"Virginal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The flashing, imperious expression that so well became her bold beauty at other times had given place to a shy and blushing softness, inexpressibly charming to her lover. In her shining eyes a host of virginal alarms were mingled with the tender, solemn ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... keeping its secret inviolate. Heavens! supposing he had backed out of that catalogue, and Miss Harden had called in another expert. At this point he detected in himself a tendency to wander from the matter in hand. He reminded himself that whatever else he was there for, he was there to guard the virginal seclusion of the Aldine Plato, the Neapolitan Horace and the Aurea Legenda of Wynkyn de Worde. He tried to shut his eyes against his vivid and disturbing vision of the lady of the library. It suggested that he was allowing that innocent person to pay fifteen ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... lovely. He did not think of trying to draw close to her or of winning her love. He looked at her as one might look at a star or across a country of low hills in October when the leaves of the trees are all red and yellow gold. "She is a pure, virginal thing," he thought vaguely. "What can she be thinking about as she sits there ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... patent and the remembered aspect. It reminds you of a friend who has been suddenly placed in new circumstances, in whom there is much that you recognise, and much that is entirely strange. How purely, divinely white when the last snowflake has just fallen! How exquisite and virginal the repose! It touches you like some perfection of music. And winter does not work only on a broad scale; he is careful in trifles. Pluck a single ivy leaf from the old wall, and see what a jeweller he is! How he has silvered over the dark-green ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... that the lives of the characters in the novels were not as real as her own. There were some for whom she would have laid down her life: the tender jealous creature, Lady Castlewood, the woman who loved in silence with her motherly virginal heart, was a sister to her: little Dombey was her own dear little boy: she was Dora, the child-wife, who was dying: she would hold out her arms to all those childlike souls which pass through the world with the honest eyes of purity: and around her there would pass a procession ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... no dust in the canyon. The leaves and flowers were clean and virginal. The grass was young velvet. Over the pool three cottonwoods sent their scurvy fluffs fluttering down the quiet air. On the slope the blossoms of the wine-wooded manzanita filled the air with springtime odors, while the leaves, wise ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... herself greatly skilled in musical learning. "If her Majesty," says that eminent author, "was ever able to execute any of the pieces that are preserved in a MS. which goes under the name of Queen Elizabeth's Virginal-book, she must have been a very great player, as some of the pieces which were composed by Tallis, Bird, Giles, Farnaby, Dr. Bull, and others, are so difficult that it would be hardly possible to find a master in Europe who would undertake to play any of them at the end of a month's ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... [56] A virginal, says Mr. Malone, was strung like a spinnet, and shaped like a piano-forte: the mode of playing on this instrument was therefore similar to ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... thy youth in peace, and to achieve The silver livery of advised age, And in thy reverence and thy chair-days, thus To die in ruffian battle?—Even at this sight My heart is turn'd to stone; and while 't is mine It shall be stony. York not our old men spares; No more will I their babes; tears virginal Shall be to me even as the dew to fire, And beauty that the tyrant oft reclaims Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax. Henceforth I will not have to do with pity; Meet I an infant of the house of York, Into as many ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... the elegant Greek says "No" to them, not by sound of voice, but by the slightest elevation of the eyebrows and movement of the eye. He sits and looks occasionally at the wonderful hills above him, so fresh, so virginal; but he does not, as an Englishman might do, pay quickly and go out and go up. The modern Greek would never build ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... with nothing of all this left save the paper with the blood of these children, in his pocket. Children! Stella was not quite that—as old as Megan! Her talk—quick, rather hard and shy, yet friendly—seemed to flourish on his silences, and about her there was something cool and virginal—a maiden in a bower. At dinner, to which Halliday, who had swallowed too much sea-water, did ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... not found Carlia Duke; instead, he had found something which appeared to him to be the end of all things. Had he found her dead, in her virginal purity, he could have placed her, with Mildred, safely away in his heart and his hopes; but this!... What more could he now do? That he did not take the first train home was because he was benumbed ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... for grace That shall surround me, His kisses on my face, His arms around me; And sinless maids draw near To drop above me A virginal sad tear ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... past saving, could he have withstood her in that vein. Her nearness, her tenderness, revived the mood of sheer bewitchment, when he could think of nothing, desire nothing but her. She had a genius for inducing that mood in men; and Roy's virginal passion, once roused, was stronger than he knew. With his arms round her, his heart against hers, it was humanly impossible to wish her other than ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... one hand, the essential activity of all artists; on the other, the art through which those who choose to learn and practise it may share in some fragmentary degree, according to their measure, the special experience of the mystic and the poet. By it they may achieve that virginal outlook upon things, that celestial power of communion with veritable life, which comes when that which we call "sensation" is freed from the tyranny of that which we call "thought." The artist is no more and ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... commonly growing in our hedges, which bears a very hard wood, of which they sometimes made bows for viols, and the inlayer us'd it for its colour, and instrument-makers for toothing of organs, and virginal-keys, tooth-pickers, &c. What we else do with it, I know not, save that (according with its name, abroad) they make spindles with it. I also learn, that three, or four of the berries, purge both ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... defeated by stronger wills than his own, and now struggling partially to fulfil itself in acts of devotion to others, the thought of women had entered scarcely more than in that of a child. His ideals were of a virginal vagueness; faces, voices, gestures had filled his fancy at times, but almost passionately; and the sensation that he now indulged was a kind of worship, ardent, but reverent and exalted. The brutal experiences of the world make us forget ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Sun, our sire, Came wooing the mother of men, Earth, that was virginal then, Vestal fire to his fire. Silent her bosom and coy, But the strong god sued and press'd; And born of their starry nuptial joy Are all that drink ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... Britannia, queen, however, not of the waves but of the woodland, poor yet noble, and innocent of every mean ambition of gentility, faithful, valiant, and proud,—as she stands pale and commanding, in the sunshine at the dingle's mouth, in all her virginal dignity, is she not a figure worthy to rank with the queens of Beauty and Romance, with Dido "with a willow in her hand," with the deeply-loving Rebecca as with a calm and tender dignity she bids for ever adieu to the land of ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... of the olden time was lately presented to the museum of the Northern Institution, by William Mackintosh, Esq. of Milbank—an ancient virginal, which was in use among our ancestors prior to the invention of the spinnet and harpsichord. Mary, Queen of Scots, who delighted in music, in her moments of "joyeusitie" as John Knox phrases it, used to play finely on the virginal; and her more ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... exposures of sentiments and of life offend that virginal modesty of soul, of which outward modesty is but an imperfect emblem? You show ourself unvailed, and you do not blush! Who ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... obtained from without, sensation must, first, include an unconscious thinking in itself, and, secondly, must itself receive a title to originality and spontaneity. As the Catholic dogma added the immaculate conception of the mother to that of the Son, so Leibnitz transfers the (virginal) origin of rational concepts, independent of external influence, to sensations. The monad has no windows. It bears germinally in itself all that it is to experience, and nothing is impressed on it from without. The intellect ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... and especially since the inauguration of the delaine, Mrs. Marmaduke Splurge had been less alive to the necessity of improving the minds of her girls; and that virginal ten-dollar investment had provided Josephine, Adelaide, and Madeline with supplies of small arms and ammunition enough for a protracted campaign of epistolary belligerence, interrupted by hair-strokes of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... his, as never before.... Julie. What, then, was she? She was his bride, his wife, coming to him consecrate—not by any State convention, not by any ceremony of man-made religion, but by the pure passion of human love, virginal, clean. It was human passion, perhaps, but where was higher love or greater sacrifice? Was this not worthy of all his careful preparation, worthy of the one centre of his being? Donovan, indeed! He wished he had stopped and told him the whole story, and that he expected ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... being written. Eveline declared that if she did not go to church she would not believe herself married. She spoke of breaking off the engagement, and of going abroad with her mother, or of retiring into a convent. Then she became tender, weak, suppliant. She sighed, and everything in her virginal chamber sighed in chorus, the holy-water font, the palm-branch above her white bed, the books of devotion on their little shelves, and the blue and white statuette of St. Orberosia chaining the dragon of Cappadocia, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... can't kiss you to-night, father; sometime I will," the gentle voice replied. "I'm not strong enough to-night." There was infinite regret in the tone, which conveyed to Serviss, with singular vividness, a virginal charm, united to something very sweet, almost saintly. Every sentiment had been beautifully voiced—no actress could have done ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... that constitutes a fully developed matron fit to play her proper part in the home and in the world. Yet with all these experiences, which undoubtedly are an important part of life, she may yet remain on the emotional side—and, as a matter of fact, frequently remains—quite virginal, as immature as a school-girl. She has not acquired an erotic personality, she has not mastered the art of love, with the result that her whole nature remains ill-developed and unharmonised, and that she is ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... before this splendid sight. Obviously, in the presence of these zoophyte and mollusk specimens, the fine lad was classifying his head off. Polyps and echinoderms abounded on the seafloor: various isis coral, cornularian coral living in isolation, tufts of virginal genus Oculina formerly known by the name "white coral," prickly fungus coral in the shape of mushrooms, sea anemone holding on by their muscular disks, providing a literal flowerbed adorned by jellyfish from the genus Porpita wearing collars of azure tentacles, and starfish that spangled the sand, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... usual from my academic session; it wanted half an hour of the midday breakfast. I went into the salon with the design of possessing myself of the day's Galignani before one of the little English old maids should have removed it to her virginal bower—a privilege to which Madame Beaurepas frequently alluded as one of the attractions of the establishment. In the salon I found a new-comer, a tall gentleman in a high black hat, whom I immediately recognised as a compatriot. I had often seen him, or his equivalent, ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... first find him associated with Middleton is well written and well contrived, and fairly diverting—especially to an idle or an uncritical reader: though even such an one may suspect that the heroine here represented as a virginal virago must have been in fact rather like Dr. Johnson's fair friend Bet Flint; of whom the Great Lexicographer "used to say that she was generally slut and drunkard; occasionally whore and thief" (Boswell, May 8, 1781). The parallel would have been more nearly complete ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Sevigne saw Louise de La Valliere some months later at court, she likened her to a modest violet, hiding beneath its leaves; but not so completely as to evade the eyes of royalty. And if Louise was lovely in her gown of virginal white, the King was a no less pleasing object to gaze upon. At all times courteous and graceful, at twenty-three Louis is described as handsome, well-formed, with deep blue eyes, and a profusion of curling ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... flashing eyes, faced her father. The virginal heart of the girl was roused with a nameless terror. "And so you have made me Arthur Ferris' wife to chain the Senator to you for life! You told me that Randall Clayton led a vile life. Who ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... destination. Probably, that American in the toga and sandals, exiled from the island he loved so well, had a message for the Tahitians or others of the Polynesian tribes of the South Seas; Essenism, maybe, or something to do with virginal beards and long hair, or sandals and the simple life. I ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... soft notes when handled by a master hand. The story of the development of the piano from the very early prototypes is an enchanting theme to the lover of music, for there is a far remove from the modern pianoforte, and still newer player piano to the virginal, harpsichord, and spinet which may occasionally be found among ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... details, but the same spirit running through the work—both the poem and the music. I cannot help thinking that Beethoven would perhaps have disliked Tristan, but would have loved Siegfried; for the latter is a perfect incarnation of the spirit of old Germany, virginal and gross, sincere and malicious, full of humour and sentiment, of deep feeling, of dreams of bloody and joyous battles, of the shade of great oak-trees and ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... of your beloved, like the fiend-dog that guards the subterranean treasure. I will drag you to church by the hair, and sword in hand wring the nuptial vow from your soul. By main force will I ascend your virginal couch, and storm your haughty modesty with still ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... those charming dimples were misplaced for true beauty, and too fixed in their quality for honest mirthfulness; that the delicate lines around these aquiline nostrils were cruel and selfish; that the sweet virginal surprise of these lovely eyes were as apt to be opened on her plate as upon the gallant speeches of her dinner partner; that her sympathetic color came and went more with her own spirits than yours. But you and I are not ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... not the originator of programme-music. In the so-called Queen Elizabeth Virginal Book,[46] in the Fitzwilliam Library, there is a Fantasia by John Munday, who died 1630, in which there is given a description of weather both fair and foul. Again, Froberger, who died in 1667, is said to have been able, on the clavier, to describe incidents, ideas, ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... to a basket which lay near her, and, taking from it a pair of garden scissors, knelt beside Paul, and began to snip his bonds. He woke to find her thus engaged, and a virginal sweet sense of shame filled him. Her fingers touched his skin at times, and he tingled ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... wearily at the knives. Her expression had not changed, and Domini was amazed at her indifference. The eyes of everyone in the room were fixed upon her. Even Suzanne began to be less virginal in appearance under the influence of this desert song of triumph. Domini did not let her eyes stray any more towards the stranger. For the moment indeed she had forgotten him. Her attention was fastened upon the thin, consumptive-looking creature who was staring at the two ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... night Hale kept a secret tryst with Ana after the village slept. Sweet, virginal Ana, who knew less of the world than a civilized child of twelve—what a sensation she would create in New York with her beauty, her culture, her natural fascination! With her in his arms and an orange tropical moon hanging low in the hot, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... exponent of tolerant hearthstone chivalry, to smile at the triumph! V—l, whom Margarita detested, practically refused to sing Siegfried to her Bruenhilde, because, he said, she made him ridiculous with her virginal strugglings and got him out of breath besides! And he could ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... brings forward, though often just, scarcely justify his conclusion. While the young virgin, however, is more modest and shy than the young man of the same age, the experienced married woman is usually less so than her husband, and in a woman who is a mother the shy reticences of virginal modesty would be rightly felt to be ridiculous. ("Les petites pudeurs n'existent pas pour les meres," remarks Goncourt, Journal des Goncourt, vol. iii, p. 5.) She has put off a sexual livery that has no ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... glance assured him she was not, and he then reflected that she was too innocent indeed for that. After a supreme hesitation he asked her if he might go and look at the yellow room, which seemed so attractive yet so virginal. He had been there already with Osmond, to inspect the furniture, which was of the First French Empire, and especially to admire the clock (which he didn't really admire), an immense classic structure of that period. He therefore felt that he ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... affect solitaire rings, as tokens of betrothal—did this mean that the honeymooning question was already settled? If it were so, the fact would account for the girl's absence of embarrassment in his own company; all the same, he did not believe it, for there was in her manner a calm, virginal composure, an absence of sentimentality, which seemed to denote that the citadel ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... exceptions. In the first place, Lycaste Skinneri alba, the pure white variety, beggars all description. Its great flower seems to be sculptured in the snowiest of transparent marble. That stolid pretentious air which offends one—offends me, at least—in the coloured examples, becomes virginal dignity in this case. Then, of the normal type there are more than a hundred variations recognized, some with lips as deep in tone, and as smooth in texture, as velvet, of all shades from maroon to brightest crimson. It will be understood that ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... stood speechless, trying to formulate the lie he could utter most boldly, until he was struck with the double thought that to defend Diane's honor with a falsehood would be to defame it further, while a lie to this pure, trusting, virginal spirit would ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... swept in state into their box. Mrs. Stuart, Miss Stuart Mr. Stuart, junior, and Miss Darrell. Miss Stuart dressed for some after "reception" in silvery blue silk, pearl ornaments in her hair, and a virginal white bouquet in her hand. Miss Darrell in the white muslin of last night, a scarlet opera cloak, and a bouquet of white and scarlet camellias. Charley lounging in the background, looking as usual, handsome of face, elegant of attire, and calmly ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... clearly, she views them without illusions, and braves them without fear; for she is full of reliance on her own strength, and her reliance seems to be shared by all who are about her. An American girl scarcely ever displays that virginal bloom in the midst of young desires, or that innocent and ingenuous grace which usually attends the European woman in the transition from girlhood to youth. It is rarely that an American woman at any age displays childish timidity or ignorance. Like the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... so often, by Fanny's youthful appearance; but that wasn't, he decided, so much because of her actual person— although since her marriage she had shown practically no change—as from a spirit of rigorous purity; she was, in spite of everything, Lee realized, completely virginal in mind. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... form. The rose-tinted nostrils were dilated slightly with the joy of triumph; the serene happiness of her life had left its plain tokens in the full development of her beauty. A certain indefinable virginal grace met in her with the pride of a woman who is loved. This was a slave and a queen, a queen who would fain obey ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... Sum of virtue virginal, Fresh Flower on whom the dew of heaven downfell; O Gem, conjoined in joy angelical, In whom rejoiced the Saviour was to dwell: Of refuge Ark, of mercy Spring and Well, Of Ladies first, as is of letters A, Empress of heaven, of paradise ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... great." The Queen replied: "Go forth, dyangs, at once And find me gold and dust of gold, and take It all unto a goldsmith. Let him make For me a fan, all decked with beauteous gems, With rubies red and pearls; and after that A girdle virginal. Count not the price. I want it all as quickly as may be." And so they hastened, took the gold, and went Outside the city, through the whole campong Of goldsmiths, seeking there the best to make The fan and girdle. And the hammered gold Soon shone with many amethysts and ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... was nought save the deep, soft voice of Beltane, and his eyes, and the new, sweet ecstasy that thrilled within her. Surely nowhere in all the world was there such another man as this, so strong and gentle, so meet for love and yet so virginal. Surely life might be very fair here in the ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... soundly after all. Her pique at Byrne had passed with the reading of his note, and the sensation of his protection and nearness had been almost physical. In the virginal little apartment in the lodge of Maria Theresa the only masculine presence had been that of the Portier, carrying up coals at ninety Hellers a bucket, or of the accompanist who each alternate day had played for the Big Soprano to practice. And they had ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in right earnest and it was infinitely becoming to her. Ferriday was not thinking of the price or cut of her frock. He was perceiving the flexile figure that informed it, the virginal shoulders that curved up out of it, the slender, limber throat that aspired from them and the flower-poise of her head on ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... affected to belong to the Bohemia of learning. He liked the snow, the pale street lamps, the sharp black tracks left in the first snow by the feet of the passers-by. He liked the air, and especially that limpid, tender, naive, as it were virginal tone, which can be seen in nature only twice in the year—when everything is covered with snow, and in spring on bright days and moonlight evenings when the ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... rolled With the sea-romp over the wreck. Night roared, with the heart-break hearing a heart-broke rabble, The woman's wailing, the crying of child without check— Till a lioness arose breasting the babble, A prophetess towered in the tumult, a virginal tongue told. ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... youth and her virginal air, Eyes and teeth in the flash of a musical smile, Come to me out of the past, and I see her there As I saw her once ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... were books here, too, books which Lucrezia examined with an awful wonder, not knowing how to read. In the window-seat were white cushions. On the chest of drawers were more red roses and geraniums. It was a virginal room, into which the bright, golden sunbeams stole under the striped awning outside the low window with surely a hesitating modesty, as if afraid to find themselves intruders. The whiteness, the intense quietness of the room, through whose window could be seen a space of ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... I get my claw into her back; by the very body of Christ, I will lead her such a dance that she will run after me, as the madwoman after her child.' 'Ay,' rejoined Bruno, 'I warrant me thou wilt rummage her; methinketh I see thee, with those teeth of thine that were made for virginal jacks,[433] bite that little vermeil mouth of hers and those her cheeks, that show like two roses, and after eat her ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Colonna and Tasso; the bluff sensuality of novelists like Bandello and Masuccio, the Aristophanesque laughter of the comedy of Bibbiena and of Beolco; seeing in our mind's eye the stately sweet matrons and noble senators of Titian, the virginal saints and madonnas of Raphael, the joyous angels of Correggio;—recapitulating rapidly all our impressions of this splendid time of exuberant vitality, of this strong and serene Renaissance, we answer without hesitation, and with only a smile of contempt at our credulous ancestors—no. The ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... of virginal pride and modesty, I hated even myself because he had touched me and could have disfigured the ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... right appreciation of the beverage, however much he may profess to relish it. It is only your habitual late riser who takes in the full flavor of Nature at those rare intervals when he gets up to go a-fishing. He brings virginal emotions and unsatiated eyes to the sparkling freshness of earth and stream and sky. For him—a momentary Adam—the world is newly created. It is Eden come again, with Eve in the similitude ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... delicate blue colour. She had angularly placed it on a footstool, since she was too high in the seneschal's chair. This foot was of narrow proportions, delicately curved, as broad as two fingers, and as long as a sparrow, tail included, small at the top—a true foot of delight, a virginal foot that merited a kiss as a robber does the gallows; a roguish foot; a foot wanton enough to damn an archangel; an ominous foot; a devilishly enticing foot, which gave one a desire to make two new ones just like it to perpetuate in this lower world the glorious works of God. The page was tempted ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... learned to beat for earthly objects. M. de Molins is preparing a volume of these manuscripts; but I am glad to present one of the seguidillas here, as an illustration of the tender and ardent fantasies of virginal passion this Christian Sappho embroidered upon the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... annoyed. He stepped out of his carriage and joined Mrs. Adams but kept Cornelia by his side, so that Hyde was compelled to escort Mrs. Smith. And Cornelia, beyond a very civil "Good-morning, sir," gave him no sign. He could watch her slight, virginal figure, and the bend of her head in answering Mrs. Adams gave him transient glimpses of her fair face; but there was no message in all its changes for him. In fact, in spite of Mrs. Smith's little rill of social complaining, he felt quite "out" of the inner ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... Neapolitan fathers, with bulging eyes, immense brown cheeks, and peppery mustaches, were promenading with their children and little dogs, looking lavishly contented with themselves. Young girls went primly past, holding their narrow, well-dressed heads with a certain virginal stiffness that was yet not devoid of grace, and casting down eyes that were supposed not yet to be enlightened. Their governesses and duennas accompanied them. Barefooted brown children darted in and out, dodging pedestrians ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... Physically I mean. That is the way in the west. Of course she was a great tom-boy, tall for her years, very frank in her speech and totally unconscious of her sex, as free and virginal as the young Artemis. The world of books to which Mr. Considine introduced her in her school-hours was wholly forgotten outside them. In the woods and on the mountains she throve as a magnificent young animal, moving with an ease and grace and freedom that civilised ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... First caught between stretched ropes the roaring west, And all our oars smote eastward, and the wind First flung round faces of seafaring men White splendid snow-flakes of the sundering foam, And the first furrow in virginal green sea Followed the plunging ploughshare of hewn pine, And closed, as when deep sleep subdues man's breath Lips close and heart subsides; and closing, shone Sunlike with many a Nereid's hair, and moved Round many a trembling mouth of doubtful ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and virginal in their beauty, the innumerable clusters of pink and white blossoms thronged the avenues of the pine woods, and ranged themselves along the hillsides and sloping banks, and trooped down by cape and promontory to reflect their young ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... wealth, which combination had prematurely aged him. Mr. Boutwood was really younger than George Cannon, and Florence Bagster certainly seemed as old as Hilda. Yet the juxtaposition of the young, slim, and virginal Florrie and the large, earth-worn Mr. Boutwood ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Stephen's resolution was held motionless, neither advancing nor receding; it was veritably the slack water of her resolution. She was afraid to go on. Not afraid in sense of fear as it is usually understood, but with the opposition of virginal instincts; those instincts which are natural, but whose uses as well as whose powers are unknown ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... the minority of women who unquestionably are is of formidable dimensions. To be sure, the peculiar vanity of men, particularly in the Northern countries, makes them place a high value upon the virginal type of woman, and so this type tends to grow more common by sexual selection, but despite that fact, it has by no means superseded the normal type, so realistically described by the theologians and publicists of the Middle Ages. It would, however, be rash to assert that ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... chrysalis condition of morning crimping-pins, petticoat and short gown, and list slippers. The bonnes who thus serve as chaperons are often as young as or even younger than the demoiselles whose virginal modesty they are supposed to protect. That they are anything more than a mere form of guardian, a figment of the social fiction that a young French girl never leaves her mother's side till she goes to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... must have shone in his ardent eyes. Hers dropped, and a bright, virginal blush dyed for the first time cheek and brow. He vaulted off his horse ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... origin of the harmless swearing which abounds in France, meaning probably just as much and as little as bigger oaths in careless mouths; but no doubt the soldiers' language was very unfit for gentle ears. Jeanne moved among the wondering ranks, all radiant in her silver armour and with her virginal undaunted countenance, exhorting all those rude and noisy brothers to take thought of their duties here, and of the other life that awaited them. She would stop the march of the army that a conscience-stricken soldier might make his confession, and desired the priests to hear it if necessary ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... that moment, in that light, in that atmosphere, in that strange assembly. Even her full pink gauze dress, from which her fair young shoulders slipped as from a sunset cloud, seemed only the perfection of virginal simplicity; her girlish length of limb and the long curves of her neck and back were now the outlines of thorough breeding. The absence of color in her usually fresh face had been replaced by a faint magnetic aurora that seemed to him half spiritual. He could ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... The dark cloak about her had fallen a little aside, and showed a gleam of white neck emerging from snowy drapery underneath—it was, to his fancy, as though a white rose- petal had been suddenly and delicately unfurled. He longed to kiss that virginal whiteness, and trembled at the audacity of his ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... rankness of rude primitive natures strange sweet mysteries will come to light, and upon the sensual lusts of satyrs, gambolling grossly in rain-soaked leafy midnights, the moon of tender purity will shed down her virginal benediction. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... young pigeon's blood resembles the virginal discharge is universal; but the blood most resembling man's is that of the pig which in other points is so very human. In our day Arabs and Hindus rarely submit to inspection the nuptial sheet as practiced by the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... ever again catch at her lovely virginal hands? [he lifts one very gently] Her hands have the sudden beauty and strange fragrance of flowers that bloom among shadows. How can I ever press my lips against them again without bruising their dear shy softness by this weight of unworthiness I ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... rounded, white of arm and throat, she had fulfilled gloriously all of the fair promise of her youth. The rich heritage of womanhood had stamped the softly curved form and the sweetly pensive face. Virginal, she was ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... one morning late in May. The season was perhaps a little late, for the apple trees were still in bloom, and the village looked fair and virginal as a bride on her wedding-day. I walked along the wide pleasant streets with a curious pain. The years that lay between me and the last day I had paced these broad walks under the pale greenery of the elms seemed legendary and dreamlike. There was the schoolhouse on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... virginal pride had urged her to flee all appearance of expectation, an equally sharp masculine reaction was withholding Johnny Byrd from ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... it; and my parents, long since dead, had placidly accepted it and the ideal that it stood for; and it had devolved upon my Aunt Constance, and ultimately it would devolve on me, the scarlet woman in a dress of virginal white, the inexplicable offspring of two changeless and blameless families, the secret revolutionary, the living lie! How had ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... some giant architect whose undertaking was arrested by a sudden, mystic command. However fruitful may be the imagination of the artist he would here always find fresh and superb inspiration from the enthralling sight of Nature's virginal beauties. ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... them on to the spot at which Reinecke disappeared. Old Virginal's stern flourishes; instantly her pace quickens. One whimper, and she is away full-mouthed through the wood, and the pack after her: ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... the words "Jhesus Maria" with three crosses. Oftentimes she reverently fixed her gaze upon it, for once she had had it touched by Saint Catherine.[1529] And that the Saint should have actually touched it was not incredible, seeing that some years before, in 1413, Sister Colette, who was vowed to virginal chastity, had received from the Virgin apostle a rich golden ring, as a sign of her spiritual marriage with the King of Kings. Sister Colette permitted the nuns and monks of her order to touch this ring, and she confided it to the messengers she sent ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... a Saracen mounted on a horse came up with him. In the course of the conversation mention was made of the Blessed Virgin. The stranger remarked that though he admitted that the Mother of Christ had conceived without detriment to her virginal purity, yet he could not believe that after the conception of her divine Son she was still a virgin. He was so obstinate in holding this opinion, that no amount of reasoning on the part of Ignatius could force him to abandon it. Shortly afterward the Saracen rode ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... with folded hands peering out from her room upon the damp hillside to the west. From across the street came the bawdy thumping of a mechanical piano and the swish of a sluggish tide. Her encounter with Sawyer Flint had forced the door of her virginal seclusion and thrust her at once into the primitive and elemental open. She felt like one who was coming out of voluntary exile to the pathos of a deferred heritage. Before her stretched the eagle's horizon, but she had only the fledgling's strength of wing. She longed for the faith ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... head, as the impulse to dance had run through it last night, was the idea that she could never marry Cyril Waring. And if Cyril Waring could have seen her just then! her cheeks burned yet a brighter scarlet at that thought than even before. One virginal blush suffused her face from chin to forehead. The maidenly sense of shame consumed and ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... convent, and of his care for her during her conventual life, or at least for that part of it that had passed before the "History" was written. Through the whole story it is Heloise who shines brightly as a curiously beautiful personality, unselfish, self sacrificing, and almost virginal in her purity in spite of her fault. One has for her only sympathy and affection whereas it is difficult to feel either for Abelard in spite of his belated efforts at rectifying his own sin and his life-long devotion to his solitary ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... across the Promised Land to the shore. Come down, and walk across, old fellow. And you won't see all that milk and honey and grapes the size of duck's eggs. All the dear little budding infant with its tender virginal mind and various clouds of glory instead of a napkin. Not at all, my dear chap. No such ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... que pollo homem que fizeste offereceste o teu estado glorioso a ser mortal. [p] E tua filha, madre, esposa, horta nobre, frol dos ceos, Virgem Maria, mansa pomba gloriosa o quam chorosa quando o seu Filho e Deos* padecia. 93 Oo lagrymas preciosas, de virginal cora[c,]am estilladas, correntes das dores vossas com os olhos da perfey[c,]am derramadas! [p] Quem h[u]a soo podera ver vira claramente nella aquella dor, aquella pena & padecer com que choraueis, donzella, vosso amor. [p] E quando vos amortecida se lagrymas vos faltauam nam faltaua a vosso ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... nonsensical lyricism. It failed, honestly; and even when the action descended from song to banal dialogue, it was not reassured. 'Silly' was the unspoken epithet on a hundred tongues, despite the delicate persuasion of the music, the virginal charm of the maidens, and the illuminated richness of costumes and scene. The audience understood as little of the operatic convention as of the aestheticism caricatured in the roseate environs of Castle ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... I travelled over an exceeding high mountain, called mount Skene, where I found the valley very warm before I went up it; but when I came to the top of it, my teeth began to dance in my head with cold, like Virginal's jacks;[21] and withal, a most familiar mist embraced me round, that I could not see thrice my length any way: withal, it yielded so friendly a dew, that did moisten through all my clothes: where the ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... was posed in a nun's dress, pensive gray, with virginal white bound primly across her brow. Marietta is a capital model, and her sad face and tender eyes were upturned with exactly the desired expression to the grinning mask in the centre of the ceiling. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... neatly though simply dressed in the English fashion, she was fair and small, and her budding breast could be seen outlined beneath the fine muslin of her dress. She had all the appearances of modesty and noble birth, and something of virginal innocence, which inspired one with attachment and respect at the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... turned into dried-up sources. His confession became a channel for the escape of scrupulous and unrepented imperfections. His actual reception of the eucharist did not bring him the same dissolving moments of virginal self-surrender as did those spiritual communions made by him sometimes at the close of some visit to the Blessed Sacrament. The book which he used for these visits was an old neglected book written by saint Alphonsus Liguori, with fading characters and sere foxpapered leaves. A faded world ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... purely American that it seems that it must be as uncomprehended by one not familiar with the scene as the beauty of Greece or Italian glows; it is poetry locked in its own land. This presence of the pure, the pristine, the virginal in the verse, this luminousness, spaciousness, serenity in the land, this immemorialness of natural things, is the body and spirit of the true wild, such as Bryant's eyes had seen it and as it had possessed his ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... river small In sweet accents Its music vents; The warbling virginal To which the merry birds do sing, Timed with stops of gold the silver ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stood, for a moment, staring. Then she managed a smile (it was the only possible attitude to take) at Sir Galahad, above the bed. The notion of flinging herself down for a self-pitying revel upon that bed,—the other Mary's virginal little narrow bed—had become unthinkable. The thing to do ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... before had she felt so old, so hopeless and humble. She knew she was bound on a love-errand of Evelina's, and the knowledge seemed to dry the last drop of young blood in her veins. It took from her, too, all her faded virginal shyness; and with a brisk composure she turned the handle of ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... nothing except of increasing the ardent love that his wife bestowed on him, and lived in a state of perpetual adoration. Suzanne's feelings, the metamorphosis of that virginal heart, which was beginning to glow with love, and which vibrated, her passion, her modesty, her sensations, were all delicious ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... to Truesdale about it," said this virginal old man, as he sat in Roger's office; "you've got to do ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... movements, glittering eyeglasses, and a pent-up imminent look, about our social system. There is something about this type of womanhood—it is hard to say—almost as though they were the bottled souls of departed buccaneers grown somehow virginal. She came with Lady Beach-Mandarin quietly, almost humorously, and yet it was as if the pirate glittered dimly visible through the polished glass ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Lord." This, says Bede, "is said in regard to the wonted manner of birth; not that we are to believe that our Lord in coming forth violated the abode of her sacred womb, which His entrance therein had hallowed." Wherefore the opening here spoken of does not imply the unlocking of the enclosure of virginal purity; but the mere coming forth of the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... itself. The shore, at best, had been only a foster-mother; the hill was the true child of the sea. Since its birth it has had a more or less enforced separateness, in experience, from the country to which it belonged. Whether temple or fortress, whether forest-clad in virginal fierceness of aspect, or subdued into beauty by the touch of man's chisel, its destiny has ever been the same—to suffice unto itself—to be, in a word, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... her mother a French Huguenot who had preferred her religion to her country. She had received a liberal and even learned education from her father, and was as attractive in person as she was accomplished in mind. "She was beautiful with that pure virginal beauty which depends on early youth" (Sainte-Beuve). In 1757 she was the talk of Lausanne, and could not appear in an assembly or at the play without being surrounded by admirers; she was called La Belle Curchod. Gibbon's curiosity was piqued to see such a prodigy, and ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... of the listener took on a pathetic droop, and her voice quivered as she spoke with an effective semblance of virginal terror. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... her 'tis for Almighty Allah's sake." The Minister did his master's bidding when she replied "His reward be upon the Almighty." Then the Wazir returned and reported the woman's prayer to the Commander of the Faithful, who cried, "Hie thee to her and enquire an she be married or virginal; and, if she be unwedded, do thou ask her an she be willing to wive with me."[FN94] So Ja'afar fared to her and questioned her, whereat she answered, "A spinster." Quoth he, "The Youth who sent the dinar to thee desireth to mate with thee;" and quoth she, "An he ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... follow you to the end of the world. I don't idealize women, you know, Maraton, and virtue isn't a fetish with me. But I know that girl. If you hold out your hands, she is yours, but if you withhold them, she is the most virginal creature that ever breathed." ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have more room. He must get out into the dawn—out where he could share these emotions which now surged in upon him with some virginal passion as big and fresh as the new-born day. He crossed to the window and looked out upon the dormant city. The morning light was just beginning to wash out the dark and to sketch in the outlines of buildings and the gray path of the road between them. He watched the new creation of a world. Around ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... golden sword-hilt, as if fearing contamination, symbolised the aloofness of her spirit. The solitary enjoyment of a great impression of art made her den a sanctuary, absolving her from commoner or shared pleasures. And in a manner the Saint was the type of the ultra-virginal quality she had retained through much contact with books and life. For her to sell the St. Michael, Dennis felt, would be a sort of vending of her soul, to give it away in the present instance would imply, he insisted, an instinctive self-surrender ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... lay and heard, her youthful blood, drawn by Nature's magnetic force, as the moon draws the tides, rose in her veins like the sap in the budding trees, and stirred her virginal serenity. All the bodily natural part of her caught the tones of Nature's happy voice that bade her break her bonds, live and love, and be a woman. And lo! the spirit within her answered to it, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... Miss Flora's blue eyes, Or blushes, or transports, or such silly actions, It was one of the quietest business transactions, With a very small sprinkling of sentiment, if any, And a very large diamond imported by Tiffany. On her virginal lips, while I printed a kiss, She exclaims, as a sort of parenthesis, And by way of putting me quite at my ease, "You know I'm to polka as much as I please, And flirt when I like—now, stop, don't ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... feel that working its track of desolation inward, but the first instinctive movement of his surface was to close over the wound. He took it as he knew he could only take it: as the explosive crisis of the virginal resistance which he remembered he had heard came to girls when marriage loomed upon them. He took a turn down the room to steady himself, praying dumbly for ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... startling clearness every remote detail of that night at the theatre. Mildred had looked exquisitely fair and girlish in her white dress, with a necklace of pearls he had given her rising and falling on the lovely virginal bosom, where the lover's eyes dwelt and lingered in the masterful hunger of his heart. Soon, soon, that hunger of his for possession would be gratified! It was April, and at the end of July, when work was growing slack, they would be married. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... better than spiritual good, that it is better to be a rich man and a successful merchant than to be a poor and humble and honest student; that it is better to have a balance at your bankers than to have great and pure and virginal thoughts in a clean heart; that a man has done better for himself when he has made a fortune than when he has God in his heart. And so we need, and God knows it was never more needed in Manchester than to-day, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... malrespekti. Violation malrespekto. Violence perforto. Violent perforta. Violet violo. Violet color violkoloro. Violin violono. Violinist violonisto. Violoncello violoncxelo. Violoncellist violoncxelisto. Viper vipero. Virago (fig.) drakino. Virgin virgulino. Virginal virga. Virginity virgeco. Virgin, The Blessed La Sankta Virgulino, Dipatrino. Virile vira. Virility vireco. Virtue virto. Virtuous virta. Virtuoso virtuozo. Virulent venena, malboniga. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... exceeded even that of his education. He frequented the churches and the sacraments, he gave great alms, and visited the sick to assist them; he wore a hair-shirt, and chastised his body severely, to enable him to preserve his virginal purity. He had made a vow to do this. After the dinner, he knelt down and petitioned for the habit of a Friar Minor, which he received in the principal church of the town, in the presence of a numerous concourse of people, after having first fulfilled two conditions ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... fond of hunting as of music, and sedulously fostered the cultivation of his niece's voice. As she stood beside him, her slender figure was almost as tall as his. Her eyes were large in the cup and they went violet in the sunlight; at night they seemed lustrously black. She was in virginal white this evening, and her delicately modelled head was turned toward the door. Her uncle ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... come down to-morrow while we are at dinner and take the pattern of those ruffles? No—no! she sha'n't! Sacrilege! You pretty thing!" she said, addressing a figure—the figure of a girl in white with thin virginal arms and bust, who seemed to be coming out of the picture, almost to be already out of it and in the room. "Come and talk to me. Don't think any more of your father and mother there. You have been curtsying to them for a hundred years; and they are rather dull, stupid people, after ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nature raises up souls that are more detached from life. Not with that intentional, logical, systematical detachment—the result of reflection and philosophy—but rather with natural detachment, one innate in the structure of sense or consciousness, which at once reveals itself by a virginal manner, so to speak, of seeing, hearing or thinking. Were this detachment complete, did the soul no longer cleave to action by any of its perceptions, it would be the soul of an artist such as the world has never yet seen. It would excel alike in every art at the same time; or rather, it would fuse ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... in an unconscious pose of virginal dignity, the girl seemed to express a subtle majesty, in which, at the moment, the prince was ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... interjectory movement, but the Prince went on. "I was twenty, and I was still virginal. To speak frankly, I was amazed at myself, perhaps even amused. Yes, even now I am inclined to think that, among princes, my record must have been exceptional. This lady, to whom I owe nearly the whole of my domestic experience, saved me from ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... in one, See the wealth of your son. Forests primeval, and virginal sod, Wheat-fields golden and splendid: Riches of nature and opulent God For the use of his children intended. A courage that dares, and a hope that endures, ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and plump, white as a lily, loaded with the most charming wealth of beauty. Her drooping eyelashes seem like the points of the iron crown; her skin, which is as fresh as the calyx of a white camelia, is streaked with the purple of the red camelia; over her virginal complexion one seems to see the bloom of young fruit and the delicate down of a young peach; the azure veins spread a kindling warmth over this transparent surface; she asks for life and she gives it; she is all joy and love, all tenderness and candor; she loves ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... rid himself of the persistence of his own imagination, he would try to exorcise the demon who had got hold of him, and this exorcism consisted in despoiling the image of his temptress of the veil of virginal purity with which his admiration had first invested her. Who could assure him, after all, that this girl, with her independent ways, living alone at her farm, running through the woods at all hours, was as irreproachable as he had imagined? In the village, certainly, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... spruce wood and entered the orchard his heart gave a sudden leap, and he felt that the blood rushed madly to his face. She was there, bending over the bed of June lilies in the centre of the garden plot. He could only see her profile, virginal and white. ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and invention in plot . . . they seek it in character. For this end they begin by deliberately falsifying human feelings, giving them a paradoxical appearance completely inadmissible . . . . Love that disguises itself as hate, incomparable energy under the cloak of weakness, virginal innocence under the aspect of malice and impudence, wit masquerading as folly, etc., etc. By this means they hope to make an effect of which they are incapable through the direct, frank, and conscientious ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... they found it, as Rose Hawthorne says, very hot—much too hot to enjoy the city as it should be enjoyed. Her reminiscences of their life at Florence, and especially of the Villa Manteuto, have a charming freshness and virginal simplicity, although written in a somewhat high-flown manner. She succeeds, in spite of her peculiar style, in giving a distinct impression of the old chateau, its surroundings, the life her family led there, and of the wonderful view ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... he believed, have been exalted above every one in the whole world, that man, instead of receiving the glory that was his due, was suddenly degraded and dishonored! What for? Who had judged him? Who could have decreed this? Those were the questions that wrung his inexperienced and virginal heart. He could not endure without mortification, without resentment even, that the holiest of holy men should have been exposed to the jeering and spiteful mockery of the frivolous crowd so inferior to him. Even had there been no miracles, had there been ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... long leaves, as they awake out of their sunlit sleep, and rage impatiently for a while before the mountain gusts, and fall asleep again. Like a Greek statue in a luxurious drawing-room, sharp cut, cold, virginal; shaming, by the grandeur of mere form, the voluptuousness of mere colour, however rich and harmonious; so stands the palm in the forest; to be worshipped rather than to be loved. Look at the drawings of the Oreodoxa-avenue at Rio, in M. Agassiz's charming book. Would that you could see actually ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... make the startled virginal resistance of a girl. She drew away from him quietly . . . the hatred for that quiet was murderous in him . . . and shook her head. Why, it was almost gently that she ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... exceedingly inferior to those of the North of Europe. "Throughout Italy, they have generally little octave spinets to accompany singing in private houses, sometimes in a triangular form, but more frequently in the shape of an old virginal; of which the keys are so noisy and the tone is so feeble, that more wood is heard than wire. I found three English harpsichords in the three principal cities of Italy, which are regarded by the Italians ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... do you. But they irked him. To revenge himself he laid penny crackers under their pedestals. His whole intellectual fortune was spent in buying penny crackers. There was something cheeky and pre-adolescent about him—a kind of virginal ferocity. That iridescent charm of sexlessness which somebody, one of these days, must be good enough to analyse for us! He lacked the male attributes of humility, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... contrasted couple—"Beauty and the Beast" they were dubbed by many—who stood together at the altar at Macerata on Good Friday of the year 1772—the bridegroom, "looking hideous in his wedding suit of crimson silk," in flaming contrast to the virginal white of his pretty victim. It needed no such day of ill-omen as a Friday to inaugurate a union which could not have been otherwise than disastrous—the union of a beautiful, romantic girl eager to exploit the world of ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall |
