"Motherhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saying that she had long felt called as a Christian citizen—she used the term citizen—to inform the women of our church of the mistake they were making with their missionary dues. She had too much confidence in their motherhood to believe they would be guilty of such heathen ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... home. Ideal happiness is portrayed in the life of Madame Cesar Birotteau. Madame Grandet, Madame Hulot (La Cousine Bette), and Madame Claes (La Recherche de l'Absolu) were martyrs to their husbands, while Madame Serizy made a martyr of hers. Beautiful motherhood is often seen, as in Madame Sauviat (Le Cure de Village), yet some of the mothers in Balzac are most heartless. A few professions among women are represented, actresses, artists, musicians and dancers being prominent in some of ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... to the wise counsel and guidance of the Prince Consort in the early decades of her reign. Not one act of folly has marred its even current. She has held up to the nation a high ideal of wifehood, motherhood, and of domestic virtue. None of her predecessors have bound their people to them with ties so human, her griefs and experiences moving them as their own. We think of her more as an exalted type of Woman, than as Sovereign of the most marvellous Empire the World ever saw;—its area ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... the motherhood latent in her, Roma understood the boy in a moment. "If I were a gentleman, I would, though," ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... toward you only as your long worship of him, your sacrifices—all the unseen little ones every day since he was born—will make him act. Dear, it breaks my heart for you, but what you have to oppose now is the history of your own selfless and perfect motherhood. I remember saying once that what you worshipped in your son was the angel you saw in him—and I still believe that is true of every mother. But in a mother's worship she may not see that the Will in her son should not always be offered incense along with ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... young woman, meantime? Let me tell the truth: motherhood became her so well that she was brazen from the very beginning. No delicacy, no pretty shame, no shrinking—she gloried in the growing fact. When she was brought to bed she made a quick recovery; she insisted upon a devout churching, an elaborate christening ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... life. Each generation borrows from generations past and pays the debt to the generations that follow. A certain percentage of the mothers die in childbirth—evidence that they are God's handiwork is found in the fact they so willingly enter the valley of the shadow of death to attain to motherhood. Many a boy has been won back to rectitude by the sorrows of a parent; we are not infrequently healed by the stripes that fall on others. In fact, great wrongs are seldom righted without the shedding of innocent blood—one dies and a multitude are saved. These do not always illustrate the voluntary ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... cry of horror. Instinctively her arms were interposed between the unconscious man and these inhuman creatures, with a beautiful gesture of protecting motherhood. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... turn of the head showed a lean Greek profile, an outline bulbous and Armenian, the smooth creamy mask of a Jewess, while here and there glimmered something more opulent and inviting still, which proclaimed, if it did not confess, the remote motherhood of the zenana and the origin of the sun. An audience of fluttering fans and wrinkled shirt collars—the evening was warm under the gas-lights—sensuous, indolent, already amused with itself. Not an old woman in it from end to end, hardly a man turned fifty, and those who were had ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... refusal to women of a generous education, of a living wage, of opportunities for professional distinction; the social habit of amused contempt at women's doings; the meanness that used a woman's capacity for mating and motherhood to bind her a slave either of the kitchen or of the streets. All these things Ellen knew to be true, because she was poor and had had to drink life with the chill on, but it did not sadden her to have her reluctant views confirmed ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... wife of the metal-smith, is not for one of your quality, though the wench is well enough now with her baby on her arm and the best of her seen by a poet and made enduring. He, like our Bernardo, had motherhood in such esteem that he held it would ransom a sin. A sin? I am no casuist to discuss rewards and punishments; but if Socrates were rightly informed and sin indeed ignorance, I have no whips for Mariota's square shoulders. Her ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... absolute formations instituted by Mind, 507:3 while water symbolizes the elements of Mind. Spirit duly feeds and clothes every object, as it appears in the line of spiritual creation, thus tenderly expressing the father- 507:6 hood and motherhood of God. Spirit names and blesses all. Without natures particularly defined, objects and subjects would be obscure, and creation would be full of 507:9 nameless offspring, - wanderers from the parent Mind, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... come in her life history, I am sure no gladder time ever came than that time when she realized that to her was going to be given the matchless privilege of mothering her own child. I know there are some mothers who do not agree with her. I know there are some that look upon the responsibilities of motherhood as building a kind of prison, but not so this immortal mother. She looked upon her duty as her highest privilege. She entered upon her task with an eagerness ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... practical training at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and in the Manhattan Maternity in New York. I have a feeling that I am not going to enjoy the former. Nursing 'grown-ups' does not appeal to me as the caring for the little flowers does. But I shall love the other. Motherhood is sacred ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... had married and had children, whom she worshipped, once told me that the pang of motherhood is that even your children don't seem your very own. They are often more like some one else than their parents, perhaps the spinster sister-in-law, whom every one dislikes, or some entire alien. Look at Regie. He is just like me, which ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... preservation. It seems at first glance that the buck is more keen- witted than the doe; but this is a debatable question. Throughout the year the buck thinks only of himself. During fully one-half the year the doe is burdened by the cares of motherhood, and the paramount duty of saving her fawns from their numerous enemies. This, I am quite sure, is the handicap which makes it so much easier to kill a doe in the autumn hunting season than to bag a fully antlered and sophisticated buck who ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... man, unless he is the weakest of all coxcombs, and unworthy to wear his beard, does not trouble himself because a woman admires another man's person more than his own. His feeling has its origin in the motherhood of woman, a recognition of which is latent in all social arrangements touching the sex, and in all man's feeling toward her. Man's jealousy is a mingled feeling of resentment of personal disloyalty, and of grief at unchastity on the part of the woman that he loves. Man ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... they had left the creche he began to speak of the horror the babies in their incubating cases had caused him. "Is motherhood gone?" he said. "Was it a cant? Surely it was an instinct. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... few days, no doubt, an omnibus will come to the door empty, to go away full, filled with luggage, crowned by a perambulator and a baby's bath!" It is only a woman who can travel with a perambulator and a bath; they are the epitome of motherhood. A father is always too busy to go ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... small sons, and her theories on motherhood were so sweet and lofty that Bridgie, listening thereto, had been moved to tears. But in practice the theories were apt to go to the wall. To do Joan justice she would at any time have marched cheerfully to the stake if by so doing she could have saved her children from peril, ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... our sex in giving us a choice between love and motherhood. I have made mine. My children shall be my gods, and this ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... talents of the Epeirae are displayed to even better purpose in the industrial business of motherhood than in the art of the chase. The silk bag, the nest, in which the Banded Epeira houses her eggs, is a much greater marvel than the bird's nest. In shape, it is an inverted balloon, nearly the size of a Pigeon's egg. The top tapers like a pear and is cut short and crowned with a scalloped ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... pensive frame of mind this morning. Two days before she had read a paper at the Institute on "Motherhood," which had been enthusiastically received. Mrs. Earle had printed a flattering item concerning it in the Benham Sentinel. It was agreeable to her to be going to meet Littleton, for he was the most interesting masculine figure in her life. She was sure ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... I referred to the great responsibilities of motherhood, and doubtless your mental comment was, "Yes, that is woman's peculiar sphere; there she should be content to remain." It is our sphere—beautiful, glorious, almost infinite in its possibilities. We accept the work; we only ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... was feeding a child in a pinafore who sat in a high-chair. The sketch might have been a mere piece of domestic prettiness; but the handling of it was so strong and free that it became a significant, typical thing. It breathed the North, a life rustic and withdrawn—the sweetness of home and motherhood. ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... whole, pleased with her experiment in vicarious motherhood. Dick instinctively resented the fact that Nancy had taken Collier Pratt's daughter into her home and heart, but the child herself was a delight to him, and he spent hours romping with her and telling her stories, loading her with toys and sweetmeats, and taking ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... is associated with all the sexual and reproductive aptitudes that make a woman attractive to a man. His conclusion is that the normal condition of which chlorosis is the extreme and pathological condition, is a preparation for motherhood (E. Lloyd Jones, "Chlorosis: The Special Anaemia of Young Women," 1897; also numerous reports to the British Medical Association, published in the British Medical Journal. There was an interesting discussion of the theories of chlorosis at the Moscow International Medical ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... spawn of children cluttered the slimy pavement, for all the world like tadpoles just turned frogs on the bottom of a dry pond. In a narrow doorway, so narrow that perforce we stepped over her, sat a woman with a young babe, nursing at breasts grossly naked and libelling all the sacredness of motherhood. In the black and narrow hall behind her we waded through a mess of young life, and essayed an even narrower and fouler stairway. Up we went, three flights, each landing two feet by three in area, and heaped ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... I will never do it," replies she, soothingly, the touch of motherhood that is in all good women coming to the front as she sees his agitation. "Why should I, when you are such a dear old boy? Now come and sit down again, and be reasonable. See, I will tie you up with my flowery chain as punishment for your behavior, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... something of motherhood. Michael's simplicity and his sincerity were already known to her, but she had never yet known the strength of him. You could lean on Michael. In his quiet, undemonstrative way he supported you completely, ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... were that soil Save as you planted. (Though in the Book we read One woman bore a child with no man's aid, We find no record of a man-child born Without the aid of woman! Fatherhood Is but a small achievement at the best, While motherhood comprises heaven and hell.) This ever-growing argument of sex Is most unseemly, and devoid of sense. Why waste more time in controversy, when There is not time enough for all of love, Our rightful occupation in this life? Why prate of our defects, of where we fail, When just the story of ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... some one began to cross the floor overhead with an astonishing sound of rocking yet with little advance—in the way that a walking doll goes forward. This was Mrs. Kukor herself, who was motherhood incarnate to Johnnie; motherhood boiled down into an unalloyed lump; the pure essence of it in a fat, round package. The little Jewish lady never objected to this regular morning interruption of her work. And so the next moment, the miracle happened. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... sympathize in all grievances and perplexities which may confront her offspring. Hence there is great need for proper instruction to wives, mothers, and, in fact, to all women in anticipation of the responsibilities of a home, and the obligations of motherhood. It has been well said that the training of children should begin with their grandparents. The character of the homes of the land, the moral and immoral bearing of every settlement, town, and city, in a large measure depend upon the class of women—upon the idiosyncrasies of wives, mothers, ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Caroline is exceedingly proud of the somewhat rounded form of her waist. All women display an innocent artfulness, the first time they find themselves facing motherhood. Like a soldier who makes a brilliant toilet for his first battle, they love to play the pale, the suffering; they rise in a certain manner, and walk with the prettiest affectation. While yet flowers, they bear a fruit; they enjoy their maternity by anticipation. All those little ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... 40 of our States have enacted measures in aid of motherhood, the District of Columbia is still without such a law. A carefully considered bill will be presented, which ought to have most thoughtful consideration in order that the Congress may adopt a measure which will be hereafter a model for all ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... would follow this pernicious custom. The girl's will or desire must not be regarded as an element in this life compact! And, what is worse still, these infant compacts are necessarily followed by early consummation, whereby girls enter, in many cases, upon the duties of motherhood at twelve years of age. Few, indeed, are permitted to reach full physical development before they assume the function of child-bearing. This is not only a serious evil to the woman herself, it also gives poor chance for the begetting of a healthy ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... the crowd of weeping women, Rosario stood, the deserted, the childless wife, tearful in the presence of that anguished motherhood; and from the bottom of her soul she ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... however, an event took place which did much to alleviate Julie's hitherto deplorable existence. A daughter was born to her, and she determined to nurse her child herself. For two years motherhood, its all-absorbing multiplicity of cares and anxious joys, made life less hard for her. She and her husband lived necessarily apart. Her physicians predicted improved health, but the Marquise herself put no faith in these auguries ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... safety for the home and the family so long as babies are robbed of their mothers' care; so long as little children are made to do the work of men; so long as the girls who are to be the wives and mothers are sent into wifehood and motherhood unprepared, simply because the years of maidenhood are spent in factories that ought to be spent in preparation for wifehood and motherhood. Here is capitalism cutting at the very heart of the home, with Socialism as the only defender of the home it ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... dames as she, and make the world a better place therefor. See you to this matter, good Saint Cuthbert, and also the matter of his Dukedom. But when he shall be Duke indeed, and blest with her that is so fair a maid and apt to motherhood—I pray thee, Saint Cuthbert, let him not forget me whose soul he saved long since within the green in the matter of Beda that was a Jester—I pray thee let him have regard to Black Roger that am his man henceforth to the end. Amen. Holy Saint ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... mother's bed of pain and unrest,—a sense that comes only of ministering, a sense that grows only when the strong bend toward the weak. As for Aurelia, words could never have expressed her dumb happiness when the real revelation of motherhood was vouchsafed her. In all the earlier years when her babies were young, carking cares and anxieties darkened the fireside with their brooding wings. Then Rebecca had gone away, and in the long months ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the temper, the senses are attuned by it. It is loved by its lovers like life. The grape to them is no longer a luscious fruit; it is 'the mother of mighty wine,' and he who is bold enough to disown that motherhood must stand apart. How can a profession however strong, march all at once against such an overwhelming influence? Itself born, perchance, under the influence bred under it, how shall it immediately be transformed? ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... said that in all this she had done quite right; that Frank, if he had done his duty after marrying her, should have come with her. And because they all felt that Richard had been her best friend as well as their own, they called the child after him. This also was Lali's wish. Coincident with her motherhood there came to Lali a new purpose. She had not lived with the Armours without absorbing some of their fine social sense and dignity. This, added to the native instinct of pride in her, gave her a new ambition. As hour by hour her child grew dear to her, so hour by hour her husband ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his father. This seems to prove Schopenhauer's remark concerning a divine sonship: "Paternity is a cheap office, anyway, accomplished without cost, care or risk, and of it no one should boast. A divine motherhood is the only thing that is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... conviction remained that she was unchanged. In this she had for support her appearance; practically she was as freshly and gracefully pale as the girl who had married Arnaud Hallet. Even Vigne, with indelible traces of her motherhood, had faint lines absent from Linda's flawless countenance. Her children, and Arnaud, were immensely proud of her beauty; it had become a part—in the form of her ridiculously young air—of the family conversational ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... book is intended as a companion volume to "Child-Life in Art," and is a study of Madonna art as a revelation of motherhood. With the historical and legendary incidents in the life of the Virgin it has nothing to do. These subjects have been discussed comprehensively and finally in Mrs. Jameson's splendid work on the "Legends of the Madonna." Out of the great mass of Madonna subjects are selected, here, only ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... woman's highest function, and, moreover, it is a function which it is unwise not to exercise; for it is infinitely more perilous for a healthy woman not to be a mother than it is for her to bear children. Motherhood, too, is the most markedly indicated function of a woman's body. She is specialized for it; it is the thing indicated. And yet we never say to a woman, Be a mother when you will; we hold up our hands in horror at the very thought of motherhood itself, and we say, Marry; ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... these women was reconciled because she could see reflected in the actions of that child the traits of a breed of strangers. And yet both these women can still find it in them to forgive her for all that she has done and all that she may ever do. That's motherhood, I suppose." ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... seeks to cut himself off from his fellows: we are all of us spirits, and spirit seeks unity and approach. Love is the one uniting and binding force in the universe, just as its opposite—hatred—is the disintegrating element. Love operates in attraction, as we see it in motherhood, childhood, and the love of man and maid. But it also works on the grand scale in the guise of the law of Gravity which attracts and binds universes together, and regulates and controls the swing of inconceivable immensities. Look again and we may see love working as chemical affinity ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... seems that folk have twitted him with never having produced one. She has long been on the look-out for a model for him. It is odd to see this pale, demure, diaphanous creature, not the more earthly for approaching motherhood, scanning the girls of our village with ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... center of the first panel, as the symbol of worldly motive. Here, too, are primitive man and woman, bearing their burdens, symbolized by their progeny, into the unknown future, ready to meet whatever be the call of earth. The woman suggests the overwhelming instincts of motherhood. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... truth is, Hedda is less a type than a "rare case," but to diagnose her as merely neurasthenic is also to go wide of the mark. Doubtless her condition may have added bitterness to her already overflowing cup; nevertheless Hedda is not altogether a pathological study. Approaching motherhood is not a veil for her multitude of sins. How soon are we shown her cruel nature in the dialogue with devoted Thea Rysing, whose hair at school had aroused envy in Hedda! She pulled it whenever she got a chance, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... rent. You will not own anything. The state shall own all the property. What will be the patriotism of the man who has nothing? Why defend something that is only his government's, not his own? You are legalizing women as cows. The sense of motherhood will vanish when a woman may not select her mate. What is the greatest thing in the world? The human need of possession. To own something, however little. The spur of creative genius. Human beings will never be equal except in lawful privileges. The skillful will outpace ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... dream. However, in a short time it was repeated,—"Mary, Mary! get up; there is a great deal to do." This voice confused her greatly. Was it possible that all that was past had been mere fancy, that she had but dreamed those long, long years,—maturity and motherhood, and trouble and triumph, and old age at the end of all? It seemed to her possible that she might have dreamed the rest,—for she had been a girl much given to visions,—but she said to herself that she never could have dreamed ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... sprinkled with grains of corn, she clung faster to his arm and pressed it closer to her. He had quite forgotten the momentary unpleasant impression, and alone with her he felt, now that the thought of her approaching motherhood was never for a moment absent from his mind, a new and delicious bliss, quite pure from all alloy of sense, in the being near to the woman he loved. There was no need of speech, yet he longed to hear the sound of her voice, which like her eyes had changed since she had been with child. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... of motherhood stirred in her veins at the thought. These were hers to care for—hers to attend and "do" for. She laughed as she thought of the family awaiting her. What a family. Yes, why not? These creatures were for the guardianship of the human race. With all their ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... beyond the animal side of her, proving the possession in embryo of faculties other than those which had survived Mr. Frayling's rule; but her nature was plastic; one of those which requires the strong and delicate hand of a master to mould it into distinct and lovely form. Motherhood, as it had appeared to her in the delicate dreams of those young days, had promised to be a beautiful and blessed privilege, but then the children of her happy imaginings had been less her own than those of the shadowy perfection who was to have been her husband. She had little sense ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Mrs. Grayson's excitable motherhood took alarm. "I never heard," she said quickly, "that breathing in coal-tar smells kept ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... many years has had a place in my thoughts, one truth has forced itself upon me: the predominant position of Woman in her natural relation to the race. The mother is the main stream of the racial life. All the hope of the future rests upon this faith in motherhood. ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... no, my dear fellow, even to you I won't betray confidence. The girl is an enthusiast. Now enthusiasts are always morbid and unhappy unless they can find vent for their energies. Why don't you give her the natural and healthy vents supplied by wifehood and motherhood? Why do you wait for Hinton's first brief to make them happy? You have money enough to ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... for the tragedy, to lead Oolik into the house in disgrace. She was anxious to make restitution for any damage; but a close examination revealed the fact that there was no wound that a bit of glue would not easily cure, and the only real hurt was that given to the feelings of insulted motherhood. ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... followed, turning the matter over in his mind. Did mere motherhood hallow that old thing to the colored girl and her sort and condition? Was there a superstition of motherhood among such people which would endear this disreputable old thing to their affection and reverence? Did such people ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... refuge from its consequences? Before this strange extension of her love all the old limitations seemed to fall. Something had cleft the surface of self, and there welled up the mysterious primal influences, the sacrificial instinct of her sex, a passion of spiritual motherhood that made her long to fling herself between the unborn child ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... the shortness of life and nearness of eternity when I see how many that I have traveled with are gone within the veil. Then there are all my own letters, written in the first two years of marriage, when Mr. Stowe was in Europe and I was looking forward to motherhood and preparing for it—my letters when my whole life was within the four walls of my nursery, my thoughts absorbed by the developing character of children who have now lived their earthly life and gone to the eternal one,—my two little boys, each in their way good and lovely, whom Christ has ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... because nature is elsewhere parsimonious, she seems frequently extravagant; yet that extravagance is the cheapest means of attaining the necessary end. Thus, when woman's passion is no longer required for the function of motherhood, its impulsion may yet be counted on for the psychological explanation of ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... she wanted to show Hugh their boy; and Hugh consented at once. And hand in hand they went through the tangled underwood and past the shimmering falls; and as Hugh looked down on his little wife and saw the new sweet womanliness that had grown on her with her motherhood, and the meek purity of her fair young face, he felt a proud happiness thrilling within him, and knew that it was God-given, and that its blessing would last him throughout ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... her pain, Lucile spoke the words of her pain, and Frona, throwing arms about her, sobbed on her breast in understanding. As for Lucile, the slight nervous ingathering of the brows above her eyes smoothed out, and she pressed the kiss of motherhood, lightly and secretly, on the other's hair. For a space,—then the brows ingathered, the lips drew firm, and ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... little theories, about this and that, more careless of the opinion of his fellowmen, and, as a certain consequence, more unable to bear the little crosses and contradictions of daily life; and as Lucia, having brought one and another child safely into the world, settled down into motherhood, he became less and less attentive to her, and more and more attentive to that self which was fast becoming the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... earthly ideal for a woman is that she should be a good wife and a good mother. It is not necessary to say this in direct words to every small girl, but she ought to be so educated, so guided, as to instinctively realise that wifehood and motherhood is the flower and perfection of her being. This is the hope and ideal that should sanctify her lessons and sweeten the right and proper discipline of life. All learning, all handicraft, and all artistic training should take their place as a preparation to this ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... the rights of motherhood among the wealthy indifferent, and from a most important viewpoint. Price . . . . . . ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... themselves, could Mother Carey's chickens go out over the seas and show good birds the way home? At such moments Mrs. Carey would look at her image in the glass and say, "No whimpering, madam! You can't have the joys of motherhood without some of its pangs! Think of your blessings, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... with their morbid emphasis on problems and crime and sex in preference to the cleancut American product which always satisfied the nobler feelings by showing the reward of the honest, the downfall of evildoers and the purity of love and motherhood. Art is all very well, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... the hand that gave— Till I rise in my wrath and I sweep on their path and I stamp them into a grave. Dreaming of men who will bless me, of women esteeming me good, Of children born in my borders, of radiant motherhood; Of cities leaping to stature, of fame like a flag unfurled, As I pour the tide of my riches in the eager lap ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... had known me as the wife of the Count de Volaski, believed that all my distress was caused by the prospect of becoming the mother of a fatherless child, and bent all her energies to try to comfort me with the assurance that this motherhood would be the greatest blessing ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... doctor's forms of speech, his facts were sound. Not in vain had he been Scott Brenton's senior warden, all these months; not in vain Kathryn's medical adviser and unwilling confidant, during the recent weeks of her approach to motherhood. He had learned to know the fineness of the man, the reverent housing he gave to his ideals, the care he lavished on their betterment; and just so surely he also knew the sordid selfishness of the woman, her lack of any ideals beyond the petty ones concerning ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... or talents, forbade them to devote sufficient time to the child, were relieved by the kindergarten. Girls learned, as if in a preparatory school of future wife and motherhood, how to give the little one what it needed, and, as Froebel expresses it, to become the mediators between Nature ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and the blazing suns of those twenty years that were gone; it may be that the soft, sweet music of spring came to her again, filled with the old, old song of life, and that Something gracious and painless descended upon her as a final reward for a glorious motherhood on earth. ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... the face Of Love in sorrow by the bed of Death, Grew tender as a maid; and she who missed A little mouth that used to catch, and cling— A small, sweet trouble—at her yearning breast;* Yea, she of Zarephath, who sat and mourned The silence of a birdlike voice that made Her flutter with the joy of motherhood In other days, she came to know the heart Of Pity that the rugged prophet had. And when he took the soft, still child away, And laid it on his bed; and in the dark Sent up a pleading voice to Heaven; and drew The little body to his breast; ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... dress, with the big collar and the coarse shirt that scratched her skin, it seemed as if she had imbibed something of the carefree, almost shameless peacefulness with which Lina had lazily and indolently moved her body, distorted by motherhood, along the vegetable ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... sleep which is no obstacle between the cries of her children and her sheltering soul: it was ready to wake at every moan of the human sea around her. Unlike most women, she had not needed marriage and motherhood to open the great gate of her heart to her kind: I do not mean there are not many like her in this. Why the tide of human affection should have begun to rise so rapidly in her just at this time, there is no need for conjecturing: much of every history must for ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... or one hundred years to come; that you, through your physical health, or lack of it, are to become a source of strength or weakness in future years, if you are a mother. It is all right that young women should think of marriage and motherhood, provided they think of it ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... stood over the dead calf, licking the blood from its wounds and caressing and nosing it, trying in her dumb way to bring it back to life, she was a pathetic picture of wild motherhood, fighting and ready to fight to the end if need be ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... across the sky of my heart. Marriage is so different from what the romance-fiddlers try to make it. Even Dinky-Dunk doesn't approve of my mammalogical allusions. Yet milk, I find, is one of the most important issues of motherhood—only it's impolite to mention the fact. What makes me so impatient of life as I see it reflected in fiction is its trick of overlooking the important things and over-accentuating the trifles. It primps and tries to be ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... thinks of everything, made the virgin for love; but with the first child her bosom loses form, her beauty its freshness. Woman is made for motherhood. Man would perhaps abandon her, disgusted by the loss of beauty; but his child clings to him and weeps. Behold the family, the human law; everything that departs from this ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... instinct has nothing to do with any desire to keep women curtained or captive: if such a desire exists. A husband would be pleased if his wife wore a gold crown and proclaimed laws from a throne of marble; or if she uttered oracles from the tripod of a priestess; or if she could walk in mystical motherhood before the procession of some great religious order. But that she should stand on a platform in the exact altitude in which he stands; leaning forward a little more than is graceful and holding her mouth open a little longer and wider than is dignified—well, ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... dear," remembering that he had a daughter of his own, nearly the builder's age, "we men have come to think of women primarily as potential mothers, and secondarily as people of affairs. And considering that motherhood is something that is denied to us lords ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... Wolf River is close to Memphis. They must have brought them that far but I don't know. This is what all she told me minua and minua time. Her own papa bought her when she was eight years old, Gabe McAlway. When she got to be a young maid he forced motherhood up on her. I was born before freedom. How old I am I don't know. Gabe McAlway was sort of a young bachelor. He got killed in the Civil War. He was a Scotch-Irishman. I never seen ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... all the results of the sexual mistakes of men and women are the unmarried mothers and their illegitimate children. Of course, I know that there are well-meaning people who argue that motherhood is the supreme fact and that the formality of a marriage ceremony is merely a medievalism in our laws and customs; but the inexorable truth remains that our modern social system is centered around the home ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... should have the opportunity of being in the open every day, and of this opportunity she should avail herself. Why some women are ashamed of pregnancy is hard for normal-minded people to understand, for the praise of motherhood has been sung by the greatest poets and its glory depicted by the greatest ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... from living actual objects, do not easily stir emotion, and, therefore, do not easily become material for art whose function it is to express and communicate emotion. Particular qualities, like love, honour, faith, may and do stir emotion; and certain bundles of qualities like, for example, motherhood tend towards personification; but the normal class label like horse, man, triangle does not easily become material for art; it remains a practical ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... its standard of perfection. The standard's strong point is contempt of the Chinese, who are hosts in Pell Street. Maggie Lynch came to be known as homeless, without a man, though with the prospects of motherhood approaching, yet she "had never lived with a Chink." To Pell Street that was heroic. It would have forgiven all the rest, had there been anything to forgive. But there was not. Whatever else may be, cant is not among the vices of ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... in this free, clear air that vision floats Before my brain. I may nor banish it Nor grasp it. 'Tis too fine, too spirit-like, To offer as the type of motherhood. Color and blood and life and truth it lacks. Gods! can it be that our imaginings Excel your handiwork? Must life seem dull, Must earth seem barren and unbeautiful, For ever unto him who can create This rarer world of delicate phantasy? I lift mine eyes, and nothing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... Levering answered. 'No woman begins that way. Every woman is in a state of natural subjection'—she looked up, and seeing Jean's face, smiled—'no, I'd rather say "allegiance" to her idea of romance and her hope of motherhood; they're embodied for her in man. They're the strongest things in life till man kills them. Let's be fair. If that allegiance dies, each woman ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... beauty of the Christ Child, The gentleness, the grace, The smiling, loving tenderness, The infantile embrace! All babyhood he holdeth, All motherhood enfoldeth— Yet who ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... It is therefore not surprising that the first question Arab women ask is, "Have you any children?" or that they should entertain the profoundest pity for those of their sisterhood who are not thus blessed. To them motherhood is the one thing worth living for: all else is denied to them by the barbarous customs of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Divergent Social Position. Shall We Return to Polygamy? All Children Entitled to Best Development Possible. The Work of the Children's Bureau. The Suggested Uniform Laws. Have Unmarried Women a Social Right to Motherhood? Ellen Key's Estimate of Motherhood. Monogamic Marriage Does Not Work Inerrantly. New Demand that Motherhood Have Social Support. The Increasing Tendency of Women Toward Celibate Life. Women Cannot be Forced Back to Compulsory Marriage. A Few Believe in a Third Sex. Most ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... never been what you'd call sick," Lily tried to reassure herself; "he's a reg'lar rascal!" she ended, tenderly; her eyes—those curious amber eyes, through which sometimes a tigress looks!—looked now at Maurice in passionate motherhood. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... from the lips of Frederick; another followed from those of Tess. The minister's daughter was throwing the motherhood of the babe upon her. Teola had branded her squatter savior with a nameless child—a horror from which the student shrank! She saw unbelief rise quickly in his eyes, and saw him draw aside his long rain-coat as it almost touched ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... therefore I deny the birth, The Virgin's motherhood, the resurrection, Who know not how mine own soul came to earth, Nor what shall follow death. Man's imperfection May bound not even in thought the height and girth Of God's omnipotence; neath his direction We may approach his essence, but ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... lover; and by Wilfrid, to whom Seraphita represented his ideal of feminine loveliness, both in mind and body; a young girl possessing marvelous, almost miraculous, wisdom, but yet a woman with human passions and human virtues—his ideal of wifehood and motherhood. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... to read the recorded words of some of the world's greatest minds in tribute to motherhood. The following talk, quoting some of these, should be an impressive lesson to the young and to ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... active. I don't think I ever saw a gipsy who had grown fat. In Germany the gipsy women are often very pretty; but beauty is very uncommon among the Spanish gitanas. When very young, they may pass as being attractive in their ugliness, but once they have reached motherhood, they become absolutely repulsive. The filthiness of both sexes is incredible, and no one who has not seen a gipsy matron's hair can form any conception of what it is, not even if he conjures up the roughest, the greasiest, and the dustiest heads imaginable. In some ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... for the strengthening of men, to seed the select, to winnow the weak. It was white logic, applied firmly, as by a white man. But somehow the stars multiplied and kept Cissie's image before Peter—a cold, frightened girl, harassed with coming motherhood, peering at those chill, distant lights out of the blackness of ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling |
