"Domesticity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Spain, and Wild Wales we have some delightful glimpses of an interesting personality, and here we may leave the personal side of Borrow. Beyond this we know that he was unquestionably a devoted son, a good husband, a kind father. The literary life has its perils, so far as domesticity is concerned. Sir Walter Scott in his life of ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... Peggy as Harriet closed the door, "how this terrible contagion of domesticity, as General Washington puts it, hath seized everybody! Here Betty hath married her Frenchman and gone to France; Clifford is to come for Sally before he sails for England; and now there is Robert and Harriet. What does thee think ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... attractive mien. He went into the real estate business, and greatly prospered. His varied accomplishments soon made him the most popular man in his state. He united with the political party which held the power. He married an attractive young woman, and settled down to a quiet and respectable domesticity. In the course of events a United States senator was to be elected, and what was more natural than that this intelligent, respectable and popular citizen should be considered a worthy candidate. The legislature convened, his prospects of election were more than promising, and he would undoubtedly ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... chef-de-reception of any of our smartest hotels, and they will reel off the names of half a dozen or so elderly bachelors, widowers or wife-quarrelers with huge incomes who prefer to pass along the line of least resistance in domesticity—the private suite ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... manner of means. In the first place, you can't live happily on a canal-boat unless you can afford to keep horses. In fact, canal-boat life is a combination of the most expensive luxuries, since it combines yachting and driving with domesticity. Nevertheless, if you will put your mind on it, you will find that with a canal-boat for your home you can do a great many things that you can't ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... it is the dream of every true woman, to be a mother herself: and yet, somehow—though she would not admit it in so many words—when her young married sisters came with their babies, there was something about their bustling and complacent domesticity that seemed to make maternity bourgeois. She had not dreamed of being a mother like that. She was convinced that her old mother had never been a mother like that. "They seem more like wet-nurses than mothers," she said to herself, with ...
— Different Girls • Various
... simply an ordinary citizen with ordinary views; and if you had told him so he would have taken it as an ordinary compliment. If you had asked him about women, he would have said that one must preserve their domesticity and decorum; he would have used the stalest words, but he would have in reserve the strongest arguments. If you had asked him about government, he would have said that all citizens were free and equal, but he would have meant what he said. If you had asked him about education, ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... delighted with his knowledge of the Scriptures. I must remark here, that such an example as the queen sets in the education of her children makes itself felt through all the families of the kingdom. Domesticity is now the fashion in high life. I have had occasion to see, in many instances, how carefully ladies of rank instruct their children. This argues more favorably for the continuance of English institutions than ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Heaven-appointed places, and becoming perpetual and exclusive feet and hands. This is the great fault of American mothers. They swamp themselves in a slough of self-sacrifice. They are smothered in their own sweetness. They dash into domesticity with an impetus and abandonment that annihilate themselves. They sink into their families like a light in a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... is no longer repellent vulgarity but art, choice and rare—see, here she comes with "What cheer, Rea; Rea's on the job." The sketch is slight, but is welcome and refreshing after the eternal drawing-room and Mrs. Kendal's cumbrous domesticity; it is curious, quaint, perverted, and are not these the aions and the attributes of art? Now see that perfect comedian, Arthur Roberts, superior to Irving because he is working with living material; how trim and saucy he is! and how he evokes the soul, the brandy-and-soda soul, of the young men, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... we came down here," he went on irritably, "the place has seethed with people, and overflowed with domesticity. I never hear one word spoken except on the subject of furniture, gardening and babies! I can't work in such an environment; it stifles all imagination. As for ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... whose brood was so great, and who was like a noisy hen with chickens. So existed the hovering mother instinct with all the women of the valley, though then the mothers fished and hunted and had stirring events to distract them from domesticity and close affection almost as much as had ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... cannot recall a single philoprogenitive moment. These dream women were all conceived of, and I was conceived of, as being concerned in some tremendous enterprise—something quite beyond domesticity. It kept us related—gave us dignity.... ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... have been laid down for observances. There were first, the duties ordained in the Vedas in respect of the order in which he was born and the mode of life he was leading (viz., a Brahmana in the observance of domesticity). There were secondly, the duties prescribed in the scriptures, viz., those especially called the Dharmasastras. And, thirdly, there were those duties that eminent and revered men of former times have followed though not occurring either in the Vedas or the scriptures.[1927] ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... us to the point where we must consider those characteristics that make up domesticity and homekeeping. Early impressions and the consistent teaching of literature, stage, press and religion have given to the home a semi-sacred character, which is one of the great components of the desire to marry, especially for women. The home is, in the ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... in its designation as a one-horse town. In 1884 came another shock to confidence, and in 1893, still another earthquake, as though the knees of the proud must at intervals be humbled. The one-horse station wagon continued to symbolize the quiet domesticity of the citizens of the Hoosier capital: women of unimpeachable social standing carried their own baskets through the aisles of the city market or drove home with onion tops waving triumphantly on the seat beside them. We had not yet hitched our wagon to a gasoline tank, but traffic regulations were ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... public. There were a number of table d'hote places on the cross streets near the broad and shining way; and to one of these he had purposed to escort her, so that the bushel might not be removed from the light of his domesticity. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... protection of the law, and that the rough man has an understanding with the officer on the beat. She has been told that certain streets are "not respectable," but a furtive look down the length of one of them reveals only forlorn and ill-looking houses, from which all suggestion of homely domesticity has long since gone; a slovenly woman with hollow eyes and a careworn face holding up the lurching bulk of a drunken man is all she sees of its "denizens," although she may have known a neighbor's daughter who came home to die of a mysterious disease said to be the ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... in slippers and house-jacket. His wife, too, was dressed comfortably in some soft clinging stuff. Their visitor saw that they had disposed themselves for a quiet uninterrupted evening by the fireside. The domesticity of it all stirred the envy in him. He did not want her to be contented and at peace with his enemy. Something deeper than his vanity cried out in ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... to their final resting-place in the burial ground of the Temple Church, and the staircase of his chambers is said to have been filled with mourners the reverse of domestic—women without a home, without domesticity of any kind, with no friend but him they had come to weep for, outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked city, to whom he had never forgotten to be kind ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... brooding in cold eternal solitude upon the heights, rather than be wooed by valley hawks; I am only a very tired wren, who missed a mate on my first Valentine season, and seeing my plumage grows a rusty brown, I accept the overtures of one similarly forlorn, and hope for serene domesticity under the sheltering eaves of some quiet, cosey barn. You are a nobler bird, no doubt; but trust me dear, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... arguments which have been adduced to prove the original and permanent distinctness of species is, that varieties produced in a state of domesticity are more or less unstable, and often have a tendency, if left to themselves, to return to the normal form of the parent species; and this instability is considered to be a distinctive peculiarity of all varieties, even of those occurring among wild animals in a state of nature, and to ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... his two brother cannibals with sharpened stomachs. After comparing notes with other travellers who have similarly revisited the Island and conscientiously inspected it, I have satisfied myself that it contains no vestige of Mr. Atkins's domesticity or theology, though his track on the memorable evening of his landing to set his captain ashore, when he was decoyed about and round about until it was dark, and his boat was stove, and his strength and spirits failed him, is yet plainly to be traced. So is the hill-top on which Robinson ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... a sufficient income were not extravagant. He looked forward to building a comfortable little house in the suburbs in the midst of an acre or two of garden and lawn, so that his neighbors' windows need not overlook his domesticity. He would have a horse and buggy wherewith to drive his wife through the country on summer afternoons, and later, if his bank-account warranted it, a saddle-horse for Emily and one for himself. He would keep open house in the sense of encouraging his friends to visit him; ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... of the same kind, without having recourse to other animals which they more or less resemble. On the other hand again, some of our first men are of opinion that there are now no original dogs, but that all the packs called wild are those which have made their escape from a state of domesticity. This is not the place to examine the merits of the different proofs brought in favor of each argument; and I hasten to a brief notice of some of those which ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... children?" Persis asked, shaking hands and returning to her sewing. She offered no excuse for continuing her work, nor did Thomas wish it. There was a delicious suggestion of domesticity in the sight of Persis sewing by the shaded lamp while he sat near enough to have touched the busy fingers, had he but won the ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... when the time comes we can find a way to help Katherine if she helps herself as much as Thomas and Molly are doing. By the way, has it occurred to you that there may be some reason for Edith's sudden turn towards domesticity?" ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... affections, flower, leaf and root, from one object to another, with undiminished enthusiasm. Sheelah's capacity for being off with the old and on with the new is almost preternatural; her progress from stage-child to leading lady is accompanied by such various essays in unconventional domesticity that the reader may well experience a sense of confusion, or at least feel some difficulty in sustaining the first freshness of his sympathy. The story is at times almost startlingly American, as when the original betrayer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... in the large office room of the consulate. The big front doors stood open to the sea, where a mile away the breakers tossed and tumbled on the barrier reef. The back door was kept shut, to keep out the meaner noises of domesticity, but at intervals in the course of the trial you could hear the deliberate grinding of the consular coffee; the chasing of consular chickens; the counting of the consular wash; shrill arguments over the price of fish—a grotesque juxtaposition ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... to denote Felicite, my French cook-housekeeper, my all of domesticity in the Chalet ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of his chase? How generous and self-sacrificing you used to be with the slender provisions, and anxious lest the foot-sore huntsman should not get enough to sustain his toilsome existence! What an example you were of domesticity! and I cannot believe that you are anything else to-day but the same ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... together, nor had they even met before the youth had passed his twenty-fifth, the girl her nineteenth year. But we are not of the opinion that young people are the more prone to fall in love with each other for the being educated together in a sort of family domesticity. Such facts are contended for in fiction, but realities have convinced us that such things seldom happen; and if we ever have the fortune to possess children of our own, and wish a son or daughter to wed a particular individual, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... their new adventure in domesticity was a tent eighteen feet by twelve; but as the side-walls were low, they could walk only in the centre, and must range their belongings at the sides. To the left, as one entered the tent, there stood a soapbox with a tiny oil-stove upon it; and then a stand, made out of a ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... there is a greater destiny reserved for you than marriage to a hired secretary, however amiable, personable, and well-meaning. You must prepare yourself to move in a world beyond and above the common hearthstone of bourgeois domesticity." ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... domesticity, formerly in the Rue Notre-Dame de Lorette, with Mademoiselle Heloise Brisetout, had lately been transferred, as we have seen, to the Rue Chauchat. Every morning the retired merchant—every ex-tradesman is a retired merchant—spent two hours in the Rue des Saussayes to attend ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... and rose instantly. It was rather dark in the salon and he did not immediately recognize Mrs. Boyer. But that keen-eyed lady had known him before he turned, had taken in the domesticity of the scene and Peter's part in it, and had drawn the swift conclusion of the pure ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... society. The Spaniards have thus learned the lesson of home in the school of history and tradition. The intense feeling of individuality, which so strongly marks the Spanish character, and which in the political world is so fatal an element of strife and obstruction, favors this peculiar domesticity. The Castilian is submissive to his king and his priest, haughty and inflexible with his equals. But his own house is a refuge from the contests of out of doors. The reflex of absolute authority is here observed, ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... at him over her shoulder and laughed, for she saw that she was gaining her point. The quiet of this luxurious house, her own personality, the subtle domesticity of her action in taking off her hat in his presence—all these were soothing a mind rasped and torn by battle and defeat. But there was something yet which she had not grasped, and she knew it. She glanced at the letters on the table before him. As if the thought ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... domesticity probes deeper than we have yet indicated. It is, in the last analysis, superficial to ticket ourselves off as house-keepers or even as women. What are these unplumbed wastes between housekeepers and teachers, mothers and scholars, civil engineers and professors of Greek, senators and journalists, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... Salgado for his scenes of Minho. The portraits, too, have much of the intensity of the South. The most noteworthy are those by Columbano, Room 110, winner of the grand prize at St. Louis. The four rooms show Portugal prolific of artists who seek beauty in scenes of domesticity and the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... John Edwards' sister, who, just one year ago, had come to set up domesticity in the house of her brother; whereas, previous to her advent, John had "bach'd it" on the ranch, with his men, for four or five years. Jim, and the chum to whom his remarks were addressed, were roosting on a fence, after the manner of a certain class of agriculturists, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... rides several with a singularly intimate and finished method, he hands the umbrella to a reverential bystander; when the trial is over the umbrella is reassumed. If anything were needed to accent its artless domesticity, it would be the group of boys, horse copers in ambition, possibly in achievement, who sit in a row under a fence, with their teeth grimly clenched upon clay pipes, their eyes screwed up in perpetual and ungenial observation. Their conversation is telegraphic, smileless, esoteric, and punctuated ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... "Really, when one comes to think of it, however much it may be against my inclinations I scarcely see how I shall be able to withhold my consent. I believe that you both have at heart the flair for domesticity. This little picture, and the thought of your tete-a-tete ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of a hardened worldliness there were touching glimpses of domesticity and heart: a young bride fed her husband soup from her own plate with her spoon, unabashed by the publicity; a mother and her two pretty daughters hung about a handsome officer, who must have been newly betrothed to one of the girls; and, the whole family showed a helpless ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... doorway to a dark courtyard, and beyond that, a charming turret staircase on the roadway with a gallery outside all wreathed in roses. The gables and the woodwork and the shadowed windows make up an exquisite little picture of mediaeval domesticity. When you return again to the Rue Orbe, look down the Rue Pomme d'Or to your left, and then turn up the Rue Poisson and admire the beautiful choir of St. Nicaise, remembering the story of the famous "boise" I told you in the last chapter. Up the Rue St. Nicaise, past the ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... with complete success. The boxing was of the best, and the local lad, Tim Chick, performed with credit against his experienced antagonist. All the comic man's songs aimed at the folly of marriage and the horrors of domesticity. He seemed to be singing at Raymond, who roared with the rest and hated the humourist all the time. The young man grew uneasy and morose before the finish, drank too much whiskey, and felt glad to get into the cold night air when ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... impressed by the peculiarity of the predicament. They simply peered. They peered everywhere for the truant form of Musa balanced on one side by a bag and on the other by a fiddle case. From the trim houses, each without exception new, twinkled discreet lights, with glimpses of surpassingly correct domesticity, and the wind rustled loudly through the foliage of the prim gardens, ruffling them as it might have ruffled the unwilling hair of the daughters of an arch-deacon. Nobody was abroad. Absurd thoughts ran through ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... the months which followed I can truthfully say that they were the happiest of my existence. The semi-detachment of our island domesticity was a charm against tedium; our family reunions ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... one disputes. Undoubtedly America needs more of their kind. But to impair the dignity and usefulness of the colleges dedicated to the higher education of women by diluting their academic programs with courses on business or domesticity will not meet that need. The unwillingness of college faculties to admit vocational courses to the curriculum is not due to academic conservatism and inability to march with the times, but to an unclouded and accurate conception of ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... long pause again, taking her in as it seemed to him he had never done. "You were never finer than at this minute, in the deepest domesticity of private life. I've no conception whatever of what the actor can do, and no theory whatever about the importance of the theatre. Any infatuation of that sort has completely dropped from me, and for all I care the theatre may go to the dogs—which I judge ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... least idea of living up to the character my friend Lanrivain ascribed to me (as a matter of fact, under my unsociable exterior I have always had secret yearnings for domesticity) that I took his hint one autumn afternoon and went to Kerfol. My friend was motoring over to Quimper on business: he dropped me on the way, at a cross-road on a heath, and said: "First turn to the right and second ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... be quieter and less important than man's. Woman is destined for nurse and educator of infancy, being herself infant-like, and an infant for life, a sort of intermediate stage between the child and the man, who is the real being.... Girls should be trained for domesticity and subjection.... Women are the most thorough-paced and ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... corresponding excess of an opposite kind, the Byronic dissolution of domestic feeling was not entirely without justification. There is probably no uglier growth of time than that mean and poor form of domesticity, which has always been too apt to fascinate the English imagination, ever since the last great effort of the Rebellion, and which rose to the climax of its popularity when George III. won all hearts by living like a farmer. Instead of the fierce light beating about a throne, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... political history the instances are rare of women who have quitted the sphere of domesticity and private life to take an active part in the affairs of State. We say "fortunately;" for in our opinion such abstention has tended to the happiness of ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... carved from the solid rock—were in darkness, but from the upper window of Avice's tiny freehold glimmered a light. Its rays were repeated from the far-distant sea by the lightship lying moored over the mysterious Shambles quicksand, which brought tamelessness and domesticity into due position ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... victim of Lady Dunstable (also deposited on the scene by the same obliging arm), get busy unearthing so various a past for the undesirable one that she retires baffled, epigrammatic brilliance bites the dust, and domesticity is left triumphant. It is a jolly little story, very short, refreshingly simple, and constructed throughout on the most approved library lines. If the writer's name were not Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD, I should say that she ought ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... then that Mrs. Delarayne had opened her heart to Cleopatra. No, she had made up her mind. Reluctantly she had been forced to the conclusion that Leonetta must go away,—to a school of domesticity, or of gardening or something,—where she could acquire not only information, but also the discipline which would save her from ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... Mrs. Coo (Mrs. Glover), a widow, whose demands entitle her to the dignity of a "private sitting and bedroom" lodger. Mr. Woodpecker is very comfortable, and does not want to go; but the hostess is obstinate: he appeals to her feelings as an orphan, without home or domesticity; but the lady, having been in business for a dozen years, has lost all sympathy for orphans of six-and-twenty. In short, Mrs. Walker determines he shall walk, and so shall his luggage (a plethoric trunk and an obese carpet-bag are on the stage); for she has dreamt even that has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... dust which one encounters in the dry season are almost suffocating. Now and then a few potted flowers in front of a low cabin, a bird cage with its chirping occupant, a noisy parrot on an exposed perch, a dozing cat before the door, all afford glimpses of domesticity; but, on the whole, this mining town, rich in native silver, gave us in its humbler portions the impression of being mostly composed of people half clothed and seemingly ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... attracted by the Cornet's glittering cuirass and plumed helmet; perhaps by his substantial income; and perhaps she tired of being a homeless wanderer, and felt that here at last was a prospect of settling down and experimenting with domesticity. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... later when Blue Bonnet returned, flushed and radiant after a stiff game with Patty, she found the kettle boiling and a general air of domesticity reigning in her friend's comfortable quarters. Annabel nodded from the depths of a chair and went on with instructions to Ruth, who was ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... table near by was already set for the coming meal. On a chair facing the fire a fat, white cat was purring blissfully. The room was delightfully warm; the whole scene had an irresistible attraction and air of domesticity. ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... sake of the fragrant manliness of the stalwart and deserving knight, I straightway resolved to enter the thankless and precarious business of matchmaking, one in which I had not had one iota of experience; but as women have to ace marriage, domesticity, and mostly all the issues of life assigned them, without training, I did not give up heart. As a first effort I determined that Dawn should chaperon me when I went for my row on the morrow. As I looked at the sun sinking behind the blue hills and shedding a wonderfully ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... novelists are of two schools. One of them depicts the dwellers on these heights as a superior race, using a vocabulary half Biblical, half minor-poetic, in which to express the most exalted sentiments; the other draws a picture of upland domesticity comparable to that found in a cage of hyenas. Mr. HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE, though he is too skilled an artist to overdo the colouring, inclines (I am bound to say) so much towards the former method that I confess to an uneasy doubt, at times, whether any human ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... of Blandford's fond memories of his wife's conservative habits, Puritan practicality, religious domesticity, and strong family attachments, to withstand Demorest's dogmatic convictions. He smiled, however, with a certain complacency, as he also recalled the previous autumn when the first news of the California ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... at all pretty, in spite of her delicate, regular features and tall figure. Her hair was dry and thin, her eyes lusterless, her complexion thick, with brown patches on it, and her conversation was of a domesticity unparalleled in Sylvia's experience. She seemed oddly drawn to Mrs. Marshall, although that lady was now looking rather graver than was her wont, and talked to her of the overflowing Fiske nursery with a loquacity which was evidently not her usual habit. Indeed, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... place, the great simplicity of the whole struck me. It is like a little grange or farm. The rooms are small and low, and of a pleasant domesticity; it is a place apt for a patriarchal life, where simple people might live at close quarters with each other. The house is hardly visible from the gate. You turn out of a steep lane, embowered by trees, into a little gravel sweep, approaching the house from the side. But its position is ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... (weaver) and daughter (duhitar, milkmaid). Without confining the sphere of woman's activity to Kueche, Kirche, Kinder, as the present German Kaiser is said to do, the Bushido ideal of womanhood was preeminently domestic. These seeming contradictions—Domesticity and Amazonian traits—are not inconsistent with the Precepts of Knighthood, as we ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... tea pensively, and Wentworth listened contentedly to the musical murmur of her voice. Such an entrancing effect had it on him that he paid less heed to what she said than a man ought when a lady is speaking. The tea-drinking had added a touch of domesticity to the tete-a-tete which rather went to the head of the young man. He clinched and unclinched his hand out of sight under the table, and felt the moisture on his palm. He hoped he would be able ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... great genius ever come into the world after commonplace pre-natal conditions? Was a maker of history ever born amidst the pleasant harmonies of a satisfied domesticity? Of a mother who was less than remarkable, although she may have escaped being great? Did a woman with no wildness in her blood ever inform a brain with electric fire? The students of history know that while many mothers of great men have been ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... blazing torches round fields, orchards, pastures, or cattle-stalls. Less widespread are the customs of hurling lighted discs into the air and trundling a burning wheel down hill. The ceremonial of the Yule log is distinguished from that of the other fire-festivals by the privacy and domesticity which characterise it; but this distinction may well be due simply to the rough weather of midwinter, which is apt not only to render a public assembly in the open air disagreeable, but also at any moment to defeat the object of the assembly by extinguishing the all-important ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... domicile, residence, dwelling-place, abode, dwelling, hearth, hearthstone; habitat, seat; asylum, retreat. Associated Words: domestic, domesticate, domesticity, domestication, inhabitativeness. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... enraptured eyes. It was slightly sickening—but let that pass. I was beginning to understand that science is a jealous mistress and that any contemplated infidelity of mine stood every chance of being squelched. No; evidently I had not been fashioned for the joys of legal domesticity. Science, the wanton jade, had not yet finished her dance with me. Apparently my maxixe with her was to ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... have been stage conspirators hastening to a rendezvous. The cavernous chill and odor which I had before noted as coming from some sarcophagus of larder or oven, where "funeral baked meats" might have been kept in stock, began to oppress me. The hollow and fictitious domesticity of this common board had never before seemed so hopelessly displayed. And Tom, the waiter, his napkin twisted in his hand and his face turned with a sudden dark abstraction towards the window, appeared to be really "lying low," and waiting for ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... her of the girl whom I loved, whom I was engaged to marry. She was on the surface sympathetic; in reality she never afterwards let pass an opportunity of making some scathing remark as to the folly of a young man sacrificing a possibly brilliant future for the commonplace joys of domesticity. I became even as the rest. My head was turned; my letters to Alice became less frequent; every penny of the money I was earning went to pay my tailor's bills, and to keep pace with the life which, as her constant companion, I was forced to live. All the ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... independent, and masculine. Once, long ago, he had been a roly-poly pepper-and-salt kitten; he had a home in those days, and a name, "Gipsy," which he abundantly justified. He was precocious in dissipation. Long before his adolescence, his lack of domesticity was ominous, and he had formed bad companionships. Meanwhile, he grew so rangy, and developed such length and power of leg and such traits of character, that the father of the little girl who owned him was almost convincing when he declared that the young ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... accompanied him on these trips; she instinctively divined a man's desire for a ramble among old haunts with old friends, freed for a brief space from the happy burdens of domesticity. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... was to be done with it. I say Marianne and Jennie, for, though the case undoubtedly is Marianne's, yet, like everything else in our domestic proceedings, it seems to fall, somehow or other, into Jennie's hands, through the intensity and liveliness of her domesticity of nature. Little Jennie is so bright and wide-awake, and with so many active plans and fancies touching anything in the housekeeping world, that, though the youngest sister, and second party in this affair, a stranger, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... which companionship with gentlewomen had given him. Insensibly he had fallen a prey to a certain harshness and bitterness of temper, which was foreign to his nature; and he had become reckless, so men said, because of defeated ambition. But now yielding to the warmth of tender domesticity, the true nature of the man asserted itself.[614] He grew, perhaps not less ambitious, but more sensible of the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... go out of doors would have been the uttermost folly, and Stane busied himself in the fashioning of snow-shoes which now would be necessary before they could venture far afield. The girl was engaged in preparing a meal, and the cabin had an air of domesticity that would probably have utterly misled any stranger who had chanced to look in. Stane, as he worked, was very conscious of the girl's presence, and conscious also that from time to time his companion glanced at him, whilst he bent over the tamarack frames, weaving in and out the webbing ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... betrayed a lack of domesticity because she had not been able to "see" the interior of the cottage—"shack"—very clearly. Sunny rooms, white curtains, bright cushions and books, pictures and rugs mingled together rather confusingly in her mind when she dwelt upon the inside of her future home. It would be bright, and ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... two defeated joshers paused inside the Payson gate, a scene of touching domesticity met their gaze. Under a jasmine-covered corner of the piazza, nestling in the depths of a great easy chair, lay Freshman Van Dyke. Senorita Dolores, in the role of ministering angel, was bending unnecessarily close. Dr. Mead, as near his patient as was consistent with delicacy, was lounging ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... Above this a polyglot babel of signs struggled to indicate the abodes of palmists, dressmakers, musicians and doctors. Still higher up draped curtains and milk bottles white on the window sills proclaimed the regions of domesticity. ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... little family, which was, even now, receiving education under the cultured guidance of the little French-Canadian priest who had set up his Mission in this wide wilderness. For the first time in all her married life she found herself free to indulge in the delights of a domesticity her woman's ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... industrialism and domesticity continued until gradually men stepped into the field of work, perhaps as a result of their wives' example, and became farmers on a larger scale, merchants of a wider scope, artisans, handicraftsmen, guild members of a more developed technique. ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... sentimental dreaming, but a passionate clutch into the infinite, a battle for deliverance from the bondage of the world. So Johann himself had been in his youth, when he had become a revolutionist, and before beer and gravy and domesticity had ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... before marriage, as we have seen, he found himself under a new depression in the consciousness that the new bliss was not blissful to him. Inclination yearned back to its old, easier custom. And the deeper he went in domesticity the more did the sense of acquitting himself and acting with propriety predominate over any other satisfaction. Marriage, like religion and erudition, nay, like authorship itself, was fated to become an outward requirement, and Edward Casaubon ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the scent of fire nor the red eye of it winking on the hill that at length gave her despairing heart a fresh handful of hope—nothing less indeed than the aroma of boiling coffee. It had such a feeling of comfort and welcome, of domesticity and peace in it that she felt as if she approached a door with a friend standing ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... must begin to appreciate the Biblical passages about partridges, and the wings of a dove, and so forth, most heartily and vividly long before seven years are out, more particularly if he be a man so much given to domesticity as was ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... an ambitionless normality. They had decided that with economy they could still afford the apartment, which Tom, with the domesticity of an elderly cat, had grown fond of. The old English hunting prints on the wall were Tom's, and the large tapestry by courtesy, a relic of decadent days in college, and the great profusion of orphaned candlesticks and the carved Louis XV chair in which ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to set herself seriously at the problems before her. It was a new theory about his wife's character, which the intelligent young man laid by on a mental shelf for future use after this period of intense domesticity should be past. ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... domestic,—elephants,—ferrets{72}. Reproductive organs not subject to disease in Zoological Garden. Dissection and microscope show that hybrid is in exactly same condition as another animal in the intervals of breeding season, or those animals which taken wild and not bred in domesticity, remain without breeding their whole lives. It should be observed that so far from domesticity being unfavourable in itself makes more fertile: [when animal is domesticated and breeds, productive power increased from more food and selection of fertile races]. As ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... labor. All life seems more or less torpid and listless in the tropics. As has been intimated, the morals of these people of the Straits will not bear writing about; the marriage rite has little force among them, and domesticity is not understood. They are more nearly Mohammedan than aught else, and its forms are somewhat preserved, but the faith of Mecca has only a slight hold upon them. There are intelligent and cultivated Malays, those of Sumatra, Borneo, and Java are notably so; but we have been speaking of the masses. ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... Art immoral, or non-moral, or highly moral? Here again public opinion is worth examining. Artists, we are told, are bad husbands, and they do not pay their debts. Or if they become good husbands and take to paying their debts, they take also to wallowing in domesticity and produce bad art or none at all; they get tangled in the machinery of practical reactions. Art, again, is apt to deal with risky subjects. Where should we be if there were not a Censor of Plays? Many of these instructive attitudes about artists as immoral or non-moral, ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... Henri Becque's two best-known plays aptly exemplify the two types of opening. In Les Corbeaux we have almost an entire act of calm domesticity in which the only hint of coming trouble is an allusion to Vigneron's attacks of vertigo. In La Parisienne Clotilde and Lafont are in the thick of a vehement quarrel over a letter. It proceeds ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Billy during the next few days, acquiring her new domesticity, that she did not notice how little she was seeing of Cyril. Then she suddenly realized it, and asked herself the reason for it. Cyril was at the house certainly, just as frequently as he had been; but she saw that a ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... is Bolingbroke in Richard II. who betrays most effectively the tranquillising influence of patriotism. In him the patriotic instinct inclines to identity with the simple spirit of domesticity. It is a magnified love for his own hearthstone—a glorified home-sickness. The very soil of England, England's ground, excites in Bolingbroke an overmastering sentiment of devotion. His main happiness ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... half-shut eyes, and gaze upon the cheerful purity, even like a shepherd on the hill. But these little occasional disarrangements serve but to preserve the spirit of permanent arrangement, without which the very virtue of domesticity dies. What sacrilege, therefore, against the Lares and Penates, to turn a whole house topsy-turvy, from garret to cellar, regularly as May-flowers deck the zone of the year! Why, a Turkey or a Persian, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... with another spirit equally heedless and daring. Not nearly so often, however, as one might suppose, did he die with his boots on. Many of the most wealthy and respected citizens now living in the border states served as cowboys before settling down to quiet domesticity. ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... "was very fair to look upon." Of course. In relating the history of these examples who have been held up since time immemorial for us to follow, the writers of "Holy Writ" never expatiate upon their virtue, industry, domesticity, constancy or love, but we are simply and briefly told they were "fair to look upon," and the natural logical inference is that we ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... reticence of the Japanese," I continued, "we hope to meet some of them who will show us something more of their domesticity than we can ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... the English genius for domesticity more notably declared than in the institution of this festival—almost one may call it so—of afternoon tea. Beneath simple roofs, the hour of tea has something in it of sacred; for it marks the end of domestic work and worry, the beginning of restful, sociable ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... in fact, an air of pleasing domesticity diffused over the whole circus. This was, perhaps, partly an effect from our extreme proximity to its performances; I had never been on quite such intimate terms with equitation and aerostation of all kinds; but I think it was also largely ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Artist The Doer of Good The Disciple The Master The House of Judgment The Teacher of Wisdom Wilde gives directions about 'De Profundis' Carey Street Sorrow wears no mask Vita Nuova The Grand Romantic Clapham Junction The Broken Resolution Domesticity at Berneval A ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... small black eyes upon him. She said nothing. The intrusion of a young man into matters essentially domestic she strongly disapproved. Under "D" in "Aphorisms" this woman had a trenchant note touching this matter. "D. Domesticity. Domesticity," said this note, "is the offspring of all the womanly virtues. The virtues impregnate the woman, and domesticity is the resultant child. Absence of a single womanly trait aborts or debilitates the offspring. Men have nothing whatever to do with ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... reeling years, The crown and chief of certitudes, For whose calm eyes and modest ears Time writes the rule and text of prudes— That, surpliced, stoops a nuptial head, Nor chooses to live blindly free, But, with all pulses quieted, Plays tunes of domesticity— That Love I sing of and have sung And mean to sing till Death yawn sheer, He rules the music of my tongue, Stills it or quickens, there or here. I say but this: as we went up I heard the Monthly give a sniff And "if the big dog makes the pup—" She murmured—then repeated "if!" The caudle ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... deeply disturbed by Zulime's keen interest in him, had I not been fully informed of their relationship, which was entirely that of intellectual camaraderie. Fuller was not merely a resolved bachelor; he was joyously and openly opposed to any form of domesticity. He loved his freedom beyond all else. The Stewardess knew this and revelled in his wit, sharing my delight in his bitter ironies. His verbal inhumanities gave her joy, because she didn't believe in them. They were ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... color and life there would be on the Asian shore ... Europe had somehow particularly sickened him on this last voyage.... All its repose was sordid, all its passion was calculated. England and its queen mourned the sudden death of the prince consort, but it mourned him with a sort of middle-class domesticity, and no majesty. So a grocer's family might have mourned, remembering how well papa cut the mutton.... He was so damned good at everything, Albert was, and he approved of art and science—within reason.... There was a contest for a human ideal in America, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... appurtenances. Twenty feet away, on the other side, was to be seen the sailing-master's wife, sitting under orders, sedate, matronly, knitting a pale blue shawl and giving to the bright scene an air of indescribable domesticity. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... turns the coy captured head to meet his glance, is, quite unconsciously, his own, and the 'ideal' he seeks is but the perfect mirror. Yet it is not that mirror he marries after all: for when at last he has come to know what that word—one so distasteful, so 'soiled' to his ear 'with all ignoble' domesticity—what that word 'wife' really expresses, he has learnt, too, to discredit those cynical guides of his youth who love so well to write Ego as the last word ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces absolutely no vibrations . . . I have known several Jacks, and they all, without exception, were more than usually plain. Besides, Jack is a notorious domesticity for John! And I pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment's solitude. The only ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... variations of domestic productions, which man accumulates for his mere fancy or use. No doubt these are all caused by some unknown law, but I cannot believe they were ordained for any purpose, and if not so ordained under domesticity, I can see no reason to believe that they were ordained in a state of nature. Of course it may be said, when you kick a stone, or a leaf falls from a tree, that it was ordained, before the foundations of the world were laid, exactly where that stone or leaf should lie. In this sense the subject ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Domesticity was the last thing anybody would suspect a characteristic of either Jane or Zura. Not knowing what the result would be, I gave the cook a holiday and turned the incongruous pair loose to do as they pleased in kitchen ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... restrictions and things might be eased a bit. Apparently there is a circle of people in the know, and by them it was immediately appreciated what this "relaxation" implied. The first overt sign of something doing was a "heavy demand for money," a need which I too, for all my quiet domesticity, have felt from time to time. No doubt the fast City set were filling their pockets before commencing a course of "relaxation." The next development was that the Market was approached from all sides with "applications for accommodation." I can picture the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... of a business life, the duel between man and man, through which thousands pass without gaining anything except business acuteness, but which introduced the great psychologist to hundreds of new types, and showed to his keen, observant eyes man, not in society or domesticity, but in undress, fighting for life itself, or for all that makes life worth living. In the Rue de Lesdiguieres he had struggled with himself, striving in cold and hunger to gain the mastery of his art. Here he battled with others; and since, except on paper, he never possessed business capacity, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... location. Jewish faces of the least prepossessing type look askance into eyes which they recognize as both unfamiliar and observant. Women, unkempt and slouchy, or else arrayed in dubious finery, brush against one. At intervals fast growing greater the remains of an extinct domesticity and privacy still show themselves in the shape of old-fashioned brick or wooden houses with Dutch gables or Queen Anne fronts, but for the most part tall tenement-houses, their lower stories uniformly given up to some small traffic, claim exclusive right of possession. The sidewalks are crowded ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... be said, but I am going to say it, if it snows. I am at my best in these tender scenes of idyllic domesticity. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... analyzing his emotions. But as he sat in his Katy-bereft 10x12 parlor he hit unerringly upon the keynote of his discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to his happiness. His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by the dull round of domesticity, had been sharply stirred by the loss of her presence. Has it not been dinned into us by proverb and sermon and fable that we never prize the music till the sweet-voiced bird has flown—or in other no less ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... whatever pliability of disposition, or other inherent suitability, led to the first domestication of certain species of animals, the changes induced in their natures by many generations of domesticity have made them amenable to man's control to a degree which puts a wide difference between them and their wild relations. A wild ass, though brought up from its birth in a stable, would make a very intractable costermonger's moke. We may infer from this that the ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... by all this terrible time unexpected deeps of maternal tenderness in childish little Cherry; there had been unsuspected qualities of domesticity and sacrifice. A new Cherry had been born, a Cherry always beautiful, always resourceful, always admired. Busy with Martin's trays, out in the garden searching for shy violets, conferring with the Chinese ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... amused resentment. It was his domesticity which was his undoing. Old Man Badger on the hillside would never have dillied or dallied ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... After all, domesticity was her birthright. With an answering low of encouragement the black cow turned and trotted amiably back to meet ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... the spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands." That was probably very true as there were lots of chestnut trees at that time. So we have nut trees that give us this connotation of domesticity. They make us think ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... think, a great deal to do with his position as a member of an alien minority in Ireland. He who has no real country can have no real home. The average autochthonous Irishman is close to patriotism because he is close to the earth; he is close to domesticity because he is close to the earth; he is close to doctrinal theology and elaborate ritual because he is close to the earth. In short, he is close to the heavens because he is close to the earth. But we must not expect any of these elemental ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... pleased to gratify her people by going among them and reciprocating courtesies. Less reserved than some other predecessors, Queen Victoria, surrounded by her family, still seems attended by a thoroughly English spirit of domesticity; the manner in which the children accompany their parents, share the walks of their father on shore, and enter into the whole spirit of the voyage, is simply a model of the national manners according to their best type. And while her husband ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... homes; but, although his wife urged him to do the same, Jackson steadfastly refused to absent himself even for a few days from the front. In November, to his unbounded delight, a daughter had been born to him. "To a man of his extreme domesticity, and love for children," says his wife, "this was a crowning happiness; and yet, with his great modesty and shrinking from publicity, he requested that he should not receive the announcement by telegraph, and when it came to ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... greasy plates is the one thing that gets on my nerves. And it is a little Waterloo that must be faced three times every day, of every week, of every month, of every year. And I was never properly "broke" for domesticity and the dish-pan! Why can't some genius invent a self-washing fry-pan? My hair is growing so long that I can now do it up in a sort of half-hearted French roll. It has been quite cold, with a wonderful fall of snow. The sleighing could not ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... stand for home and everything I was leaving behind me, with reluctance, especially that season of the year. For one thing, he is named after Mr. Winkle, the Christmas guest of Mr. Wardle; and there is indeed something Dickensian in his union of domesticity with exuberance. He jumped about me, barking like a small battery, under the impression that I was going for a walk; but I could not, alas, take him with me on a stroll to Palestine. Incidentally, he would have ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... modern curriculum of "Household and Social Science" may attract a certain number of men of the suitable type of mind. The attitude of the community is changing so rapidly that one may hope those fears to be groundless which speak of "relegating women back to the limited sphere of domesticity," and thereby losing so much that has been gained with ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... this day, And live without the great felicity Which, as TOM used of old to say, Can't fail to wait on domesticity. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... night, Paragot drew her down and kissed her cheek, which was an unprecedented mark of domesticity. Blanquette turned brick-red, and I suppose her foolish heart beat wildly. I have known my own heart to beat wildly for far less, and I am not a woman; but ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke |
