"Womanish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he had believed his marriage to have been an ideally happy one, that he had felt all that man can feel; and he had been inclined to treat as womanish the desperate desolation of men who had after all only suffered the same bereavement as he had himself, and which he had quickly overcome. He saw now that he had missed happiness exactly as his son-in-law ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... the falsetto voice develops a bright quality in the normal speaking-voice. Try the following, and any other selections you choose, in a falsetto voice. A man's falsetto voice is extremely high and womanish, so men should not practise in falsetto after the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... See, that is to Peter: thou shalt recognise on the altar the unbloody sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ: thou shalt beseech the blessed martyrs and all the saints to intercede with Christ on thy behalf: thou shalt restrain womanish apostates from unnatural vice and public incest: thou shalt do many things that thou art undoing, and wish undone much that thou art doing. Furthermore, I promise and undertake to show, when opportunity offers, that the Synods of other ages, and notably the Synod of ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... I engaged to prove in IV:xviii., whereby it is plain that the law against the slaughtering of animals is founded rather on vain superstition and womanish pity than on sound reason. The rational quest of what is useful to us further teaches us the necessity of associating ourselves with our fellow men, but - not with beasts, or things, whose nature is different from our own; we have the ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... because in his long life he had known it to be the only reality in the world of men. And in that world he had known the only reality to be that if you didn't cut the other fellow's throat first he would cut yours. There wasn't any other reality. He had heard impractical, womanish men say there was, and try to prove it, only to have their economic throats cut considerably more promptly than any others. He had done his little indirect share of the throat-cutting always. He was not denying the ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... son, who stood before him in an attitude so respectful yet so firm. Something seemed to strike him in the pale, delicate, womanish features; perhaps he saw therein the wife who had died when Nathanael was born, and whose death, people said, had chilled the father's heart strangely against ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... One saw her loveliness, and with desire Unhallowed, burning, to her ear addressed Dishonest words: 'Her favour was his life, His heaven; her frown his woe, his night, his death.' With turgid phrase thus wove in flattery's loom, He on her womanish nature won, and age Suspicionless, and ruined and forsook: For he a chosen villain was at heart, And capable of deeds that durst not seek Repentance. Soon her father saw her shame; His heart grew stone; he drove her forth to want And ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... as wisely wouldst thou strive To warn a swelling wave: imagine not That ever I before thy lord's resolve Will shrink in womanish terror, and entreat, As with soft suppliance of female hands, The Power I scorn unto the utterance, To loose me from the chains that bind me here— A world's division 'twixt that thought ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... be womanish," said Sybil, "but it is wise: for what should make us unhappy if not the sense of impending, yet ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... all our womanish fears upon the occasion of the storm, telling me it was nothing but what was very ordinary in those seas, but that they had harbours on every coast so near that they were seldom in danger of being lost indeed. "For," says he, "if they cannot fetch one coast, they can always stand away for another, ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... without courage and wisdom; for this world in itself is but a painful and uneasy place of residence, and lasting happiness, at least to the self-conscious, comes only from within. Now Thoreau's content and ecstasy in living was, we may say, like a plant that he had watered and tended with womanish solicitude; for there is apt to be something unmanly, something almost dastardly, in a life that does not move with dash and freedom, and that fears the bracing contact of the world. In one word, Thoreau was a skulker. He did ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of hope and gladness, while all this is going on here outside. But soon the big hurt will come. Oh, Prue—Prue, girl!—can't you think what it will mean to me? Don't you know how I shall sicken for the sight of you, and my ears will listen for you! Prudence, Prue, darling—yet I must not be womanish! I have a big work to do. I have known it with a new clearness since that radiance rested above my head last night. The truth burns in me like a fire. Your going can't take that from me. It must be I was not meant to have you. With you perhaps I could not have had a heart single to ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... Macbeth evidently is to wish that no womanish tenderness, or conscientious remorse, may hinder her purpose from proceeding to effect; but neither this, nor indeed any other sense, is expressed by the present reading, and, therefore, it cannot be doubted that Shakespeare ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... the contrary. Only do you try not to dislike writing when you write, or not to write when you dislike it ... that, I ask of you, dear dearest—and forgive me for all this over-writing and teazing and vexing which is foolish and womanish in the bad sense. It is a way of meeting, ... the meeting in letters, ... and next to receiving a letter from you, I like to write one to you ... and, so, revolt from thinking it lawful for you to dislike.... Well! the Goddess of Dulness herself ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... upon somebody else but plotting against these persons. To leave aside other instances, he was pitied and preserved by Caesar and enrolled among the patricians, after which he killed him,—no, not with his own hand (he is too cowardly and womanish), but by persuading and making ready others who should do it. The men themselves showed that I speak the truth in this. When they ran out into the Forum with their naked blades, they invoked him by name, saying ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... life, inasmuch as it teaches us to hate no man, neither to despise, to deride, to envy, or to be angry with any. Further, as it tells us that each should be content with his own, and helpful to his neighbour, not from any womanish pity, favour, or superstition, but solely by the guidance of reason, according as the time and occasion demand, as I will show in ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... good will it do you to die of hunger?' she asked, 'or to bury yourself alive'? Or to surrender an uncondemned spirit before the fates demand it? 'Think you the ashes or sepultured dead can feel aught of thy woe! Would you recall the dead from the reluctant fates? Why not shake off this womanish weakness and enjoy the blessings of light while you can? The very corpse lying there ought to convince you that your duty is to live!' When pressed to eat or to live, no one listens unwillingly, and the lady, thirsty after an abstinence of several ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... by the small group of Christians to follow their example and refuse to permit anybody else to drink my portion. It took me a long time to make up my mind to follow their advice. It was, of course, considered an old-womanish thing to do, but I finally came to the point when I asked the commissariat department to give me, as was the custom, tea, coffee, and sugar instead. I took very good care, however, not to indulge myself in these things. I handed them over to men on the night watches. This ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... be this, that I sometimes had the idea in a rough womanish sort of way and then you polished it up till ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... The die is thrown! And now, let each that wishes for long life Put up his sword, and kneel for peace to Rome. Ye all are free to go. What! no man stirs! Not one! a soldier's spirit in you all? Give me your hands! (This moisture in my eyes Is womanish,—'twill pass.) My noble hearts! Well have you chosen to die! For, in my mind, The grave is better than o'erburdened life; Better the quick release of glorious wounds, Than the eternal taunts of galling tongues; Better ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... but his eyes, as they rested on the lad's young, fair, womanish face, were very gentle under the long shade ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... had been wrapt in some embroidered garments to them belonging, and done a great many other things, in order to make the company mistake him for a woman; yet did he, by way of reproach, object the like womanish behavior to Cherea. But when Cherea received the watchword from him, he had indignation at it, but had greater indignation at the delivery of it to others, as being laughed at by those that received it; insomuch that his fellow tribunes made him the subject of their drollery; for ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... she rather liked his looks, though he did not strike her as a very amiable young man. Perhaps she was a bit tired of amiable young men. His face was thin, and refined, and strong—the strength of level brows, straight nose and square chin, with a pair of paradoxical lips, which were curved and womanish in their sensitiveness; the refinement was an intangible expression which belonged to no particular feature but pervaded the whole face. As to his eyes, she was left to speculate upon their color, since she had not seen them, but she reflected that many a girl would give a good deal ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... own hair dressed high in front in the fashion first set for the women by the Grand Monarque's loose-wife; and as he passed under the candles I saw that it was graying slightly. His face, high-browed, long-nosed, double-chinned, with the eyes womanish for bigness and marked with brows that might have been penciled by the hair-dresser, I had seen before; but lacking this present sight of it, the orders on his breast would have named him the ranking general of the army in the field—Lord Charles Cornwallis. With all the houses ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... of the voice and the woman's gaze came back to the chamber. "That I know not. Travelling the ways of the world and plucking roadside fruits, for he is no home-bred and womanish stripling. Wearing his lusty youth on the maids, I fear. Nay, I forget. He is about to wed the girl of Avesnes and is already choosing his bridal train. It seems he loves her. He writes me she has a skin of snow and eyes of vair. I have ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... benefactress silenced me gratitude would not allow me to persevere for the moment. But from what I had already seen of Her Majesty the Queen, I was too much interested to lose sight of my object,—not, let me be believed, from idle womanish curiosity, but from that real, strong, personal interest which I, in common with all who ever had the honour of being in her presence, felt for that much-injured, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... thee, poor Anne," she said. "I think thou wouldst lie on my threshold and watch the whole night through, if I should need it; but I have given way to womanish vapours too much—I must go and be alone. I was driven by my thoughts to come and sit and look at thy good face—I did not mean to wake thee. Go ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... say again," replied the governess, "that you do not look at the whole of the case. You have given me a home, when it is no easy matter for such as I am to earn one, with my old-womanish ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... me a gaping marvel that womanish tongues should hold forth upon subjects which are naturally far outside ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... rustic philosopher, more than it would gratify him;—while, as for Tom o' the Gleam, that handsome ruffian was more likely to rob a man of gold than accept it as a gift from him. Then involuntarily, his thoughts reverted to the "kiddie." He recalled the look in Tom's wild eyes, and the almost womanish tremble of tenderness in his rough voice, when he had spoken of this little child of his on whom he openly admitted he had set all ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... of yours to learn a few things in the army," the General said to Monsieur Joseph, when they at last rose and left the dining-room. "He will grow up nothing but an ignorant, womanish baby, if you keep him down here among your woods ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... also mimicking a fussy, womanish manner. "But I never get into the spirit of the thing until near Christmas Day. Then I run round and try to ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... Cort. I melt to womanish tears, and if I stay, I find my love, my courage will betray; Yon tower will keep you safe, but be so kind To your own life, that none ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... I recognized Dr. Harlowe, the excellent and beloved physician. When I called him by name, as he stood by the bed, counting my languid pulse, the good man turned aside his head to hide the womanish tears that moistened his cheeks. Then looking down on me with a benignant smile, he said, smoothing my hair on my forehead, as if ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... views on the questions in which he took so deep an interest. One final remark must be hazarded about the most remarkable point after all in General Gordon's personality. I refer to his voice. It was singularly sweet, and for a man modulated in a very low tone, but there was nothing womanish about it, as was the case with his able contemporary Sir Bartle Frere, whose voice was distinctly feminine in its timbre. I know of no other way to describe it than to say that it seemed to me to express the thorough ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... to make me the largest present in compensation; yes, he may take her this very hour, and my blessing with her. But there are conditions: he whom I approve must be lawfully married to the girl by the priest Francisco here," and turning he pointed to a small melancholy-looking man, with a womanish face and dark blue eyes, who stood in the background, clothed in a somewhat tattered priest's robe. "Then I shall have done my duty by her. One more thing, gentlemen: we are not going to waste time in little bids; the upset price will be ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... minutes of pulsing excitement for the woman who knew only monotony and the drudgery of an outland life. No womanish fears could deter her. She believed and hoped she was on the eve of a great discovery, and such was her reckless desire ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... off a few steps under the watchful side glance. It worked. One of Pete's slim, womanish hands fluttered up in a movement ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... her womanish enthusiasm had overshot her mark. The laws were strong, but this wild savage's nature was as untamed and fearless as any beast of the field. It was her tone of ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... would not after the report keep fresh As long as flowers on graves." "We are only like dead walls or vaulted graves, That, ruined, yield no echo. O this gloomy world! In what a shadow or deep pit of darkness Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!" ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... such as formerly were fastened to Midas, as a punishment for his affront to the god Pan. For I am now in a humour to act awhile the sophist, yet not of that sort who undertake the drudgery of tyrannizing over school boys, and teach a more than womanish knack of brawling; but in imitation of those ancient ones, who to avoid the scandalous epithet of wise, preferred this title of sophists; the task of these was to celebrate the worth of gods and heroes. Prepare therefore to ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... foolish rheum. [Aside. Turning dispiteous torture out of door! I must be brief; lest resolution drop Out at mine eyes, in tender womanish tears. Can you not read it? is it ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... to the suit, and the presiding judges shall not permit either of them to use an oath for the sake of persuading, nor to call down curses on himself and his race, nor to use unseemly supplications or womanish laments. But they shall ever be teaching and learning what is just in auspicious words; and he who does otherwise shall be supposed to speak beside the point, and the judges shall again bring him back to the question at ...
— Laws • Plato
... her weak and womanish character. Let her excuse be the memory of those six rapturous weeks, twenty-five years ago, when she was a bride, and all her life was rosy till she found herself deserted—left to deal as she best might with Time and her loneliness. You see, this man actually was ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... with no beard, and little moustache; the complexion is sallow, or often a clear olive; the hair is collected into an immense tail, plaited flat or round. The lower limbs are powerfully developed, befitting genuine mountaineers: the feet are small. Though never really handsome, and very womanish in the cast of countenance, they have invariably a mild, frank, and even engaging expression, which I have in vain sought to analyse, and which is perhaps due more to the absence of anything unpleasing, than to the presence of direct grace or beauty. In like ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... "My daughter, my darling child!" cried the despairing mother, wringing her hands and weeping bitterly. "My dearest sister Anne, what can I do for you?" inquired the young man, whose stern features were melted into mere womanish tenderness. "Daughter," interrupted the priest, " God is good; he can and will forgive you if you heartily turn to him, with a sincere desire to atone for your fault." All this took place in less time than it has taken in the recital. My brother-in-law seemed completely deprived ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... Heere are no hils wherewith to feede thine eyes, But heaped hils of mangled Carkases, Heere are no birdes to please thee with their notes: But rauenous Vultures, and night Rauens horse. Anto. What meanes great Caesar, droopes our generall, Or melts in womanish compassion: To see Pharsalias fieldes to change their hewe 270 And siluer streames be turn'd to lakes of blood? Why Caesar oft hath sacrific'd in France, Millions of Soules, to Plutoes grisly dames: And made ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... to be turned up on the very top of my head with a huge shell comb, borrowed for the occasion from mamma's drawer. Upon my grandmother's entrance, I intended to rise and make her a very stiff courtesy, and then deliver a series of womanish remarks. This, I say, was to have been my first appearance—but alas! fate ordered otherwise. I was caught by my dignified relative indulging in a game of romps upon the balcony with two or three little ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... lips, his face indicated weakness. His dark-gray eyes had in them either a great deal of worry or undisguised fear. As he took the chair pointed out to him, he was being catalogued by Bristow as showing too much uncertainty, even a womanish timidity. Bristow noticed also that his thick, soft blond hair was carefully parted and brushed, and that his ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... man who did not belong to his century; and such men always have a hard lot. His love of quiet, and hatred of war, were, in the eyes of his father, spiritless meanness; while his musical tastes and his love of animals went beyond womanish weakness, and were looked upon as absolute vices. But perhaps to the nobles the worst features of his character were two which, in the nineteenth century, would entitle him to respect. He was extremely faithful in friendship, ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... in France, during the time that continual and bloody wars were incessantly draining her youth. It was a temporary affliction also to Annette, to lose her lover. With tender embraces, half childish, half womanish, she parted from him. The tears streamed from her blue eyes, as she bound a braid of her fair hair round his wrist; but the smiles still broke through; for she was yet too young to feel how serious a thing is separation, and how many chances there are, when parting in this ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... man's qualities were exactly what he needed for this position he had offered him; rather, because the unexpected opposition, Johnston's scruples, irritated him personally. It was a part of the sentimental newspaper clamor, half ignorance, half envy, that he despised. When he had used the words, "womanish hysteria," descriptive of the agitation against the railroads, Steve had protested in the only humorous remark he was ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... think it was because he knew him to be hunted, knew him to be the object of a murderous conspiracy, and loathed most thoroughly the vulgar rogue who was his treacherous enemy. But Captain Kettle scouts the idea that he was stirred by any such feeble, womanish motives. Kettle was a poet himself, and with the kinship of species he felt the poetic fire glowing out from the person of this Mr. Hamilton. At least, so he says; and if he has deceived himself on the matter, which, from an outsider's ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... European capacity,—showing that in this, likewise, he possessed a genuine American element of character. Lafayette thought much of him, used his pen freely, and listened to his advice. The Marquis, warm-hearted, honest, but endowed with little judgment and a womanish vanity, was trying to make himself the Washington of a French federative republic, and felt happy in having secured the experienced services of Mr. Paine. He wrote to his great master,—"'Common Sense' is writing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... of this ambitious and politic usurper. But the part of Richard himself gives the chief interest to the play. His folly, his vices, his misfortunes, his reluctance to part with the crown, his fear to keep it, his weak and womanish regrets, his starting tears, his fits of hectic passion, his smothered majesty, pass in succession before us, and make a picture as natural as it is affecting. Among the most striking touches of pathos are his wish, 'O that I were a mockery king of snow to melt away ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... stranger. He was a young man, a few years older than myself; tall and slender,—we might have been twins as far as height and build went, but there the resemblance ceased. He was fair, with such delicate colouring that he might have looked womanish but for the dark fiery blue of his eyes, and his little curled moustache. He looked the way you fancy a prince looking, Melody, when Auntie Joy tells you a fairy story, though he ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... man of the party, because he has old-womanish ways with him, yet in his old-womanish ways he is disposed to do the best he can for me, though he will not carry a pound in weight without groaning terribly at his hard fate. To me he is sentimental and pathetic; ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... that existence grew unbearable under your roof. It could not continue, my lord," she pursued, rising under the sway of her indignation. "It could not continue. I am not of the stuff that goes to making martyrs. I am weak, and—and—as your lordship has said—womanish." ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... to mingle a reverence with my admiration. We were friends; he talked to me much of his plans in life,—of the future that lay before him. What an ambitious spirit burned within him!—a godlike ambition I thought it then. And how my weak, womanish heart thrilled with sympathy to his! With what pride I listened to his words! with what fervor I joined ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... at her best should see her at home—at least, so said young Mr. Robins, the rich yeoman's son, who sighed in vain for her good graces. He was a domestic man, much given to superintending himself, duties which were looked upon as women's gear—"A womanish man," said the women. ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... seemed for the first time given to one terrible suspicion, which she had hitherto known only in a misty, intangible, and seldom recurring form—the suspicion that, if the passive girl before her were really an enemy, it was not owing to any mere ordinary impulse of fear, or envy, or inexplicable womanish dislike, but ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... suddenly, the rail almost broke. I thought the truth was, that he had heart trouble, himself. He stopped up, choked on things, flopped around, and turned so white. I suppose he thought it was womanish, and a sign of weakness, and so he didn't tell, but I bet ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... been present at many, sir," said I—"some bad enough, too; and, I confess, I have been less womanish and weak beholding them than I felt this morning, witnessing your kindness to those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... 'twas not this that sent my heart flying into my mouth at the sight of him. For by his curls and womanish face, no less than the amber cloak with the black bars, I knew him at once for the same I had seen ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... and gentlemen, I have to propose the everlasting health and welfare of our host, who should have been our honoured guest but for that persistent pertinacity he exhibited in the matter, and which he does himself the injustice to call womanish. But I am sure, ladies and gentlemen, no one but himself ever accused our esteemed host of being womanish, and when we look upon the high standing he has achieved in our University, the honour he ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... him. On the hand that toyed carelessly with the fob of his watch flashed a diamond; another sparkled in his cravat. His dark hair was sleek and well brushed; his bristly little moustache was clipped in the latest fashion. He was not large. His hands, as he made a gesture toward Quade, were of womanish whiteness. Casually, on the street or in a Pullman, Aldous would have taken him for a gentleman. Now, as he stared through the narrow slit between the bottom of the curtain and the sill, he knew that he was looking upon one of the most dangerous men in all the West. Quade was a villain. Culver ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... far-seeing Henry II., with the other two great warriors, Edward I. and Edward III., and William of Orange, did most for the foundation and development of England's constitutional law. Some monarchs, such as Edward II. and the womanish Henry VI., have been contemptible. Hard-working, useful kings have been Henry VII., the Georges, William IV., and especially the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... it marks the freshness, the vivacity, the self-forgetfulness, the logical ardour belonging to this delightful reformer. It may seem a paradox, but at bottom it is not, that the vitalists should be oppressed, womanish, and mystical, and only the intellectualists keen, argumentative, fearless, and full of life. I mention this casualness and inconstancy in Mr. Russell's utterances not to deride them, but to show the reader how impossible it is, at this juncture, to give a comprehensive ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... truly felt and represented the character, is but a softened reflection of that of her husband Brutus: in him we see an excess of natural sensibility, an almost womanish tenderness of heart, repressed by the tenets of his austere philosophy: a stoic by profession, and in reality the reverse—acting deeds against his nature by the strong force of principle and will. In Portia there is the same profound and passionate ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... my mother, Thy faithful one, Thou sangest in my ears? Nothing whereof sunk into my heart, so as to do it. For she wished, and I remember in private with great anxiety warned me, "not to commit fornication; but especially never to defile another man's wife." These seemed to me womanish advices, which I should blush to obey. But they were Thine, and I knew it not: and I thought Thou wert silent and that it was she who spake; by whom Thou wert not silent unto me; and in her wast despised by me, her son, the son of Thy handmaid, Thy servant. ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... she might have electrified that woman's club by making the revelation which she had won to-night and reading this same selection from her own book. He had not read Martha Wallingford's Hearts Astray. He thought that the title was enough for him. He knew that it must be one of the womanish, hysterical, sentimental type of things which he despised. But Margaret had been so modest that she had held back from the turning on the search-light of her own greater glory. She had made the effort which had resulted so disastrously ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that it had not occurred to him before. Her sisters were neither ugly nor proud (Tishy, indeed, was almost touchingly delicate and timid, with exceedingly pretty points, yet with a little appealing, old-womanish look, as if, small—very small—as she was, she was afraid she shouldn't grow any more); but her mother, like the mother in the fairy-tale, was a femme forte. Madame de Brives could do nothing for Dora, not absolutely because she was too plain, but because she ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... I were joint proprietors. In the making of it, the hammer and nails were mine by right of sex, while she stitched in womanish fashion on the fabrics. She was leading woman and I was either the hero or the villain as fitted to my mood. My younger cousin—although we scorned her for her youth—was admitted to the slighter parts. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... virtually took no time off from work; or at least the change of work that stood for leisure was all in the line of home-making. Eternally, they joked each other about these womanish occupations; but they all kept steadily to it. Ralph Addington and Honey Smith put the furniture into shape, repairing and polishing it. Billy Fairfax sorted out the glass, china, tools, household ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... Bernhardt. When Vittoria next appears, it is as Duchess by the deathbed of the Duke, her husband. Her attendance here is necessary, but it contributes little to the development of her character. We have learned to know her, and expect neither womanish tears nor signs of affection at a crisis which touches her heart less than her self-love. Webster, among his other excellent qualities, knew how to support character by reticence. Vittoria's silence in this act is significant; and when she retires exclaiming, 'O me! this place is hell!' ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... warm fire, we began to feel the sudden reaction which necessarily followed twenty-four hours of such exposure, suffering, and anxiety. Our overstrained nerves gave way all at once, and in ten minutes I could hardly raise a cup of coffee to my lips. Ashamed of such womanish weakness, I tried to conceal it from the Americans, and I presume they do not know to this day that Dodd and I nearly fainted several times within the first twenty minutes, from the suddenness of the change from 50 deg. below zero to 70 deg. above, and the nervous exhaustion produced by anxiety and ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... for purposes of decency."[1477] The Acholi, in Uganda, think it beneath masculine dignity to wear anything.[1478] The Vanyoro men are generally clothed in skins. The women, until marriage, wear nothing; after marriage, bark cloth. The Bari men never wear anything. They think it womanish to do so. The unmarried women wear a pendant of fringe behind and five or six iron bars six inches long, the whole three and a half inches broad, in front. Married women wear a fringe in front ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... them. In another way, by natural disposition, because, to wit, his mind is less persevering through the frailty of his temperament. This is how women are compared to men, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. vii, 7): wherefore those who are passively sodomitical are said to be effeminate, being womanish themselves, as it were. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... bayonet" which conquers. The English King was slain and every man of his chosen troops with him. A monk who wrote the history of the period of the Conquest, says that "the vices of the Saxons had made them effeminate and womanish, wherefore it came to pass that, running against Duke William, they lost themselves and their country with one, and that an easy and light, battle." Doubtless the English had fallen off in many ways from what hey had been generations earlier; but the record at Hastings shows ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... was the origin of the war with the Amazons; and it seems to have been carried on in no feeble or womanish spirit, for they never could have encamped in the city nor have fought a battle close to the Pnyx and the Museum unless they had conquered the rest of the country, so as to be able to approach the city safely. It is hard to believe, as Hellanikus relates, that ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... great; and no man was more amazed than Barillon, who had resided in England during two bloody proscriptions, and had seen numerous victims, both of the Opposition and of the Court, submit to their fate without womanish entreaties and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... silent. Her little womanish airs of the last few months, the quaint effort of dignity with which it seemed to have pleased her to add all that was possible to her years, had wholly departed. She was a child again, with frightened eyes and quivering lips, the child who had walked so easily ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at the window, a person holding a hesitant pencil above a yellow blank. I believe I am not without self-possession myself, partly natural, and partly acquired by living so long with Tom; but it took all I ever had not to utter a womanish cry when the young man turned his face and I saw ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... delib'rate Wisdom? Is all rank Cowardice but Fire and Fury? Is it all womanish to re-consider And weigh the Consequences of our Actions, Before we desperately rush upon them? Let me then be the Coward, a mere Woman, Mine be the Praise of Coolness, ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... ii. 140) he received L5000. 'Old Marlborough,' wrote Horace Walpole in March, 1742 (Letters, i. 139), 'has at last published her Memoirs; they are digested by one Hooke, who wrote a Roman history; but from her materials, which are so womanish that I am sure the man might sooner have made a gown and petticoat ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... in the case of Sophronia; on the contrary, 'twas in proper form, and in meet and seemly sort, that Gisippus gave her to Titus. And others, peradventure, will say that 'twas by one to whom such office belonged not that she was bestowed in marriage. Nay, but this is but vain and womanish querulousness, and comes of scant consideration. Know we not, then, that Fortune varies according to circumstances her methods and her means of disposing events to their predetermined ends? What matters it to me, if it be a cobbler, rather than a ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the range or kitchen table. As a matter of course every cow-man must know something of how to cook a meal and, also, naturally and as a matter of course, Old Heck and Skinny, without the slightest thought that it was "womanish" or beneath the "dignity" of men, peeled potatoes, fried meat, washed dishes or did whatever there ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... might easily have felled her to the ground with one stroke, but he contented himself with merely warding off the blows she aimed at him. From his great height and strength, he was easily able to do this, and she struck at him with her little womanish arms as ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... nature is utterly womanish. Not merely his weak points, but his strong ones, are those of a woman. Tender and pitiful as a woman; and yet, when angry, shrieking, railing, hysterical as a woman. The physical distaste for meat and fermented ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... tabita; ewe, cow; lioness, tigress; vixen. gynecaeum^. estrogen, oestrogen. consanguinity &c 166 [Female relatives], paternity &c 11. lesbian, dyke [Slang]. V. feminize. Adj. female, she-; feminine, womanly, ladylike, matronly, maidenly, wifely; womanish, effeminate, unmanly; gynecic^, gynaecic^. Pron. she, her, hers.' Phr. a perfect woman nobly planned [Wordsworth]; a lovely lady garmented in white [Shelley]; das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan [Goethe]; earth's noblest thing, a woman perfected [Lowell]; es de vidrio ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... excellent, and warms the blood! My heart was drawing back, drawing me back With womanish pulls of pity. Dusky slave, Now I will kill thee pleasantly, and count it 145 Among my comfortable ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... personal strength, soon excelled his brother and other youths, whose age considerably exceeded his own. They who had hitherto held him in contempt, now feared, if they did not love him; and, instead of Allan's being esteemed a dreaming, womanish, and feeble-minded boy, those who encountered him in sports or military exercise, now complained that, when heated by the strife, he was too apt to turn game into earnest, and to forget that he was only engaged in a friendly trial ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... had not come. And, do you know, there is one thing that puzzles me. It came by post from New York in a hair-pin box, and done up in about a thousand papers-at least there were six—so I suppose Russell sent to some one in the city to do it for him; but the whole thing was awfully womanish. The address was in the most correct, copy-book-y handwriting, every point turned just so, every loop according to rule. But it came just in the nick of time, and saved me and your money. Bless your heart, how are ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... his praying—how under the cover of his cant about saving souls he scatters his old-womanish scandals an' ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... pledge, you know!" says Semyon in a thin womanish little voice, sighing deeply, and not taking his eyes off the string of bread rings. "Hand over the rouble you borrowed, and then take ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the crypt Among our earth's foundations'—'The god's great altar Must be the last far coping of our work'— It should inaugurate the broad main stair'— 'Or end it'—'It must stand toward the East!' But here a grave contemptuous youth cries out 'Womanish babblers, how can we build god's altar Ere we divine its foreordained true shape?' Then one 'It is a pedestal for deeds'— ''Tis more and should be hewn like the king's brow'— 'It has the nature of a woman's bosom'— 'The tortoise, first created, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... other officials were, each in his district, to see to the thoroughness of its cessation. Sometimes, as happened at Erzerum, the Vali in question, not having the broad out-look of Enver, or quaintly and curiously having a womanish objection to the national duty of flogging men to death and giving over young girls to a barbarous soldiery, remonstrated with the authorities, or even refused to obey orders. Such a one was instantly removed ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... our optics), yet on terra firma still, for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, has made to spring up beneath their sandals. I love the men with women's faces and the women, if possible, with still more womanish expressions. ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... traitor's gone, To mock the meekness of an injured king. [To Qu. M. Why did not you, who gave me part of life, Infuse my father stronger in my veins? But when you kept me cooped within your womb, You palled his generous blood with the dull mixture Of your Italian food, and milked slow arts Of womanish tameness in my infant mouth. Why stood I stupid else, and missed a blow, Which heaven and daring folly made ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... a glimpse of a head too pretty to belong to any other than the redoubted Colonel de Hamal. What a very finished, highly polished little pate it was! What a figure, so trim and natty! What womanish feet and hands! How daintily he held a glass to one of his optics! with what admiration he gazed upon the Cleopatra! and then, how engagingly he tittered and whispered a friend at his elbow! Oh, the man of sense! Oh, the refined gentleman of superior taste and tact! ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... need requireth to bring the body to temperance. For no other good, they say, can it do to ourselves, and then to our neighbour can it do none at all. And therefore they condemn it for superstitious folly. Now, heaviness of heart and weeping for our sins, this they reckon shame almost, and womanish childishness—howbeit, God be thanked, their women wax there now so mannish that they are not so childish, nor so poor of spirit, but what they can sin on as men do and be neither afraid nor ashamed nor weep for their ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... letter in her hand. All pretence of incredulity was gone. She began to walk stormily up and down. Doris sank back in her chair, watching her, conscious of the most strangely mingled feelings, a touch of womanish triumph indeed, a pleasing sense of retribution, but, welling up through it, something profound and tender. If he should ever write such a letter to a stranger, while his mother ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... we used to think a part of the English character—coolness and steadiness and unselfishness in times of danger, for example. The Englishmen who live in quiet places have not become cowardly, so far as is ascertained; nor are they liable to womanish panic. In the dales and in the fishing-villages along our north-east coast may still be found plenty of brave men. Where such disgraceful scenes as that rush to the "Alice's" boat are witnessed, or selfishness like ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... bright, and she didn't linger after she had said, "Good-bye Leander." As for my father,—he was an old North Carolinian, born and reared among the Cherokee Indians at the base of the Great Smoky Mountains, and with him, and all other men of his type, any yielding to "womanish" feelings was looked on as almost disgraceful. His farewell words were few, and concise, and spoken in his ordinary tone and manner, he then turned on his ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... demanded Frank, who took an instant dislike to this softly smiling fellow with the womanish voice and gentle ways. "What do ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... possible ways even before they surround him, and fortify him against them. Intentionally to expose him to temptation in order to prove his strength, is devilish; and, on the other hand, to guard him against the chance of dangerous temptation, to wrap him in cotton (as the proverb says), is womanish, ridiculous, fruitless, and much more dangerous; for temptation comes not alone from without, but quite as often from within, and secret inclination seeks and creates for itself the opportunity for its gratification, often ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... "I told you that secret. I was with Teague the Smith when he discovered it. . . . But he discovered it too late; and, besides, he was a dreamer, and used it only to make crosses and charms and womanish ornaments." ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rich black gown with fluffy stuff over it, and a bit of a sparkle in the way of diamonds like a band across her parted hair. The face was deceiving, now lighted up by one of the old smiles, now hard set as one who had suffered much for her years. But there was nothing over-womanish in her talk, and we two thrashed it out there, just the same as if Ken's Island wasn't full of devils, and the lives of me and my men worth what a spin of the coin ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... longer or look on the light of the sun. Long I lay mourning, as one who had lost all hope, but at last Proteus checked the torrent of my passion, and bade me take thought of my own homecoming. 'This is no time,' he said, 'to melt away in womanish grief. Haste thee to take vengeance, if so be that Orestes hath not forestalled thee, and slain ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... dreamt of falling down a precipice into a pit? That's just how I'm falling, but not in a dream. And I'm not afraid, and don't you be afraid. At least, I am afraid, but I enjoy it. It's not enjoyment though, but ecstasy. Damn it all, whatever it is! A strong spirit, a weak spirit, a womanish spirit—whatever it is! Let us praise nature: you see what sunshine, how clear the sky is, the leaves are all green, it's still summer; four o'clock in the afternoon and the stillness! ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... interview with my wife was most satisfactory; the usual womanish questions had been replied to, and hosts of compliments exchanged. We were then rich in all kinds of European trifles that excited their curiosity, and a few little presents established so great an amount of confidence that they gave the individual history of each member of the family ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... New York to the latest grand ball and conquest; glowed over the horses, the houses, and the people; speculated profoundly in possible romances and romantic possibilities, and became so eloquent in a pretty, half-childish, half-womanish way she had, that Sophie's eyes shone, and she told herself that Neelie was the dearest, cunningest sister in ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... shrug of contempt at such womanish weakness, ran to his assistance. He straightened the Easterner out and placed his folded coat under his head. "He'll come around in a minute," he muttered. He glanced toward the gulch and then back to ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White |
