"Handmaid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... talking, a gentleman entered whom the duke had sent to Olivia, and he said: 'So please you, my lord, I might not be admitted to the lady, but by her handmaid she returned you this answer: Until seven years hence, the element itself shall not behold her face; but like a cloistress she will walk veiled, watering her chamber with her tears for the sad remembrance of her ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... was white with flowers, And Summer, in her sun-built towers, Stood smiling 'mid her handmaid Hours, Who robed her limbs for bridal; Somewhere between the golden sands And purple hills of Folly's lands, Love, with a laugh, let go our hands, And ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... O thou, whose eye of contemplation Looks through the windows of the highest heavens, Resolve thy handmaid, where Earl Gloster lives: And whether he shall live, and 'scape the hate Of proud young Henry ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... places of things, and set herself and Miss Collins vigorously to work. The handmaid looked on somewhat ungraciously at the quiet, competent energy of her superior, the smile on her broad ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... Fly, fly, my handmaid, bear unto your lord This news without delay. O oracles, Where are ye? Oedipus in exile lives Lest he should slay this prince, and lo, this prince, Untouched by him, in course ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... and fear fell on me, shame burned upon my cheek, Swam earth and sky around me, my trembling limbs grew weak: "O Lord! support thy handmaid; and from her soul cast out The fear of man, which brings a snare, the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Rachel; and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? and she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees that I may also have children by her. And she gave him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... that was sweet in the sinning Is foul in the ending thereof, As the heat of the summer's beginning Is past in the winter of love: O purity, painful and pleading! O coldness, ineffably gray! Oh, hear us, our handmaid unheeding. And take ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... preparations for supper. It was a favorite maxim in the household that the meal should be eaten early, "to get it out of the way;" and to-night this unaccustomed handmaid had additional reasons for haste. But the new bread and preserves were ignored. She built a rousing fire in the little kitchen stove; she brought out the moulding-board, and with trembling eagerness proceeded to mix cream-of-tartar biscuits. Not Cellini himself nor Jeannie Carlyle had awaited ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... lifts up the manhood of the poor, She of the open soul and open door, With room about her hearth for all mankind! The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more; From her bold front the helm she doth unbind, Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin, And bids her navies, that so lately hurled Their crashing battle, hold their thunders in, Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful shore. 400 No challenge sends she to the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... was come to the Skaian gates, whereby he was minded to issue upon the plain, then came his dear-won wife, running to meet him, even Andromache daughter of great-hearted Eetion. So she met him now, and with her went the handmaid bearing in her bosom the tender boy, the little child, Hector's loved son, like unto a beautiful star. Him Hector called Skamandrios, but all the folk Astyanax [Astyanax "City King."]; for only Hector guarded Ilios. So now he smiled and gazed ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... great offspring thou dost lack, From pirate Singleton to pilfering Jack. Here Flandrian Moll her brazen incest brags; Vice-stript Roxana, penitent in rags, There points to Amy, treading equal chimes, The faithful handmaid ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... fasted and wept these seven days, because I know that I have done wrong in worshipping dumb idols, and in speaking scornfully against Joseph. But, Lord, I did it in ignorance; save me, and above all watch over Joseph, whom I love more than my own life. Keep him, Lord, in safety, and let me be his handmaid and his slave, if Thou wilt, so that I may minister to him all the days ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James
... a philosopher, as intrepid in his actions as bold in his speculations. His political creed was a consequence of his philosophy. He believed in the divinity of reason, and in the omnipotence of the human understanding, with liberty as its handmaid. Heaven, the abode of all ideal perfections, and in which man places his most beautiful dreams, was limited by Condorcet to earth: his science was his virtue; the human mind his deity. The intellect impregnated by science, and multiplied by time, it appeared to him must triumph necessarily ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... watching behind the big screen with the crack in it?" said the handmaid. "She come back to me, and she says, 'They're all ate,' says she: ''tis the way ye had not enough made,' she says. I didn't know if 'twas on me head or me heels I was!" She bent a look of adoration upon Miss de ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... the woman of his planning. She had built not upon his careless defective design but upon her own incessant instinct for the best. So much his last night's blunder had taught him. He had sent for her as for a handmaid; and as a handmaid she had obeyed—but in ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... thee, child or no child, that chit is woman enough to have bound thee her slave. She is woman enough, too, to hold secret converse with my foes. Do thou speak to her now and learn for me what traffic she had with Sancho the morning after I took her as my handmaid. I give thee scant time; if I learn it not swiftly neither thou nor she shall ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... what this means for Conscience and for Memory as the handmaid of Conscience in the great contemplative life after Death. There is no good or evil thing that I have ever done but Conscience has pronounced on. Some of these judgments I remember. Some of them I forget. In the many distractions of life and the desire to escape painful thoughts, ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... MY aunt's handmaid, as I supposed she was from what she had said, put her rice in a little basket and walked out of the shop; telling me that I could follow her, if I wanted to know where Miss Trotwood lived. I needed no second permission; though I was by this time in such a state ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... auvadh, "to serve;" the noun, EVEDH, evedh, "servant" or "bondman," one contracting service for a term of years; SAUKIR, saukir, a "hired servant" daily or weekly; AUMAU, aumau, and SHIPHECHAU, shiphechau, "maid-servant" or "handmaid;" but there is no term in Hebrew synonymous with our word slave, for all the terms applied to servants are, as we shall show, equally applicable and ...
— Is Slavery Sanctioned by the Bible? • Isaac Allen
... Virgin kneels before the throne of the Creator; she is clad in regal attire of purple and crimson and gold; and she bends her fair crowned head, and folds her hands upon her bosom with an expression of meek yet dignified resignation—"Behold the handmaid of the Lord!"—accepting, as woman, that highest glory, as mother, that extremest grief, to which the Divine will, as spoken by the prophets of old, had called her. Below, on the earth and to the right hand, ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... humour for such favour." And the girl wailed in answer—"Ah! Ah! Harsh his lordship's tone, harsh his words. Has not long since his command been issued? The fault lies not with Kiku. A lying officer stands between the Tono Sama and his handmaid." Shu[u]zen sat bolt upright, glaring. Framed by the long trailing hair there appeared to his eyes the wan, blood smeared face of O'Kiku. With a yell he was on one knee—"Wretched woman! Does Kiku still pursue ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... no more about it," Rhoda answered, with a little pallor; "if the rest are willing, a poor girl like me will not refuse you, but say, like Ruth, 'Spread thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... shadow of death.' 4. On Monday, April 17, 1853 [his first budget speech], it was: 'O turn Thee then unto me, and have mercy upon me: give Thy strength unto Thy servant, and help the son of Thine handmaid.' Last Sunday [Crimean war budget] it was not from the Psalms for the day: 'Thou shalt prepare a table before me against them that trouble me; Thou hast anointed my head with oil and my cup ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... pigs convenient styes; Or ponder long with anxious thought To banish rats that haunt our vault: Nor have you grumbled, reverend Dean, To keep our poultry sweet and clean; To sweep the mansion-house they dwell in, And cure the rank unsavoury smelling. Now enter as the dairy handmaid: Such charming butter [14] never man made. Let others with fanatic face Talk of their milk for babes of grace; From tubs their snuffling nonsense utter; Thy milk shall make us tubs of butter. The bishop with his foot may burn it,[15] But with his hand the Dean can churn it. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... that we have hitherto seen has been almost exclusively the handmaid of religion or the State. At the Ducal Palace we found the great painters exalting the Doges and the Republic; even the other picture in Venice which I associate with this for its pure beauty—Tintoretto's "Bacchus and Ariadne"—was probably an allegory ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... the old man took the broth from his handmaid,—"Poor Boxer, you are a disinterested creature," said he, feebly; "I think you will grieve when ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and Allah gave him the victory over them, so that he took all their Kings prisoners and he opened [FN32] the coast [FN33] cities by His leave. Now it fortuned one day after this, that a man came to me and sought of me a slave-girl for Al-Malik al-Nasir. Having a handsome handmaid I showed her to him and he bought her of me for an hundred dinars and gave me ninety thereof, leaving ten still due me, for that there was no more found in the royal treasury that day, because he had expended all his monies in waging war against the Franks. Accordingly they took counsel ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... words were so inflamed With sacred love's own virtue did they burn They truly seemed to fall from God above. With holy joy her beating heart was full: "Behold," she said, "the handmaid of the Lord, Be it to ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... seem surprising to some that the decay of religious faith should be an impulse to the birth of art. We are accustomed to talk rather vaguely of art "as the handmaid of religion"; we think of art as "inspired by" religion. But the decay of religious faith of which we now speak is not the decay of faith in a god, or even the decay of some high spiritual emotion; it is the decay of a belief in the efficacy of certain magical rites, and especially of the Spring ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... his absorbing desire for the spiritual and moral welfare of society. Art is purely the creation of man. It receives no inspiration from Heaven; and yet the principles on which it is based are eternal and unchangeable, and when it is made to be the handmaid of virtue, it is capable of exciting the loftiest sentiments. So pure, so exalted, and so wrapt are the feelings which arise from the contemplation of a great picture or statue, that we sometimes ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... and just, if a little more disposed towards that which is sensuous than towards that which is spiritual. And in all its many forms she appreciated luxury, even entertaining a kindness for that necessary handmaid of luxury—waste. Appreciated these the more ardently, that, with birth-pangs at the beginning of each human life, death-pangs and the corruption of the inevitable grave at the close of each, all this lapping, meanwhile, of the doomed flesh in exaggerations of ease and splendour seemed ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... settled himself gloomily upon a side verandah, uncertain which to anathematize, the flies that had broken in upon his slumbers, or the ones that evidently were studiously refraining from awakening his sister and her handmaid. ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... number be Whether by seavens, or eighths, or fives, or nines, They round each fixed lamp; Infinity Will be redoubled thus by many times. Besides each greater Planet th' attendance finds Of lesser. Our Earths handmaid is the Moon, Which to her darkned side right duly shines, And Jove hath foure, as hath been said aboven, And Saturn more then foure if the plain ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... and not only to serve and love but also to respect each other. I say "respect"; for if respect is gone, friendship has lost its brightest jewel. And this shows the mistake of those who imagine that friendship gives a privilege to licentiousness and sin. Nature has given us friendship as the handmaid of virtue, not as a partner in guilt: to the end that virtue, being powerless when isolated to reach the highest objects, might succeed in doing so in union and partnership with another. Those who enjoy in the present, or have enjoyed ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... "Nothin' like a good spread. Grub enough and good liquor; that's the ticket. Guv'nor 'll do the heavy polite, and let me alone for polishin' off the young charmers." And Mr. Geordie looked expressively at a handmaid who was rolling gingerbread, as if he were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... upon them—even to think of them, and devise plans for their elevation in knowledge and virtue, instead of forever opening the old reservoirs and resources for their improvidence; if he has sufficient heart and soul to do all this, or part of it; if wealth would be to him the handmaid of exertion, facilitating effort, and giving success to endeavor; then may he lawfully, and yet warily and modestly, desire it. But if it is to do nothing for him, but to minister ease and indulgence, and to place his children in the same bad school, then ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... duty accomplished, the reaction consequent on his still weak physical condition threw him back upon himself and his memory. He had resolutely refused to think of Miss Sally; he had been able to withstand the suggestions of her in the presence of her handmaid—supposed to be potent in nursing and herb-lore—whom she had detached to wait upon him, and he had returned politely formal acknowledgments to her inquiries. He had determined to continue this personal avoidance as far as possible until he was ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... restores sight to the blind, the dumb speak, the deaf hear, the lame walk at her bidding; pestilence and madness and fits and wounds and possession itself disappear before the power with which Almighty God has endued her; and she walks this earth of ours dispensing blessings, as the faithful handmaid of Him who ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... she had left Cecile to get out of her faint as best she could. For six or seven hours she had now been literally without a soul to speak to. She was not, therefore, indisposed to chat with Jane—who was a favorite with her—when that handmaid brought in a carefully prepared little supper, and laid it by ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... previously sent a message to the captain by the stewardess, requesting him, with her compliments, to have a steel conductor immediately attached to the top of every mast, and to the chimney, in order that the ship might not be struck by lightning. They and the handmaid before mentioned, being in such ecstasies of fear that I scarcely knew what to do with them, I naturally bethought myself of some restorative or comfortable cordial; and nothing better occurring to me, at the moment, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... the passage with a dignity and majesty of demeanor which impressed Miss Sherrard's neat handmaid considerably. The next instant she was ushered into the ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... fifteen years old, it became needful I should journey to certain cities and I travelled with great store of goods. But the daughter of my uncle (this gazelle) had learned gramarye and egromancy and clerkly craft[FN46] from her childhood; so she bewitched that son of mine to a calf, and my handmaid (his mother) to a heifer, and made them over to the herdsman's care. Now when I returned after a long time from my journey and asked for my son and his mother, she answered me, saying "Thy slave girl is dead, and thy son hath fled and I know ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... and tried to inflame her fancy with the splendors of the Greek ritual. "The choir goes on singing, and the pope takes one crown and makes the bridegroom kiss it, then places it on his head and says, 'I crown thee as servant of God and husband of this handmaid of the Lord.' Then he takes the other crown, gives it to the bride to kiss, and says to her, 'I crown thee as handmaid of the Lord, and wife of this servant of God.' The deacon begins to pray for the young pair, and meanwhile the priest leads them three times round the altar, and ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... For, as 'mid brightest flowers The lovely Rose unquestioned reigns The Queen of Nature's bowers, So 'mid the daughters fair of Eve Art thou the peerless One! The chosen handmaid of the Lord! The ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... has deceived us, O Lord, but we forgive him freely. Forgive Thou also his trespasses, so that at the last he escape hell-fire. Count not Thy handmaid for a daughter of Belial, wherever she is this day. May it be good for her to be cut off from the body of the righteous. Grant that she feel this mercy in her carnal body before her eternal soul be called to everlasting judgment. Lord, strengthen Thy servant. Let ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... in their days, Rest in their slumbers, And Cheerfulness the handmaid of their toil; Nor yet too many nor too few their numbers; Corruption could not make their hearts her soil; The lust which stings, the splendour which encumbers, With the free foresters divide no spoil; Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes Of this ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... her handmaid and said, 'Bring me from my room the jewelled drinking horn.' And the handmaiden brought it and Grania filled it to the brim and said, 'Take it to Finn, and say that I would have him drink ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
... accord, the doors flew open and admitted our visitor. She was the selfsame young lady of the covered head who had but a little while before stood by the peasant's side. "So you thought," said she, "that you could make a fool of me, did you? I am Quartilla's handmaid: Quartilla, whose rites you interrupted in the shrine. She has come to the inn, in person, and begs permission to speak with you. Don't be alarmed! She neither blames your mistake nor does she demand punishment; on the contrary, she ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... industry; but quantities of stuff were served out under bond to private establishments to be worked up and returned or paid for. The work on these industries constituted the amat sarruti, or obligation to serve as "king's handmaid." It lay also upon slaves. It is doubtful whether the obligation included domestic service. From the second Babylonian Empire we have a host of tablets relating to these weaving accounts. They will be found fully discussed by Dr. Zehnpfund ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... Blanchefleur, 'the guilt is mine, for had I not been in your Tower never would Fleur have sought to enter it. Moreover, it were shame that a king's son should die for me, who am but the daughter of his handmaid.' ...
— Fleur and Blanchefleur • Mrs. Leighton
... for you to spin now?" queried the little handmaid. "You will be a great lady, and great ladies do not work ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... it. The virtue of the Regent, well known in the kingdom, saved her from suspicion, since she was supposed to be as impregnable as the Chateau de Peronne. At curfew, when everything was shut, both ears and eyes, and the castle silent, Madame de Beaujeu sent away her handmaid, and called for her squire. The squire came. Then the lady and the adventurer sat side by side upon a velvet couch, in the shadow of a lofty fireplace, and the curious Regent, with a tender voice, asked of Jacques "Are you bruised? It was very wrong ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... bell," said Coralie, smiling to herself at Camusot's want of spirit.—"Berenice," she said, when the Norman handmaid appeared, "just bring me a button-hook, for I must put on these confounded boots again. Don't forget to bring ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... the Sea God, bore him a daughter, and since Angus was a friend of Mananan and much beloved by him, the child of the Sea God was sent to Brugh na Boyna, the noble dwelling-place of Angus, to be fostered and brought up, as the custom was. And Ethne became the handmaid of the young princess ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... something must be done quickly, we tried to unite upon strictly local heroes such as the famous fire marshal who had lived for many years in our neighborhood— but why prolong this description which demonstrates once more that art, if not always the handmaid of religion, yet insists upon serving those deeper sentiments for which we unexpectedly find ourselves ready to fight. When we were all fatigued and hopeless of compromise, we took refuge in a series of landscapes connected with our two heroes ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... our shame from our faces." And they ceased not watching the gate till daybreak, when the young man opened the door and their mother farewelled him; after which he went his way and she entered, she and her handmaid. Hereat said Salim to his sister, "Know thou I am resolved to slay this man, an he return the next night, and I will say to the folk, He was a robber, and none shall weet that which hath befallen. Then I will address myself to the slaughter of whosoever knoweth what is between the fellow and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... I am the handmaid of the earth, I broider fair her glorious gown, And deck her on her days of mirth With many a ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... The warriors rejoiced; To the gate of the fortress the folk then hastened, Wives with their husbands, in hordes and in bands, In crowds and in companies; they crushed and thronged 165 Towards the handmaid of God by hundreds and thousands, Old ones and young ones. All of the men In the goodly city were glad in their hearts At the joyous news that Judith was come Again to her home, and hastily then 170 ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... in forwarding his version of events to the Egyptian court, and assuring the king of his unswerving fidelity. "Verily the king my lord knows," he says, "that the queen of the city of Sidon is the handmaid of the king my lord, who has given her into my hand, and that I have hearkened to the words of the king my lord that he would send to his servant, and my heart rejoiced and my head was exalted, and my eyes were enlightened, and ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... mean that she must be brought up in ignorance and kept to housework only? Is she to be man's handmaid or his help-meet? Will he dispense with her greatest charm, her companionship? To keep her a slave will he prevent her knowing and feeling? Will he make an automaton of her? No, indeed, that is not the teaching ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... art of embroidery, in its highest form the handmaid of architecture, is full of suggestion, and may assist us greatly in the search which culminates in the text of ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... society undertakes the work of fitting him for the ownership of land and for the responsibility of citizenship. And it is doing this in the genuine way, through the gospel of Christ, and education as the handmaid and helper of the gospel—that helper without which Christianity would be falsely conceived, and erroneously applied, and without which a failure would result in the ethical training of the colored race. The Association, ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 3, March 1888 • Various
... precepts thus from great examples giv'n, She drew from them what they deriv'd from Heav'n. The gen'rous Critic fann'd the Poet's fire, 100 And taught the world with reason to admire. Then Criticism the Muse's handmaid prov'd, To dress her charms, and make her more belov'd: But following wits from that intention stray'd, Who could not win the mistress, woo'd the maid; 105 Against the Poets their own arms they turn'd, Sure to hate most the men from whom they ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... without previously knocking at the door, and so beheld a gentleman with his arm clasping his young mistress's waist, sitting very lovingly by her side on a sofa, while Arabella and her pretty handmaid feigned to be absorbed in looking out of a window at the other end of the room. At sight of which phenomenon the fat boy uttered an interjection, the ladies a scream, and the gentleman ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... strength of her love, smilingly to win the wager from her lover. But so long as she remains obstinately in the dark, lifts not her veil, does not recognise her lover, and only knows the world dissociated from him, she serves as a handmaid here, where by right she might reign as a queen; she sways in doubt, and weeps in sorrow and dejection. She passes from starvation to starvation, from trouble to trouble, and from fear to fear. [Footnote: Daurbhikshat yati ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... which Horace calls a handmaid, if you know how to use it; a mistress, if you do not—money! It is—success, the thing which wrecks more lives than cyclones, fires and floods! We were happy enough before ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Her dress was always perfect: she never dressed but once in the day, and never appeared till between three and four; but when she did appear, she appeared at her best. Whether the toil rested partly with her, or wholly with her handmaid, it is not for such a one as the author even to imagine. The structure of her attire was always elaborate and yet never over-laboured. She was rich in apparel but not bedizened with finery; her ornaments ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... haughtiness of my mind and the seriousness of my character. My bride shall stand before me like the full moon, in her robes and ornaments, and I, out of my pride and my disdain, will not look at her, till all who are present shall say to me: 'O my lord, thy wife and thy handmaid stands before thee; deign to look upon her, for standing is irksome to her.' And they will kiss the earth before me many times, whereupon I will lift my eyes and give one glance at her, then bend down my head again. Then they will carry her to the bride-chamber, ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... Brilliant always puts me in good humour, so, of course, I can but answer, "That he is, Gertrude, and as good as he's handsome;" on which my voluble handmaid goes ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... indispensable at the other, they have turned education into an entirely different channel. Nothing was deemed worthy of serious attention, except what led to some practical object in life. Education was considered by their founders as merely a step to making money. Science became a trade—a mere handmaid to art. Mammon was all in all. Their instruction was entirely utilitarian. Mechanics and Medicine, Hydraulics and Chemistry, Pneumatics and Hydrostatics, Anatomy and Physiology, constituted the grand staples ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... term general culture. The stage, with its half-sister, the cinema, is strangely, by how long and circuitous a route, returning of course, with an immeasurably developed equipment, to its starting-point, ending curiously where it began as the handmaid of the church. As with the old moralities or miracle-plays, it is becoming once more our teacher. The lessons of truth and beauty, as those of plain gaiety and delight, are relying more and more upon the actor for their expression, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... but since then he has thrust me aside, saying that I weary him, and courts a handmaid of mine own, and therefore I demand ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... lecture of a year ago, it was still the orthodox creed of the Society, that Circumstance is the handmaid of the Will; that one can demand of one's days "bread, kingdoms, stars, or sky," and that the Days will obediently produce the objects desired. If one has but the spirit that can soar high enough to really be resolved upon stars, or the ambition sufficiently vaulting to ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Christians, although not in need of it for themselves, nevertheless render cheerful obedience to this government, through love for the others who need it. A Christian himself may wield the sword when called upon to maintain peace among men and to punish wrong. This authority, which is God's handmaid, as St. Paul says, is as necessary and good as other worldly callings. God therefore instituted two regimens, or governments-the spiritual, which, through the Holy Ghost under Christ, makes Christians and pious people, and the worldly or temporal, which ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... women. If I should forsake the helm at this moment, how could I safely guide the keel to King Mark's land?" Brangaene's temper flashes a faint reflection of Isolde's fire. "Tristan, my lord, are you mocking me? If the stupid handmaid cannot make her meaning clear to you, hear my mistress's own words. This she bade me say: Be warned, a self-sufficient one, to fear the mistress! That is her behest,—Isolde's!" Without giving Tristan time to hesitate, Kurwenal jumps up: "May I frame an answer?"—"What would your answer ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... Peter's,—which work, however, he did not live to see completed.] The mediaeval artists devoted themselves to painting instead of sculpture, for the reason that it best expresses the ideas and sentiments of Christianity. The art that would be the handmaid of the Church needed to be able to represent faith and hope, ecstasy and suffering,—none of which things can well be expressed by sculpture, which is essentially ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... its range: the French [Footnote: But judge not, reader, of French skill by the attempts of fourth-rate artists; and understand me to speak with respect of this skill, not as it is the tool of luxury, but as it is the handmaid of health.] have an art, and more extensive; but we English are about upon a level (as regards this science) with the ape, to whom an instinct whispers that chestnuts may be roasted; or with the aboriginal Chinese of Charles Lamb's story, to ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... this brief, blurred story, and wondering how it would seem to love anyone very much beforehand. She has been trained to believe that love follows duty as an obedient handmaid. She likes Mr. Grandon very much. He is so good and tender, but of course he loves the child the best. Violet is not a whit jealous, for she does not know what love really is in its depth and strength. But it is a mystery, a sort of forbidden fruit to her, and yet ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... wisely, and became so fair. Could from his copious Brain new Humours bring, A bragging Bessus, or inconstant King. Could Laughter thence, here melting pity raise In his Amyntors, and Aspasia's. But Rome and Athens must the Plots produce With France, the Handmaid of the ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... accounts like these how far we have left behind us the old Roman religion we discussed in earlier lectures. That religion did not any longer supply the material needed; it was not suited to be the handmaid of a political or military policy; it was a real religion, not invented for political purposes, to use Polybius' language, but itself a part of the life of the State, whether active in war, or law, or politics. In the ceremonies I have just been describing almost all the ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... was thy dead chief's handmaid, Friends. Twelve months agone, I was with him Upon the battle-field alone. The Sioux were all around us; their Faces war-red painted; their cries Of vengeance filling all the air. He to his saddle ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... that as gold is the most precious of all other metals, so exceedeth this prayer all other prayers, and who that devoutly sayeth it shall have a singular reward of our blessed Lady, and her sweet Son Jesus. 'Ave,' &c. Hail, Mary, most humble handmaid of the Trinity, &c. Hail, Mary, most prompt Comforter of the living and the dead. Be thou with me in all my tribulations and distresses with maternal pity, and at the hour of my death take my soul, and ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... handmaid was as lean as her mistress was stout. Her hair was magnificent in quality and quantity, but, alas! was of the unpopular tint called red; not auburn, or copper hued, or the famous Titian color, but a blazing, fiery red, which made it look like a comic wig. ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... prudential side it has led to such outrageous exaggerations as the well-known and oft-quoted proverb, "Speech is silver, but silence is golden." Articulate speech, the chiefest triumph and highest single accomplishment of the human species, the handmaid of thought and the instrument of progress, is actually rated below silence, the attribute of the clod and of the dumb brute, the easy refuge of cowardice and ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... to have rejected the love of a wicked king than in Guzman to have let the Moors slay his son rather than surrender a city to them. But I could only pay honor to her pathetic memory and the memory of that nameless handmaid of hers who rushed into the flames to right the garments on the form which the wind had blown them away from, and so perished with her. We had to take on trust from the guide-books all trace of the Roman town where the three emperors were born, and whose ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... noticed it has sometimes been found that it has been recorded on a photographic plate taken some time previously, and this shows us how long it has been visible. More and more photography becomes the useful handmaid of astronomers, for the photographic prepared plate is more sensitive to rays of light than the human eye, and, what is more useful still, such plates retain the rays that fall upon them, and fix the impression. Also on a plate these rays are cumulative—that ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... sight of heaven to Rome I swear, If Saturnine advance the Queen of Goths, She will a handmaid be to his desires, A loving nurse, a mother to ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... his advice had been taken there would have been no trouble. Whitlow discharged his man this winter, and took in his place a half-grown boy. Mrs. Whitlow sets a good example to her class by discharging one handmaid and making the other do double duty. Yet, so far as I can find, Whitlow is a richer man than he was three years ago. Kenny keeps his factory open, and gives the men three days' work in the week, and pays them in poor shoes, as much as possible; and takes ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... were so white. Buskins of shell, all silver'd, used she, And branch'd with blushing coral to the knee; Where sparrows perch'd, of hollow pearl and gold, Such as the world would wonder to behold: Those with sweet water oft her handmaid fills, Which, as she went, would cherup through the bills. Some say, for her the fairest Cupid pin'd, And, looking in her face, was strooken blind. But this is true; so like was one the other, As he imagin'd Hero was his mother; And oftentimes into her bosom flew, ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... only week-day clothes—which were ragged at that—Phoebe was fair, and exquisitely clean, and quite terribly tidy. Her mother was the neatest woman in the parish. It was she who was wont to say to her trembling handmaid, "I hope I can black a grate without blacking myself." But little Phoebe promised so far to out-do her mother, that it seemed doubtful if she could "black herself" if she tried. Only the bloom of childhood could have resisted the polishing effects of ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... little notice of her handmaid's volubility as if the latter had been a grey parrot, and dismissed her with a certain cold, imperial manner that none of the household ever dreamt it possible to dispute or disobey; but after Puckers, with a quantity of white draperies ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... the annunciation of the angel. But she wished rather to forego the exalted dignity of divine motherhood, than relinquish the virginity which she had dedicated to God. And when the highest dignity which can be bestowed upon a creature was announced to her, she called herself the handmaid of the Lord. Mary, when convinced of the will of God, humbly consented, saying, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... work; she liked to dash round the house alone, without thinking what somebody else was doing or ought to be doing. In short, she liked to have her out of the way for a while. Furthermore, it did not please her that Mr. Van Brunt and her little handmaid were, as she expressed it, "so thick." His first thought, and his last thought, she said, she believed, were for Ellen, whether she came in or went out; and Miss Fortune was accustomed to be chief, not only in ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... our souls and say, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord!" Let us lift up our hearts and ask, "Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?" Then light from the opened heaven shall stream on our daily task, revealing the grains of gold, where yesterday all seemed dust; ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... agonized and contaminated by the sight of human turpitude and barbarity, streaming blood, quivering flesh, wounds, tortures, death, and horrors in every shape, even though it should be all very natural. Painting has been called the handmaid of nature; is it not the duty of a handmaid to array her mistress to the best possible advantage? At least to keep her infirmities from view and not to expose ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... corrupt as illusory; a church, in which spiritual religion was all but extinct, had sold herself as a bondslave to the governing classes. Rank and wealth and territorial ascendency were divorced from public duty, and even learning had become the handmaid of tyranny. The sacred name of justice was prostituted to sanction a system of legal murder. Commercial enterprise was paralyzed by prohibitive legislation; public credit was shaken to its base; the prime necessaries ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... the vernacular; she read them. 'They're no bad for a beginner,' said she. The landlord's daughter, Miss Stewart, was present in oil colour; so I wrote her a declaration in verse, and sent it by the handmaid. She (Miss S.) was present on the stair to witness our departure, in a warm, suffused condition. Damn it, Gosse, you needn't suppose that you're the only ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was the god who arose from the rite, similarly it was the ritual connected with the worship of the god which gave birth to his representation in sculpture. Art, she says, is not, as is commonly supposed, the "handmaid of religion." "She springs straight out of the rite, and her first outward leap is the image of the god." Miss Harrison gives two examples to substantiate her contention. In the first place, she states at ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Virgin blest, Hath laid her Babe to rest. Time is our tedious Song should here have ending, Heav'ns youngest teemed Star, Hath fixt her polisht Car, Her sleeping Lord with Handmaid Lamp attending: And all about the Courtly Stable, Bright-harnest Angels sit in ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... this, or a far higher and profounder philosophy is (I think) contained in the Teutonick's writings. And if there be any friendly medium which can possibly reconcile these ancient differences between the nobler wisdom which hath fixt her Palace in Holy Writ and her stubborn handmaid, Naturall Reason: this happy marriage of the Spirit and Soul, this wonderful consent of discords in one harmony, we owe in great ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... made such researches as his genius suggests. That is only reasonable, and reason, after all, is a mighty gift of God—a gift, no doubt, often abused by finite beings, who actually use it to defy the Giver—yet none the less, in its proper place, the handmaid of faith and ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... amazed at the beauty of the palace. They bathed in the marble baths, rubbed themselves with oil and put on the splendid tunics that were brought them. After that they entered the great hall, where each was seated on a throne near the king. A handmaid brought a golden pitcher and a silver bowl for their hands, and a table was placed before them laden with choice food. When they had eaten enough, golden beakers of wine were handed them, and then the monarch gave his hand to each of them, saying: "Ye have come in ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... handmaid, bred With Queen Kaikeyi, fancy-led, Mounted the stair and stood upon The terrace like the moon that shone. Thence Manthara at ease surveyed Ayodhya to her eyes displayed, Where water cooled the royal street, Where heaps of flowers were fresh and sweet, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... us only a time of trial, and the longer and harder the trial the greater our recompense in a better world. Whatever befalls us, our answer should be that of the Virgin Mary to the angel who announced the mystery of the Incarnation: 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... themselves on the score of actuality, nor in fitness for the work in hand. The trivial, the accidental, the unmeaning, are rejected, and there will be no stopping short of the end; for art, being the handmaid of truth, can employ no other than the method of all reason, wherefore idealism is to it what abstraction is to logic and induction to natural science,—the breath of its rational being. Those who hold to realism in its ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... self-denials of Christian workers in the field and many Christian givers in the country at large. It is this thought that has ever been held up before it—the thought that the church and the school go together, and that the school is simply the handmaid of the church. We recognize the fact that in Congregationalism especially, out of all forms of religious belief, we cannot hope to make men earnest, effective Christians, caring for themselves, managing their ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... pride of a boy will frequently divert him to the path where lie his subtlest powers. Richard gave up his companions, servile or antagonistic: he relinquished the material world to young Ralph, and retired into himself, where he was growing to be lord of kingdoms where Beauty was his handmaid, and History his minister and Time his ancient harper, and sweet Romance his bride; where he walked in a realm vaster and more gorgeous than the great Orient, peopled with the heroes that have been. For there is no princely wealth, and no loftiest heritage, to equal this early ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... man should see virtue exalted, and vice punished: truly, that commendation is peculiar to poetry, and far off from history; for, indeed, poetry ever sets virtue so out in her best colours, making fortune her well-waiting handmaid, that one must needs be enamoured of her. Well may you see Ulysses in a storm, and in other hard plights; but they are but exercises of patience and magnanimity, to make them shine the more in the ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... With that she broke the silence once again, And gave the knight great thanks in little speech, She said she would his handmaid poor remain, So far as honor's laws received no breach. Her humble gestures made the residue plain, Dumb eloquence, persuading more than speech: Thus women know, and thus they use the guise, To enchant the ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... he diffused it over too large an area. In such cases genius is overpassed by the talent which husbands its resources; in other words, Nature succumbs to second nature, as the wife in the patriarchal days (when she grew patriarchal) succumbed to the handmaid. And after all, though we talk so glibly about genius, and profess to feel, though we cannot express, in what it differs from talent, are we quite so sure about this as we would fain persuade ourselves? At ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... enough in his day, to construct the State from without rather than to guide and encourage its evolution from within. It seemed to him that, in such an ocean of corruption, Force was a remedy and Fraud no sluttish handmaid. 'Vice n'est-ce pas,' writes Montaigne, of such violent acts of Government, 'car il a quitte sa raison a une plus universelle et puissante raison.' Even so the Prince and the people could only be justified by results. But the public life is of larger ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Thenceforth the philosophic life, so to speak, which had never been interrupted, assumed a fresh character. Within the Church it sheltered—I will not say disguised—itself under the interpretation of dogma; it became a sort of respectful auxiliary of theology, and was accordingly called the "handmaid of theology," ancilla theologiae. When emancipated, when departing from dogma, it is a "heresy," and all the great heresies are nothing else than schools of philosophy, which is why heresies must come into a history of philosophy. And at last, but only towards ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... to the Princess where she sat High in the hall: above her drooped a lamp, And made the single jewel on her brow Burn like the mystic fire on a mast-head, Prophet of storm: a handmaid on each side Bowed toward her, combing out her long black hair Damp from the river; and close behind her stood Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men, Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain, And labour. Each ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... difficult to recognise in that King of the Prologue, "in whose heart all gracious things are rooted," the actual King who murdered Becket; who turned over picture-books at Mass, and never confessed or communicated. It is yet more difficult to perceive "joy as his handmaid" who, because of the loss of a favourite city, threatened to revenge himself on God, by robbing Him of that thing—i.e., the soul—He desired most in him; and whose very last words were an echo of Job's curse upon the day that he was born. Marie's phrases may be regarded, perhaps, ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... a goodly company,' said Grania, and ordered her lady to bring her the golden goblet chased with jewels. When it was brought she filled it up with the drink of nine times nine men, then bade her handmaid carry it to Fionn and say that she had sent it to him, and that he was to drink from it. Fionn took the goblet with joy, but no sooner had he drunk than he fell down into a deep slumber; and the same thing befel also Cormac, and Cormac's wife, and as many as drank of ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... lawyers. They ought to be trained practitioners and learned in the profession of the law before they ascend the Bench, and generally they are. Therefore, our courts, as they are now conducted, and our profession, which is the handmaid of justice, are necessarily so bound together in our judicial system that an attack upon the courts is an attack upon our profession, and an attack upon our profession is equally an ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... enchantments of this Moorish paradise become part of our mental possessions, without the least shock to our common sense. After a few days of residence in the part of the Alhambra occupied by Dame Tia Antonia and her family, of which the handmaid Dolores was the most fascinating member, Irving succeeded in establishing himself in a remote and vacant part of the vast pile, in a suite of delicate and elegant chambers, with secluded gardens and fountains, that had once been occupied by the ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... by reflection of the sun's rays upon sensitive paper are, after a temporary obliteration, resuscitated on the sheet being exposed to the fumes of mercury. Such are the phenomena of memory, that handmaid of intellect, without which there could be no accumulation of mental capital, but an universal and continual infancy. Conception and imagination appear to be only intensities, so to speak, of the state of brain ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... the maidens of the Arabs, and the Caliph said to Ja'afar, "There is no help for it but I take her to wife." So Ja'afar repaired to her father and said to him, "The Commander of the Faithful hath a mind to thy daughter." He replied, "With love and goodwill, she is a gift as a handmaid to His Highness our Lord the Commander of the Faithful." So he equipped her and carried her to the Caliph, who took her to wife and went in to her, and she became of the dearest of his women to him. Furthermore, he bestowed on her father largesse such as succoured ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... of Ra, and the width of the earth four times. I come forth. My tongue is like unto that of Ptah and my throne is like unto that of the goddess Hathor, and I make mention of the words of Tem, my father, with my mouth. He it is who constraineth the handmaid, the wife of Seb, and before him are bowed [all] heads, and there is fear of him. Hymns of praise are repeated for [me] by reason of [my] mighty acts, and I am decreed to be the divine Heir of Seb, the lord of the earth and to be the protector therein. The ...
— Egyptian Literature
... them as if the sun of the early summer had arisen for nought save to shine on their happy day. And they went about from place to place whereas tidings had befallen Birdalone; and she served them one and all as if she were their handmaid, and they loved her and caressed her, and had been fain to do all her will did ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... ideal, like the Greek, broke down in practice. 'Where the Middle Ages failed', says the Master of Balliol, continuing a passage already quoted, 'was in attempting ... to make politics the handmaid of religion, to give the Church the organization and form of a political State, that is, to turn religion from an indwelling spirit into an ecclesiastical machinery.' In other words, the mediaeval attempt broke down through neglecting the special conditions and problems of the political department ...
— Progress and History • Various |
