Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Domesticity   /dˌoʊmˌɛstˈɪsəti/   Listen
Domesticity

noun
1.
The quality of being domestic or domesticated.
2.
Domestic activities or life.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Domesticity" Quotes from Famous Books



... poem is approximated. The story is told with fireside friendliness. The pale Lillian Gish surrounded by happy children gives us many a genre painting on the theme of domesticity. It is a photographic rendering in many ways as fastidious as Tennyson's versification. The scenes on the desert island are some of them commonplace. The shipwreck and the like remind one of other ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... the months which followed I can truthfully say that they were the happiest of my existence. The semi-detachment of our island domesticity was a charm against tedium; ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock

... her position, Nancy hesitated, not knowing whether to retreat or go forward. She had decided to go on, observing nothing—and of course she had observed nothing save an agreeable incident in the oft impugned domesticity of Mr. and Mrs. Wyeth—when a ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... art, the Mater Amabilis is the preeminent subject. This fact is due partly to the German theological tendency to subordinate the mother to her divine Son, but more especially to the characteristic domesticity of Teutonic peoples. From Van Eyck and Schongauer, through Duerer and Holbein, down to Rembrandt and Rubens, we trace this strongly marked predilection in every style of composition, regardless of ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... very early have attached it to man for motives less selfish than either its fleece or its flesh; for it has been proved beyond a doubt that, obtuse as we generally regard it, it is susceptible of a high degree of domesticity, obedience, and affection. In many parts of Europe, where the flocks are guided by the shepherd's voice alone, it is no unusual thing for a sheep to quit the herd when called by its name, and follow the keeper like a dog. In the mountains of Scotland, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... not with the least idea of living up to the character my friend Lanrivain ascribed to me (as a matter of fact, under my unsociable exterior I have always had secret yearnings for domesticity) that I took his hint one autumn afternoon and went to Kerfol. My friend was motoring over to Quimper on business: he dropped me on the way, at a cross-road on a heath, and said: "First turn to the right and second to the left. Then straight ahead till ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... important; and that previous conditions must have been due to her unwillingness to set herself seriously at the problems before her. It was a new theory about his wife's character, which the intelligent young man laid by on a mental shelf for future use after this period of intense domesticity ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... threatened throne still sat good Farmer George and his prim German consort, models of dull domesticity, of narrow convictions, of punctilious etiquette—the epitome of respectable and respected mediocrity, save when, with a profound irony, the recurring blast of insanity transformed the personality ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... have run away from the contaminations which belonged inevitably to a life spent in the society of an incurable dipsomaniac. Nor could he as yet blame himself overmuch if he had at last yielded to the claims of that domesticity which offered him involuntary shelter: the invitations of a home of love and confidence; an atmosphere in which no cloud hovered which could not be puffed away in a cloud of tobacco smoke, or shattered into ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... of Mrs. Sevenoaks—it became full Sevenoaks in the second year. Then one day near the Easter rest she felt lonely and without a soul to understand her in the world, and her mind ran once more on what is called Platonic friendship. Fanny was clearly happy and busy in her new sphere of domesticity, but no doubt HE had his lonely hours. Did he ever think of those days in Rome—gone now beyond recalling? No one had understood her as he had done; no one in all the world. It would be a sort of melancholy pleasure to talk to him again, and what harm could it do? Why should she deny ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... guidance of the little French-Canadian priest who had set up his Mission in this wide wilderness. For the first time in all her married life she found herself free to indulge in the delights of a domesticity her ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... Crevel's real domesticity, formerly in the Rue Notre-Dame de Lorette, with Mademoiselle Heloise Brisetout, had lately been transferred, as we have seen, to the Rue Chauchat. Every morning the retired merchant—every ex-tradesman is a retired merchant—spent two hours in the Rue des Saussayes to attend ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... bottles of wine in the course of an evening. No wonder that gout was the pervading disease among county squires, and even among authors and statesman. Morality was not one of the features of English society one hundred years ago, except as it consisted in a scrupulous regard for domesticity, truth, and honor, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... I cannot recall a single philoprogenitive moment. These dream women were all conceived of, and I was conceived of, as being concerned in some tremendous enterprise—something quite beyond domesticity. It kept us related—gave us dignity.... ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... also received by the English people with every expression of sorrow and sympathy. Though her books were not remarkable for any perfection of literary style, they had the charm of brightness, vivacity, and unconventionality. They revealed a fascinating personality, and their touches of domesticity made them classics in many an English household. In all modern movements Lady Brassey took a keen interest. She gained a first-class certificate in the South Kensington School of Cookery, scullery department and all; was one of the most energetic members of the St. John's ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... add the last touches to her toilet in his presence was a suggestion of familiarity, of domesticity, that was very intoxicating to ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy

... sake of the fragrant manliness of the stalwart and deserving knight, I straightway resolved to enter the thankless and precarious business of matchmaking, one in which I had not had one iota of experience; but as women have to ace marriage, domesticity, and mostly all the issues of life assigned them, without training, I did not give up heart. As a first effort I determined that Dawn should chaperon me when I went for my row on the morrow. As I looked at the sun sinking behind the blue hills and ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... decides that 'a worse school for a young girl, or one more detrimental to all natural feelings and affections, cannot well be imagined.' Perhaps it was an experience which she needed to convince her fully of the value and blessedness of the true domesticity which was soon to be hers. After she had in 1837 placed her life-interest in the hereditary revenues of the crown at the disposal of the House of Commons, her yearly income was fixed at L385,000. This income ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous

... of domesticity, and as she passed from one room to another she told Caroline bits of interesting history about this piece or that. In her naivet she let the girl see into the long hard years that had been a hand-to-hand struggle for her and the major on their ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... heavily built, with a quiet kind face, and a somewhat quizzical smile. He seemed to make all the money he needed, occupied the two rooms and plentiful closet space of his floor in great contentment, and manifested most improper domesticity of taste by inviting friends to tea. "Just like a woman!" ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... cause than most!—just because he looked after his own affairs for a time! Something unruly was rising within him; he felt a sudden need to lay about him; to fight a good stiff battle and shake the warm domesticity out of his bones. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... realised. There are some to whom that mad hastening from pleasure to pleasure, that rush from scene to scene of excitement, that eager crowding into one day and night of gaieties which might fairly relieve the placid monotony of a month's domesticity, a month's professional work—some there are to whom this Vanity Fair is as a treadmill or the turning of a crank, the felon's deepest humiliation, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... an eagle brooding in cold eternal solitude upon the heights, rather than be wooed by valley hawks; I am only a very tired wren, who missed a mate on my first Valentine season, and seeing my plumage grows a rusty brown, I accept the overtures of one similarly forlorn, and hope for serene domesticity under the sheltering eaves of some quiet, cosey barn. You are a nobler bird, no doubt; but trust me dear, I shall ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... the spoils of his chase? How generous and self-sacrificing you used to be with the slender provisions, and anxious lest the foot-sore huntsman should not get enough to sustain his toilsome existence! What an example you were of domesticity! and I cannot believe that you are anything else to-day but the same ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... seven years of age; but that, on examining him at that time, they were equally surprised and delighted with his knowledge of the Scriptures. I must remark here, that such an example as the queen sets in the education of her children makes itself felt through all the families of the kingdom. Domesticity is now the fashion in high life. I have had occasion to see, in many instances, how carefully ladies of rank instruct their children. This argues more favorably for the continuance of English institutions than any thing I have seen. If the next generation of those who are ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... a long pause again, taking her in as it seemed to him he had never done. "You were never finer than at this minute, in the deepest domesticity of private life. I've no conception whatever of what the actor can do, and no theory whatever about the importance of the theatre. Any infatuation of that sort has completely dropped from me, and for all I care the theatre ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... receptions seems to have been continuous. On Sunday there was a mass in the morning, afterward a grand dinner, at five o'clock a light repast, at nine a supper, and later a musicale. One is inclined to wonder if there was ever any retirement, any domesticity in this life so full of movement ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... Dunaston had been a day of blessedness, this was its twin sister, and the better favored of the two. There was a certain flavor of domesticity in these quiet hours passed together in the garden, interrupted only by the child as she ran hither and thither breaking in on them, sometimes not unpleasantly when speech was growing embarrassed because emotion ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... sheep-tracks, with sudden abrupt hills and flights of steps which checked the rickshaws' progress. Here, the houses of the rich people were closely fenced and cunningly hidden; but the life of poverty and the shopkeepers' domesticity were flowing over into the street out of the too narrow confines of the boxes which they called ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... with amused resentment. It was his domesticity which was his undoing. Old Man Badger on the hillside would never have dillied or ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... myself,' said Mrs. Craggs, 'have been so long accustomed to connect the office with everything opposed to domesticity, that I am glad to know it as the avowed enemy of my peace. There is something honest ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens

... are of two schools. One of them depicts the dwellers on these heights as a superior race, using a vocabulary half Biblical, half minor-poetic, in which to express the most exalted sentiments; the other draws a picture of upland domesticity comparable to that found in a cage of hyenas. Mr. HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE, though he is too skilled an artist to overdo the colouring, inclines (I am bound to say) so much towards the former method that I confess to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various

... the grocery with unusual animation of step, and returning with her basket well stocked with beer and soda bottles—a provision made against a need for "dutch-cocktails," likely to assail Jack during his hours of domesticity. ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin

... was meditating, verily. His thought had been unsuspended; he was becoming ill with thinking; eaten out with thinking, withered by thinking; scourged out of all his former pulsating, flexuous domesticity. He walked about saying to himself, "What's to be done—what's to be done?" and by chance she overheard him. It caused her to break the reserve about their future which ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... real estate business, and greatly prospered. His varied accomplishments soon made him the most popular man in his state. He united with the political party which held the power. He married an attractive young woman, and settled down to a quiet and respectable domesticity. In the course of events a United States senator was to be elected, and what was more natural than that this intelligent, respectable and popular citizen should be considered a worthy candidate. The legislature convened, his prospects of election were more ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... were as much attracted to her as the children were; they ran towards her, kissed her hands, pressed round her, could not receive her ardently or enthusiastically enough. She came among them like the spirit of all goodness, affection, gentle consideration, love, and domesticity. ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens

... the truant form of Musa balanced on one side by a bag and on the other by a fiddle case. From the trim houses, each without exception new, twinkled discreet lights, with glimpses of surpassingly correct domesticity, and the wind rustled loudly through the foliage of the prim gardens, ruffling them as it might have ruffled the unwilling hair of the daughters of an arch-deacon. Nobody was abroad. Absurd thoughts ran through Audrey's ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... Jowler seemed to have taken all of a sudden to such a fit of domesticity, that there was no finding him out of doors, and his rhubarb-colored wife (I believe that her skin gave the first idea of our regimental breeches), who before had been gadding ceaselessly abroad, and poking her broad nose ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of strictly literary curiosities, reveal not only the haunt of the elegant scholar and poet, but the favorite resort of the family circle. But the northern gloom of a New England winter is intolerant of this serene delight, this beautiful domesticity, and urges the inmates to the smaller room in front of the house, communicating with the library, and the study of General Washington. This is still distinctively 'the study,' as the rear room is 'the library,' Books are ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... carried beneath its placidity a tremulous anxiety that he should be pleased, and her mild eyes swam in the light of his encouragement. I was sure, however, that the calm and discipline that I felt in the things around me came as much from her domesticity as from his discipline. She was a fortunate woman in that she had attained the ambition of her life—to govern the household of a man whom she could both ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... marshes in which they chiefly live. The third (rasores) are distinguished by strong feet, for walking or running on the ground, and for scraping in it for their food; also by wings designed to scarcely raise them off the earth and, farther, by a general domesticity of ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... banquets. The social equilibrium was, however, bi-diurnally restored by a common pursuit—a general warfare under the black flag against a common enemy, as insignificant individually as he was collectively formidable—an insect, in short, whose domesticity on the human body is, according to some naturalists, one of the differences between our species and the rest of creation. This operation, technically, 'skirmishing,' happened twice a day, according as the sun illumined the east or west sides of the apartments, along which the line was ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... in the large office room of the consulate. The big front doors stood open to the sea, where a mile away the breakers tossed and tumbled on the barrier reef. The back door was kept shut, to keep out the meaner noises of domesticity, but at intervals in the course of the trial you could hear the deliberate grinding of the consular coffee; the chasing of consular chickens; the counting of the consular wash; shrill arguments over the price of fish—a grotesque juxtaposition ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... which indeed he might be said to have helped to bring about by his effective, though speechless, advocacy of Daventry's desire. But it was obvious to affectionate eyes that he sometimes felt rather homeless, and that he was happy to be in the little Westminster home where such a tranquil domesticity reigned. Dion sometimes felt as if Bruce Evelin were watching over that home in a wise old man's way, rather as Rosamund watched over Robin, with a deep and still concentration. Bruce Evelin had, he confessed, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... colouring of the piece as a work of art. "Ay," said Frederick, smiling, "that is, I suppose, your masterpiece as cooper; mine is below yonder in the entrance-hall; but I shall soon make another." "I know all," replied Reinhold, "and rate you lucky. Only stick fast to your art; it can put up with more domesticity ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... I have been travelling about my country—trying to get to know my people and to understand them. I will tell you, Sara, what has made the greatest impression upon me. It is their beautiful domesticity. I think that it has taught me to understand a little how much fuller and sweeter life may be when one has a wife to care for, and to help one. And, Sara, I think that I too have been often lonely, and I too ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

... to close an article on Pekinese without bearing testimony to their extraordinarily attractive characteristics. They are intensely affectionate and faithful, and have something almost cat-like in their domesticity. They display far more character than the so-called "toy dog" usually does, and for this reason it is all-important that pains should be taken to preserve the true type, in a recognition of the fact that quality ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... again. He was the sort of man who always married again, and if his present wife, with whom he was rather in love, had passed away he would have undoubtedly married a third time. Some men are born husbands; they have a passion for domesticity, for a fireside, for a home. Yet, curiously, these men very rarely stay at home. Apparently what they want is to have a ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson

... almost suffocating. Now and then a few potted flowers in front of a low cabin, a bird cage with its chirping occupant, a noisy parrot on an exposed perch, a dozing cat before the door, all afford glimpses of domesticity; but, on the whole, this mining town, rich in native silver, gave us in its humbler portions the impression of being mostly composed of people half clothed and seemingly ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... was a silent, taciturn creature, as wrinkled as leather parchment and about as handsome, but Alice found safety in the very knowledge of the presence of another woman in the valley. She was among robbers and cutthroats, but old Juanita lent at least a touch of domesticity to a situation that would otherwise have been impossible. The girl was very uneasy in her mind. A cold dread filled her heart, a fear that was a good deal less than panic-terror, however. For she trusted the man Neil even as she ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... as one writer has remarked, lost under Jackson something of the good form of the Virginia regime, but it lost nothing of the air of domesticity. Throughout the two Administrations the mistress of the mansion was Mrs. Andrew Jackson Donelson, wife of the President's secretary and in every respect a very capable woman. Of formality there was little or none. Major Lewis ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... a woman should not have a vote because she was a woman; that it would interfere with her work in the home; that it would make her more masculine; that it would take her out of her own home; that it was a blow at domesticity and an actual menace to the home life of America—these did not weight with him. There was only one question for him to settle: Was the ballot something which, in its demonstrated value or in its potentiality, would serve the best ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... Cornet's glittering cuirass and plumed helmet; perhaps by his substantial income; and perhaps she tired of being a homeless wanderer, and felt that here at last was a prospect of settling down and experimenting with domesticity. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... stronger one among the Italians than among ourselves. In the upper classes, it is certainly so; and, probably, among all classes. It may be thought strange, perhaps, that this should be the case with a people whose lives are supposed to be less pervaded by the sentiment of domesticity than our own. The explanation may, however, perhaps be found in the greater and more frequent disruption of family ties, which is caused by that more active social movement, which pushes our younger sons away from the parental stock in search ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... clamour and leap; none heard him or knew of him; nor did he ever view the day. Diana's frank: 'Ah, Mr. Redworth, how glad I am to see you!' was met by the calmest formalism of the wish for her happiness. He became a guest at her London house, and his report of the domesticity there, and notably of the lord of the house, pleased Lady Dunstane more than her husband's. He saw the kind of man accurately, as far as men are to be seen on the surface; and she could say assentingly, without anxiety: 'Yes, yes,' to his remarks upon Mr. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... to do so," she said, stealing backward towards the door. "You are a very interesting widower. A wife would spoil you. Consider the troubles of domesticity, too." ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... daring. Not nearly so often, however, as one might suppose, did he die with his boots on. Many of the most wealthy and respected citizens now living in the border states served as cowboys before settling down to quiet domesticity. ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various

... said that a young man ought to live on an entresol; there should be no sign of domesticity about the place; no cook, no kitchen, an old manservant to wait upon him, and no pretence of permanence. In her opinion, any other sort of establishment is bad form. Godefroid de Beaudenord, faithful to this programme, lodged on an entresol on the Quai Malaquais; ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac

... No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces absolutely no vibrations . . . I have known several Jacks, and they all, without exception, were more than usually plain. Besides, Jack is a notorious domesticity for John! And I pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment's solitude. The only really safe ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde

... most fortunate of pleasure-hunters, a country squire, with a princely rent-roll. Then should be detailed, circumstantially, the lord of the beautiful home, a picture of the hospitable virtues; the wife of the beautiful home, a portraiture of happy domesticity, admirable also as a mother, a nurse, a neighbour, and the poor's best friend: children must abound, of course, or the home is a heaven uninhabited; and shrewd hints might hereabouts be dropped as to the judicious or ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... as to what was to be done with it. I say Marianne and Jenny, for, though the case undoubtedly is Marianne's, yet, like everything else in our domestic proceedings, it seems to fall, somehow or other, into Jenny's hands, through the intensity and liveliness of her domesticity of nature. Little Jenny is so bright and wide awake, and with so many active plans and fancies touching anything in the housekeeping world, that, though the youngest sister and second party in this affair, a stranger, hearkening to the daily discussions, might listen ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... deduction. It is simply because, as the conditions of life change, structure must, for adaptation's sake, change likewise, that wild animals are capable of being domesticated, of being, that is, made to undergo modifications by being brought from the conditions of wildness to those of domesticity. How, then, should they possibly retain those modifications, how escape return to their previous shape and habits, when retransferred ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... home. With her words, "Herrliche Wohnung, wonniger Hausrath," "Beautiful dwelling, delectable household order," first occurs the winning strain which afterward stands for Fricka in her love of domesticity, or, separate from her, for the ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... full of work-days," she declared. "Three days of domesticity! I can no more. I will see ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... the population in this island—the educated class, and chiefly of pure Spanish blood—can be set down as valuable acquisitions to our citizenship and the peer, if not the superior, of most Americans in chivalry, domesticity, fidelity, and culture. Of the rest, perhaps one-half can be moulded by a firm hand into something approaching decency; but the remainder are going to give us a great deal of trouble. They are ignorant, filthy, untruthful, lazy, treacherous, ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman

... the feudal lord lent, undoubtedly, a great preponderance to domesticity in his affairs. The lord had his wife and children for his permanent society; they continually shared his interests, his destiny. It was in the bosom of the feudal family that woman gained her importance ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... long, far sweep of Fifth Avenue, piled high with snow—dazzling in white, blue, gold—on either side, and they turned presently into a street of brownstone houses, houses pleasant, peaceful, with an air of happy domesticity. ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... shack. The grimmest bug-bear of domestic work is dish-washing. A pile of greasy plates is the one thing that gets on my nerves. And it is a little Waterloo that must be faced three times every day, of every week, of every month, of every year. And I was never properly "broke" for domesticity and the dish-pan! Why can't some genius invent a self-washing fry-pan? My hair is growing so long that I can now do it up in a sort of half-hearted French roll. It has been quite cold, with a wonderful fall of snow. The sleighing could not ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer

... Cowper—that charming, domestic poet who wrote 'The Task', and invested even furniture with the glamour of poesy? Alas! to many people Cowper is merely a name, or is known only as the author of the delightfully quaint ballad of John Gilpin. Yet he was undoubtedly the Poet Laureate of domesticity, and every householder should possess a bust or picture of him—placed, not amid the frigid splendours of the drawing room, but occupying the place of honour in his own particular den, where everything is old-fashioned, cheery, and sanctified by long usage. No one ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... "does filth, overcrowding, lack of privacy and domesticity, lack of ventilation and lighting, and absence of supervision and of sanitary regulation still characterize the greater number of the tenements; but they are built to a greater height in stories; there are more rear houses built back to back with other buildings, correspondingly ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... she observed, "the House adjourned for tea. Nan, it's your week for domesticity. Go and ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... course they are friendly, but I mean their tastes are so different, and they are so unlike. Your sister doesn't care for domesticity." ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... Europe had somehow particularly sickened him on this last voyage.... All its repose was sordid, all its passion was calculated. England and its queen mourned the sudden death of the prince consort, but it mourned him with a sort of middle-class domesticity, and no majesty. So a grocer's family might have mourned, remembering how well papa cut the mutton.... He was so damned good at everything, Albert was, and he approved of art and science—within reason.... There was a contest for a human ideal in America, and in the ports ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... characteristic productions we shall meet with in the Salle La Caze. A somewhat feeble protest against the prevailing vulgarity and debasement of contemporary art was made by Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin (1699-1779) and Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) in their rendering of scenes of domesticity and of the pathos of simple lives. Chardin is well seen in this room in his laborious studies of still life, 89 and 90, L. wall, diploma works, and in 91 and 92, same wall, The Industrious Mother, and Grace before Meat. ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... the officer on the beat. She has been told that certain streets are "not respectable," but a furtive look down the length of one of them reveals only forlorn and ill-looking houses, from which all suggestion of homely domesticity has long since gone; a slovenly woman with hollow eyes and a careworn face holding up the lurching bulk of a drunken man is all she sees of its "denizens," although she may have known a neighbor's daughter who came home to die of a mysterious ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams

... characteristics, the idiosyncrasies, the imbecilities, even the fascinations of other, no matter how attractive dwelling places. It had the restful aloofness of a studio, with none of its professional limitations; the domesticity of a home, with none of its fatiguing clutter; the freedom of an inn, with none of its stale sense of over-use. And above and through all this ran the note of almost ascetic cleanliness, a purity fairly conventual. ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... of domesticity because she had not been able to "see" the interior of the cottage—"shack"—very clearly. Sunny rooms, white curtains, bright cushions and books, pictures and rugs mingled together rather confusingly in her mind when she dwelt upon the inside of her future home. It would be bright, ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... eyes with a compelling gaze—"boy-and-girl romance is all very well, but there is a greater destiny reserved for you than marriage to a hired secretary, however amiable, personable, and well-meaning. You must prepare yourself to move in a world beyond and above the common hearthstone of bourgeois domesticity." ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... have thus learned the lesson of home in the school of history and tradition. The intense feeling of individuality, which so strongly marks the Spanish character, and which in the political world is so fatal an element of strife and obstruction, favors this peculiar domesticity. The Castilian is submissive to his king and his priest, haughty and inflexible with his equals. But his own house is a refuge from the contests of out of doors. The reflex of absolute authority is here observed, it is true. The Spanish father ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... corners in the family pew, and in their wildest dreams after the happiness of novelty never thought of Sir Cresswell Cresswell. In some respects—with regard, for instance, to the continued duration of their joint domesticity at the family mansion of Greshamsbury—they might have been taken for a pattern couple. But yet, as far as the doctor could see, they did not seem to add much to the happiness of each other. They loved each other, doubtless, and had either of them ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... society, Cornelia knew little more about them than on the first day of their meeting on shipboard. A mushroom city of the West figured as "home," in occasional references; but the wife frankly declared a hatred of domesticity, while the husband regretted that constant travel was a necessity ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... were designed to suit great houses. In a small room, which a portrait by Holbein would have decorated nobly, a canvas by Van Dyck would have been overpowering. In spite of the fact that the expressions on the faces are often intimate and appealing, domesticity is not the mark of his art. In Van Dyck's picture of our 'heir of fame,' the white linen, the yellow satin, and the armour please us as befitting the lovely face. There is a glimmer of light on the armour, but you see how different is Van Dyck's treatment of it from Rembrandt's. Van ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway

... watching her lover, Captain Plume. Of course the deception is discovered, and all ends happily in the orthodox fashion [the only bit of orthodoxy about the performance, by-the-way]. The girl is allowed to marry the Captain and settles down, we may suppose, to the pleasures of domesticity and woman's gowns. The comedy was admirably acted throughout, Wilks, Cibber, and that prince of mimics, Dick Estcourt, being in the cast, and the seal of popular approval was quickly put upon the production. At present such a seal should bring hundreds, perhaps thousands, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... dwelt meditatively upon Lucy: she patted her hand and smiled upon her, as if every other subject was irrelevant. "And he has taken you into society?" she said, continuing her examination. "How delightful is that English domesticity. You go everywhere together?" She had no appearance of having so much as heard Lucy's question. "And you do not fear that he will find it dull in the country? You have the confidence of being enough for him? How sweet for me to find the happiness of ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... rabbit, yet the capacity of its skull only slightly exceeds that of the wild rabbit. The Angora rabbit, No. 13, offers the most remarkable case; this animal in its pure white colour and length of silky fur bears the stamp of long domesticity. It has a considerably longer head and body than the wild rabbit, but the actual capacity of its skull is less than that of even the little wild Porto Santo rabbits. By the standard of the length of skull the capacity (see column 7) is only half of what it ought to have been! I kept ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... Beauce, where the vast rolling fields seem to anticipate the great western sea itself. It is full of the traits of that country. We see Du Bellay and Ronsard gardening, or hunting with their dogs, or watch the pastimes of a rainy day; and with all this is connected a domesticity, a homeliness and simple goodness, by which the Northern country gains upon the South. They have the love of the aged for warmth, and understand the poetry of winter; for they are not far from the Atlantic, and the west wind which ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater



Words linked to "Domesticity" :   undomestic, activity, domestic, quality



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com