"Maternal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... determination to live in Duxbury—which he named for Duxborough Hall, his ancestral home in Lancashire—went far in obtaining for it a separate incorporation and a separate church. This was the first definite offshoot from the Plymouth Colony, and was accompanied by the usual maternal fears. While he could not forbid them going to Duxbury to settle, yet, when they asked for a separate incorporation and church, Bradford granted it most unwillingly. He voiced the general sentiment when he wrote that such ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... giving him a gentle push. She was shyly aware of a lapse into unhabitual emotion and of some closer approach to the maternal relation fostered by his growing resemblance ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... were accordingly removed to the Yellow Springs, a healthy and pleasant bathing-place at three hours' distance from the city. On Saturday morning their nurse, the only servant we have, thought proper to disapprove of my deportment towards her, and left me to the maternal delights of dressing, washing, and looking after my children during that insufferable heat. Miss H—— was entirely incapacitated, and I feared was going to be ill, and I have reason to thank Heaven that I am provided with the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... say, nothing, not even enough to hire a coupe by the month. Hence, in this respect, the young girl has never been dependent upon the man, and as she has but one weapon with which to conquer him—love—the mothers allow them to learn love as soon as possible, through maternal devotion.... Yes, through maternal devotion. In my opinion, the universal alteration in the type of the young girl of former times may be imputed, first of all, to the mothers of the present generation." ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... thoughts will remain in the mind long after the book has been set aside.... Before I had covered ten pages I realized that I had something worth its weight in gold. What theme could be more interesting to the ordinary reader than 'Mother,' especially when it is a panegyric on maternal devotion? The author was fortunate in her selection and still happier in her treatment of it, for if there is anything that appeals, it is a true loyal discussion of mother and mother-love. In modern fiction we have too little of the chastening and ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... continued. A troubled sleep fell upon the husband, and in it he murmured the name of his child. The quick ear of the mother caught the word, and it thrilled through every nerve. Tears stole down her cheeks, and her heart swelled near to bursting with maternal instincts. The vision of his child that passed before him had been no pleasant one, and with the murmur of her name he awoke to consciousness. Lifting himself up, he saw the tearful face of his wife. He could not mistake the cause. ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... servitude except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Mr. Garrett Davis of Kentucky proposed to amend the resolution so as to exclude the descendants of negroes on the maternal side from all places of office and trust under the government of the United States. Mr. Davis betrayed by this motion his apprehension that freedom to the negro would be followed by the enjoyment of civil ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... "My maternal grandfather," he said, "was a remarkable man. In his youth he spent a great deal of time in France. He was there at the time of the French Revolution, and, as it happened, was present at the execution of the unfortunate Queen Marie Antoinette. This of course was not intentional. It chanced ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... Crown-Prince still meditates Flight; the maternal heart and Wilhelmina's are grieved to see Lieutenant Katte so much in his confidence—could wish him a wiser councillor in such predicaments and emergencies! Katte is greatly flattered by the Prince's confidence; even brags of it in society, with his foolish ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... cupboards—the history of the Origin of Religions had taken its melancholy place among the suspended literary enterprises of the time. Mrs. Eyrecourt (after a superficially cordial reconciliation with her son-in-law) visited her daughter every now and then, as an act of maternal sacrifice. She yawned perpetually; she read innumerable novels; she corresponded with her friends. In the long dull evenings, the once-lively lady sometimes openly regretted that she had not been born a man—with the three masculine ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... judicial functionaries, he has derived his good sense, his intense appreciation of detail, and his strong grip on reality. His career represents at its two poles a progression from the adventurous romanticism of his maternal heritage to the severe, wide-awake realism of the paternal—the emancipation of ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the external opening of the maternal passages. It shows a vertical slit enclosed by lips, and interiorly it forms a passage that is continuous with the vagina. This passage is about six inches long in the larger animals. The different features that should be noted are the clitoris, ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... more quality than the sire, that her influence and characteristics are perpetuated in her posterity to a greater degree than are those of the sire's, especially that feature of paramount importance, a beautiful disposition, hence I speak of the maternal side of the house first. There are two inexorable laws that confront the breeder at the onset, more rigid than were those of the Medes and Persians, the non-observance of which will inevitably lead to shipwreck. Better by far turn one's energies ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... whisky—it is always whisky, somehow—in one hand and a glass in the other; and, beginning with the oldest soldier administers a calker to every one in the room till she comes to the "cruity," upon whom, if he be a pullet-faced, homesick, bit of a lad, she may bestow a maternal salute in addition, with the advice to consider the regiment as his mother now, and be a smart soldier and ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... family,—four or five children, we were told,—but she brought with her only one daughter, a little girl about twelve years of age. She had torn herself asunder, as she told me, from the younger nurslings of her heart, and had left them to the care of a devoted female attendant, whose love was all but maternal. And then she said a word or two about the general in terms which made me almost think that this quasi-maternal love extended itself beyond the children. The idea, however, was a mistaken one, arising from the strength of her language, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... Opportunities of more frequent and minuter Remarks upon your Ladyship's Conduct, I might have defy'd the whole British Fair to have outshone my southern Gawry: For if, to a majestic Form and extensive Capacity, I had been qualified to have copied that natural Sweetness of Disposition, that maternal Tenderness, that Cheerfulness, that Complacency, Condescension, Affability, and unaffected Benevolence, which so apparently distinguish the Countess of Northumberland; I had exhibited in my Youwarkee a Standard ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... whether the maternal grief of Fredegonde were quite so pious and so strictly in accordance with morality as it has been represented by Gregory of Tours; but she was, without doubt, passionately sincere. Rash actions and violent ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the maternal care cease here. Such tender sympathy should exist on the one side, such trusting confidence on the other, that the mother should acquaint herself with every detail of each recurring period until the function is thoroughly established. She should inquire into ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... a little too much, therefore, that she should now allude to her maternal solicitude because it happened to suit her purpose. She felt herself growing hard and callous and bitter under the strain of the early struggle to succeed, handicapped as she was; and because of one or two ugly ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... than the management of the light. The face of the child is skillfully hidden, by its oblique position, from the conviction that the features of a new-born infant are ill-adapted to please the eye; but that of the Virgin is warmly irradiated, and yet so disposed, that in bending with maternal fondness over her offspring, it exhibits exquisite beauty, without the harshness of deep shadows. The light strikes boldly on the lower part of her face, and is lost in a fainter glow on the eyes, while the forehead is thrown into shade. The figures of Joseph and the shepherds ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... power full well you know, E'en though in words I nor describe nor name, Alike for me and you its rays aye glow— Maternal love, by day and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the tortures to which my mother was subjected by those theological problems and the daily anxiety she endured until each of us had passed through the gates of salvation into the narrow way, I must wonder at that divine maternal instinct which made her rejoice at my birth, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... essential traits of the national character, and he who would appeal to them must speak in a way which is not of the people—that is to say, after the manner of our best prose-writers and Wagner himself; though that he did violence to himself in writing thus is evident. But the strength of that almost maternal instinct of prudence in him, which is ready to make any sacrifice, rather tends to reinstall him among the scholars and men of learning, to whom as a creator he always longed to bid farewell. He submits to the language of culture and all the laws governing its use, though he was the first to recognise ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... but in vain. I added my voice, and could have given him goods to keep him afloat a good while, but he invariably replied, "How can I stop where I have no mother and no sister?" The affection seems to go to the maternal side. I suggested that he might come after he had married a wife, but I fear very much that unless some European would settle, none of these Nassick boys will come to this country. It would be decidedly better if they were taught ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... murmured behind his sanguinary handkerchief, edging still further away from maternal ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... truly the home, the happy resting-place, the sheltering nest of father, mother and children, and when through the rearrangement of labor, the workingman's wife will be relieved from her monotonous existence of unrelieved domestic drudgery and overwork, disguised under the name of wifely and maternal duties, when the cooking and the washing, for instance, will be no more part of the home life in the humblest home than in the wealthiest. The workingman's wife will then share in the general freedom to occupy part of her time in whatever occupation she is best fitted for, ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... pregnant with disaster to Sutherland, though many years elapsed ere the ruin which it involved fell on that hapless county. The sole survivor and heir of the family was a female infant of but a year old. Her maternal grandmother, an ambitious, intriguing woman of the world, had the chief share in her general training and education; and she was brought up in the south of Scotland, of which her grandmother was a native, far removed from the influence of those genial sympathies ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... well-behaved and conduct themselves on the pattern, O Krishna, of their righteous friends. Your father and your uterine brothers proffer them a kingdom and territories; but the boys find no joy in the house of Drupada, or in that of their maternal uncles. Safely proceeding to the land of the Anartas, they take the greatest delight in the study of the science of arms. Your sons enter the town of the Vrishnis and take an immediate liking to the people there. And as you would direct them to conduct themselves, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Gourd temple next door. This Chia Yue-ts'un was originally a denizen of Hu-Chow, and was also of literary and official parentage, but as he was born of the youngest stock, and the possessions of his paternal and maternal ancestors were completely exhausted, and his parents and relatives were dead, he remained the sole and only survivor; and, as he found his residence in his native place of no avail, he therefore entered the capital in search of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the Smithsonian Institution, I had rare opportunity to learn much of its history and something of its marvellous accomplishment. As is well known, it bears the name of James Smithson. He was an Englishman, related to the historic family of Percy, and a lineal descendent of Henry the Seventh, his maternal ancestor being the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... son,—that the stern ferocity of the slow-moving eyes was forgiven, and they took him to their hearts, if not for love, at least for pity. Twenty thousand pounds ought to have become the property of Walter Marrable, when some maternal relative had died. It had seemed hard that the father should have none of it, and, on the receipt in India of representations from the Colonel, Walter had signed certain fatal papers, the effect of which was that the ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... this place, who is in his 80th year, is related to this family. The said William Chapman being his great-uncle (maternal). ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... in the Agora, upon the steps of the temples and along the porticoes. At every street corner one might have encountered women leading by the hand little children, whose uneven walk ill suited the maternal anxiety and impatience. Maidens were hastening to the fountains, all with urns gracefully balanced upon their heads, or sustained by their white arms as with natural handles, so as to procure early the necessary water provision for the household, and thus obtain leisure at the ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... the mother from the nest and the young, his alligatorship would eat up all his progeny, and exterminate his species, without a particle of regret. He has no pride in the perpetuation of his family, and it is to the maternal instincts of his good wife that we owe the ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... guileless-hearted woman, her maternal solicitude would have been the first denouncer, even the abrupt betrayer of a plotted crime in which one companion of her son could have been implicated, had cognizance of such reached her. Her days would have been agonized, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... 1805. Death of Froebel's maternal uncle, Superintendent Hoffman. Froebel determines to become an architect, and sets out for Frankfurt to study there. Becomes, however, teacher in the Model School at Frankfurt, on Gruner's invitation. Visits Pestalozzi, at Yverdon, for a ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... recognize him as well as in those who do. Let us consider for a moment the principle which is here involved. Many forces and persons serve us when we do not recognize them and do not know the truth about them. This experience of being ministered to by persons whom we do not know goes back even to the maternal care that nourished us before we were born. No mother waits to be recognized before she serves her child. We are tempted to think of persons as ministering to us only when the service is consciously received and acknowledged but, as a matter of fact, service continually comes to us from sources ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... just below his sharp cheek-bone. But she forgot the sweetness of the vision in scorn of herself for even thinking of marriage with a weakling; scorn of herself for aspiring to marry a man who regarded her as only a dull stenographer; and a maternal anxiety over him that was untouched ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... "is old Ludwig dead at last? Why, then, the damned must be holding a notable carnival by this, in honor of his arrival. Hey, but there was a merry rascal, a thorough-paced—" He broke off short. He laughed. "What the devil, man! Monsieur de Soyecourt is Ludwig's nephew, I grant you, on the maternal side, but Ludwig left a son. De Soyecourt remains de Soyecourt so long as Prince Rudolph lives,—and Prince Rudolph is to marry the Elector of Badenburg's daughter this autumn, so that we may presently look for any number ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... children. And woe to the mother who is obliged to abandon her children during the greater part of the day to hirelings—no, not obliged; for there is no duty so imperious, no social convenience or fashionable custom so commanding, as to oblige her to such shameful neglect: for maternal care, let her remember, supercedes all ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... to be seen but the "square cut" which revealed the fine busts of beauties in the days of Charles II.,—now graceful folds a coeur sentimentally ruled the day,—now infant waists became a passion, and the most maternal forms aped the juvenility borrowed from their babies. Then for sleeves: at one time they were wide and long and cumbrous, forbidding every trace of the most rounded member beneath; then they took the form of antique drapery, disclosing ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... unchosen reign— Wilt thou o'er cities fix thy guardian sway, While earth and all her realms thy nod obey? The world's vast orb shall own thy genial power, Giver of fruits, fair sun, and favouring shower; Before thy altar grateful nations bow, And with maternal myrtle wreathe thy brow; O'er boundless ocean shall thy power prevail, Thee her sole lord the world of waters hail, Rule where the sea remotest Thule laves, While Tethys dowers thy bride with all ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... whose head had been bent while his wife was talking, looked up, and there was a half smile of mischievous humour on his face. In the upper as well as the lower middle class there is a certain maternal love capable of rising to the height of passion and of sinking to mere idolatry. There are mothers who in their affection and love will fall down and worship their son. Theirs is not that maternal love which veils its own weaknesses, which defends its rights, is jealous of its duties, which ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... exhibited to the senses, a more beautiful image of self-devoting, heroic magnanimity than Niobe, as she bends her body forward, that, if possible, she may alone receive the destructive bolt? Pride and repugnance are melted down in the most ardent maternal love. The more than earthly dignity of the features are the less disfigured by pain, as from the quick repetition of the shocks, she appears, as in the fable, to have become insensible and motionless. Before this figure, twice transformed into stone, and yet ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... a brave and faithful man, there is always a strain of maternal tenderness; he gives out again those beams of protecting fondness, which were shed on him as he lay upon ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... conviction to the judicial minds of unemotional scientific observers is simply this: that the children of the present generation are, as an incontestable matter of actual fact, really brought into this world alive and some attain to maturity, not through maternal intelligence, but rather, in spite of mothers. This is a hard saying but none the less a truth. They survive in spite of the idiosyncracies of their fondly irrational, untutored mothers rather than because of any practical, efficient effort these contribute towards the well being and survival ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... know," said the king, paying no heed to this maternal duel, but patting the top of his sceptre as if it had been the hilt of a sword which he was about to draw, "is, where the ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... side of the door they heard the impatient stamping of school children longing to be dismissed, eager for room and air; and the old woman listened with delight to the fascinating sounds that increased her maternal longing ten-fold, but prevented her from doing anything to satisfy it. At last the door opened. First the tutor appeared, an abbe with a pointed nose and prominent cheek-bones, whom we have seen at the state breakfasts of an earlier day. Having ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... must be abandoned too, if he left her; and somehow the birth of this child had embellished the mother; a delicious pink had taken the place of her rustic bloom; and her beauty was more refined and delicate. So pure, so loving, so fair, so maternal, to wound her heart now, it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... a moment, clasping Dora to her bosom with a face full of maternal anxiety. But Susy, Lucy and Lizzie cried: "Let her go, do let her go, and if she is lost papa will give you a ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... Maternal descent was, therefore, the only one openly acknowledged, and the affiliation of the child was indicated by the name of the mother alone. When the woman ceased to belong to all, and confined herself to one husband, the man reserved to himself the privilege of taking as many wives ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the anathemas hurled at my innocent head, during the impressionable years of girlhood, by the pale and determined Congregational ministers with gold-bowed spectacles, who held forth in the meeting-house of my maternal ancestry (all honor to their sincerity), had taken little hold upon my mind, still, the vital drop of the Puritan was in my blood, and the fear of a personal God and His wrath still existed, away back in the hidden recesses ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... deal doors, dressers, stair-rails, bed-posts, and other foreign substances, still they were the honest results of Tilly Slowboy's constant astonishment at finding herself so kindly treated, and installed in such a comfortable home. For the maternal and paternal Slowboy were alike unknown to Fame, and Tilly had been bred by public charity, a foundling; which word, though only differing from fondling by one vowel's length, is very different in meaning, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... conferring the crown on a son of Zames, a boy named after his grandfather Kobad, on whose behalf Zames would naturally be regent. Zames readily came into the plot; several of his brothers, and, what is most strange, Chosroes' maternal uncle, the Aspebed, supported him; the conspiracy seemed nearly sure of success, when by some accident it was discovered, and the occupant of the throne took prompt and effectual measures to crush it. Zames, Kaoses, and all the other sons of Kobad were seized ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... A good example of the latter style of operation is afforded by the dowager who is fortunate enough to have an eldest son to use as a pushing machine. Handled with tact, a young heir, not yet cut adrift from the maternal apron-string, may be turned to excellent account. There is, or was, a sentimental ballad entitled, "I'll kiss him for his mother." One might reverse the sentiment in the case of Madame Mere. Of her the dowagers ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... began the active practice of law. He was born August 1, 1815, at Cambridge, Mass., with a line of ancestors reaching back to the early days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, with several colonial governors in the maternal lines. His great grandfather, Richard Dana, was one of the early patriots, a "Son of Liberty,'' who frequently presided at the meetings at Faneuil Hall at which Otis, Adams and others spoke. This man's son, my father's grandfather, Francis ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... brought Meadows a letter; it was from Susan to George. Meadows read it writhing. It breathed kind affection, with one or two demi-maternal cautions about his health, and to be very prudent for her sake. Not a word of doubt; there was, however, a postscript of which the following is ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... trying to convert her, though lacking the expression. She had let the book fall on the grass. I remember how she smiled down at me with the wisdom of the ages in her eyes, seeking my hand with a gesture that was almost maternal. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to Dantzic, where a child, the future philosopher, was shortly afterwards born. The first five years of the child's life were spent in the country, partly at the Stuthof which had formerly belonged to Andreas Schopenhauer, but had recently come into the possession of his maternal grandfather. ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... created before Eve. In this instance, it is 553:18 seen that the maternal egg never brought forth Adam. Eve was formed from Adam's rib, not from a foetal ovum. Whatever theory may be adopted 553:21 by general mortal thought to account for human origin, that theory is sure to become the signal for the appear- ance of its method in finite forms and operations. ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... a certain air and polish about her strain, however, like that in the vivacious conversation of a well-bred lady of the world, that commands respect. Her maternal instinct, also, is very strong, and that simple structure of dead twigs and dry grass is the center of much anxious solicitude. Not long since, while strolling through the woods, my attention was attracted to a small densely grown ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... wanted "something to occupy his brain, and he should be wretched if he continued longer at this trade, or indeed in any thing, except one of the learned professions." For a year these remonstrances were ineffectual; but no persuasions, even when urged with maternal tenderness, could reconcile him to his lot. He sought for consolation with the Muses, and wrote an "Address to Contemplation," in which he describes ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... lives on very short rations. The little boy ties a string around a stone and drags it through dust and mire with happy conviction that it is a go-cart. The little girl wraps up a stocking or a towel with tender hands, winds her shawl about it, and at once the God-given maternal instinct leaps into life,—in an instant she has it in her arms. She kisses its cotton head and sings it to sleep in divine unconsciousness of any incompleteness, for love supplies many deficiencies. So let us cherish the child heart in ourselves and never look with scorn upon the ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Queen drink-offerings paid. So long away, she flew to meet The darling of her soul: So runs a mare with eager feet To welcome back her foal. He with his firm support upheld The queen, as near she drew, And, by maternal love impelled, Her arms around him threw. Her hero son, her matchless boy She kissed upon the head: She blessed him in her pride and joy With tender words, and said: "Be like thy royal sires of old, The nobly good, the lofty-souled! Their lengthened days and fame be thine, And ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... frail a being, the most tender assiduity was scarcely sufficient, and my mother's attention was somewhat diverted by an exclusive passion for her husband, and by the dissipation of the world, in which his taste and authority obliged her to mingle. But the maternal office was supplied by my aunt, Mrs. Catherine Porten; at whose name I feel a tear of gratitude trickling down my cheek. A life of celibacy transferred her vacant affection to her sister's first child; my weakness ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... sweetest familiarity reigned our intercourse. She called me "Little one," I called her my little mother, and these names express the relation of our hearts. She sought always my good, never her own pleasure; she was deeply attached to me, and lavished on me her maternal caresses. I was now about nineteen years old, but was only occupied about the house in writing for her, or in helping her in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... is known to be related on her father's side to John Wesley, and her maternal grandfather was a highly skilled mechanic and the inventor of an important train-coupling device used on ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... colaborer of the business man, the overworked housewife of the tiller of the soil, the colleague of the professional man, or the wife of the leisure man of wealth; nevertheless, in every normal woman in every station of life there lurks the conscious or sub-conscious maternal instinct. Sooner or later the mother-soul yearns and cries out for the touch of baby fingers, and for that maternal joy that comes to a woman when she clasps to her breast the precious form of ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... of a species of maternal idolatry; centered in her child Louis Marie as rays gathered up into a focus, were all her hopes, her aspirations, her ideas of the future. If she could be assured she would live to see her son leading the armies of the empire, ruling in the cabinets of state or worshipped in ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... settled in China in the Year of the Mission, A.D. 628, under Wahb-Abi-Kabha, a maternal uncle of Mahomet, who was sent with presents to the emperor. Wahb-Abi-Kabha travelled by sea to Canton, and thence overland to Ch'ang-an, the capital, where he was well received. The first mosque was built at Canton, where after several restorations, it still ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... special notice. But his mother remarked that he paid little attention to these, and his, "No, I thank you," when it came to the preserved "damsels," as some call them, carried a pang with it to the maternal bosom. The most touching evidence of his unhappiness—whether intentional or the result of accident was not evident was a broken heart, which he left upon his plate, the meaning of which was as plain as anything in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... beneath the artifice of usual life. She had a beautiful hand, long, warm, and firm, and the fingers, when they clasped, seemed to possess and inclose your own—the tenderness of the maidenly, the protectiveness of the maternal. She carried with her a wholesome fragrance and beauty as of an orchard, and while she sat there I ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... self-assurance. The idea of my tumbling into the water! The idea of my drowning even did I meet with so ludicrous a mishap! But I was accustomed to my mother's anxious care, for as an only child there had fallen to me a double portion of maternal solicitude. In moments of stress and pain it came as a grateful balm; yet more often, as now, it was irritating to my growing sense of self-reliance. To show how little I heeded her admonition, how well able I was to take care of myself, as I smiled loftily from ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... bride-elect. Accordingly, she sent her own milliner—mantua-maker—what you will,—to array her in the complete toilette of a lady of fashion. The blushing damsel appeared in the most elegant attire, and took her place in the maternal drawing-room, amongst the sisters of the enraptured lover. Alas! enraptured no more! The rustic beauty, where could it have flown? The belle of the village was transformed into a very awkward young lady. Goddess!—She was a simpleton. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... at this time, "I have decided upon law as my profession, and will work at it industriously, however cold and dry the beginning may be." Previously, however, he had spent a year in the household of Frederick Wieck, the distinguished teacher of music. So much he had exacted before succumbing to maternal pleading. At this time he first made the acquaintance of a charming and precocious child, Clara Wieck, who played such an important part in his ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... failure, and lamented somewhat that she had so wrecked it. She was not hard of heart; and sometimes she thought of Daniel Granger with a remorseful pang, that cams upon her sharply in the midst of her maternal joys; thought of all that he had done for love of her—the sublime patience wherewith he had endured her coldness, the generous eagerness he had shown in the indulgence of her caprices; in a word, the wealth of wasted love he had lavished on ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... was required to act at all in the case, it must have been very hard for her, in such a question of life and death, to decide between her youngest son alive and the children of her first-born in his grave. Mothers can best judge to which side, in such an alternative, her maternal ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... on anything definite until we've known one another twenty-four hours," she said, looking at him with a gravity that was almost maternal; and then she turned the horse's head ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... A prince of Magadha and a maternal uncle of Sakyamuni, who gave him the name of Ajnata, meaning automat; and hence he often appears as Ajnata Kaundinya. He and his four friends had followed Sakyamuni into the Uruvilva desert, sympathising with him in the austerities he endured, and hoping ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... the blows of circumstance, this was ever the problem of problems. How to write. How not to write. This way and that the raging fates tug the hapless reader, pillowed he upon the vast brown bosom of his maternal earth, or lurefully beckoning the dim shadow-shapes of dodecahedronic cataplasmatic centipede fatally conditioned to the everlasting pyramid of a star-pointing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... this ever since I've known you, Sylvia, an' I ain't given to catchin' cold easy," said Richard almost pitifully. But he stood still and let Sylvia pin the shawl around his neck. Sylvia seemed to have suddenly acquired a curious maternal authority over him, and he submitted to it as if it were merely ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the residence Grantley Mellen had inherited from a maternal uncle just after his first struggle in life commenced. It was backed by many a fruitful field and broad stretch of timber-land, which altogether went under ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... children. These feelings, while strong in certain directions, were crude and uneven. In savage tribes to-day the wife is an ill-treated drudge. Yet the husband will protect his wife and children from danger at risk of his life. The maternal instinct seems still stronger. The mother often acts as if the child were an actual part of herself. Danger or injury to it produces in her a mental agony, the close equivalent of its fear or pain, and she will endure suffering and peril in its protection with an impulse ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... captain. "You remind me of your poor dear mother. The family spirit, Miss Vanstone. We all inherit our hot blood from my maternal grandfather." ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... at my coming; while inside there waited my little delicate one, long gone to God, who never ran and played with the others. I can see her still, with the pleasure lighting up her little, thin face, where she sat sedately, her scarlet shoes to the blaze and her doll clasped to a tenderly maternal breast. ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... represented as having acquired his kingdom; so that the only inference to be drawn from his conduct, as Xenophon describes it, is, that the prince who would accomplish great things must have learned how to deceive. Xenophon, moreover, represents his hero as deceiving his maternal grandsire Cyaxares, king of the Medians, in a variety of ways; giving it to be understood that without such deceit he could not have reached the greatness to which he came. Nor do I believe that any man born to humble fortunes can be shown to have attained great station, by sheer ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... FAIR! whom no fond transport warms To lull your infant in maternal arms; Who, bless'd in vain with tumid bosoms, hear His tender wailings with unfeeling ear; 385 The soothing kiss and milky rill deny To the sweet pouting lip, and glistening eye!— Ah! what avails the cradle's damask roof, The eider bolster, and embroider'd woof!— Oft hears the gilded ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... virtue, are there, untainted by sin, unclouded by guile. There woman shines, scarcely dimmed by the fall, reflecting the loveliness of Eden's first wife and mother; the grace, the beauty, the sweetness of the wifely relation, the tenderness of maternal affection, the graciousness of manner which once charmed angel ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... Mahometanism; but that should she remain beneath her roof, her resolutions would certainly be frustrated by her mother, since the contiguity of their abodes rendered communication so easy, that it would be impossible to carry out the work of conversion, or to annul the maternal influence. This audacious dissembler failed not to enlarge on the difficulty and importance of her conquest, and the governor, without further demur, commanded a soldier[8] to bring the unhappy Jewess into his presence. The thunderbolt that rends the airy region, travels not with more fatal celerity ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... she doesn't know. Her maternal grandmother was born in Trim, near Tara, in Meath, but she does not think she has any relations over here. She is entirely alone in the world, and that gives her a certain sentiment in regard to Ireland, which she heard a great deal about when she was a child. The maternal ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... from considering firstly, some other strong emotions which do not ordinarily require for their relief or gratification any voluntary movement; and secondly the contrast in nature between the so-called exciting and depressing states of the mind. No emotion is stronger than maternal love; but a mother may feel the deepest love for her helpless infant, and yet not show it by any outward sign; or only by slight caressing movements, with a gentle smile and tender eyes. But let any one intentionally injure her infant, and ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... Clevedon Church, Somersetshire, rest the mortal remains of Arthur Henry Hallam, eldest son of our great philosophic historian and critic,—and the friend to whom "In Memoriam" is sacred. This place was selected by his father, not only from the connection of kindred, being the burial-place of his maternal grandfather, Sir Abraham Elton, but likewise "on account of its still and sequestered situation, on a lone hill that overhangs the Bristol Channel." That lone hill, with its humble old church, its outlook ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... an instinct, or any other form of disharmony, leading to destruction, cannot increase or even endure very long. The perversion of the maternal instinct, tending to abandonment of the young, is destructive to the stock. In consequence, individuals affected by it do not have the opportunity of transmitting the perversion. If all rabbits, or a majority of ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... rend you, no tiger to end you, I'm tame as a bird in a cage. That counsel maternal can run for The Journal— You get me, I guess.... ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... magic was making under an early summer moon that clothed the peaks in silvery softness and painted shadows of cobalt in the hollows. The river flashed its response and crooned its lullaby, and like children answering the maternal voice, the frogs gave chorus and the whippoorwills called plaintively from ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the great Bertha, was successively the wife of the count of Arles and of the marquis of Tuscany: France and Italy were scandalized by her gallantries; and, till the age of threescore, her lovers, of every degree, were the zealous servants of her ambition. The example of maternal incontinence was copied by the king of Italy; and the three favorite concubines of Hugo were decorated with the classic names of Venus, Juno, and Semele. [63] The daughter of Venus was granted to the solicitations ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... a certain sweet and subtle element in her love for Bennett that only of late she had begun to recognise and be aware of. This was a certain vague protective, almost maternal, instinct. Perhaps it was because of his present weakness both of body and character, or perhaps it was an element always to be found in the deep and earnest love of any noble-hearted woman. She felt that she, not as herself ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... and south entrances of the Palace of Education) - Gustave Gerlach Decorative panels above the doors outside of the building showing maternal instruction. ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... that day send my coach to you, to carry you and the boys to Loughborough House, with all their immense baggage. I must recommend to you, when you leave them there, to suppress, as well as you can, the overgrowings of maternal tenderness; which would grieve the poor boys the more, and give them a terror of their new establishment. I am, with great truth, Madam, your ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the least an object of absorbing interest to her. It cried out of tune and made ear-piercing noises that were not included in even the most modern of compositions. Moreover, she was not by nature of the maternal type of woman, to whom marriage is but the beautiful path which leads to motherhood. She was essentially one of the lovers of the world. Had she married her mate, she would have demanded nothing more of life, though, if a child had been born of such mating, ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... cold words makes it sound ghoulish. But of course Rosalie was not really that. She was merely absorbed in her own exalted theories and she was not maternal. I think when I compared her, unthinking, to the young moon, that I was subconsciously aware of her likeness to the "orbed maiden" whose white ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey |
