Feminine

“ Every good quality, every virtue which we regard as distinctively feminine, will, under conditions of greater freedom, develop more freely, like plants brought out into the light from a cellar in which they languished, dwarfed and blanched, without sun or air. The woman is strong in almost every woman ”

“ And well may I address thee in the feminine gender, thou dispenser of heartfelt mirth! 'Tis WOMAN'S smile enlivens the feast—'tis WOMAN'S handy care that has so well provided it—'tis WOMAN'S kind encouragement that adds a charm to all you see around you. ”

“ What would the right word be but that nature, in these lights, was no single one of the horrid things I have named, but was, instead of them all, that quite other happy and charming thing, feminine?—feminine from head to foot, in expression, tone and touch, mistress throughout of the feminine attitude and effect. ”

“ It is, perhaps, difficult to define it exactly, but there exists, somehow, in the fashionable world, the notion that a pale and sensitive woman is feminine and refined, while one in blooming health is masculine and coarse. ”

“ The inherent narrowness of the feminine nature, its unswerving devotion to the traditional dogmas of womanliness, now expressed itself in every line of her face and figure.
“I don't think any woman has any call to talk as you are doing,” she said with grave reproof. ”

“ I had contrived--God knows how--to pass with him as a great discerner of feminine spirits, and was fond of introducing into my generalisations the word "Woman," which has always a mystical charm for youths of our age. ”

“ I confess I can imagine no tribute to a manly nature from a feminine more final even than the confidence in "mere" consideration here embodied—the comfort of the consideration being in the fact that the character with which the feminine nature was dealing lent it, could it but come, such weight. ”

“ So that, aside from the mysterious working of feminine motive, which makes woman a law unto herself, there should be practical unanimity in regard to this habit. There is in the cap and gown a subtle suggestion of the union of learning with womanly charm that is very captivating to the imagination. ”

“ Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. ”

“ Submissiveness, clinging affection, humility, all the traits accounted distinctively feminine, and the natural and ever-increasing result of steady suppression of all stronger ones stood in the way of any resistance. ”

“ The kick feminine is expressive, suggestive, terse, electric,—an indispensable instrument in domestic discipline, as women will bear me witness, and not at all incompatible with beauty, grace, and amiability. ”

“ Our dames were the physicians of their time and districts. An exaggerated sense of sex wastes accomplishments on the pursuit of mere feminine attractiveness, which might minister to and promote the highest interests of society. ”

“ Instead of making a subtle and seductive appeal to the imagination, she is a prosaic fact; interesting, possibly, as an anatomical study, she loses in a peculiar way the fascinations of the feminine gender. When tights enter into the problem, there is a vast difference between the womanly woman and the womanish woman. ”

“ Rugged and straightforward as he was, there was something in his nature that was purely feminine in its tenderness. ”

“ These amazons often wonder why the great mass of women are so hard to stir up in this matter. The reason is that the great mass of women—heaven be thanked!—have feminine minds as well as feminine bodies. ”

“ Here is a Woman, and an English Woman, who, notwithstanding the many Dangers and Vicissitudes she underwent for near the Space of five Years, during her Travels, was never found out to be of the feminine Gender. ”

“ women and young girls, how incomprehensible are your feminine hearts! When you are not the timidest, you are the bravest of creatures. ”

“ As women, to exert in private and in public, throughout the whole range of Social Relations, that special influence which God assigns as their appropriate function, in endowing them with feminine attributes. ”

“ But when women have fairly learned to use their wings, they will shape their flight for themselves, discover their own truths, draw their own conclusions, conceive their own ideals,—a proposition which I consider proven by the history of the English feminine novel, which, beginning with the gross masculine imitations of Mrs. ”

“ It requires the feminine temperament to repeat the same thing three times with unabated zest. ”

“ Place aux dames is all very well, as some one has somewhere said—but then, dames in their place, which, with all possible deference to the femininely-influenced philosophers of to-day, is not in politics, nor in any arts or sciences whatever. ”

“ Scattered upon the flimsy dresser scarf were half a dozen hairpins—those discreet, indistinguishable friends of womankind, feminine of gender, infinite of mood and uncommunicative of tense. ”

“ Compound adjectives, like simple ones, are freely used substantively as abstracts and collectives, especially in the neuter, less often in the feminine; and they are also much used adverbially, especially in the accusative neuter. ”

“ Of nouns ending in consonants, some are masculine, and some are feminine. No rule can be formulated regarding these, except that all abstract nouns ending in ar (a very numerous class) are masculine. There are four declensions. The first consists of masculine nouns ending in a consonant, in a, ĕ or ū (very few of these last two) . The second consists of the important class of masculine nouns in u; the third of feminine nouns in i, ū, or ñ (being the feminines corresponding to the masculine nouns of the second declension) ; and the fourth of feminine nouns ending in a, ĕ or a consonant. ”

“ When an adjective of the 1st declension agrees with a feminine noun, it is declined like a noun of the 2nd declension (see cos, par. 67, &c.) , but it never takes iḃ in the dative plural.
Adjectives ending in aċ form their plural by adding a, both for masculine and feminine.
140. The following list of adjectives gives examples of the vowel-changes mentioned above. The genitive masculine is given; the genitive feminine is formed by adding e:—
141. There are five or six adjectives of the first declension which are syncopated in the genitive singular feminine and in the plural ”

“ Once only she bursts forth with, "In truth I am not a little annoyed at being a woman. I ought either to have had another sex, another soul, or another country. I ought to have been a Spartan or a Roman woman, or at least a Frenchman. ”

“ THE woman's question—woman as she is, woman as she will be! That is my subject; and I want, at the outset, to get away from woman as the individual, more or less pleasing, more or less aggravating, more or less useful. I want to study woman in the abstract: the great woman-principle in life, in thought, and in action. ”

“ She was of that species of women whom you commend rather for good qualities than beauty, and who are generally called, by their own sex, very good sort of women—as good a sort of woman, madam, as you would wish to know. ”

“ I cannot better conclude than with the hope that these examples of what may be done may excite a noble emulation in their own sex, and in ours such a conviction of the value of the female mind, as shall overcome our long-cherished prejudices, and induce us to give our earnest endeavors to the promotion of women's best interests. ”

“ For example, a woman (the same may be said of the other sex) all beautiful and accomplished will, while her hand and heart are undisposed of, turn the heads and set the circle in which she moves on fire. ”

“ Here, the female principle exists, and as you predicted, most of the women are therefore entirely different from ours. The term used in this language is "femininity." It is a devastatingly attractive thing—but almost impossible to explain. I will make an attempt.
Senseless, reasonless, even foolish motions of the body and the hands, the expressions of the eyes and the mouth, the way the head is moved and tilted are a part of it. So are unusual tones of the voice and special ways in which things are said. ”

“ Yet to us, who are in the secret of her sex, all the proprieties, all the inward harmonies, of her character are exquisitely preserved; and the essential grace of womanhood seems to irradiate and consecrate the dress in which she is disguised. ”

“ Looking and listening, "Here," thought I, "is another jewel in the crown of womanhood, to radiate and glorify the lives of all." I have such an intense pride of sex that the triumphs of woman in art, literature, oratory, science, or song rouse my enthusiasm as nothing else can. ”

“ In these pages we have made some record of woman's work in past centuries, and also caught glimpses of duties, loves, hopes, fears, and sorrows not unlike our own. A wider sphere is now accorded, and a deeper responsibility devolves upon woman to fill it wisely and well. We should never forget that, as far as they were faithful to the duties appointed to them, they elevated their sex to a higher and nobler position, and therein performed the best work of the women of the Middle Ages. ”

“ The ladies here, present no exception to a proverbial excess in the use of the ‘unruly member’ as the especially noticeable characteristic of the gentler sex in more favoured parts of the world, and a Babel-like clatter of tongues formed a striking accompaniment to the quietness and order of the work in hand. ”

“ Lady lecturers and authors often tell us of the higher moral plane from which the gentle sex surveys the world's affairs, but for honest old-world delight in sheer physical force and muscular prowess, can a woman be equalled? ”

“ Never were seen ladies so proper and handsome, so miniard and dainty, less forward, or more ready with their hand, and with their needle, in every honest and free action belonging to that sex, than were there. ”

“ No institution of note has yet ventured to admit females much further than into the mysteries of the rudiments." (Female delicacy, female industry, female mind, female college were terms hard worked in those days. A belief of sex in mind was universal.) ”

“ Though woman is called the weaker sex, here, in one example, is represented the strongest passion and the strongest principle, admirably supported. It is an episode in this work-day world, most interesting, and touched with a daring and delicate hand. The execution of the painting is as perfect as the conception. ”

“ Impossible, I suppose, is a word not to be found in the dictionaries of lovely ladies who all their lives have seen the most obdurate doors fly open before them. And this lovely lady evidently had her share of the resolution, or of a certain indifference to the realities of life, for which her sex is noted. ”

“ You have all—nay, more than all—those qualities which I have ever regarded as the characteristic excellences of womanhood. The great charm of your sex is its capability of an ardent self-sacrificing affection, and herein we see its fitness to round and complete the existence of our own. ”

“ The stories of which it is composed have been mainly written with the end of creating for woman, in the various life-trials through which she has to pass, sympathy and true consideration, as well in her own sex as in ours. ”

“ In the women who present the attributes of their sex with the greatest unity, we distinguish, especially during youth and adult age, the traits of the sanguine temperament, which may be regarded as the most suitable to the organization of woman. ”

“ Oh, woman, woman, how potent is thy influence, which thou exercisest, in thy apparently limited sphere, over the human race. Thy tender hand moulds the plastic mind of childhood; thy gentle rebuke checks the wayward impulses of impetuous youth; thy loving sympathy and voice counsel, cheer, and stimulate manhood ”

“ Whether or not continuity and sequence, relation and effect, have been maintained in the retraversing of the footsteps of woman in all ages of the history of those isles where femininity has flowered in the most gracious blossoms, it remains for the reader to say. ”

“ 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. ”