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Virile   /vˈɪrəl/   Listen
Virile

adjective
1.
Characterized by energy and vigor.  "A new and virile leadership"
2.
Characteristic of a man.  Synonyms: male, manful, manlike, manly.  "Manly sports"
3.
(of a male) capable of copulation.  Synonym: potent.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Virile" Quotes from Famous Books



... know that sexual intercourse is not necessary to the development of mature normal manhood or womanhood. On the contrary, we know that continence, not incontinence, is an absolute essential to the growth of full sexual, virile maturity, as well as to the growth of efficient and ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... London: Gainsborough, Romney and Lawrence beckoned to him. He must master their technique, study their color. The next year was spent in Madrid studying Velasquez and Goya. It was the full brush that enthralled him now—the sweep and directness of virile methods. Then he wandered over to Granada, and so on to the coast and Barcelona, and at ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith

... that still had in it something of the sensation of a wholesale bumping of one's crazy bone. If she had been anything but a stupid little flirt, she would have realized that here was a specimen of the virile male with which she could not trifle. She glanced up at him now, smiling faintly. "My, I was scared!" She stepped away from him a ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... sublimity, and worthy of all admiration. The long, lean, sunburned, weather-beaten soldiers in ragged gray stepped forward, superbly, their ranks loose, but swift and firm, the men leaning forward in their haste, their tattered slouch hats pushed backward, their whole aspect business-like and virile. Their line was three battalions strong, far outflanking the Fifth, and at least equal to the entire echelon. When within thirty or forty yards of the further fence they increased their pace to nearly a double-quick, many of them stooping low in hunter ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... by their intense interest to the natural bent of the curious mind, have always elicited much discussion. To many of these cases have been attributed exaggerated function, notwithstanding the fact that modern observation almost invariably shows that the virile power diminishes in exact proportion to the extent of duplication. Taylor quotes a description of a monster, exhibited in London, with two distinct penises, but with only one distinct testicle on either side. He could exercise the function of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... given a nobler witness to the truth of his patriotism than Colonel Patrice Mahon, known in letters as Art Roe. His novels, which dealt largely with modern Russian life, in relation with the French army, were virile and elevated productions, but he was a man of fifty at the time of his heroic death at the head of his troops, in the battle of Wisembach (August 22, 1914), and his tone was not that of such young men as Camille ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... them that it was a duty of the Good Man to teach and redeem them,—to sacrifice his life, if need be, in the work of enlightenment. They seem to have thought even of women and children as hardly partaking of Reason; their ideally good man was virtuous in a strictly virile way,[801] and it never occurred to them that training in goodness must begin from the earliest years, and be gradually developed with infinite sympathy and tenderness. If a man is to learn that there is something within ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... wiry, well-knit, upright figure, and at the fresh, elderly, but virile face, with its sombre eyes and its snowy hair, thought once again of the ancient saw which she had quoted to herself the night before, only to dismiss it finally from her mind. This man was no fool, nor was he old. He might be eccentric, but ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... the often superior numbers of the Opposition. That Jefferson was able in the face of this victorious and discouraging army to form a great party out of the rag-tag and bobtail element, animating his policy of decentralization into a virile and indelible Americanism, proved him to be a man of genius. History shows us few men so contemptible in character, so low in tone; and no man has given his biographers so difficult a task. But those who despise him ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... it had so long been ruddy with the florid hues of a Rubens; and now a certain discoloration and the deep tension of the wrinkles betrayed the efforts of a passion at odds with natural decay. Hulot was now one of those stalwart ruins in which virile force asserts itself by tufts of hair in the ears and nostrils and on the fingers, as moss grows on the almost eternal ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... enthrone conscience where the heart has been: this willing immolation is a noble thing. Our nature jibes at it, but the better self will submit to it. To hope for justice is the proof of a sickly sensibility; we ought to be able to do without justice. A virile character consists in just that independence. Let the world think of us what it will; that is its affair, not ours. Our business is to act as if our country were grateful, as if the world judged in equity, as if public opinion could see the truth, as if life were just, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... of the tempter? All the strong virile blood rushed through his veins, and he only made a feeble fight to subdue it. He did not really ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... struggles to bring up their large (ten to twenty) families worth while when they see how their group is strengthening its position. If a race comes to find no instinctive pleasure in children it will probably be swept away by others more virile. One man will live where another will starve; prudence and ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland

... weaker people will be able to get work which these boys have, but ought not to have. The nation demands a vigorous manhood, but the nation cannot have it without some sacrifice, which means doing without child labour, for child labour is the destruction of virile manhood. ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes

... in the part for which he had cast himself. He had expected to condescend upon an elderly inept and give him sharp instructions; instead he found himself faced with a jovial, virile figure which certainly did not suggest incompetence. It has been mentioned already that he had always great difficulty in looking any one in the face, and this difficulty was intensified when he found himself confronted with bold and ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... laughed. "Silly little thing!" he said, with a fascinating tone of virile condescension. "An author's business is to write books, not to read them. If he reads, he grows intelligent and thoughtful and careful about his work. Those old books spoil him for the modern market. But if he ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke

... toward her so that her light fell full on the doctor's face—a clean cut, virile face, manly, stern, yet with ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... Actoris partes chorus officiumque virile Defendat, neu quid medios intercinat actus, Quod non proposito conducat, et haereat apte. Ille bonis faveatque, et concilietur amicis, Et regat iratos, et amet peccare timentes. Ille dapes laudet mensae brevis; ille salubrem Justitiam, legesque, et apertis otia portis. Ille tegat commissa, deosque ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... Carrington uttered an ejaculation, but vouchsafed nothing more precise. Cicily waited for a few seconds, then continued gaily: "Now that the minutes are read, the specific business before the house is the consideration of new members. All working clubs to be successful must take in constantly virile, live members." ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... conventionality, until men actually came to prefer the absurdities of Ciceronianism, and a cold, colorless adherence to hard-and-fast rules of composition, to a work throbbing with the pulsation of virile life. Humanism was beginning to take flight from Italy, to find a home and a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... chariot may the joy-desiring chargers, The virile stallions, bring at Dawn's first coming; That car whose reins are rays, and wealth upon it; Come with the steeds that keep ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... Germany a comparatively small country, with a great and prolific population of sixty-six millions. He found the German woman not the mild and simple 'hausfrau' of folk lore, but a virile woman with a creed that the production of children was her first duty, not only to her husband and herself, but to her country. He knew that in Germany illegitimacy was no disgrace, and he saw Germany's population increase ten millions in the course ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... Milton nor Carducci could keep him alive. His palmy days were in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, before the Renaissance had grown powerful enough to influence European life. Even during those palmy days he exercised a power that for the most part was not virile, but crushing and inhuman. It has been set forth in Dr. Paul Carus's History of the Devil. In the light of such a history as that I doubt much whether even Professor Stanley Hall himself would lift a finger to bring the Devil ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... final position the slow elaborate outcome of his own sustained efforts to live, a woman, from the age of sixteen onward—as the world goes now—is essentially adventurous, the creature of circumstances largely beyond her control and foresight. A virile man, though he, too, is subject to accidents, may, upon most points, still hope to plan and determine his life; the life of a woman is all accident. Normally she lives in relation to some specific man, and until that man is ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... in the history of the game, which is so dear to the hearts of the American people, has the general legislative and executive body been so well equipped by the adoption of pertinent and virile laws to insist upon justice to all concerned as at the ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster

... These virile venturers group themselves into four categories. Illustrating them by reference to the Gordons alone, there was the venturer, usually a soldier of fortune, who died in the country of his adoption, such as the well-known General Patrick Gordon, of Auchleuchries, Aberdeenshire ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... was leaning on the back of her tall chair, a long, virile figure with a hawk-nosed, bearded face that was sternly handsome. He thrust back the crisp dark hair that clustered about his brow, and ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... prone to maintain the imperative mood, and to consult his own heart rather than that of the woman he loves. While in Laura's nature there was unusual gentleness and a tendency to respect and admire virile force, she was too highly bred in our Western civilization not to resent as an insult any such manifestation of this force as would make the quest of her love a demand rather than a suit, after once recognizing such a ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... blood in their veins, the heartbeat was quick and strong, and love had charmed them all. It must not be supposed, however, that this was a weakly and effeminate age, that all were carpet knights, and that strong and virile men no longer could be found, for such was not the case. All was movement and action, the interests of life were many, and warfare was the masculine vocation, but in the very midst of all this turmoil and confusion there sprang up a courtly ideal of ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... knew, the face that (oddly, it seemed to her) had not changed to suit her new conception of him, that maintained its protest. She had loved everything about him, from the dark, curling hair of his head to his well-finished feet; she had loved his slender, virile body, and the clean red and brown of his face, the strong jaw and the mouth that, hidden under the short moustache, she divined only to be no less strong. More than these things she had loved his eyes, the dark, bright dwelling-places of the "goodness" she ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... as in war, he seemed a prince born to lead a democratic people. With his tall, virile figure, and a handsome face in which strength and dignity were happily blended with simplicity, he had a manner of address which was very engaging: his words, few, simple, soldier-like, produced a wonderful ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... man, confound him, and a picked specimen of his type: one of those high-geared and smoothly running physical machines that are all grace in a lady's drawingroom and all steel under their skins. What a contrast between him and poor Bernard! the one so impotent and devil-ridden, the other so virile, unscrupulous, and serene. ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... to hear her call, and, dropping his sack and implement, he hurried across the tilled ground, sending up puffs of dust. He vaulted the rude fence of poles, and upon sight of her called out lustily. How big and virile he looked! Yet he was gaunt and strained. It struck Carley that he had not looked so upon her arrival at Oak Creek. Had she worried him? The ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... very moment we were leaving Belgium, the King recalled to us his trip to the United States and the vivid and strong impression your powerful and virile civilization left upon his mind. Our faith in your fairness, our confidence in your justice, in your spirit of generosity and sympathy, all these have dictated our ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... not unnaturally to the postponement of social development until the pioneer farmers had settled down to the new life. The third cause was immunity from the danger of foreign invasion, which eliminated the military reasons for maintaining a numerous, virile, and progressive rural population. ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett

... borne away from the prosaic and practical spirit of the age, to the days of chivalry, feudal zeal, and genuine humanity,—when faith was an inspiration, friendship a moral fact, and manhood, in its virile simplicity, greater than wealth. Nor were the generous exile's humble surroundings alien to these impressions: the effigies of his country's poets were the favorite ornaments of his sitting-room; a volume of Foscolo on the table, or a fresh letter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... several weeks. The omitted compliment from formal records is the singular fragrance of the flowers—strong, sweet, and enticing, though with a drug-like savour, as if rather an artificial addition than a provision of Nature. During December the perfume hangs heavily about the trees, being specially virile in the cool of evening and morning. Being confined to the tropical coast, away from the centres of population, and flowering at a season when visitors avoid the north, the scented Ixora has so far remained uncommended. Those who ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... other poet of his time "the queasy pain of being beloved and loving." Donne was curious of adventures of many kinds, but in nothing more than in love. As a youth he leaves the impression of having been an Odysseus of love, a man of many wiles and many travels. He was a virile neurotic, comparable in some points to Baudelaire, who was a sensualist of the mind even more than of the body. His sensibilities were different as well as less of a piece, but he had something of Baudelaire's taste for hideous and shocking aspects of lust. One is not ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... writers have a real point of union it is in a certain instinct for contrast between their shape and subject matter. All the poems are brief in form, and at the same time big in topic. They remind us of the vivid illuminations of the virile thirteenth century, when artists crowded cosmic catastrophes into the corner of an initial letter; where one may find a small picture of the Deluge or of the flaming Cities of the Plain. One of the specially short poems sees the universe overthrown and the good angels conquered. ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various

... estranging sea" cannot be any check, certainly do not use the island for nesting as birds of "innocent and quiet minds" might. Gauze-winged butterflies flit across the channel, occasionally in great numbers. What law restrains virile birds ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... was the old buoyant spirit he had brought with him into the fight? Gone forever, and in its place he found his maimed and trembling hands, and limbs weakened by starvation as by long fever. His virile youth was wasted in the slow struggle, his energy was sapped drop by drop; and at the last he saw himself burned out like the battle-fields, where the armies had closed and opened, leaving an impoverished and ruined soil. He had ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... pressed by poverty or distracted by despair at the misfortunes which then overwhelmed Italy, migrated to Corsica. There the family was grafted upon a tougher branch of the Italian race. To the vulpine characteristics developed under the shadow of the Medici there were now added qualities of a more virile stamp. Though dominated in turn by the masters of the Mediterranean, by Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, by the men of Pisa, and finally by the Genoese Republic, the islanders retained a striking individuality. The rock-bound coast and mountainous interior ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... in accepting the re-cog-nition. She had a stout roll of paper in her hand, and was dressed in a black stuff gown, with a cloth jacket buttoned up to neck, which hardly gave to her copious bust that appearance of manly firmness which the occasion almost required. But the virile collars budding out over it perhaps supplied what was wanting. Lady George looked at her to see if she was trembling. How, thought Lady George, would it have been with herself if she had been called upon to address ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... entirely lost. Such a sad waste was out of accord with the obvious principles of divine economy. As the icy chill of ceremonialism seized decadent Babylonia and Egypt, there emerged from the steppes south and east of Palestine a virile, ambitious group of nomads, who not only fell heir to that which was best in the revelation of the past, but also quickly took their place as the real spiritual leaders of the human race. Possibly their ancestors, like those of Hammurabi, ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent

... and tastefully dressed, though generally paler than the young Englishwomen he remembered. The men were athletic, and their well-cut clothes, which fitted somewhat tightly, showed their finely developed but rather lean figures. They had a virile, decided look, and an ease of manner that indicated perfect self-confidence. Indeed, some were marked by an air of smartness that was half aggressive. A large number were employed at the Hulton factory, but there were brown-faced farmers ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... earlier years of the American settlement, but certainly the later years are filled with discoveries in actual life as romantic as they are unexpected. If I may illustrate one of these romantic discoveries from my own experience, I would cite the indications of an internationalism as sturdy and virile as it is unprecedented which I have seen in our cosmopolitan neighborhood: when a South Italian Catholic is forced by the very exigencies of the situation to make friends with an Austrian Jew representing another nationality and another religion, both of which cut into all his most ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... went to make up John Adams; but their enumeration does not furnish a complete picture of him, or reveal the virile, choleric, masterful man. And he was far more lovable and far more popular than his equally great son, also a typical Adams, from the same cause which produced some of his worst blunders and misfortunes,—a generous impulsiveness of feeling which made it impossible for him ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... solitude a quantity of clarified butter that it hath obtained. O Janarddana, this is really no insult offered unto the monarchs; on the other hand it is thou whom the Kurus have insulted. Indeed, O slayer of Madhu, as a wife is to one that is without virile power, as a fine show is to one that is blind, so is this royal worship to thee who art no king. What Yudhishthira is, hath been seen; what Bhishma is, hath been seen; and what this Vasudeva is hath been seen. Indeed, all these have ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... he lived, not only a political figure. Looking back for more than a century we may very well appreciate to the full Fox's great qualities and yet be aware of his weaknesses and his vices, in which he showed the strength of a passionate and virile character in contact with certain characteristics of the society of the age. Instead, therefore, of blaming Selwyn for repeating to correspondents the minor incidents of the time, we ought to be thankful to him for enabling us to picture so many of the leading personages ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... "Piker," later it was applied to all persons of that type in the Far West, regardless of their origin. Many years' of mingling of California's cosmopolitan population has changed all that; producing her present homogeneous, sterling, virile, and somewhat distinct type of "Californian"; so the "Piker," as such, is no longer in the land. A later application of the same word, descriptive of a person who does business in a small way, has nothing in common with the "Piker" ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell

... clergy-house was of the regular type—very comfortable and pleasing to the eye, as it ought to be for a young man working under such circumstances; not really luxurious; pious and virile. The walls were a rosy distemper, very warm and sweet, and upon them, above the low oak book-cases, hung school and college groups, discreet sporting engravings, a glorious cathedral interior, and the Sistine Madonna over the mantelpiece. An oar hung all along ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... The pride of virile arrogance invaded the soul of Febrer. He was rejoiced at his own assurance. That bully could easily see that he had come to seek him in the solitude of the mountain, at his own house; he must be convinced that he was not afraid ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... trivialities; perhaps it is because art has ceased to be spiritual or tragic, and is merely domestic or melodramatic; the Greeks knew neither domesticity nor melodrama, and the early Italian painters were imbued with a faith which, if not so virile as the worship of the Phidian Zeus, yet absorbed them and elevated them in a degree impossible in the tawdry Sadduceeism of our own day. By the way, when the weather is milder you must go to Orvieto; ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... the most characteristic products of his genius are closely akin to the insanity which clouded his later years. Yet it is impossible to read his writings without recognising his penetrating insight as well as his abundance of virile passion. Besides, in spite of all his extravagances—or, perhaps, because of them—he is symptomatic of certain tendencies of the age. Nietzsche's demand is for nothing less than a revision of the whole moral code and a reversal of its most characteristic ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley

... Fig. 14 as did the clearly outlined projectile of Fig. 10 to the indeterminate cloud of Fig. 8. We could hardly have a more marked contrast than that between the inchoate flaccidity of the nebulosity in Fig. 14 and the virile vigour of the splendid spire of highly developed devotion which leaps into being before us in Fig. 15. This is no uncertain half-formed sentiment; it is the outrush into manifestation of a grand emotion rooted deep in the knowledge ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant

... the little lines of the doings of men; unnamed adventurers whose deeds were virile deeds; rough men, from whose contaminating touch society gathers up her silken skirts and passes by upon the other side; unlovely men, rolled-sleeved and open-throated, deep-seamed of face, and richly weather-tanned of arm, who tread roughshod the laws of little right and wrong; who drink red ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... the moment, grim and virile, a hat in one hand, a stick in the other, his white tie just showing between the lapels of his overcoat, already he was consoling himself. He had not seen Margaret in the afternoon, and he was not to see her this evening. No matter. The morrow would repay—that morrow which is ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... chosen to characterize American life during the generation that followed the age of Douglas and Lincoln, it must be "business enterprise"—the tremendous, irresistible energy of a virile people, mounting in numbers toward a hundred million and applied without let or hindrance to the developing of natural resources of unparalleled richness. The chief goal of this effort was high profits for the captains of industry, on the one hand; and high wages for the workers, on the other. ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... the good-humored reproof of unimportant vices, of the indulgent, condescending admonition to the "gentle reader," particularly of the fair sex. In Hazlitt's hands the essay was an instrument for the expression of serious thought and virile passion. He lacked indeed the temperamental balance of Lamb. His insight into human nature was intellectual rather than sympathetic. Though as a philosopher he understood that the web of life is of a mingled yarn, he has given us ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... few words.) "The credentials of enthusiasm! The credentials of strength! You ask for my credentials? The credentials of red blood, of red corpuscles, of young manhood, ripest in the glorious young West! The credentials of vitality! Of virile—" ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... bathe stark naked, with the sunset glowing orange on our sunburnt limbs. Here it was that Hawk proved himself a wonderfully good swimmer. He was lithe and supple and well-made—an extraordinary specimen of virile manhood—and he spent his fiftieth birthday ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave

... maleness, rose powerfully in him, in a sort of mastery. He felt his own power, he felt suddenly his own virile title to strength and reward. Suddenly, and newly flushed with his own male super-power, he was going to have his reward. The woman was his reward. So it was, in him. And he cast it over in his mind. He wanted her—ha, ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... bareknuckled, without rounds, licking or being licked, milled it to a finish with Jimmy Botts, Jean Choyinsky, and the rest of the lads that went out over the world to glory and cash a few years later, a generation of prizefighters that only San Francisco, raw and virile and yeasty and young, could ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... the vine is planted. Neither is time saved in digging beforehand, for the sun-baked and rain-washed sides of holes long dug would surely have to be pared afresh. It is, however, quite worth while to throw the surface soil to one side and that lower to the other, that a spadeful of moist, virile, surface soil may be ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... pines grew upon earth, the words they sing were set to the sagas of vast space, rhythmic runes of unremembered ages taught by the great winds of the world to these patriarchs that seem to tell them over and over lest they forget. They tower virid and virile. They stretch wide arms over the pasture people in benediction and sheltering love, but they are not of them. The reading of the deep riddle of the universe has made them prophets and seers and they dwell alone in their dignity. I may make my home beneath their sheltering ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... spake nor sought nice reasons why, Too much for softer arts forgotten since That teach our forthright tongue to lisp and mince, 70 And drown in music the heart's bitter cry! Lead me some steps in your directer way, Teach me those words that strike a solid root Within the ears of men; Ye chiefly, virile both to think and feel, Deep-chested Chapman and firm-footed Ben, For he was masculine from head to heel. Nay, let himself stand undiminished by With those clear parts of him that will not die. Himself from out the recent dark I claim 80 To hear, and, if I flatter him, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... scientifically accurate, and a frieze of boys with garlands on the villa is in the best manner of Florentine sculpture. On the mountain side, diminished in scale, is a group of elders, burying the body of S. John. These are massed together and robed in the style of Masaccio, and have his virile dignity of form and action. Indeed this interesting wall-painting furnishes an epitome of Florentine art, in its intentions and achievements, during the first half of the fifteenth century. The colour is strong and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... spring, But powerful as the poison-drop, once sped, That creeps, corrupts, and leaves its victim—dead! As the asp's fang could turn to pulseless clay The Pride of Egypt, so this Worm can slay If left long covert for its crawling course. Up, up against it every virile force, And every valorous virtue! By its hiss 'Tis known hostis humani generis, Let Civilisation snatch St. Michael's sword, And slay this Dragon, of a tribe abhorred The meanest and the most malignant Worm Which can spill venom, but, attacked, will squirm, Shrink, splutter, vanish. With ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various

... I could see, too, that the hair of the feebler man was white, while that of his companion was jet black. The younger man's face appeared so dark that I suspected he wore a beard, and his figure was erect and vigorous, in the prime of life, virile and full ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson

... pregnant actuality in the palpitating life all about us. But, as Engels pointed out, Socialism also has its ideological side. In this sense it may correctly be called a theory, if we bear in mind that it is the virile force of class-feeling, and not the theory, that is going to effect the Social Revolution. Now, every individual socialist does in his development conform to the biogenetic law; but the bourgeois socialist is more apt to epitomize the history of Socialist theory, while the proletarian ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... them, and to debase our politics to the uses of foreign intrigue. Their number is not great as compared with the whole number of those sturdy hosts by which our nation has been enriched in recent generations out of virile foreign stock; but it is great enough to have brought deep disgrace upon us and to have made it necessary that we should promptly make use of processes of law by which we may be purged of their corrupt distempers. America never witnessed anything ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson

... in the 19th century by the Lentaigne of that day, one Sir Francis. At the beginning of that century the Irish gentry were still an aristocracy. They ruled, and had among their number men who were gentlemen of the grand style, capable of virile passions and striking deeds, incapable, constitutionally and by training, of the prudent foresight of careful tradesmen. Lord Thormanby, who rejoiced in a brand new Union peerage and was a wealthy man, kept race horses. ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... Her education, the things she had seen, the spectacle of what seemed the end of everything, the Revolution, had so formed her character as to lead her to disdain human suffering. And this old woman, who had nothing left of life save breath, had risen to a serene philosophy, to a virile, haughty, almost satirical stoicism. Sometimes she would begin to declaim against a sorrow that seemed a little too keen; but, in the midst of her tirade, she would suddenly hurl an angry, mocking word at herself, upon which her face would at once become ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... envisioned a pair of sensitive, virile hands, lean and brown, with the short, well-kept nails that any violinist needs must have—the contradictory hands which had aroused her interest on the journey ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... grandly upon the sea. Bedient was early below, and overtook Miss Mallory in the gardens. She seemed particularly virile. A pair of Senora Rey's toy-spaniels ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... elderly man with dundrearies, preferring through his nose a request to have word of Wilhelmina, my life, as he calls her. I bade him hold himself in readiness for that the event would burst anon. 'Slife, I'll be round with you. I cannot but extol the virile potency of the old bucko that could still knock another child out of her. All fell to praising of it, each after his own fashion, though the same young blade held with his former view that another than her conjugial ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... long i is retained, and in disyllables the penultima is lengthened, as in 'anile', 'senile', 'virile'. There is no excuse for following the classical quantity in the former syllables of any of these words. As an English word 'sedilia' shortens the antepenultimate, like 'tibia' and the rest, the 'alias' rule not applying when the ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt

... was strong and virile and brutal in him seemed to harden and stiffen in the moment after he had seen the beach-comber collapse limply on the sand under the last strong knife-blow; and a sense of triumph, of boundless self-confidence, leaped within him, so that he ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... city. And his fresh earth grip and virile conception of humanity gave him a finer sense of civilization and endeared civilization to him. Day by day the people of the city clung closer to him and the world loomed more colossal. And, day by day, Alaska grew more remote and less real. ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... anathematised what he considered the weakness shown by the Gladstone Government in dealing with disorder in Ireland. Himself not only the kindest, but also the most just and judicially-minded of men, he feared that a maudlin and misplaced sentimentalism would destroy the more virile elements in the national character. "I should like," he said, in words which must not, of course, be taken too literally, "a little more fierceness and honest brutality in the national temperament." ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... readily traceable associations. This was a Hamlet also of French extraction in the skill and school of the actor, but as much more deeply derived than the Hamlet of Mme. Bernhardt as the large imagination of Charles Fechter transcended in its virile range the effect of her subtlest womanish intuition. His was the first blond Hamlet known to our stage, and hers was also blond, if a reddish-yellow wig may stand for a complexion; and it was of the quality of his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... into the unequal contest. Courage and tenacity win their reward; and in these qualities Castlereagh had no superior. It is said that on one occasion he determined to end a fight between two mastiffs, and, though badly bitten, he effected his purpose. These virile powers marked him out for promotion; and during the illness of Pelham, Chief Secretary at Dublin, Castlereagh discharged his duties. Cornwallis urged that he should have the appointment; and to the King's initial objection ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... something more than a man of virile temperament; he was gifted with other qualities than energy, determination, and common sense. He was not witty. He had no talent for repartee, and the most industrious collector of anecdotes will find few good things attributed to him. But he possessed ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... across the pews, I don't think I'll apply for the job. Let Billy Sewall tackle it. There's one thing about it—if they get to fighting in the aisles Billy'll leap down from the pulpit, roll up his sleeves, and pull the combatants apart. A virile religion is Billy's, and I rather think he's the ...
— On Christmas Day In The Evening • Grace Louise Smith Richmond

... marvelous gift in modeling," said Carl. "I know a famous young sculptor whose work is nothing like so virile. Might not something utterly new and barbaric come of it with proper direction? If she could interpret this wild life of the Glades from ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... word well!" he replied. "If then you wish to keep your vow of eclecticism, you should be willing to express certain virile ideas on the subject of love which I will communicate to you, and I will not grudge you the benefit of them, if benefit there be; I wish to bequeath my property to you, but this will be all that ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... of the world there were camp followers, Women of ancient sins who gave themselves for hire, Women of weak wills and strong desire. And, like the poison ivy in the woods That winds itself about tall virile trees Until it smothers them, so these Ruined the bodies and the souls of men. More evil were they than Red War itself, Or Pestilence, or Famine. Now in this war - This last most awful carnage of the world - All the old wickedness ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... shoulder-high on its side bounds, a close evergreen hedge of hemlock spruce. In its young way this hedge has been handsome from infancy; though still but a few years old it gives, the twelvemonth round, a note both virile and refined in color, texture and form, and if the art that planted it and the care that keeps it do not decay neither need the hedge for a century to come. Against the intensest cold this side of Labrador it is perfectly hardy, is trimmed with ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... recovered quickly, and manifested itself, with growing force, in varied and widespread activity worthy of a literature that had grown out of the needs of a national group. On the field of poetry, there is, first of all, Constantin Shapiro, the virile lyricist, who knew how to put into fitting words the indignation and revolt of the people against the injustice levelled against them. His "Poems of Jeshurun" published in He-Asif for 1888, alive with emotion and patriotic ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... they are effeminate would be incorrect. In some things, from our point of view, they undoubtedly are; in others they are extremely virile. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... Jones," his masterpiece, appeared in 1749, and three years later "Amelia"; journalism and his duties as a justice of the peace occupied him till 1754, when ill-health forced him abroad to Lisbon, where he died and was buried. Fielding is a master of a fluent, virile, and attractive style; his stories move with an easy and natural vigour, and are brimful of humour and kindly satire, while his characters in their lifelike humanness, with all their foibles and frailties, are a marked contrast to the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... but his expression, in its way, was curious. There was no horror in his face, no fear, no shadow of remorse. Some wholly different sentiment seemed to have transformed the man. He was younger, more virile. He seemed as though he could ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... virile independence acted as a powerful magnet wherever their bands moved. All through Russia and Siberia, there are refugee groups from Poland, Lithuania, Courland and the Riga District. These people have ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... has composed a number of songs, all endowed with an unusual share of beauty. She writes her own words in almost all cases, as she is able while doing this to hear in a vague way the music which she afterward sets to them. Hers is a virile genius. "These women seem preoccupied, first of all," says one critic, "to make people forget that they are women.... Whatever Mlle. Holmes may do, or whatever she may wish, she belongs to the French school by the vigour of her harmony, ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson

... REDEEM HIS PAST. To use and expend whatever force was in him for the good, the help, the consolement, and the love of others, ... NOT to benefit himself! This was his task, . . and the very comprehension of it gave him a rush of vigor and virile energy that at once lifted the cloud of love-loneliness from ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... speaking terms with the luring voices of the forest fairyland. We shall "thrill with the resurrection called spring," and steep our senses in the fragrance of its flowers; glory in the gushing life of summer, sigh at the sweet sorrows of autumn, and wax virile in winter's strength ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... from my husband to the amount of four thousand francs, why should I exchange the comforts of the hotel for the doubtful accommodation of the sainted Mme. Bidoux who sells cabbages?" But I repeat that Fleurette was a simple soul who took for granted the wisdom of so flamboyant and virile ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... dead could do nothing, neither could he change his mind, but having left an indelible record of his ideas by the strenuous verbiage of his virile and inspiring rhetoric, there was no room for doubt. As in all political and religious faiths founded on the ideas of dead heroes, this made for solidarity and power and quite prevented any adaptation of the form of government ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... fornicationem ut quidam facere solent; ita dico ut ipse tuum membrum virile in manum tuam acciperes, et sic duceres praeputium tuum, et manu propria commoveres, ut, sic, per ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... watched the craft gather way, a trifle shocked, her breath coming a little faster. The most deadly blows she had ever seen struck were delivered in a more subtle, less virile mode, a curl of the lip, an inflection of the voice. These were a different order of beings. This, she sensed was man in a more primitive aspect, man with the conventional bark stripped clean off him. And she ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... one house for seventy-eight years; he was born there, and you will find the like of that in few places in America. It was a fine house for its time, for any time, and not new when John Templeton was born. A great, solid, square structure, such as they built when the Puritan spirit was virile in New England, with an almost Greek beauty of measured lines. It has a fanlight over the front door, windows exquisitely proportion, and in the center a vast brick chimney. Even now, though weathered and unpainted, it stands four-square upon the earth with a kind of natural dignity. ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson

... traditional processes of even the highest authenticity, have been thrown to the winds. Hence, indeed, the scandal which he caused from the first and which went on increasing, until, owing to the acceptance, with modifications, of his point of view by the most virile and vigorous painters of the day, he became, as he has become, in a sense the head of the corner. Manet's great distinction is to have discovered that the sense of reality is achieved with a thousand-fold ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... features, which makes such a great castle as this so impressive. As a feudal stronghold it can hardly fail to appeal to the imagination. As the modern palatial home of an English nobleman, it appeals to something more virile—to the sense that behind the medieval walls the life of its occupants is still representative, is still deep and national in importance and significance. Pictorially, there is nothing—unless it be a great cathedral, which brings up quite a different ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... strong, virile novel with the lumber industry for its central theme and a love story full of interest as ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... Longfellow's birth witnessed that of another American poet, more virile, but of a narrower appeal—John Greenleaf Whittier. Whittier's birthplace was the old house at East Haverhill, Massachusetts, where many generations of his Quaker ancestors had dwelt. The family was poor, and the boy's life was a hard ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... with herself for feeling a just perceptible response to his virile personality and his absolute sureness. Anything he wanted—— Then she bent her mind resolutely upon a ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose

... offense. Its river home had always been salted by the flood-tides of the sea. On the face of the Noachian deluge innumerable forest trees were floating. Upon these the Ornithorhynchus voyaged in peace; voyaged from clime to clime, from hemisphere to hemisphere, in contentment and comfort, in virile interest in the constant change Of scene, in humble thankfulness for its privileges, in ever-increasing enthusiasm in the development of the great theory upon whose validity it had staked its life, its fortunes, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... aft without rejoinder. "Invalid's pessimism," was my private comment. And yet the sick man was whole for the time being; the virile spirit was once more master of the recreant members; and it was with illogical relief that I found those I sought standing almost ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung

... when he walked. Only moderately tall, clothed in ill-cut garments which he wore as uneasily as possible, his immature young figure was not one to call out much admiration on the score of its virility. Indeed, the one really virile thing about Scott Brenton was his hair, which sprang out strongly from his scalp, fine, but thick and just a little wavy where it lay across his crown. His head was well-shaped, only that it was a bit too high above the ears, the brow a bit too salient; the eyes alone, though, at that time, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... rather than more.' It is a counsel of perfection in The Imitation of Christ. And here, undoubtedly, is the secret of all that is virile and classic in the art of man, and of all in nature that is most harmonious with that art. Moreover, this is the secret of Italy. How little do the tourists and the poets grasp this latter truth, by the way—and the artists! The legend of Italy is to be gorgeous, ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell

... certain of the "Polonaises," the "Scherzos," the "Ballades" and the "Fantaisie" in F minor, reveal a fire, passion and virile power that will surprise those who have formed their estimate of Chopin from the mournful nocturnes and brilliant waltzes. The so-called "Military Polonaise," Op. 40, No. 1, is so replete with the spirit of war that in the middle ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb

... confidence in her mother was a painful blow to Madame de la Chanterie. Already she had several times noticed in her daughter indications of the reckless disposition of the father, increased in the daughter by an almost virile ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... spent a great part of her half-year's dividend in the purchase of a black velvet coat for little Rawdon, who, by the way, was grown almost too big for black velvet now, and was of a size and age befitting him for the assumption of the virile jacket and pantaloons. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... born master of circumstances. Like the younger generation, he was clean shaven; hence there was no mask for the deeply graven lines of determination about the mouth and along the angle of the strong, leonine jaw. In the region traversed by the great railway system the virile face with the massive jaw was as familiar as the illegible signature on the Inter-Mountain's guest-book. Though he figured only as the first vice-president of the Transcontinental Company, Hardwick McVickar was really the active head ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... Holland's contribution to the art of the world, and that this chapter of its history, like the chapters which deal with its maritime supremacy, its industrial greatness, and its struggles for liberty, is closed for ever. Nothing could be farther from the fact. Dutch art was never more virile, more original, more self-conscious than to-day, when it is represented by a band of men whose genius and enthusiasm recall the great names of the past. Professer Richard Muther has well said, in his 'History of Modern ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... with her own reasoning faculty. She followed caprices, no doubt, but she was never under any apprehension with regard to their true nature, displaying in this respect a detachment which is usually considered exclusively virile. Elle et Lui, which, perhaps because it is short and associated with actual facts, is the most frequently discussed in general conversation on her work, remains probably the sanest account of a sentimental experiment which was ever written. How far it may have ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... to parade through town with a tin haversack of carbons for the arc-lights, familiarly lowering the high-hung mysterious lamps, while his plodding acquaintances "clerked" in stores on Saturdays, or tended furnaces. Sometimes he donned the virile—and noisy—uniform of an electrician: army gauntlets, a coil of wire, pole-climbers strapped to his legs. Crunching his steel spurs into the crisp pine wood of the lighting-poles, he carelessly ascended to the place of humming ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... Honey Smith was standing, staring upwards. In his virile, bronzed semi-nudity, he might have been a god who had emerged for the first time into the air from the woods at his back. His lips were open and ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... will write it as a song and put it in italics, so that even you will know that it is a song; So listen, listen, Camerados! for I am about to spout and my song shall be masculine and virile. A bas your metre, a la lanterne your rhyme, conspuez your punctuation, ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)

... rain had quite ceased, and there was a faint something, rather a reminiscence than a suggestion, of early spring in the air. People caught themselves looking hard at the elm branches to see if they were acquiring the virile fringe of spring or if their eyes deceived them, and wondered, with respect to the tips of maple and horse-chestnut branches, whether or not they were swollen red and glossy. Sometimes they sniffed incredulously when a soft gust of south wind seemed ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... remarked. "Show me a clever newspaper man and I'll show you a failure. There is nothing in it but the glory—and little of that. We contrive and scheme and run about all day getting a story. And then we write it at fever heat, searching our souls for words that are cleancut and virile. And then we turn it in, and what is it? What have we to show for our day's work? An ephemeral thing, lacking the first breath of life; a thing that is dead before it is born. Why, any cub reporter, if he were to put into some other profession ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... him, in which it is asserted that 'most of his rarest books are miserable copies' (how book-collectors can hate one another!), ends with the reluctant admission: 'He was eminently a gentleman, however, and his manners were even courtly, yet virile.' ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... of mixed blood jabbered in French, Cree, and Chipewyan chiefly, but when they wanted to swear, they felt the inadequacy of these mellifluous or lisping tongues, and fell back on virile Saxon, whose tang, projectivity, and wealth of vile epithet evidently supplied a long-felt want in the Great Lone Land of the Dog ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... dark-haired, dark of complexion, and blue-eyed; but notwithstanding these signs of virile character, she was gentle, tender-hearted, and devoted to those she loved. Her frank innocence, her simplicity, her quiet acceptance of a hard-working life, her character—for her life was above reproach—could not fail to win David Sechard's heart. So, since the first time that these ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... regiments of fine, high-bred, young fellows from London, Manchester and Liverpool, out for a holiday and magnificent in their uniforms of scarlet and gold, each with his beautiful and abundant hair done up in a queue, Mr. Binkus laughed and said they looked "terrible pert." He told the virile and profane Captain Lee of Howe's staff, that the first thing to do was to "make a haystack o' their hair ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... and burned out, before she had finished reading. After she had read it, her first love letter, she must needs go over it again, to learn by heart the sweet phrases in which he had wooed her. It was a commonplace note enough, far more neutral than the strong, virile writer who had lacked the cunning to transmit his feeling to ink and paper. But, after all, it was from him, and it told the divine message, however haltingly. No wonder she burned her little finger tips from the flame of the matches creeping nearer unheeded. No wonder she pressed it to her lips ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... one party, the wild laxity and folly of the other. "The very air of London must have been electric with the daily words of those immortals whose casual talk upon the pavement by the street-side was a coinage of speech richer, more virile, more expressive than has been known on this planet since the great days of Atheman poetry, eloquence and mirth." There were "wits, dramatists, scholars, orators, singers, philosophers." For every ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... rebuilt the awful Democratic party, which was broken up, prostrated in the dust. Lincoln—Seward—Weed, partially emasculated the Republican party, and may even emasculate the thus far thoroughly virile and devoted patriotism of ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... time immemorial for a victor to carry off some portion of the body of his victim or defeated enemy, as a mark or testimony of his prowess; it was either a hand, head or scalp, lower jaw, or finger. The carrying off of the phallus or virile member was considered the most conclusive proof of the nature of the vanquished, and, as it established the sex, it conferred a greater title to bravery and skill than a mere collection of hands or scalps, which would not denote the sex. In conformity with this custom, we find that ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... offered was not much more effective than that of a respectable militia. But both the Austrian and the French armies were organized and trained under the old system. Courage, experience, and professional pride they possessed in abundance. Man for man, in all virile qualities, neither officers nor men were inferior to their foes. But one thing their generals lacked, and that was education for war. Strategy was almost a sealed book to them." Also, "Moltke committed no mistake. Long before war had been declared every possible precaution had been ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... like grey scimitars, its great flower-stems like spears. Stiffly they reared, erect, smooth, well-rounded, and each was crowned with the swollen bud of promise. She displayed them proudly, she counted them, made him check her counting. She glowed over them, fascinated by their virile pride. Struan watched her more than her treasures. He was pale still, and bit his lip; had ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... not organised for war, it was not the effete and decadent power, not the fortuitous combination of discordant and incoherent elements, which German theory had supposed; but that Freedom can create a unity and a virile strength capable of withstanding even the most rigid discipline, capable of enduring defeat and disappointment undismayed; but incapable of yielding to the insolence ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir

... Montmorency's disastrous defeat at St. Quentin. Her answer to the remonstrance of her servants against this excessive drain upon her slender resources bore witness at once to the sincerity of her patriotism and to a virile spirit which ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... When the virile figure of Theodore Roosevelt swung down the national highway, Bok was one of thousands of young men who felt strongly the attraction of his personality. Colonel Roosevelt was only five years the senior of the editor; he spoke, therefore, as one of his own years. The energy ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... ascended the throne of Spain he had no beard. It was not to be expected that the obsequious parasites who always surround a monarch, could presume to look more virile than their master. Immediately all the courtiers appeared beardless, with the exception of such few grave old men as had outgrown the influence of fashion, and who had determined to die bearded as they ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... curves of bosom and shoulders; but, somehow, she seemed older—older even than she was! Perhaps because of her efforts to be girlish? It was as if she wore clothes she had outgrown—clothes that were too tight and too short. She used Maurice's slang without its virile appropriateness; when they accepted an invitation from one of Maurice's new acquaintances, her anxiety to be of his generation was pathetic—or ludicrous, as one happened to look at it. These friends of Maurice's seemed to have innumerable interests in common with him that she knew ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... hand—a woman's soft and delicate fingers, yet clasping his with an almost virile strength and friendliness. She left him with just that feeling about her—that she was expansive, in her heart, her sympathies, even her brain and peculiar gifts of apprehension. She left him, too, with a curious sense of restfulness, as though suddenly he had ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... not many characteristics, scarcely any expression, and is generally in repose. . . . The contemporaries of Pericles and Plato did not require violent and surprising effects to stimulate weary attention or to irritate an uneasy sensibility. A blooming and healthy body, capable of all virile and gymnastic actions, a man or woman of fine growth and noble race, a serene form in full light, a simple and natural harmony of lines happily commingled, was the most animated spectacle they could dwell on. They desired to contemplate man proportioned ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... positiveness were very agreeable to a candid mind which was speculatively adrift and experimenting, and, as it seemed to me, which was more emotional than logical. Brownson, after his life of varied theological and controversial activity, was drawing toward the Catholic Church, and his virile force fascinated the more delicate and sensitive temper of the young man, and, I have always supposed, was the chief influence which at that time affected Hecker's views, although he did not then ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... and virile than the Lepchas are the Nepalese, who, migrating from Nepal, are found in great numbers in this region. They are more given to agriculture than the Lepchas, and are thrifty, industrious, and resourceful. Though excitable and ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... the Convention did not sever and did not wish to sever the close bond of union between the Socialist Party of the United States and the Third or Moscow International, the Convention, in its majority report, stating that "The Moscow organization is virile and aggressive, inspired as it is by the militant idealism of the Russian revolution," the majority report further stating that the Socialist Party of the United States, "retaining its adherence to the Third International," "instructs its executive ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... his side. Growing every day feebler, already at that stage in which the artist regrets himself, he found in following Felicia's progress a certain consolation for his own ended career. He saw the boasting-tool, which trembled in his hand, taken up again under his eye with a virile firmness and assurance, tempered by all those delicacies of her being which a woman can apply to the realization of an art. A strange sensation, this double paternity, this survival of genius as it abandons the man whose day is over to pass into ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... winked down at him jeeringly, and a little mocking breeze sniggered among the mimosas and palms of the hotel gardens. He passed out of them into the many-tongued Babel of the streets, packed with humanity, throbbing with virile life, and tramped the magnificent avenues and wide electric-lighted streets of Cape Town with the thousands who had no beds at all, and the ten thousand who had, but preferred not to occupy them. To his narrow couch in the dressing-room adjoining Lynette's bedroom her ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... at him: and nothing could disturb the clearness of her gaze: nothing in his Christian soul seemed to escape her. He felt that. Under the seduction of the woman's eyes upon him he was conscious of a virile desire, clear and cold, Which stirred in him brutally, indiscreetly. There was no evil in the brutality of it. She took possession of him: not like a coquette, whose desire is to seduce without caring whom she seduces. Had she been a coquette she would have gone to greatest lengths: but she knew ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... a letter to Hawthorne, speaks of himself as having no development at all until his twenty-fifth year, the time of his return from the Pacific; but surely the process of development must have been well advanced to permit of so virile and artistic a creation as 'Typee.' While the narrative does not always run smoothly, yet the style for the most part is graceful and alluring, so that we pass from one scene of Pacific enchantment to another quite oblivious of the vast amount of descriptive detail which ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... contests. On such pretext he will tell a new story, or bring to its last perfection by his manner of telling it, his pregnancy and studied beauty of expression, an old one. The tale of Castor and Polydeukes, the appropriate patrons of virginal yet virile youth, starred and mounted, he tells in all its ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... man," wearing a shirt open at the neck, sleeves rolled to the elbows, riding trousers and shiny leather puttees, endeavoring desperately to appear like a combination of Sandow and a Northwest Mounted Police officer. He had had the satisfaction of hurling a rock to mar the "virile" face as it looked down defiantly ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson



Words linked to "Virile" :   virility, manful, strong, potent, masculine, impotent, manlike



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