Feme sole

“ As regards the competency of the parties to enter into a contract of guarantee, this may be affected by insanity or intoxication of the surety, if known to the creditor, or by disability of any kind. The ordinary disabilities are those of infants and married women—now in England greatly mitigated as regards the latter by the Married Women’s Property Acts, 1870 to 1893, which enable a married woman to contract, as a feme sole, to the extent of her separate property. ”

“ The pretty girls are exquisite: the slender oval of the face, the rich olive of the cheek, the long, sweeping dark lashes over superb eyes glowing at once with passion and tenderness, the low forehead with its rippling mass of dusky hair, the slender neck, the lithe form, the springing step, and the dainty foot, make them like a poet's dream of darkly brilliant loveliness, not to be measured by any type with which we have been heretofore familiar. But Nature is never over-lavish, and the number of these splendid creatures is as few as their perfections are many. ”

“ Earth has kissed my knees, and put strength in my belly. Sky has perched on my wrist, and sent power into my breast.
“But as in the morning the Morning-star stands between earth and sky, a star can rise in us, and stand between the heart and the loins.
“That is the manhood of man, and for woman, her womanhood.
“You are not yet men. And women, you are not yet women.
“You run about and toss about and die, and still you have not found the star of your manhood rise within you, [Pg 214] the stars of your womanhood shine out serene between your breasts, women. ”

“ The flesh of women is like the sky When bare is the moon: Rhythm of backs, hollow of necks, And sea-shell loins. I know a woman whose splendors vex Where the flesh joins— A slope of light and a circumflex Of clefts and coigns. She thrills like the air when silence wrecks An ended tune. These are the things not made by hands in the earth: Water and fire, The air of heaven, and springs afresh, And love's desire. And a thing not made is a woman's flesh, Sorrow and mirth! ”

“ Her eyes, very far apart and set in black lashes, were of a deep soft blue—the blue of wild hyacinths after rain. By her eyes, and by an old-world charm of personality which she exhaled like a perfume, it was easy to discern that she embodied the feminine ideal of the ages. To look at her was to think inevitably of love. For that end, obedient to the powers of Life, the centuries had formed and coloured her, as they had formed and coloured the wild rose with its whorl of delicate petals. ”

“ Oh, the exquisite, the ecstatic delight of this first awakening into the manhood of feeling!—when the passion-flower is just opening—when the nerves are troubled, for the first time, by the sensibilities of sex—when the blooming cheek, the rosy lip, the inviting glance, and the happily-moulded rotundities of the female form, become, for the first time, an object of fearful, of indescribable, of trembling interest! ”

“ To cry "sex" and to talk of nature's mad preoccupation with the species throws no light on the matter, and robs it of no whit of its magic. The rainbow remains a rainbow, for all the sciences. And woman, with or without the suffrage, stenographer or princess, is of the rainbow. She is beauty made flesh and dwelling amongst us, and whatever the meaning and message of beauty may be, such is the meaning of woman on the earth—her meaning, at all events, for men. ”

“ As she strolled around the garden under the cloudy flush of the evening sky dressed in white, a shawl of white lace over one arm, a rose on her breast, she had the exquisiteness of a long past, during which women have been chosen in marriage for health and beauty and children and the power to charm. ”

“ But the sun spell is even more fugitive upon the face of this wild land than the spell of beauty upon a woman. So runs one of our proverbs: as the falling of the wave, as the fading of the leaf, so is the beauty of a woman, unless—ah, that unless, and the indiscoverable fount of joy that can only be come upon by hazard once in life, and thereafter only in dreams, and the Land of the Rainbow that is never reached, and the green sea-doors of Tir-na-thonn, that open now no more to any wandering wave! ”

“ Her face changed then, as the calm sea will change when a breath of wind rises in the east, and the waves dance and sparkle in wild haste beneath the first blush of the morning.
Colour and life came into her cheeks, light and passion sprang to her eyes; all the woman’s nature rose to her face. ”

“ It seems that woman, that exquisite and delicate flower, blossoms in fur, as those white gardenias of the conservatory which half open and develop themselves in a nest of perfumed wadding.
The more she hides, muffles up, deadens, so to speak, her beauty, the more woman—a creature of Hades who makes us dream of paradise—is bewitching in the diabolicity of her graces. ”

“ Upon the Ocean's gentle breast,
So fond they look on her.
They gaze and gaze till the beauteous orb
Seems made for them alone:
They feel as if their home were Heaven,
And the earth a dream that hath flown.
Softly they lean on each other's breast,
In holy bliss reposing,
Like two fair clouds to the vernal air
In folds of beauty closing. ”

“ Tall and slim and crowned with plumes in one period, in another these Ladies become as wide-winged as butterflies, or float, large, balloon-like visions, down summer streets. And yet in all shapes they have always (I tell myself) created thrilling effects of beauty, and waked in the breasts of modish young men ever the same charming Emotion. ”

“ Her dark hair sweeping backward showed a forehead broad and white;
And a passion born of heaven gave her eyes undying light.
'Round her white soul lingered all the virtues, honor, love and truth,
All the stainlessness of woman in the loveliness of youth. ”

“ In so far as soul is in her completely developed, all soul is the same, but in so far as it is modified in her as Woman, it flows, it breathes, it sings, rather than deposits soil, or finishes work; and that which is especially feminine flushes, in blossom, the face of earth, and pervades, like air and water, all this seeming solid globe, daily renewing and purifying its life. Such may be the especially feminine element spoken of as Femality. ”

“ Dew-Woman In the night I built my fire, Fire that maidens foster when In the ripe of mating season Each builds for her man of men. Red Cloud In the night I sought her, proved her, Found her ease, content, and rest, After day of toil and struggle Man's reward on woman's breast. ”

“ For all that he then saw in nature was but a setting for a woman; even the sun itself, low in the west, robbed of its glory, and faded into a dull red ball seeking to hide its head, but served to throw into high relief the noble and beautiful face of the girl upon whom he gazed,—the girl who was sun and life and light and world for him. ”

“ That is the sort of woman I have always longed to paint—a figure tall and strong, yet rich and supple and womanly; skin like the flesh of a camellia, yet delicately touched with color of rose; hair like a mesh of flames, and eyes that can light up with laughter, melt with tenderness, or burn with passion, according to her mood. ”

“ From the shining nimbus of her hair to her small tripping feet she was the incarnation of girlhood—of that white and gold girlhood which has intoxicated the imagination of man. She shed the allurement of sex as unconsciously as a flower sheds its perfume. ”

“ For she would seem a woman and would be like some women we have known, beautiful with blue flower-like eyes, pale gold or honey-coloured hair; very white of skin, Leightonian, almost diaphanous, so delicate as to make all other skins appear coarse and made of clay. And with her beauty and a mysterious sweetness not of the heart, since no heart there would be in that mist-cold body, she would draw all hearts, ever inspiring, but never satisfying passion, her beauty and alluring smiles being but the brightness of a cloud on which the sun is shining. ”

“ Because, if women never see the serpent's face, neither do they ever scent the smell of the paradise roses; and it will be hard for you to die without a single rose d'amour in your pretty breast, poor little Bébée? ”

“ To see a woman in that place was not so strange; but such a woman! Even in the first casual glance I gave her, I at once acknowledged to myself her extraordinary power. Not the slightness of her form, the palor of her countenance, or the fairness of the locks of golden red hair that fell in two long braids over her bosom, could for a moment counteract the effect of her dark glance or the vivid almost unearthly force of her expression. ”

“ The Sun Its Relation to Planetary Life. What is Radiant Energy? Why the Ancients Worshipped the Sun. The Parsees the Present Sun Worshippers.
It is supposed to be a figure of speech, a mere bit of symbolism to call the sun masculine and the earth feminine. To call the earth a woman. To state that woman was made from man, etc. But when it is understood that sex is nothing but polarity, that male and female, masculine and feminine and positive and negative are synonymous terms, we begin to understand the truly scientific nature of these expressions. ”

“ Ninon, Madame du Barry, Madame Tallien, Mademoiselle Georges, Madame Recamier.—all these women who preserved their beauty in spite of years, of passion, and of their life of excess and pleasure, have in figure, frame, and in the character of their beauty certain striking resemblances, enough to make one believe that there is in the ocean of generations an Aphrodisian current whence every such Venus is born, all daughters of the same salt wave. ”

“ Her face shall be but a cold mirror in which the image of a fire is reflected without warmth, her soft words shall be to me as the screaming of a parrot, her touch a thorn and her lips ashes. What is it to me if all the women of the world love me? ”

“ Here is a collection of miniature paintings, and be assured that these illustrations of Ento female loveliness are not at all exaggerated. Some are types of the blonde, blue eyed Northern races, others of the dark skinned, lovely women of the Orient, with eyes as dark and liquid as quiet pools in shady nooks. As you perceive, all are arrayed in graceful flowing garments, unlike the hideous robes worn by even the most highly civilized women of our Planet. ”

“ She possessed all that soft delicacy of appearance that reminds the sterner sex how frail and dependent is woman, while she bore in her face that sweet and winning expression of intellect, that, in other climes more favored by civilization, and where cultivation adds so much to the charms of her sex, would alone have marked her as beautiful. ”

“ Our sex has need of all the barriers, all the defenses, which nature has given us. No—never let woman be the wooer, save as the flowers woo, with their sweetness—save as the stars woo, with their brightness—save as the summer wind woos—silently unfolding the rose’s heart. ”

“ What is there in some women’s look, some women’s touch that more than all beauty goes to the heart and subdues it. As she stood there before me in her dark worsted dress and coarse shawl, with her locks simply braided and her whole person undignified by art and ungraced by ornament, she seemed just by the power of her expression and the witchery of her manner, the loveliest woman I had ever beheld. ”

“ The inner rose will open and glow For summer's sake: Fond bees will lodge within her breast Till she herself is plucked and pressed Where I would rest. Wait but a little while— The maid will grow Gracious with lips and hands to thee, With breast of snow. To-day Love's mute, but time hath sown A soul in her to match thine own, Though yet ungrown. ”

“ I am, as it seems, a magnetic gem, omnipotent and irresistible, to whose attraction the entire sex succumbs inevitably, like grass. And this opinion was justified by the conduct of the women themselves. ”

“ An ordinary woman would dawdle away her time in admiring their soft eyes, and curly hair, and full warm cheeks; but the woman of the world sees the bud grown into the expanded flower, and the small cradle is metamorphosed into the boudoir by the magic of her maternal love. ”

“ That widely looked-for personage, yet to rise from this agitation like Venus from surf of the Grecian sea, the coming woman, no feminine man or masculine opposite, with greater physical vigor of finer fibre, will bring impressive beauty, melting tenderness, ethereal grace, mental force, moral rectitude, such as the exhaustless sources of being yearn to incarnate. ”

“ For a time I knew what it was to have loving looks from every woman I met, and being saner and healthier I would seem to be moving in a divine atmosphere of color and fragrance, pearly teeth and bright eyes. Even the old women with daughters looked at me amiably—married women with challenge and maidens with Paradise in their eyes. ”

“ Since the moon receives its light from the sun, it is the "lesser light," and after the analogy of the sexes we naturally use the feminine gender when speaking of it, while of the "greater light"--the sun--we use the masculine gender. It is natural to speak of things optically. ”

“ For thus the woman hinders and resists Her own conception, if too joyously Herself she treats the Venus of the man With haunches heaving, and with all her bosom Now yielding like the billows of the sea— Aye, from the ploughshare's even course and track She throws the furrow, and from proper places Deflects the spurt of seed. And courtesans Are thuswise wont to move for their own ends, To keep from pregnancy and lying in, And all the while to render Venus more A pleasure for the men—the which meseems Our wives have never need of. ”

“ In the midst of my work, or perhaps when I am in conversation with someone, I will suddenly see in my mind’s eye a woman’s face—ah! very often that woman’s tender face—then a patch of grey rock, a smooth white stone, or a gigantic crag against the blue sky ”