"Womanliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bitter as he continued to recall the past. "Had you been a plain woman you would likely have found some attractions at your home; but the love of adulation and the greed of excitement and false flattery seem now to be so necessary to you that your true womanliness has been killed." ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... were striking indeed. Their aspiration was the imitation of Christ, and they approached their model as near as ever was done by man. In an age of courtesans, when convictions were subservient to the pleasure of power, they set a worthy example of strength of mind, firmness of will, purity, and womanliness. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... fine preservation, and really a pretty and lovable- looking woman. I think I never saw anything sweeter than her smile of recognition, given to some of her friends in the gallery—to the little Indian Princess in especial. There is much in her face of pure womanliness and simple goodness; yet it is by no means wanting in animated intelligence. In short, after seeing her, I can well understand the loving loyalty of her people, and can heartily join in their prayer of ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... Miss Vernon," said Bertram; "but I am inclined to think there is a latent depth of character, a womanliness in you that our gay ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... learning things, the desire to be keeping apace with just a little bit of the world's progress, and, best of all, teaching oneself how to live wisely and well. There never was—to my way of thinking—a brainless, silly woman who was beautiful. It takes the light of intellect, the splendor of sweet womanliness, the glory of kindness, unselfishness and goodness to complete a perfect picture of "the ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... no trace of such a mood about either of them. Whether this kindly and sweet patience has been acquired, after hard and miserable wrestlings with despair and wretchedness, I cannot say, but I am inclined to think that it is not so. It seems to me rather to be the display of perfect manliness and womanliness in the presence of an irreparable calamity, a wonderful and amazing compensation, sent quietly from the deepest fortress of Love to these simple and generous natures, who live in each other's lives. I tried to picture to myself what my own thoughts would be ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... McLEOD'S style and general attitude that imposes limitations; it is a quality that shows itself not only in her plot, but in her characters, the three reputed males who figure therein being as fine examples of true womanliness as you need wish to meet. Frieda was the heroine (a name somehow significant); and of the trouser-wearers, the first, Geoffrey, was a cat-like deceiver, who fascinated poor Frieda for ends unspecified, pretended (the minx!) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... pie was served on a huge china plate that had been packed over the mountains with much trouble and when every inch of room was needed for the bare necessities. Thus tenacious were the women in coming to this raw country to preserve their womanliness. I might have thought I was being favored had not Mrs. Davis frankly informed me that her few pieces of china were shunned by her men-folks on the plea ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... clothes, their portion; their sweethearts in the service of masters who were reluctant to fee a married man. Is it to be wondered that these lads who could be faithful unto death drank soddenly on their one free day, that these girls, starved of opportunities for womanliness, of which they could make as much as the finest lady, sometimes woke after a Muckley to wish that they might wake no more? Our three brushed shoulders with the devils that had been let loose, but hardly saw them; they heard them, but did not understand their ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... I like to see a woman have plenty Of new dresses," Claude replied. He was really enjoying the girl's rebellion and growing womanliness. ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... purity of mind, but how you believe—in the Trinity, in the Atonement; and do you turn to the East during the recital of the Apostles' Creed? These and such, as every one knows, are the vital matters of religion. And it is even so with sex. You are not asked for the realities of manliness or womanliness, but for the shadows, the arbitrary externalities, the fashions of which change from ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... in parables say much of people, and never by name, but I must tell you of my maid, the man, and of the other man who came between them—nearly! She was all simple charm, yet also of pulsing womanliness, the healthy product of a country life, a fair survival of many ordeals. Deep in her nature was that intense power of feeling which belongs to complete womanhood, as music belongs to an ancient fiddle. There were strings so sweet and subtle, so strange and strong, that she herself feared ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... the moment by so much true womanliness.] I mean, I stayed awake for an hour last ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... demanded service as her right, and he yielded it as her due. The unflinching shrewdness of his professional character, the hardness of his business beliefs, had never entered into the atmosphere of his home. Juliet possessed to a degree that pervasive womanliness which vanquishes mankind. After twenty years of married life in which Galt had learned her limitations and her minor sins of temperament, he was not able to face her stainless bosom or to meet her pure eyes without believing her to be a saint. In his heart ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... told his young wife, if he had confided to her pure soul the secret that burdened his, child as she was, she would have understood and pitied and forgiven him; the very suffering would have given her added womanliness and gained his respect, and through that bitter knowledge, honestly told and generously received, a new and better Fay would have risen to win ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... poems were so wanting in restraint both of thought and language that I could not bear the idea of their being written by a woman. The letters that were shown to me made it still less possible for me to believe in the womanliness of the writer. But my doubts did not shake my friend's devotion and he went on with the worship of ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... ultimate arrival at the farm, and the meeting with its homely folk, soon restored her equanimity. She at once warmed to Ma, whose gentle practical disposition displayed such a wealth of true womanliness as to be quite irresistible, and, in the confidence of her bedchamber, which she shared with Rosebud, she imparted her favorable impressions. She assured the girl she no longer wondered that she, Rosebud, with everything ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... slightly made. He was sallow in colour, with brown eyes, and a full yet delicate mouth; but his beautiful face, like that of our English Shakespeare, is familiar to most of us. With regard to Raphael's face, the amount of womanliness in it is a striking characteristic. One hears sometimes that no man's character is complete without its share of womanliness: surely Raphael had a double share, for womanliness is the most distinctive quality in his ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... petticoats, in defiance of the fact that classical parts should not be dressed in a superfluity of raiment. But if the petticoats were full of starch, the voice was full of pathos—and the dignity, simplicity, and womanliness of Mrs. Charles Kean's Hermione could not have been marred by a far more ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... pressure deep down in the throat) for the sympathy of that one person whose presence is different from the presence of other people. And failing that particular woman another can, in a certain degree, by her mere womanliness, stay the pressure of ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... German spirit through all the changes in her life, with the same determination which made it possible, in her strenuous labors, to retain her gentle womanliness. Just before she died she desired to hear one ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... was being carried over the threshold dwelt upon the graceful form of Crystal—clad all in white—all womanliness and gentleness now—her sweet face only faintly distinguishable in the gloom. St. Genis, whose nerves were still jarred with all that he had gone through to-day and irritated by Crystal's assiduity beside the sick man, resented that last look ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... Horace Greeley, Bayard Taylor, Richard and Elizabeth Stoddard, Justin McCarthy, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Ole Bull, P. T. Barnum, Elizabeth Cady Stanton—these were but a part of the brilliant company which delighted to gather on Sunday evening and enjoy the sweetness and womanliness of Alice, and the wit ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... Roger took my part. "Let the girl alone," he told Alicia. "If she doesn't love Sinclair, she was right in refusing him. I, for one, am glad that she has got enough truth and womanliness in her to keep her from ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was the world-old struggle for liberty. The knitting women remember now with shame and sorrow that they have said hard things about the suffragettes, and thought they were unwomanly and hysterical. Now they know that womanliness, and peaceful gentle ways, prayers, petitions and tears have long been tried but are found wanting; and now they know that these brave women in England, maligned, ridiculed, persecuted, as they were, have been fighting every woman's battle, ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... house quarters, are reputable institutions, but to most of them the lowest of the low, both men and women, resort. There, as in the dance halls, the "White Slaver" plies his trade, and the destroyer of womanliness lays his nets. ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... notorieties, which naturally throw her mind and Mrs. Stuart's more frequently into contact with each other. But I see that, after all, Mrs. Stuart had no need of any bridges of this kind to bring her on to common ground with Isabel Bretherton. Her strong womanliness and the leaven of warm-hearted youth still stirring in her would be quite enough of themselves, and, besides, there is her critical delight in the girl's beauty, and the little personal pride and excitement she undoubtedly feels at having, in so creditable and natural ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... woman of twenty-six, with clear kind eyes and a strong sweet mouth. She had about her that charm of manner which can only be described as winsome womanliness. Prudence gazed at her with open and honest admiration. Such a young woman to be the principal of a high school in a city the size of Mount Mark! She must be tremendously clever. But Prudence did not sigh. We can't all ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... Look at their dark skins, and their haughty noses. Oh, you needn't blow your nostrils out at me, gentlemen; I am not a bit afraid of either of you.—And then look at this lovely creature. She is a Raby too, only softened down by her sweet womanliness. Look at them all three, if they are not one flesh and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... men into whose scheme of life they fit as honorific items sanctioned by the requirements of pecuniary reputability. They are items of pecuniary and cultural beauty which have come to do duty as elements of the ideal of womanliness. ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... pistol at the horse's head and as often withdrew it, reluctant, a man, as all who knew him wondered at, gentle to womanliness with a brute, though in a cause against men the most bitter and sometimes ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... lodged at her ease, for she saw first to that, she ordered her prisoners to be brought before the Prince her son. She had the decency not to sit as judge herself; but, in outrage of all womanliness, she sat herself in the court, near the Prince's seat. She would have sat in the seat rather than have missed her end. The Prince was wholly governed by his mother; he knew not her true character; and ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... me, Mr. Price," Mrs. Malcomson rattled on: "The fate of nations has hung upon your opinion, and your decisions are matter of history: so kindly condescend, of your goodness and of your wisdom, to tell us if you think that 'true womanliness' is endangered by our occupations, or the cut of our clothes—I have it!" she broke off, clasping her hands, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... experiencing a whirl of conflicting emotions,—anger at Louis's interference, pleasure at his protecting care, annoyance at what he considered gross negligence on the doctor's part, and a sneaking pride, in defiance of his insinuations, over the thought that Kemp had trusted to her womanliness as a safeguard against any chance annoyance. She also felt ashamed at ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... an exquisite forehead. The dark brown eyes were the girl's chief charm. They danced and sparkled in impish mischief, and had a way of shooting sudden glances which made themselves felt as keenly as arrows. And crowning it all was a sweet grace and womanliness which was good to see. From that hour my opinion of a ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... at the Empire Theater May 8, 1899, and was a distinguished artistic success. Miss Adams's Juliet was appealing, romantic, lovely. It touched the chords of all her gentle womanliness and gave the character, so far as the American stage was concerned, a new tradition of ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... contemplation of this portrait, Bettina turned to its companion. Here she encountered a face and form which were truly all womanly, if by womanliness is meant abject submission and self-effacement. The poor little lady looked patiently hopeless, and her deprecating air seemed the last in the world calculated to hold its own against such a lord. That she had not done so—of her own full surrender of herself, in mind and soul and body—the ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... into womanliness. One day a month or so after receiving intelligence of Newson's death off the Bank of Newfoundland, when the girl was about eighteen, she was sitting on a willow chair in the cottage they still occupied, working twine nets for the fishermen. Her mother ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... no sweeter words than these; and it was this loyalty in Miss Nussey which has marked her out in our day as a fine type of sweet womanliness, and will secure to her a lasting name as the friend of ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... with each other less honestly than the beasts of the field,—but for me there is a limit!—a limit you have passed! I think I could pardon your wrong to me more readily than I can pardon your callous desertion of the child you brought into the world—your lack of womanliness— motherliness!—your deliberate refusal to give Pierce Armitage the chance of righting the wrong he had committed in a headstrong, heart-strong rush of thoughtless passion!—he WOULD have righted it, I know, and been a loyal husband to you, and a good father to his ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... this was a new revelation. He had never known this sort of woman. That a woman could be clever as men are clever, and also be graceful, adorned, and tender with womanliness, he had not supposed. ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the church Dan had heard, and had already learned to think somewhat lightly of the kind of people who commonly make them. But this young woman—so wholesome, so good to look at in her sweet seriousness, so strong in her womanliness and withal so useful in what she called her ministry—this woman was—well, ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... and am at pains to pleasure you, I do most frankly and fully confess; and I ask them whether, considering only all that it means to have had, and to have continually, before one's eyes your debonair demeanour, your bewitching beauty and exquisite grace, and therewithal your modest womanliness, not to speak of having known the amorous kisses, the caressing embraces, the voluptuous comminglings, whereof our intercourse with you, ladies most sweet, not seldom is productive, they do verily marvel that I am fond ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... ungracious when she would most wish to be gracious. She saw her face as the glass reflected it, but she did not see the changing play of expression which gave it its charm—the infinite pity, the sympathy, the sweet womanliness which drew towards her all who were in doubt and in trouble, even as poor slow-moving Charles Westmacott had been drawn to her that night. She was herself, she thought, outside the pale of love. But it was very different ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in him then what may be justly called the wonder of life. The thoughtful reader of these pages has ere this discerned enough to know that the young Jew in disposition was gentle even to womanliness—a result that seldom fails the habit of loving and being loved. The circumstances through which he had come had made no call upon the harsher elements of his nature, if such he had. At times he had felt the stir and impulses of ambition, but they had been like the formless dreams of a child walking ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... varying particulars which made up the character of Bathsheba Everdene. It was almost foreign to her intrinsic nature. Introduced as lymph on the dart of Eros, it eventually permeated and coloured her whole constitution. Bathsheba, though she had too much understanding to be entirely governed by her womanliness, had too much womanliness to use her understanding to the best advantage. Perhaps in no minor point does woman astonish her helpmate more than in the strange power she possesses of believing cajoleries that she knows to be false—except, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... together—that is, Sarah Walker did, with deft womanliness—carried it darkly along the hall to No. 27, and deposited it in Peters' bed, where it lay like a freshly opened oyster. We then returned hand in hand to my room, where we looked out of the window on the sea. It was observable ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... the ladies are at home," and refined custom requires it. But to express the graces and endowments of a woman, it is her womanliness that is emphasized. "She is a gracious, sweet-tempered, kindly woman." The same distinction applies to the use of ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... gratitude to her young preserver mixed with deeper and more mysterious feelings? I could not tell, but from that night I noticed a regular change in Jill: she became less girlish and fanciful, a new sort of womanliness developed itself, her high spirits were tempered with softness. Uncle Brian was right when he said a few days afterwards 'that his little girl was growing ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... was womanly to the core of her nature, in spite of her work in Brandywine's millinery department, it was impossible to doubt while he kissed her. There were times, indeed, when the exaltation of Gabriella's womanliness seemed to have left her without a will of her own; when, in a divine submission to love, she appeared to exist only for the laudable purpose of ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... and gentle as he stood there pleading in the pale moonlight, that Selah could have taken him to her bosom then and there and fondled him as one would pet a sick child, for pure womanliness; but the devil in her blood kept her from doing it, and she answered haughtily, instead: 'Ronald, if you wanted to marry me, you ought to have asked me for my own sake. Now that you've asked me for another's, you can't expect me to give you an answer. Keep ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... when "Modjesky" came to town. Her Camille—a character in which she was not excelled by the great Bernhardt herself—had a remarkable vogue in the early eighties. She imparted to its impersonation the subtle charm of her own sweet womanliness, which served to excuse Armand's infatuation and as far as possible lifted the play out of its unwholesome atmosphere of French immorality to the plane of romantic devotion and self-sacrifice. Her Camille seemed a victim of remorseless destiny, a pure soul ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... mother of Washington as an excellent woman of business; and to possess such a quality as capacity for business is not only compatible with true womanliness, but is in a measure essential to the comfort and wellbeing of every properly-governed family. Habits of business do not relate to trade merely, but apply to all the practical affairs of life—to everything that has to be arranged, to be organised, to be provided for, to be done. ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... its president, Mrs. Richards, assisted by Mrs. Cohen and Mrs. E. E. Corfman. A long and valuable program was carried out. Mrs. Catt spoke in the Tabernacle on Sunday afternoon, introduced by President Charles W. Penrose with a glowing tribute to her power as a leader, to the sincerity and womanliness of her character and to the catholicity of her vision and sympathy. There were banquets, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... tends to press the upper extremities of the thighs out laterally in females more than in males. Hence the former can stand less long with comfort than the latter. Miss C——, however, believed in doing her work in a man's way, infected by the not uncommon notion that womanliness means manliness. Moreover, she would not, or could not, make any more allowance for the periodicity of her organization than for the shape of her skeleton. When about twenty years of age, perhaps a year or so older, she applied to me for advice in consequence ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... endeavored to follow such advice by bringing forward those qualities of colonial womanhood which have made for the refinement, the intellectuality, the spirit, the aggressiveness, and withal the genuine womanliness of the present-day American woman. As the book is not intended for scholars alone, the author has felt free when he had not original source material before him to quote now and then from the studies of writers on other phases of colonial life—such as the valuable ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... were ways and ways of saying things. "I suppose there is some sneering at her," said he, "among the girls who couldn't do anything if they tried. It seems to me, if there is any profession a woman could follow without losing her womanliness, it is that of doctor. Every woman ought to be a doctor, whether she ever tries to make a living ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... and an old, almost obliterated almanac that had been used by her father;" and with these tokens of the unswerving love and fidelity she had always borne to parent and brother, she was laid away to rest, leaving the memory of a noble woman, great in wisdom, and greater in womanliness, without which, in woman, wisdom is unhallowed.—S.A. CHAPIN, JR., in ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... fighting for a good cause. He knew that he could always count on her never-flagging sympathy; that he had a friend at home who would always stand by him. Their common fate drove them into each other's arms like frightened birds at the approach of a storm. All the womanliness in her,—however little it may be appreciated now-a-days,—which is after all nothing but a memory of the great mother, the force of nature which is woman's endowment, was roused. It fell on the children like the warm glow of a fire at ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... and to making known the aspirations of our country, especially in introducing the labors and achievements of our women to their sisters in France, of whom we also have much to learn; for simple, homely virtues and the charm of womanliness may still be studied with advantage on the ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... taught our children. The spirit which Jesus revealed in his life upon earth is exemplified in the lives of many of his followers who joyously spend themselves in the service of others. Men who set the standard for manliness, and women whose character and lives are the best definition of womanliness, are as much a revelation of God's work and power as a constellation of stars or the bloom ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... moved as he had never been moved before by kindliness and womanliness. "Thank you.... Thank you," he said, tremulously. "I—you don't know what this means to me. You've—you've put a new face on the ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... from bending to kiss him, poor Lady Valleys fidgeted from head to foot. A sudden impulse of sheer womanliness caused a tear to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... figure acquired a new elegance from her black dress. Robert had never set eyes on Sylvia in such a costume before that day. Hitherto she had been a schoolgirl, a flapper, a straight-limbed, boyish young person in long frocks; but today she seemed to have put on a new air of womanliness, and he found ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... above all, that quick smile with which she greeted any flash of humor, and which produced a fascinating dimple in her cheek, all served to puzzle and stimulate him; while admiration of her so apparent womanliness began as instantly to replace the vague curiosity he had felt toward her as an actress. She was different from what he had imagined, with absolutely nothing to suggest the glare and glitter of the footlights. Until this time he had scarcely been conscious that she possessed any special ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... above, we have produced soldiers whose valor has reached world-wide reputation, poets, artists, teachers and professional men and women of recognized ability. There are hordes of others pursuing the humbler walks of life eager to acquire by education a higher ideal of manliness and womanliness, and to learn the ways of advanced civilization and approved citizenship. These achievements have been wrought by us under the most adverse conditions. We have wearily toiled by day and by night; have made bricks without ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... single look of hers ever given him a hint that, when she had been with him as the White Moll, she cared! It was unjust, unfair, to fling such a taunt at herself. It seemed as though she had lost nearly everything in life, but she had not yet lost her womanliness and her pride. ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... met him at the door and showed him into the living-room. Mrs. Duncan, plump, motherly, lovable in the mature womanliness of forty, greeted him cordially. She was sorry Edith was out; Edith had a tennis engagement. She was apparently deeply interested in the young man who was to be her coachman. Dave had never been in a home like this, and his eyes, unaccustomed to comfortable furnishings, ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... the rank and majesty in which this Marquise moved; she, Kora—who had laughed in the face of a Princess whose betrothed was seen in Kora's carriage! No; it was not the rank, it was the gentle, yet slightly imperious womanliness, back of which could be felt a fund of sympathy new and strange to her; it appealed to her as the reasoning of a man would appeal; and man was the only compelling force hitherto acknowledged ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... she was a woman, at any rate, and he loved her all the better for her womanliness. He knew very well that if God is a Figure of Speech with men, the losing of a soul is a figure of speech with women. The expression means only that they have lost the chance of drinking a number of cups of tea in drawing rooms whose doors are now shut to them. That was what Ella meant, ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore |
