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Sex   Listen
noun
Sex  n.  
1.
The distinguishing peculiarity of male or female in both animals and plants; the physical difference between male and female; the assemblage of properties or qualities by which male is distinguished from female.
2.
One of the two divisions of organic beings formed on the distinction of male and female.
3.
(Bot.)
(a)
The capability in plants of fertilizing or of being fertilized; as, staminate and pistillate flowers are of opposite sexes.
(b)
One of the groups founded on this distinction.
The sex, the female sex; women, in general.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sex" Quotes from Famous Books



... maintained to the last that the whole thing was a myth, and jokingly said to Monckton: "When you find these duck-footed people, you had better see that Walker does not take them for birds, and shoot and skin a couple of specimens of each sex and add them to his collection." (For my chief hobby in this and many other countries all over the world consisted in adding to my fine collections of birds and butterflies in the ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker

... of our race, we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. With Dr. Crummell, "In her girlhood all the delicate tenderness of her sex has been rudely outraged. In the field, in the rude cabin, in the press-room and in the factory, she was thrown into the companionship of coarse and ignorant men. No chance was given her for delicate reserve or tender modesty. From her girlhood she ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... were of the eccentric old man, who had been to him a father, and from whom he had received Spring Bank, together with the many peculiar ideas which made him the strange, odd creature he was, a puzzle and a mystery to his own sex, and a kind of terror to the female portion of the neighborhood, who looked upon him as a woman-hater, and avoided or coveted his not altogether disagreeable society, just as their fancy dictated. For years the old man and the boy had ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... draft on sight on my banker for all expenses. Spare nothing. You know I am quite a grand seigneur. I must use this masculine expression, since your sex have exclusively appropriated to yourselves (tyrants as you are) a term, so significant as ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... changes produced in my conception of things were so striking as the one which led me to cease to see in one of our chambermaids a mere servant of the female sex, but, on the contrary, a WOMAN upon whom depended, to a certain extent, my peace of mind and happiness. From the time of my earliest recollection I can remember Masha an inmate of our house, yet never until the occurrence of which I am going to speak—an ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy

... necessarily subject to correction by any one who may have had superior opportunities for forming a trustworthy judgment. I contend, however, not as a matter of opinion, but as what seems to me to be a certainty, that whatever may be the inward feeling in regard to the other sex on the part of the men of either nation after they have arrived at mature years, the young Englishman, as he comes to manhood, possesses a much higher ideal of womanhood than is possessed by the young American of corresponding ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... taken heart of grace from that airy kiss. It stood to him as a symbol that, though one of the sex had proved a deserter to his standard, there were still volunteers. He treasured the incident as a king treasures the homage of his humblest subject when rebellion is rife in the kingdom. On such trifles ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice

... reduced to his salary, in hope that the smallness of his income would prevent his relapsing into mischief. And by some singular good fortune, on which neither the mother nor the son had reckoned, Hulot seemed to have foresworn the fair sex. His subdued behaviour, ascribed to the course of nature, so completely reassured the family, that they enjoyed to the full his recovered amiability and delightful qualities. He was unfailingly attentive to his wife and children, escorted them to the play, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... talents, our veneration for your character, our gratitude for the eminent services your writings render our sex, our people, our faith, in which the sacred cause of true religion is embodied: all these motives combine to induce us to intrude on your presence, in order to give utterance to sentiments which we are happy to feel and delighted to express. Until you arose, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... Egypt. Eight others were founded in his lifetime, numbering 3000 monks. Within fifty years from his death his societies could reckon 50,000 members. These coenobia resembled vilIages, peopled by a hard-working religious community, ail of one sex. The buildings were detached, small and of the humblest character. Each cell or hut, according to Sozomen (H.R. iii. 14), contained three monks. They took their chief meal in a common refectory at 3 P.M., up to which hour they usually fasted. They ate in silence, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... this situation we were induced to a declaration of Independence not doubting we should be excused by Congress ... as North Carolina seemed quite regardless of our interest and the Indians daily murdering our friends and relations without distinction of age or sex." ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson

... will pull off a deal like that is not worthy of the confidence of one of our sex. But, understand, I am not by any means damning the whole male sex, for I have met gentlemen who threw the lid of their grouch bag in the gutter and didn't care if they ever found it again. Those is the kind of parties that has my trust. Me grub, and I got ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... persisted in confounding one with another. Morbid it was if you like it—perhaps very morbid—but all these heaps of letters which go into the fire one after the other, and which, because I am a woman and have written verses, it seems so amusing to the letter-writers of your sex to write and see 'what will come of it,' ... some, from kind good motives I know, ... well, ... how could it all make for me even such a narrow strip of sunshine as Flush finds on the floor sometimes, and lays his nose along, with both ears ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... husband, the adultery of his wife is sufficient ground for divorce; for the woman, just cause for divorce is more limited. In case of divorce, the children are divided equally between the two, without distinction of sex; thus, if they are two in number, one falls to the father and one to the mother; and in a state of slavery the same thing occurs when husband and wife belong to different masters. If two persons own one slave, the same division is made; for half belongs to each, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... according to the seasons of the year. She is a reading lady, and far gone in the pleasures of friendship: She is always accompanied by a confident, who is witness to her daily protestations against our sex, and consequently a bar to her first steps towards love, upon the strength of her own maxims ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... not be kept waiting, Lord Arthur,' said Mr. Podgers, with his sickly smile. 'The fair sex is apt ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... cries a great deal, all alone there by herself, sir," added Mary, who had her own reasons for believing that Dexter was not really the heart-choice of Jessie—and with the tact of her sex, took it upon herself to throw a little cold water over his ardor. It may be that she hoped to give it ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... is necessary to take into account, is that they are very precocious. A French girl of fifteen is as much developed as regards the sex and love, as an English girl of eighteen. This is accounted for essentially by Catholic education and by the Confessional, which brings forward young girls to ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... and loss of life. Brant proved himself one of the most successful of the leaders in this border warfare, and while he does not seem ever to have been guilty of wanton cruelty himself, those under him, on more than one occasion, ruthlessly murdered their foes, irrespective of age or sex. That he tacitly permitted his followers to murder and scalp unarmed settlers shows that he was still much of a savage. As one historian has written: 'He was not a devil, and not an angel.' It is true, as we shall see, that on several occasions he intervened to save Tory ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood

... every thing; to all threats and entreaties opposing a determined and immovable silence. Many of them depend upon us for their food and salt, and their applications are endless. Three women of Singe are our regular pensioners; for their sex excludes them from the rations granted to the men. By these means we had many excellent opportunities of judging of their habits and temper. Among all these tribes the language differs but slightly—so slightly, indeed, that it is needless to note ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... must ever be a cipher, and endeavored, accordingly, to unite the eclat of the litterateur with that of the man of fashion or of society. He "pushed himself," went much into the world, made friends with the gentler sex, "delivered" poetical addresses, wrote "scriptural" poems, traveled, sought the intimacy of noted women, and got into quarrels with notorious men. All these things served his purpose—if, indeed, I am right in supposing that he had any ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... the same subject in the House of Commons, seems to have produced, at the time, even a more lively and general sensation;—possibly from the nature and numerousness of the assembly before which it was spoken, and which counted among its multitude a number of that sex, whose lips are in general found to be the most rapid ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... more like Paris than England, because one wears a hat at dinner, which I always think looks so much better in a restaurant. The party was about eighteen, and I sat next the host. American men; as far as I have yet seen, are of quite another sex to English or French—I mean you feel more as if you were out with kind Aunts or Grandmothers or benevolent Uncles than just men. They don't try to make the least love to you or say things with two meanings, ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn

... familiar with the fact that there exist two different types of human twins. In the one type the twins differ as much as two children of the same parents born at different periods; they may or may not have the same sex. In the second type the twins have invariably the same sex and resemble each other most closely. Twins of the latter type are produced from the same egg, while twins of the former type are produced ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... whose influence over men is an unfathomable mystery to observers of their own sex. The governess was one of those women. She had inherited the charm, but not the beauty, of her unhappy mother. Judge her by the standard set up in the illustrated gift-books and the print-shop windows—and the sentence must ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... to the roots of our trees by the so-called weaker sex; and the proper way of toasting the new woodwoman is to sing, "For ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various

... quite a platform manner already. I predict you will soon be addressing audiences of rebellious women.... But I am more the Booker Washington of my sex. I want women to work—even at quite humble things—before they insist on equal rights with man. At any rate I want to help them to make an honest livelihood without depending on some one man.... Business seems to ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... do that." Mrs. Morres turned about with the inconsequence of her sex. "I've brought one of the maids up with me. She will take care of me better than most men. She is alarming, this good Susan, to the people who don't know her. But I thought you ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... great duty which she felt was laid upon her in an especial manner, she was by no means a reformer of one idea, but her interest was manifested in every question affecting the welfare of humanity. Peace, temperance, education, prison reform, and equality of civil rights, irrespective of sex, engaged her attention. Under all the disadvantages of her estrangement from popular favor, her charming Greek romance of Philothea and her Lives of Madame Roland and the Baroness de Stael ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... country perhaps are women more cruelly used than among the poorer classes of England, while in no country under the sun is greater sympathy expressed for the weaker sex; a paradox which was strikingly exemplified in 1850. The Austrian General Haynau in that year paid a visit to this country. Some time before he had earned unenviable notoriety by his treatment of the wives and daughters of Hungarian insurgents who ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... not think this feeling is one peculiar to our sex alone; I have heard women express the same in ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... * What boy has not felt a thrill of pride, for the sex, at the dogged persistence with which Columbus clung to his purpose and to Isabella after Ferdinand had flung ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... one might call a ladies' man, though I like their company immensely, and during my college days and since have made various friends among the sex. I think that I rather appeal to a certain type of girl for the reason that I never make love to them; I leave that to the numerous others who do it infinitely better than I could hope to, and take my pleasure out of girls' society ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... out to be as efficient as the man. This sounds almost prophetic; but it was probably intended to operate on the cultivation of the silkworm. Plantations of the mulberry had been ordered, and culture of the cocoon was an industry fitting to the gentler sex, who were the more likely to succeed in it on account of their known partiality for the product. On the other hand, excess in apparel was kept within bounds by a tax. The planting of vines was also ordered; ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... guests was one long to be remembered, not only in the [v]annals of the Rockville Hunting Club but in the annals of Rockville itself. The fair de Compton literally turned the heads of old men and young boys, and even succeeded in conquering the critics of her own sex. She was marvelously beautiful, and her beauty was of a kind to haunt one in one's dreams. It was easy to perceive that she had made a conquest of Tom, and I know that every suggestion he made and every project he planned had for its sole end and aim the enjoyment ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... gallant adversary and his country's idol on his hands, the penalties of debt and treason hanging over him, the fertility of an acute intellect wasted on vain expedients,—an outlaw, an adventurer, a plausible reasoner with one sex and fascinating betrayer of the other, poor, bereaved, contemned,—one holy, loyal sentiment lingered in his perverted soul,—love for the fair, gifted, gentle being who called him father. The only disinterested sympathy his letters breathe is for her; and the feeling and sense ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... the pool of Siloam, they came to a water-course at which there was being conducted a considerable washing of clothes. The washerwomen—the term is used as being generic to the trade and not to the sex, for some of the performers were men—were divided into two classes, who worked separately; not so separately but what they talked together, and were on friendly terms; but still there was a division. The upper washerwomen, among whom the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... youths every morning what colors the ladies would on that day wear; for all was done according to the pleasure of the ladies. In these so handsome clothes, and habiliments so rich, think not that either one or other of either sex did waste any time at all; for the masters of the wardrobes had all their raiments and apparel so ready for every morning, and the chamber-ladies were so well skilled, that in a trice they would be drest, and completely in their clothes from head to foot. And to have ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... are capable of dying of grief for her; do not gratify her so far. Double your serenity and coolness, and, if need be, paint like a dowager; it is necessary to sustain before these affected dames the dignity of the uglier sex of which we have the honor of forming a part. I approve the position you have taken. The Pale Faces should bear moral torture with the same impassiveness with which the Red ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... of all elephants up to the required working point is so fully conceded in India that the market value of an animal depends wholly upon its age, sex, build and the presence or absence of good tusks. The animal's education is either sufficient for the buyer, or, if it is not, he knows ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... tree full of verdure had arisen in a day out of the barren breast of Mother Earth, it would scarcely have been a greater miracle that what really happened when a child of the soil, a girl, rising triumphant over the disabilities of age, sex, birth, and condition, saved France from destruction. Summoned by celestial voices, by angels whom she not only heard but saw, Joan of Arc started upon her mission of ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... the Family.—(1)The Family rests upon the Great Biological Fact of Sex. While sex does not characterize all animal forms, still it does characterize all except the simplest forms of animal life. These simplest forms multiply or reproduce by fission, but such asexual reproduction is almost entirely confined to the unicellular ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... faithful mothers, he might, perhaps, have been less anxious about the apparel and the manners of his converts. Could he have foreseen a Margaret Fuller, a Maria Mitchell, or an Emma Willard, possibly he might have suspected that sex does not determine the capacity of the individual. Or, could he have had a vision of the public school system of this Republic, and witnessed the fact that a large proportion of the teachers are women, it is possible that he might have hesitated to utter so tyrannical ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... they settle the point by a crab race on the beach. The crab race consisted of traveling on all fours in a sidewise direction and was as difficult as it was ridiculous. Anthony won because Antha stepped on her skirt and lost her balance. Then Sahwah spoke up and said she must insist on her sex having fair play and that in order to make the race fair and above board Anthony must wear a skirt, too. Anthony protested loudly, but the Chiefs ruled that it was right and just, and Anthony, still protesting, was hustled into a skirt of his sister's ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... Addison and Steele with which his contemporaries sought to associate him. There was nothing in him of the courtier-like grace employed in 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 ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... photographs only, but there are many more of them, and (strange innovation!) there are more gentlemen than ladies. For this preponderance there is a good commercial reason, as any student of the work will quickly discover, for we are now entering a sphere of life where the beauty of the sterner sex (if so severe a word can be applied to such sublimation of everything that is soft and voluptuous and endearing) is more considered than that of the other. Beautiful ladies are here in some profusion, but the first place is for beautiful and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various

... commonly in interspecific hybrids either because the chromosomes fail to pair in meiosis or because the parent genes when brought together in the hybrid interact in some way deleterious to the formation of sex-cells. Furthermore, cytoplasmic sterility is likely to occur ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various

... Most come to see me, and seeing me, return'd Full of my praises? teaching their Chroniclers To make their Stories perfect? for where the name, Merely the word of fair Erota stands, It is a lasting History to time, Begetting admiration in the men, And in my own Sex envie: which glorie's lost, When I shall stick my beautie in a cloud, And ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... pro-Hindu Theosophists, champions of Hinduism more Hindu than the Hindus, after whom the educated Hindus flock, are not even Indians; alas, they belong, the most prominent of them, to the inferior female sex! I mean the Russian lady, the late Madame Blavatsky, the English ladies Mrs. Annie Besant and Miss Noble [Sister Nivedita], and the American, Colonel Olcott. Which side of that glaring incongruity is to give way—brahman and caste ideas, or the buttressing ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... projection of these against a Puritan background ties symbolical of everything the Anglo-Saxon shudders at and abhors; of anarchy and mob rule, of bohemia and vagabondia, of sedition and murder, of Latin revolutions and reigns of terror; of sex irregularity—not of the clandestine sort to be found in decent communities—but of free love that flaunts itself in the face of an outraged public. For there were women in the band. All this, and more, the invaders suggested—atheism, unfamiliarity with soap and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... hastened on foot to meet him, running across the Gardens, on his return from the Continent, have been made the subject of satire. She was generally accompanied by her five daughters, a pathetic little band, cramped in the fetters of royalty, so stringent toward their sex. Portraits of two of them may be seen in ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... that of the women of this society. For though it might be supposed at the first sight (the Quakers being cast as it were in one mould) that the same character would attach to both, yet it must be obvious, on farther consideration, that it cannot be wholly applicable to the female sex. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... of Vienna, in acknowledging the honor of being made a corresponding member, "because our own ladies, who show so much virtuous perseverance with their waists, may wish to try lip-ornament too." In regard to the other sex, he informed the same Society: "I could see nothing encouraging for the gentlemen who are anxious to prove that we are all descended from a ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... "I mean to free yourself of the bonds that bind your sex; for instance, the bonds of matrimony. It is obsolete, barbarous. It makes of women—slaves ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis

... extraordinary rendezvous—for how could I expose Aunt Jane's madness to the multitude?—that I felt it would take the actual bodily presence of my aunt to convince them that she was not a myth, or at least of the wrong sex for aunts. To have traveled so far in the desperate hope of heading off Aunt Jane, only to be frustrated and to lose my character besides! It would be a stroke too much from fate, I told myself rebelliously, as I crossed the broad ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... the punishment of Thomas, Condemns to banishment the race of Thomas. The whole family goes forth together. No order, sex, age, or condition ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... slaves would spare Their brethren and themselves; great is the strength Of words—for lately did a maiden fair, 1570 Who from her childhood has been taught to bear The Tyrant's heaviest yoke, arise, and make Her sex the law of truth and freedom hear, And with these quiet words—"for thine own sake I prithee spare me;"—did ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... rushed down her cheeks as she spoke, and her lover could only say, "Dearest Lucy, most beloved of my heart, your language, your sentiments, your feelings—so pure, so noble, so far above those commonplaces of your sex, only cause me to shrink almost into nothing when I compare or contrast myself with you. Let, however, one principle guide us—the confidence that our love is mutual and cannot be disturbed. I am for the present placed ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... gentle and good feelings, though poor—like to yourselves in love and affection, though wretched—Woman, in truth, kind, affectionate, and good; blessings to their own—Woman in all things, but in that which is her due and right in Great Britain—care and respect for her sex and virtues. Those whose cause I plead are blessed with as pure and spotless bosoms as your own—though one may be cased in russet or in rags, the other enshrouded in lace—and they die, not through the horrors of war, or of plague, but of starvation ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers

... not vain chattering pies." In mountains, poets say, Echo is hid, For her deformity and monstrous shape: Those mountains are the houses of great lords, Where Stentor, with his hundred voices, sounds A hundred trumps at once with rumour fill'd. A woman they imagine her to be, Because that sex keep nothing close they hear; And that's the reason magic writers frame[101] There are more witches women, than of men; For women generally, for the most part, Of secrets more desirous are than men[102], Which having got, they have no power to hold. In these times had Echo's ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... countenance turned greenish white. But, before he could make a reply, Meschines, who scented mischief in the air, and divined that the gentler sex must somehow be at the ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne

... agricultural home; this penus was cleansed on June 15 for the reception of the first fruits of the harvest, and then closed until June 7 of the following year.[288] These and other simple duties of the Vestals, all of them traceable to the old life on the farm, together with their own sex and maidenhood, preserved this beautiful cult throughout Roman history from all contamination. Vesta in her aedes, a round dwelling which was never a temple in the technical sense, was represented by no statue, and her title of Mater never suggested to the true ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... flight. The momentary commotion was quickly quieted, and our visitors continued their inspection. All of us immediately recognized the personage whom Jack had singled out as the subject of his startling exclamation. It was clear that he had rightly guessed her sex, and she appeared worthy of his admiring designation. Even at the distance of a hundred feet we could see that she was very beautiful. Her complexion was light, with a flame upon the cheeks; her hair a chestnut blond; and her large, ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... described as a "small tea-party" on the sea. But it differs in many respects from such gatherings on shore, inasmuch as the revellers are not "a few friends", male and female, but are usually absolute strangers to each other, and of the male sex only. But the circumstances of their meeting—on the lone ocean, far from home and friends—have a marvellous effect in opening up the fountains of the human heart. The men and officers fraternised at ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne

... Bryan, Charles Warren Fairbanks, and "Tom" Marshall, and when a Socialist had spoken from the court-house steps on a rainy evening, Phil, then in her last year in high school, had been the sole representative of her sex in the audience. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... women in other places, but none had made the slightest impression upon me. Can there be an appointed hour, a conjunction of stars, a union of circumstances, a certain woman among all others to awaken an exclusive passion at the period of life when love includes the whole sex? ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... were published in "Nature," it also seems to have puzzled an able mathematician, and gave rise to some newspaper controversy, which need not be recapitulated. The essence of the problem is that the sex of one child is supposed to give no clue of any practical importance to that of any other child in the same family. Therefore, if one child be selected out of a family of brothers and sisters, the ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster

... go one day to visit the Jesuit College in Havana, yclept "Universidad de Belen." The ladies, weary of dry goods, manifest some disposition to accompany them. This is at once frowned down by the unfairer sex, and Can Grande, appealed to by the other side, shakes his shoulders, and replies, "No, you are only miserable women, and cannot be admitted into any Jesuit establishment whatever." And so the male deputation departs with elation, and returns with airs of superior opportunity, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for several months before the plague, as there did the year after, another, a little before the fire; the old women, and the phlegmatic hypochondriac part of the other sex, whom I could almost call the old women too, remarked, especially afterward, though not till both those judgments were over, that those two comets passed directly over the city, and that so very near the houses that it was plain ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... kept him from those writers who jested with uncleanness; so he was virginal, and pure in all his imaginings. Other lads exchanged confidences in forbidden things, they broke down the barriers and tore away the veils; but Thyrsis had never breathed a word about matters of sex to any living creature. He pondered and guessed, but no one knew his thoughts; and this was a crucial thing, the secret of ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... misty and solitary; Guy Seton's eyes were fixed upon her face with an expression at once so wistful and so ardent that it seemed impossible to meet it with her own. In her heart of hearts Rowena knew perfectly well what that look meant; but with the curious inconsistency of her sex the impulse was strong upon her to fly from what she had most longed for and desired. Conversation was the best refuge for the moment, and she plunged hastily into the ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... sultry hours and to discuss the questions of the day. One of these groups was composed of Ludovico and six other nobles, among whom was a bold, sharp-tongued rich youth named Pio. The conversation touched on topics concerning the fair sex, especially of women historically famous for their personal charms, virtues, and vices. The garrulous Pio ridiculed the noble constancy and other excellent traits of ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... tasks exclusively for women. I would have women side by side with men in every division of labour, working out the task with equal fidelity, equal authority, and equal rewards. One of the results of this amazing age is going to be the new comprehension, understanding, and sympathy of the one sex for ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser

... other back yards are not filled with the bones of stupid, tactless, irritating wives. The fact that no such horror has as yet been unearthed, bears eloquent testimony to the noble self-control and patience of many of the sterner sex. ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... in England uninstructed. In disseminating information, and in awakening feeling and conscience, the women of England were particularly earnest, and labored with that whole-hearted devotion which characterizes the sex. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... be admitted probably by most men who have thought upon the subject that no fault among us is punished so heavily as that fault, often so light in itself but so terrible in its consequences to the less faulty of the two offenders, by which a woman falls. All her own sex is against her,—and all those of the other sex in whose veins runs the blood which she is thought to have contaminated, and who, of nature, would befriend her were her trouble any other than ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... a Bird of Prey, Who on her slaughtering skyey way, Beak-striketh and claw-clutcheth. But Ladies who own not her sway, Will you not lift white hands to stay The shameless slaughter which to-day Your sex's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various

... favour; it's like a prize—I earned it by hard work. If nobody had been good enough in English, the committee wouldn't have awarded the scholarship; some years they don't. Also— But what's the use of arguing with a man? You belong, Mr. Smith, to a sex devoid of a sense of logic. To bring a man into line, there are just two methods: one must either coax or be disagreeable. I scorn to coax men for what I wish. Therefore, I must ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster

... and critical attention. To have this sort of intercourse to perfection, I think we must go to old ladies. Women are better hearers than men, to begin with; they learn, I fear in anguish, to bear with the tedious and infantile vanity of the other sex; and we will take more from a woman than even from the oldest man in the way of biting comment. Biting comment is the chief part, whether for profit or amusement, in this business. The old lady that I have in my eye is a very caustic speaker, her tongue, after years of practice, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... wouldn't say so. He didn't talk much about it. I guess you noticed that. I mean, he didn't preach. He smoked some and had his glass of wine now and then—even had a cocktail or two on occasion. His views on sex were orthodox, I reckon—I mean, as far as I know. He'd tell an off-color story, if it wasn't too bad. But he'd get up and leave quietly if the boys started tellin' about the women they'd made. Fornication and adultery just ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... on her way to Troy, to complete her studies in the excellent institution for young ladies, which has sent out some of the brightest ornaments of their sex, to refine and bless the world. She had been entrusted to Albert's care, who was to spend his summer in New York, in the pursuit of the legal profession. They were both Carolinians, and had no little of that ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... her soft, warm allurement, the appeal of sex with which she was so prodigally endowed. His breath came ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... incessantly beside her, and felt herself happy in being able to watch over her and to serve her. Susanna had conceived an almost passionate devotion for Mrs. Astrid; such as young girls often feel for elderly, distinguished women, to whom they look up as to the ideal of their sex. And when Mrs. Astrid returned to Norway, Susanna kissed with tears her little Hulda, but yet felt herself happy to follow such a mistress, and to serve her in the rural solitude to which she betook herself. ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer

... manner and the words. I read you both with the same admiration, but not with the same delight. He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where Nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts and entertain them with the softnesses of love. In this (if I may be pardoned for so bold a truth) Mr. Cowley has copied him to a fault: so great a one, in my opinion, that it throws ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... eulogy ever given to a man, either in public or private life, is that he is one "you can tie to." And when you find a woman of that sort you do not need to explain to the cynical the wisdom of the Creator in making the most attractive and fascinating sex. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... thought him such. He couldn't bear to see any one uncomfortable; he would have been sorry even in his angriest moods for any harm to happen to his grandfather; and his Aunt Lydia herself had the benefit of that soft-heartedness which he bore towards the whole sex. Whether he would have self-mastery enough to be always as harmless and purely beneficent as his good-nature led him to desire, was a question that no one had yet decided against him; he was but twenty-one, you remember, and ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... cigarette holder, was longer than is commonly worn by his sex, and marked by a certain not infelicitous disorder. He had trouble with a luxuriant lock of it that persistently fell across his pale brow. With a weary, world-worn gesture he absently brushed this back into place from moment ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... that what he had told them was true, and that he had taken possession of the yacht to smuggle his goods, to be revenged, and to have a laugh. Now none of these three offences are capital in the eyes of the fair sex; and Jack was a handsome, fine-looking fellow, of excellent manners, and very agreeable conversation, at the same time, neither he nor his friend were in their general deportment and ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... dropping in the woods at noon, and the wolves singing among the rocks at night, and it was enough to have purged her of vanities. She had grown fat and sad and yellow and dull. But when the means came, she felt a rekindled desire to assume the perquisites of her sex—to sit at tea tables; to buy futile things; to whitewash the hideous veracity of life with a little form and ceremony. So she coldly vetoed Pike's proposed system of fortifications, and announced that they would descend upon the ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... business to see to domestic matters, and not to gossip or play bridge." Nevertheless, she had her favourites: Mr. Hutton and young Shafto. (Envy and malice declared that Mrs. Malone had no favourites among her own sex.) She was drawn to the boy by his air of good breeding and admirable manners; also she noticed with secret indignation how shamefully his mother neglected and snubbed him. She took far more notice of Jimmy Black, or Sandy Larcher, than of her own son. No doubt she disliked to be so unmistakably dated ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... excluded by the fourth. Upon what principle is this exclusion founded? Upon the principle of incapacity. Universal suffrage, then, means—universal suffrage of those who are capable. In point of fact, who are the capable? Are age, sex, and judicial condemnations the only conditions to which incapacity ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... twenty-four hours, the fashionable promenade. The regent—who declared that he had proofs of the treason of M. de Richelieu, sufficient to lose him four heads if he had them—would not, however, risk his popularity with the fair sex by keeping him long in prison. Richelieu, again at liberty, after a captivity of three months, was more brilliant and more sought after than ever; but the closet had been walled up, and Mademoiselle de Valois became ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... the wing, to which it readily takes, its flight is powerful and sustained. The bill is of moderate length, but, owing to the exceedingly flat head of the bird, appears longer than it really is. The neck, especially of the male in the breeding-season, is thick, and the tail, in the same sex at that time of year, is generally carried in an upright position, being, however, in the paroxysms of courtship turned forwards, while the head and neck are simultaneously reverted along the back, the wings are lowered, and their shorter feathers erected. In this posture, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... his old mouth may long water in vain, Who tries by this method a mistress to gain— A miss is the sure termination: For a maiden's delight is to plague the old boy, And to think sixty-five not the period for joy; Alas! all the sex are vexation. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various

... Ella Risborough's feet. "So intelligent too!" said the enthusiastic—"so learned even!" A member of the Roman "Accademia dei Lincei," with only one other woman to keep her company in that august band; and yet so modest, so unpretending, so full of laughter, and life, and sex! Mrs. Hooper, who generally found herself at these official luncheons in a place which her small egotism resented, had watched her sister-in-law from a distance, envying her dress, her title, her wealth, bitterly angry ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... returned Miss Pecksniff. 'It was wrong. But such is the caprice and thoughtlessness of our sex! Let me be a warning to you. Don't try the feelings of any one who makes you an offer, as I have tried the feelings of Augustus; but if you ever feel towards a person as I really felt towards him, at the very time when ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... not quite mad," he continued, "only I'll answer for you the part of your question you don't put into words. Beatrice was nothing to me but an interpretress of her sex. I never loved her. If I had, we might in our misery have done the wildest, the most foolish things. I will tell you why I know so clearly that I never loved her. I have known it since you have been kind to me, since I have realised what a wonderful thing a woman ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Llewellyn, a social leader, and a devoted patron of the arts. The violinist made a deep impression on those fortunate enough to be near him during the evening. He won the respect of the men by his observations on matters of international interest, and the admiration of the gentler sex by his chivalric estimate of woman's influence in the world's progress, on which subject he talked with rarest good humor and ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... succeeding novels, A Mother's Rights (1897) and Half Beast (1899), in which Helene Boehlau enters the lists side by side with Gabriele Reuter and Marie Janitschek and other women as a passionate champion of the rights of her ever oppressed sex. From the point of view of literary art the immoderate formlessness of these partisan novels was an aberration; but meanwhile the writer has once more emancipated herself from such servitude to the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... go up to worship, and, when the snow-drifts are deepest, go literally from strength to strength. There is no furnace or stove save the foot-stoves that are filled from the fires of the neighboring houses, and brought in partly as a rather formal compliment to the delicacy of the tender sex, and sometimes because they are really wanted. The dress of the assembly is mostly homespun, indicating only slight distinctions of quality in the worshipers. They are seated according to age,—the old king Lemuels and their queens in front, near the pulpit, and the younger Lemuels ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... horseback is both an exercise and an amusement, and is peculiarly suitable for the fair sex, more especially as their modes of exercise are somewhat limited, ladies being excluded from following many games, such as cricket, and foot-ball, both of which are practised, with such zest and benefit, by ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... cates and dainties, then with bread and meat; she has been clothed,—if not in silk and lace, then in good blue linen and penistone. She is young and of the springtime, hath more learning than had many a princess of old times, is innocent and good to look at. Thou and the rest of thy sex are fools, Deborah, but wise men died not with Solomon. It ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... black-brow'd Pluto told, And the Stygian boatman old, Whose rude hands grasp the oar, the rudder guide, The dead conveying o'er the tide,— Let him be told, so rich a freight before His light skiff never bore; Tell him that o'er the joyless lakes The noblest of her sex her ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... political institutions of the aborigines. Apart from his sophistical defence of Spanish colonial policy, Acosta deserves high praise as an acute and diligent observer whose numerous new and valuable data are set forth in a vivid style. Among his other publications are De procuranda salute Indorum libri sex (Salamanca, 1588), De Christo revelato libri novem (Rome, 1590), De temporibus novissimis libri quatuor (Rome, 1590), and three volumes of sermons issued respectively in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Much as she abhorred him, she had no choice. There was none to whom she could appeal for succor. She must depend absolutely upon her ability to beguile him. She must hide the revulsion inspired by his mere presence. She must arm herself with the world-old weapons of her sex, and by wiles blind him to the truth of her feeling, gain time for—something, anything! At least here was room for hope, uncertain, absurd even, yet hope. A little color crept to her pallid cheeks. If she could but manage the deceit to secure delay ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... happens that I come on both sides of my house from stocks of Englishmen who, nearly three hundred years ago, had encountered just these same difficulties and dangers before. In the seventeenth century, indeed, the battle was around the problem of religion, as to-day it is around the problem of sex. Since I have of late years realized this analogy I have often thought of certain admirable and obscure men who were driven out, robbed, and persecuted, some by the Church because the spirit of Puritanism moved within them, some by the Puritans because they clung to the ideals of the Church, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... It is moreover, a very suggestive type, since the latency is manifestly of quite another character than for instance in the case of Mendelian hybrids, and probably more allied to those instances, [325] where secondary sexual marks, which are as a rule only evolved by one sex, are transferred to the ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... fellows," regaled the young ladies with college gossip, and bits of news full of interest, to judge from the close attention paid to their eloquent remarks. Polly regarded these noble beings with awe, and they recognized her existence with the condescension of their sex; but they evidently considered her only "a quiet little thing," and finding her not up to society talk, blandly ignored the pretty child, and devoted themselves to the young ladies. Fortunately for Polly, she forgot all about them in her enjoyment ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott

... were males, F a female; the sex of the others was not determined by dissection and ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... and that she shall never leave there until she is old enough to be married to a prince of her own rank and religion, whose morals shall be such that the spouses may live happily together in a good and holy marriage.'" D'Aubigne wrote of her: "A princess with nothing of a woman but sex—with a soul full of everything manly, a mind fit to cope with affairs of moment, and a ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... sweetly, as if there were only one sex in the world, and that an entirely divine one. The gleam of spring sunset was bright in her hair, and in the soft garnish of health on her cheeks, and the vigorous play of young life in her eyes; while the silvery glance of the sloping shore, and breezy ruffle of the darkening ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... rabble of either sex That hung around the wretches as they writhed, Till thrust back by our spears, one held my eye - A weeping woman, whose strained countenance, Sharpened against a looming livid cloud, Was mocked by the crude rays of afternoon - The mother of one of those who suffered there ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... Mr Inspector, again using his pocket handkerchief, 'though there's nothing for the lady to be at all alarmed at, still, ladies are apt to take alarm at matters of business—being of that fragile sex that they're not accustomed to them when not of a strictly domestic character—and I do generally make it a rule to propose retirement from the presence of ladies, before entering upon business topics. Or perhaps,' Mr Inspector ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... pipe. Agatha was pleased that he did so. While they were in the bush their relations must be marked by an informal friendliness, as if she were a comrade and partner and not a girl. Anything that hinted at the difference in their sex must ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss

... of a by-word," Otto cried. "The partiality of sex. She is a demirep; what then is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... said of her the better. She was a coarse and, it is to be feared, a very sinful woman. But at that time she was the only woman in Roaring Camp, and was just then lying in sore extremity, when she most needed the ministration of her own sex. Dissolute, abandoned, and irreclaimable, she was yet suffering a martyrdom hard enough to bear even when veiled by sympathizing womanhood, but now terrible in her loneliness. The primal curse had come to her in that original isolation which must have made the punishment of the first ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte



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