"Virginal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... repeated Mr. Fielding, to whose eyes there was something very piquant in a jointure, and who thought consequently that there were few virginal flowers equal to a widow's weeds. "A rich old widow: you are right, Count, you are right. Don't go, don't think of it. I cannot abide those depraved creatures. Widow, indeed,—quite an affront ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... UTERUS.—The womb, which is small before marriage, is converted by pregnancy into the largest organ of the body. The virginal uterus, shaped somewhat like a pear, and placed with apex downward, is carefully protected within the bony basin between the hips, which is commonly called the Pelvis. The upper and larger part of the organ, known as the body, lies at the bottom of the ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... 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 ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... embitter the amiable SILLIMERE's existence, and to produce, in conjunction with him, that storm and stress, that perpetual clashing of two estimates without which no modern religious novel could be written, and which not even her pale virginal grace of look and form could subdue. That is a long sentence, but, ah! how short is a merely mortal sentence, with its tyrannous full stop, against the immeasurable background of the December stars, by whose light ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... was a virginal soul, but full-blooded. An unsuspected passion beat in her veins. Not for nothing did she have the deep, languorous eyes, the perfect scarlet lips, the sumptuous grace of an artist's ideal. Fires lay banked within her in spite of the fine purity of her nature. Nature had poured into ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... their villa in The Parks. The conversation turned on a new book of Limericks (or "Nonsense Rhymes," as we called them then) about the various Colleges. The Professor had not seen it, and wanted to know if it was amusing. In my virginal innocence I replied that one rhyme had amused me. "Let's have it," quoth the Professor, so ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... has everything 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 ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... 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
... moment Catherine, rising above the weakness of her age and sex, applied herself to those amazing austerities which have made her a prodigy of penance. To open Heaven to her father, she freely sheds, in bloody scourgings, the first fruits of that virginal blood which is to flow for half a century in innumerable torments. Magnanimous child, she is already the martyr of filial piety, but her tears, her mortifications, her prayers have disarmed the divine justice and discharged ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... to and fro in the sun, like shabby butterflies, and 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
... grace and elegance of feeling that Watteau would certainly have sanctioned. She brings up the same sense of exquisite gesture and simplicity of movement with a feeling for the romantic aspect of virginal life which exists nowhere else in modern painting. She eliminates all severities of intellect, and super-imposes wistful charm of idea upon a pattern of the most delicate beauty. She is essentially an original which means that she invents ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... torment her like a biblical devil if she does not. There is no miser like a reformed spendthrift, and no ascetic will go to such extremes of self-mortification as a converted libertine; in the same way, there are no such portentously virginal old maids as those who might have been the most womanly wives; the opposite is certainly true also, for the variety 'Hemiparthenos,' studied after nature by Marcel Prevost, generally makes an utter failure of matrimony, and becomes, in fact, ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... marked with excessive decorum. To the ordinary civilities of her host and hostess she replied softly, modestly, in the manner of a very young and timid girl; save when addressed, she kept silence, and sat with head inclined; a virginal freshness breathed about her; she ate very little, and that without her usual gusto, but rather as if performing a dainty ceremony. Her eyes never moved in ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... modern Spanish law (of which few availed themselves) which permitted the intended bride to be "deposited" away from parental custody, whilst the parents were called upon to show cause why the union should not take place. However, it often happens that when Cupid has already shot his arrow into the virginal breast, and the betrothed foresee a determined opposition to their mutual hopes, they anticipate the privileges of matrimony, and compel the bride's parents to countenance their legitimate aspirations to save the honour ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Seen otherwhere, but chiefly when the sail 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 ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... full of it. On one side sits enthroned, as some have thought, the Goddess of Death; on the opposite side the Goddess of Life, with her flowers and fruit. Towards her three young maidens are advancing—were they still alive thus, graceful, virginal, with their long, plaited hair, and long, delicately-folded tunics, looking forward to carry on their race into the future? Presented severally, on the other sides of the dark hollow within, three male persons—a ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the Meyer girls were now tall and stately, and all of them as beautiful as could be, and not a year's difference between them. As they grew up, and their virginal charms developed, Mr. Meyer's house became more and more noisy and frequented. The old luxury, frivolity, and extravagance returned, and a perpetual jollity took possession of it. The most select company, moreover, assembled there—counts, barons, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... 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 ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... 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 not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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 ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... after so many years of homeless wandering, in his own land and among his own countrymen, and the companionship of Mary Leithe, like, yet so unlike, the Mary Cleveland he had known and loved, possessing in reality all the tenderness and lovely virginal sweetness that he had imagined in the other, with a warmth of heart that rejuvenated his own, and a depth and freshness of mind answering to the wisdom that he had drawn from experience, and rendering her, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... snow. And the coming of Spring to London was to me not unlike the descent of the maiden-goddess into Death's Kingdoms, when pink almond blossoms blew about her in the gloom, and those shadowy people were stirred with faint longings for meadows and the shepherd's life. Nor was there anything more virginal and fresh in wood or orchard than the shimmer of young foliage, which, in May, dimmed with delicate green all ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... 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 ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... companions are pictures; she is a charming piece of descriptive writing, rather than a dramatic exhibition. But she is described, like her companions too, so subtly and lovingly that we enter into her virginal old heart and stand with her behind her abominable little counter. Clifford Pyncheon is a still more remarkable conception, though he is perhaps not so vividly depicted. It was a figure needing a much more subtle touch, however, and it was of the essence ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... impertinence in her air of not having suffered from an exertion which had wrought so powerfully on every one else. Ransom broke into a genial laugh, which he instantly swallowed again, at the sweet grotesqueness of this virginal creature's standing up before a company of middle-aged people to talk to them about "love," the note on which she had closed her harangue. It was the most charming touch in the whole thing, and the most vivid proof of her ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... O youth! O virginal beauty of woman! Only for an instant can ye gleam before me,—in the early morning of the ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... machine shuddered with delicate clinkings. "Therefore, we of Puffyloaf are taking today what may be the ultimate step toward purity: we are aerating our loaves with the noble gas helium, an element which remains virginal in the face of all chemical temptations and whose slim molecules are eleven times lighter than obese carbon dioxide—yes, noble uncontaminable helium, which, if it be a kind of ash, is yet the ash only of radioactive burning, accomplished or initiated ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... 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, flinging wide her bosom's doors, and of a sudden, as it were, something ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... Pont Saint-Michel, going off with an officer; but this husband, after the fashion of Bohemia, was an incredulous philosopher, and besides, he, better than any one else, knew to what a point his wife was virginal. He had been able to form a judgment as to the unconquerable modesty resulting from the combined virtues of the amulet and the gypsy, and he had mathematically calculated the resistance of that chastity to the second power. Accordingly, he was ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... had enclosed the sacred objects revered by all true believers. The clothes-press was empty, the bed broke up. The robbers had not taken the little mirror hanging between the door and the window. What had become of the mistress of this simple, virginal abode? A terrible thought flashed through my mind. Marie in hands of the brigands! My heart was torn, and I cried aloud: "Marie! Marie!" I heard a rustle. Polacca, quite pale, came from her hiding-place behind ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... yielded her lips to his, and in all the world for her 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 green ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... the essentials and yet so akin in their physical beauty. As was inevitable, from the first they loved—he with the flaming passion of a hell-rake, she with the sweet, appealing purity of one whose whole life had been peculiarly virginal. There followed swiftly upon their ardent confessions the determination to elope together. The night they bade adieu to Ffraddle and all it held is well known to young and old of every generation. They crept from their rooms at midnight and met at the top of the grand staircase, down which they ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... sacrifice to the goddess. Every woman must have her head shaved in mourning for Adonis, or sacrifice herself under this custom.[1907] Tanith has been identified with Artemis, and the later cults of Punic Africa give great prominence to the "celestial virgin," or "virginal numen." "The identification of the mother-of-the-gods with the heavenly virgin, that is, the unmarried goddess, is confirmed, if not absolutely demanded, by Augustine.[1908] At Carthage she seems ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... she was frightened—too frightened perhaps to move; but a second 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
... 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 ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... 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 had not yet ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... splendours of Egyptian art. Thus lighted up, the Golden Hall flamed, and for the first time, perhaps, the colours of the paintings shone in all their brilliancy. Red and blue, green and white, of virginal purity, brilliantly fresh and amazingly clear, stood out from the golden background of the figures and hieroglyphs, and attracted the eye before the subjects which they formed could be discerned. At first glance it looked like a vast tapestry of the richest stuffs. The vault, some thirty feet ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... were entitled to respect. He dreamed of other tickets, in original shapes, with original legends. In brief, he achieved, in regard to tickets, the rare feat of ridding himself of preconceived notions, and of approaching a subject with fresh, virginal eyes. When he indicated the nature of his wishes to Mr. Chawner, the wholesale stationer who supplied all the Five Towns with shop-tickets, Mr. Chawner grew uneasy and worried; Mr. Chawner was indeed shocked. For Mr. Chawner there had always been certain well-defined ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... 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 soul. In no other American poet is there this nearness to original ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... enchanting greenery; he sighed after the water of that Fountain; he dwelt within Mary's beauteous precincts—resting, hiding, heedlessly straying there, drinking in the milk of infinite love that fell drop by drop from her virginal bosom. ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... and half-length figures which represent the Virgin alone, looking up with a devout or tender expression, or with the head declined, and the hands joined in prayer, or crossed over the bosom with virginal humility and modesty, belong to this class of representations. In the ancient heads, most of which are imitations of the old Greek effigies ascribed to St. Luke, there is often great simplicity and beauty. When she wears the crown over her veil, ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... Maiden blest, Proudest and holiest: God's Daughter, great in bliss, Leto-born, Artemis! Hail to thee, Maiden, far Fairest of all that are, Yea, and most high thine home, Child of the Father's hall; Hear, O most virginal, Hear, O most fair of all, In ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... the eyes were wan With desolate fore-knowledge of the end. My life lay waste about me: as I walked, From the gross dark of unfrequented streets The face of my own youth peered forth at me, Struck white with pity at the thing I was; And globed in ghostly fire, thrice-virginal, With lifted face star-strong, went one who sang Lost verses from my youth's gold canticle. Out of the void dark came my face and hers One vivid moment—then the street was there; Bloat shapes and mean eyes blotted the sear ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... 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 ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... trooper of Africa which had wedded her to the dead Spanish Prince—compassion which, with many another rich and generous thing, lay beneath her coldness and her pride as the golden stamen lies folded within the white, virginal, chill cup ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... died early, and at four o'clock it was dark night in the long room in which Mr. Innes gave his concerts of early music. An Elizabethan virginal had come to him to be repaired, and he had worked all the afternoon, and when overtaken by the dusk, he had impatiently sought a candle end, lit it, and placed it so that its light fell upon the jacks.... Only one more remained to be adjusted. He picked it up, touched the quill and dropped it into ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... 'Scuse!" he laughed. One hand off the steering wheel, he took her hand—a fresh, cool, virginal hand, snuggling into his, suddenly stirring him. He wanted to hold it tighter. The lamenting historian of love's pilgrimage must set down the fact that the pilgrim for at least a second forgot the divine tread of the goddess Claire, and made rapid calculation that ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... permanent domestics, she could receive lame ducks at any hour of day or night, and not seldom had a duck without studio of its own made use of June's. She enjoyed her freedom, and possessed herself with a sort of virginal passion; the warmth which she would have lavished on Bosinney, and of which—given her Forsyte tenacity—he must surely have tired, she now expended in championship of the underdogs and budding 'geniuses' ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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
... the first listed above is easier to make than cottage cheese or any other. Technically, in fact, it is not a cheese but the dried curd of milk and is often called virginal. Fresh milk is simply strained through muslin in a perforated box through which the whey and extra moisture drains away for three or four days, leaving a residue ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... 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 ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... been hit with more admirable dexterity, just within the hair's breadth here indicated, than it was, for example, in Macready's impersonation of Virginius, where his scream in the camp-scene betrayed his instantaneous appreciation of the wrong meditated by Appius Claudius against the virginal purity of his daughter. As adroitly, in his way, as that great master of his craft, who was for so many years among his most cherished friends and intimates, Dickens kept within the indicated lines ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... state of perfection; since, according to Burney, she was 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 ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... men, they were constantly finding bodies of women so disfigured that it was almost impossible to judge of their age: mothers who had their arms arched as though putting forth their utmost efforts to guard the babe that had disappeared. Many whose virginal modesty had been violated by the sea, showed naked limbs swollen and greenish, with deep bites from flesh-eating fishes. The tide had even tossed ashore the headless body of a child a ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 from Bellosguardo. One feels that ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... spindle-tree, (euonymus, or fusanum) 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 by vomit, and siege, and the powder made of the berry, being bak'd, kills nits, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... told her husband that she had been attacked while on her way to show him a delightful scene in the midst of all this terrible misery, he angrily exclaimed: "A magnificent picture! Balm for the eyes and ears of your own brother's virginal daughter! The saints be praised that you both escaped so easily. Can there be in the worst hell anything more horrible than what has just been witnessed here? Really, where ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... it comes that she is buried in the stained robe, and she is carried amid flowers and white cloths to a white marble tomb, where incense is burning, and where the walls are hung with votive wreaths and things commemorative of virginal life and its many lovelinesses. But, strange to say, upon all these, upon the flowers and images alike there is some small stain which none sees but she and the one in shadow, the one whose face she cannot recognise. And ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... onnur. I wouldn't a be meant to be thoft to put in a word for meself, by no manner of account; no, no; far be it from me; but in other partikillers, if so be that it wus me meself, I shouldn't a grutch her kinkdums. And ast to thwartin and knatterin and crossin the kindly sweet virginal soul, ever blessed as she is, in love, for what truly? Your noble onnur has too much bowels of fatherly miseration. No, no! Your noble onnur has a clencht it; take her now she is in the humour. Whereby maidens be wayward ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... County, whose widow, before 1679, married Charles Hansford, of York, owned two violins. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that guests at his hostelry were frequently entertained with music from that instrument. The virginal (a small rectangular spinet without legs) was the most common of instruments known to have been in possession of the colonists, while they also owned and played the fiddle, both small and large, the cornet, the recorder (a flageolet ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... and fighting blindly to delay death's coming for a moment. No, it is heroism freely donned, deliberately and unanimously hailed, heroism on behalf of an idea and a sentiment, in other words, heroism in its clearest, purest and most virginal form, a disinterested and whole-hearted sacrifice for that which men regard as their duty to themselves, to their kith and kin, to mankind and to the future. If life and personal safety were more precious than the idea of honour, of patriotism ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... air. She trembled as Amelius looked at her in silence, with compassionate wonder. But for the words in which she had accosted him, it would have been impossible to associate her with the lamentable life that she led. The appearance of the girl was artlessly virginal and innocent; she looked as if she had passed through the contamination of the streets without being touched by it, without fearing it, or feeling it, or understanding it. Robed in pure white, with ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... though the authorship is much disputed, a work entitled, "Kitab al-Izah fi 'ilm al-Nikah" The Book of Exposition in the Science of Coition: my copy, a lithograph of 33 pages, undated, but evidently Cairene, begins with exclaiming "Alhamdolillah—Laud to the Lord who adorned the virginal bosom with breasts and who made the thighs of women anvils for the spear handles of men!" To the same amiable theologian are also ascribed the "Kitab Nawazir al-Ayk fi al-Nayk" Green Splendours of the Copse in Copulation, an abstract ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... unique character of the Sussex Downs is their virginal security, their unassailable independence. They stand, a silent undiscovered country, between the seething pleasure towns of the seaboard plain and the trim estates of the Weald. Londoners, for whom ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... 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; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... prepared victim was I! A poor, shy, over-susceptible, virginal savage—Uncas, the son of Chingachgook, astray for the first time in a fashionable ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the jewel song from "Faust." She had looked beautiful enough in her old riding-habit and hat, but she seemed a vision of loveliness as she stood in the moonlight with the old house for a background. There was something bewitchingly virginal in the rapt and dreamy face with its dark eyes and long lashes, in the soft, delicately cut lips, the pure ivory pallor; at the same time something equally bewitching in the modernness of her dress, which ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... musical instruments similar in form to the piano were in use several hundred years ago. The virginal, shaped like an old-fashioned square piano, was a favorite instrument at the time of Queen Elizabeth of England, and by some authorities is supposed to have been named in honor of the Virgin Queen, as she was called. The harpsichord, much in use during the last century, was ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 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 no less than a contemplative who has learned to express himself, and who tells his ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... 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 gobbets will I cut it ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... with her stirred her skirts, and fluttered her scarlet ribbons, and the curls about her temples. You might think Spring herself had paused for a lovely moment in the Parish House garden and stood before you in this gracious and virginal shape, at once ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... 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 Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... of shame which burned in her face. In her passion of disgust and anger, she hurried out into the storm. The chill of the east wind was friendly. She gave no other thought to the wind-driven rain, but ran through the woods like a wild thing, all virginal woman, unreasonable, insulted, angry as a child is angry—even her uncle was forgotten. She ran upstairs, the glory of her rain-soaked hair in tumbled disorder, and in her room broke into the open speech which passion confides to ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... his mental vision. What! Distrust Iris! Imagine for one second that riches or poverty, good repute or ill, would affect that loyal heart when its virginal font was filled with the love that once in her life comes to every true woman! Perish the thought! What evil spirit had power to so blind his perception of all that was strong and beautiful in her character. Brave, uncomplaining Iris! Iris of the crystal soul! Iris, ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... 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, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... refinement, the grace and natural delicacy of virginal souls, in general eluded Balzac's observation. He found it hard to imagine a lady; still harder—though he tried and half succeeded—to conceive the mystery of a young girl's mind, in which the airs of morning are nimble and sweet. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the throne the finishing stroke seems to have been dealt at it. One might fancy that the whole literary world had become conscious of the youthful and innocent monarch's eye on every book issued from the press, and that every writer feared he might write a word to bring a blush on her virginal countenance. When young Queen Elizabeth came to the throne, they seem to have felt, it was another matter. There was a monarch who feared nothing and nobody, who once spat at a courtier whose costume misliked her, who as a girl had experienced ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... unsavory death, Grow, Soul! unto such white estate, Strong art and virginal prayer shall be thy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... an 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, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... and there came four damsels, high-bosomed girls and virginal, who set before us food and fruits and confections and flowers and wine, such as befit none save kings. So, O Commander of the Faithful, we ate, and sat over our wine, compassed about with blooms and herbs of sweet ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... little while neither of them spoke. The woman looked out across the white spaces and the man watched the glimmering curve of her neck and the soft darkness of her rich hair. How virginal, how sacred, she looked! The thought of Tom ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a young and handsome husband, at once ardent and pure. It is true that they generally marry old, ugly, and corrupted men, and make up for it by taking two or three lovers six months after. But Adrienne felt instinctively how much of virginal and celestial freshness there is in the equal innocence of two loving and passionate beings—what guarantees for the future in the remembrance which a man preserves ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... their heads; of tropical effects, with canes and naked rock and sunlight; of the relief of cypresses; of the troubled, busy-looking groups of sea-pines, that seem always as if they were being wielded and swept together by a whirlwind; of the air coming, laden with virginal perfumes, over the myrtles and the scented underwood; of the empurpled hills standing up, solemn and sharp, out of the green-gold air ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was full of the promise of early spring. A cold blue sky showed through the lattice work of twigs and branches; but, as yet, no fluttering leaf had crept out of its sheath to soften, with a hint of tender green, the virginal stiffness and straightness of the stems. Grey among the grey tree-trunks little Mary flitted about, gathering her precious windflowers. She was clad in the demure Puritan dress worn by young and old alike in the early days of the Society of Friends. A frock of grey duffel hung ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... with the little Jesus and St. John, a signed work from the late Mr. Beckford's collection. The child Jesus stands, naked and upright, upon a stone balustrade, and plays with a lock of His mother's hair, who is herself of the pure virginal type imaged by Rafaelle in his earlier creations, notably the famous "Madonna del Granduca"; while the "Adoration," the master's last work, was removed from the Church of Fontignano in 1843. The landscape in both these works—in the Beckford Virgin blue hills and outlined trees, ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... towards the fire, trailing the golden raiment after her so that it pulled against the beauty of her body. For a moment she stood unconsciously silhouetted against the wall, virginal in her whiteness and her slimness, and yet, in her build alone, giving such promise of greater beauty, in ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... herself," Rastignac said, turning to de Marsay. "What a virginal toilette; what swan's grace in that snow-white throat of hers! How white her gown is, and she is wearing a sash like a little girl; she looks round like a madonna inviolate. Who would think that you ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... burning kisses of New Year's Night, and they were all to be 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 ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... she recalled the refusal of Sim Gage himself to think of marriage. He had said he was not good enough for her. How could she then marry him, even if she so wished? Must she woo him and persuade him, argue with him? All her own virginal soul, all the sanctity of her life, rebelled against ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... virtuous, she might deem that she had lost her flower of purity. You promise, indeed, to feel no resentment against me; but who can ensure me against the wrath of Nyssia, she who is so reserved and chaste, so apprehensive, fierce, and virginal in her modesty that she might be deemed still ignorant of the laws of Hymen? Should she ever learn of the sacrilege which I am about to render myself guilty of in deferring to my master's wishes, what punishment ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... they came face to face, he the taller by a head. She lifted her cool, gray-green eyes that had in them the silvery sparkle of the sea, and met his golden gaze. Her face framed in her flaming mane was warmly pale, the brow thoughtful, the mouth virginal. For a long moment they regarded each other steadily, wonderingly; and in that single moment the eternal miracle occurred by which life and the face of the world changed ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... the major, "such knowledge would have a terrible effect upon young girls!" He rose and began to pace the floor again. "Daughter, you are letting yourself run wild! The sweetness, the virginal innocence of young and pure women—if you take that from them, there'd be nothing left to keep men from falling to the level of ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... which she was herself but imperfectly acquainted, and in order to enter which she did nothing but submissively abandon herself to the will of God. Our Lord was pleased about this time to imprint upon her virginal body the stigmas of his cross and of his crucifixion, which were to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Gentiles folly, and to many persons who call themselves Christians, both the one and the other. From her very earliest childhood she had besought ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... Francis shall be the dread phantom ever lurking behind the image 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 ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... emerged from the 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
... group of maids in attendance, all young, fair, high-born, she stood, never more tastefully attired, never more graceful and self-possessed, never more lovely, not even in childhood before the flitting of its virginal bloom; and though the portico was garden-like in decoration, vines, roses and flowering shrubs everywhere, the sovereign had eyes for ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... 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. Virus veneno. Visage vizagxo. Vis-a-vis ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... look already!" Isabelle complained, gazing at the dark circles under her eyes in the glass. She thought of Aline, whose complexion like a Jacqueminot rose had been roughened and marred. Something still virginal in her soul rebelled ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... peculiarly 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 by ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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
... began to exult, to boast, to call attention to the beauty of the lines spoken by Enid. "See how her simplicity and virginal charm are enhanced by the rugged, remorseless strength, and by the conscienceless greed of the men surrounding her, and yet she sees in them something admirable. They are like soldiers to her. They are the heroes who tunnel mountains ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... double pleasure, all the expectancy and the delight of seeing our men so pleased. Forty bedsteads and beds complete we found in that district, until the bare white-washed walls of the jail were transformed. White paint, too, we discovered in plenty, and soon our wards were virginal in their whiteness. And when I tell you that at one time I had no less than thirteen gunshot fractures of thigh and leg alone and other wounds in proportion, in the hospital, you may judge ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... 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 shook ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... 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 reticulations with his frosts! The faggot ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... sighs, Without any tears in 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 you speak— And you must not come here more than twice in the week, Or talk to me either at party ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... Sand has some of its roots in corruption; in becoming modest she would become commonplace. It would have been otherwise had she always remained in that sanctuary not frequented by men; her power of love, restrained and concealed beneath the virginal fillet, would have drawn from her heart those decent melodies which belong at once to the woman and the angel. However that may be, audacity of ideas and voluptuousness of manners form a spot not before cleared up by a daughter of Adam, and which, submitted to a woman's ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... whom those tiny frocks and socks and shirts once belonged! Giving them away, I seem to have wrenched my heart from the dead children; each gift was a separate pang. The toys, too, go to-morrow to the Sisters of Charity, who have a great house near at hand. A Sister, a virginal creature whom I have seen holding the puny babies of the poor to a breast innocently maternal, has told me of the children who at Christmastide have no toys. This year they shall not go without; so I am sending them all—the doll's house and the rocking-horse, ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... had taken her favourite low chair, and her hands lay idly in her lap, the wedding-ring which was their sole ornament gleaming in the lamplight. To Barry's eyes her youthful prettiness had a slightly dimmed effect. Without losing anything of its virginal purity of outline there was a hint of weariness, of almost jaded fatigue, which startled Barry. He thought always of Toni as some joyous woodland nymph, a pagan it might be, a hedonist by nature and training; and while he had regretted, formerly, her lack of worldly ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... head back on the pillow, and closed her eyes. A more noble, beautiful, virginal head it would be impossible to imagine. Phidias would have asked no other model ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... student of mythology will demand of a myth so clearly destined for fructification an everlasting virginal inviolateness. From the start almost the two dogs of Yama are the brood of Saram[a]. Why? Saram[a] is the female messenger of the gods, at the root identical with Hermes or Hermeias; she is therefore the predestined ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... complacent prospect. He could look forward to a sensible, prosperous, respectable future. He had won back his good name, his fortune, and position,—not perhaps exactly in the way he had expected,—and he had stilled the wanton, foolish cravings of his passionate nature in the calm, virginal love of an honest, handsome girl who would make him a practical helpmeet, and a comfortable, trustworthy wife. He ought to be very happy. He had never known such perfect health before; he had lost his reckless habits; ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... that air of unmistakable distinction; regard that expression of face,-so pure, so virginal: comme il faut she ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... DAILY NEWS are as romantic (and as rich) as I take them to be, I presume that this experience is not uncommon. I suppose that they are all being thrown out of cabs, all over London. Still, as there are some people, virginal and remote from the world, who have not yet had this luxurious experience, I will give a short account of the psychology of myself when my hansom cab ran into the side of a motor omnibus, and I ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... gossamer thoughts to wing through; and snow-white words, lily-white words, words of ivory and pearl, words of silver and alabaster, words white as hawthorn and daisy, words white as morning milk, words 'whiter than Venus' doves, and softer than the down beneath their wings'—virginal, saintlike, nunnery words. ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... the room filled with a brilliant crowd. Within the large circle of armchairs were Madame de Wesson, about whom people told frightful stories, and who kept, after twenty years of half-smothered scandal, the eyes of a child and cheeks of virginal smoothness; old Madame de Morlaine, who shouted her witty phrases in piercing cries; Madame Raymond, the wife of the Academician; Madame Garain, the wife of the exminister; three other ladies; and, standing easily against the mantelpiece, M. Berthier d'Eyzelles, editor ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... speaking of him! How she must love him! And I? She loves me as a father, she told me so,—as a father! And could it be otherwise? Is it not justice? Could she see a lover in a sombre and severe-looking magistrate, always as sad as his black coat? Was it not a crime to dream of uniting that virginal simplicity to my detestable knowledge of the world? For her, the future is yet the land of smiling chimeras; and long since experience has dissipated all my illusions. She is as young as innocence, and I am as old ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... pallid river winds slowly to the sea. The gulf, stretching limitless, shines like a slab of salt strangely bespangled. In this atmosphere without mists, the sharp outlines of the coast, the dense movelessness of the aspect, has an indescribable effect. It is like a hitherto unknown and virginal revelation of the earth. Then the stars bloom out, with a flame, an hallucinating palpability. Charles's Wain, burning low on the gorges of the Edough, seems like a golden waggon rolling through the fields of Heaven. A deep peace settles upon farmland ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... sleeves hung barely to the elbow. A line of green crossed from the shoulders under each breast, and her hair, tightly bound, was decorated with another narrow band of green. She looked younger than in the city—almost virginal. Stooping low, she gathered a handful of blue scylla from the grass, Mary barely checking an exclamation at this ravishing of her beloved bulbs. Then Felicity lay down upon the grass; her eyes closed; she seemed asleep. They waited silently for ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... should hate Rome, as he does. Can you, when you have pushed out your gates the very defender of them, and in a violent popular ignorance, given your enemy your shield, think to front his revenges with the easy groans of old women, the virginal palms of your daughters, or with the palsied intercession of such a decayed dotant as you seem to be? Can you think to blow out the intended fire your city is ready to flame in, with such weak breath as this? No, ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... 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 to distant ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... 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
... her to her cell and kissing her lightly on the brow, exclaimed that she had never been happier in a conquest for the Church against the vileness of the world. Then she had dropped the conventional speech of her calling, and said with an expression that made her look so young, so curiously virginal, that the novice had held her breath: "Remember that here there is nothing to interrupt the life of the imagination, nothing to change its course, like the thousand conflicting currents that batter memory and character to pieces ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... Juliet. Love the ruling power in the entire character: wholly virginal and pure, but quite earthly, and recognizing no other life than his own. Viola is, however, far the noblest. Juliet will die unless Romeo loves her: "If he be wed, the grave is like to be my wedding bed;" but Viola is ready to die for the happiness of ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... you. He understood the teachings of the giants. So 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, reverence and ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... bruised cinnamon. The lovely shoulders now allure the eye To see two tablets of pure ivory From which two arms like branches seem to spread With tender rind[F] and silver coloured, With little hands and fingers long and small To grace a lute, a viol, virginal. In length each finger doth his next excel, Each richly headed with a pearly shell. Thus every part in contrariety Meet in the whole and make a harmony, As divers strings do singly disagree, But form'd ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... assiduously as a real mother might have accompanied her daughter. I was very young then, and ready to accept for myself the easy morality of the age. I remember, however, the contempt and disgust which awoke in me at the sight of this scandalous chaperoning. Her face, too, was inexpressibly virginal in its expression of innocence and of melancholy suffering. She was like ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... this frank-minded young woman from America. "Young woman" was how he thought of her; she didn't correspond to anything so prim and restrained and extensively reserved and withheld as a "young lady "; and though he judged her no older than five and twenty, the word "girl" with its associations of virginal ignorances, invisible purdah, and trite ideas newly discovered, seemed even less appropriate for her than the word "boy." She had an air of having in some obscure way graduated in life, as if so far she had lived each several ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... 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 ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... beautiful in the temperate regions of the earth, and inhabited by a race once capable of the sternest patriotism and simplest purity of life, your modern religion, in the very stronghold of it, has reduced the song and dance of ancient virginal thanksgiving to the howlings and staggerings of men betraying, in intoxication, a nature sunk more than half-way towards the beasts; and you will begin to understand why the Bible should have been "illustrated" by ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... wide the floodgates of the weirs of hell. And what hast thou to do with sin? Hath he Whose sin was thine not given thee there and then God's actual absolution? Mary lived God's virgin, and God's mother: mine art thou, Who am Christlike even as thou art virginal. And if thou love me or love me not God knows, And God, who made me and my sire and thee, May take the charge upon him. I am I. Somewhat I think to do before my day Pass from me. Did I love thee not at all, I would not ...
— The Duke of Gandia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... waking up at length to a full glow of interest. "That's why I don't want to go and stare at pictures. In the spring, to see the fresh, virginal, delicious green of a bush against an old dry brick wall, gives a keener pleasure than the best picture that ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... devout young heart whose pulsations had never 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 theme ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... brain reeled. He called up to his memory what Diana had been when he first saw and loved her at Laurebourg: how pure and modest she looked! what virginal candor sat upon her brow! and yet she was even then doing her best to urge on a son to murder ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... and therefore the queen of the air becomes to them at once the queen of bodily strength in war; not mere brutal muscular strength,—that belongs to Ares,—but the strength of young lives passed in pure air and swift exercise,—Camilla's virginal force, that "flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... nothing but a few crabbed black-letter volumes dating from not later than the early seventeenth century, and you had to be in a frantically Elizabethan frame of mind to be at ease there. But Mrs Lucas often spent some of her rare leisure moments in the smoking-parlour, playing on the virginal that stood in the window, or kippering herself in the fumes of the wood-fire as with streaming eyes she deciphered an Elzevir Horace rather late for inclusion under the ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... was struck, as he was 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
... 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 I allude to the common forms ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... her, disturbed, and he hoped, disturbing, he thought of little Vera Walters, of her slender virginal body, of her small virginal face, smooth, firm, and slightly pointed like a bud, of her gray eyes, clear as water, and of the pale gold and fawn of her hair. He thought of her tenderness and of her cruelty. He caught himself frowning at it over the mousse de volaille he was eating; ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... certain day, however,—and here he begins his own story,—in the Church of St. Peter, as he sat listening to the harmony of the morning service, drowsiness overcame him, and he fell asleep.[G] As he was sleeping, a very beautiful maiden of virginal aspect, and in a rich dress, stood before him, and, looking at him, said,—"We return thee many thanks; but why without cause, trusting to false reports, hast thou given up the search for me? Thou hast been so near me that we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various |
