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Illegitimate   /ˌɪlɪdʒˈɪtəmɪt/   Listen
Illegitimate

noun
1.
The illegitimate offspring of unmarried parents.  Synonyms: bastard, by-blow, illegitimate child, love child, whoreson.



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"Illegitimate" Quotes from Famous Books



... has recently exemplified this by his personation of CLAUDE MELNOTTE, in that most tawdry specimen of the cotton-velvet drama, the LADY OF LYONS. This melancholy event took place a few nights since at the French Theatre, that mausoleum of the illegitimate French drama. Miss CARLOTTA LECLERCQ, an actress who deserves the highest praise, and who would receive it were it not that a doubt as to the proper pronunciation of her name prevents the bashful critic from mentioning her when flushed with the generous ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various

... matter for his absolute discretion. You will find, sir, that the author of the law has not conferred the right of disherison upon any father against any son upon any pretext. It is true he has armed fathers with this weapon; but he has also protected sons against its illegitimate use. That is the meaning of his insisting that the procedure shall not be irresponsible and uncontrolled, but come under the legal cognizance of inspectors whose decision will be uninfluenced by passion or misrepresentation. He knew how often irritation is unreasonable, and what ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... is told in many places, but nowhere with such dramatic picturesqueness as by Professor Karl Pearson in his Ethic of Freethought. "As the illegitimate son of a tailor in Leyden," says Professor Pearson—Jan's mother was the maid of his father's wife—"his early life was probably a harsh and bitter one. Very young he wandered from home, impressed with the miseries of his class and with a general feeling of much injustice in the world. ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... without that you have lost the salt of life. To my mind there is something austere in the better characteristics of the Scot, and also something hypocritical about his morality. You always hear that professed in Scotland, and never in Ireland. But in the latter fewer illegitimate children are born than in any other country in Europe, and in Scotland—notably Glasgow—the high percentage has become sadly proverbial. Yet, despite these adverse points, the Scottish character has a native grandeur which must provoke admiration, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... I was in the Isle of Wight engaged in negociations with both houses of parliament, under guarantee of the public faith. We were upon the point of concluding a treaty. I would be informed by what authority—I say legitimate authority—for of illegitimate authorities there are, I know, many, like that of robbers on the highway;—I would be informed, I repeat, by what authority I have been dragged from place to place, I know not with what views. When I am made acquainted with this legitimate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various

... meaning, do you, see, would run of itself, but you give us these impedimenting big stones to help us over it, while we profess to understand you by implication. For my part, I own, that to me, your parliamentary, illegitimate academic, modern crocodile phraseology, which is formidable in the jaws, impenetrable on the back, can't circumvent a corner, and is enabled to enter a common understanding solely by having a special highway prepared for it,—in short, the writing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the Stuarts and the deadly foe of the Hamiltons, to visit Scotland, whence, in the time of Henry VIII., he had been driven as a traitor. But Lethington was at that time confuting Lennox's argument that the Hamilton chief, Chatelherault, was illegitimate. Knox is not positive, he only reports rumours. {226d} Lethington's serious business was to negotiate a marriage for ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... Greifenstein, Greif was not married at all. His birth was illegitimate, and if he had been married under the name he supposed to be his, the union was not valid. For the law only acknowledges such marriages as take place under the true and lawful names of both parties. If one or the other, though wholly innocent and ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... reviving and stimulating a policy of self-help. The I.A.O.S. has done valuable work in enabling the Irish farmers, by co-operating, to secure a more stable position in the English market, to secure themselves against illegitimate and fraudulent competition and to standardise the quality of their product, but even more important has been the work of the Society in releasing the farmers from the bondage of the "Gombeen" man who has for so many years been the curse ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... bringing back the law to the state in which it had been previous to the year 1796. Other features of the bill, he explained, consisted in simplifying the law of settlement and removal; in rendering the mother of an illegitimate child liable for its support, and, for its ailment, to save from imprisonment the putative father to whom she might swear it. The great principles of the proposed plan, therefore, went to stop the allowance system; to deprive the magistracy of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... is; and the word "illegitimate" is not in God's vocabulary, since He smiles on love-children as on none other. If you know history, you know this: that into their keeping God has largely given the beauty, talent, energy, strength, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... of the health of the community to do so. The Department of Health was also required by law to make a physical examination of children when they were born and to take care of them if the mother was unable to do so and to send all illegitimate children to the Government Orphan College. It superintended the sale of all medicine and drugs, having a Government physician at every Government warehouse where they were sold. It had also charge of all idiots and insane persons as well as ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans

... the seduction of a young girl by the heir to an earldom, the resulting illegitimate pregnancy, and the young nobleman's struggle to decide whether to marry or to abandon the girl—certainly not the usual ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... hesitate, then we take a mistress while we are deciding, but it is easier and less binding to live like that, and we keep going on and put off marrying, sometimes put it off until it is too late." In Spain the illegitimate birth-rate is the highest of any ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... in 1834. She was a faithful helpmate for years, sacrificing to him her own career, but did not comprehend his genius, and as years went by they drifted apart. The composer's professional intercourse with Hans von Buelow led to an intimacy with the latter's wife, Cosima von Buelow, who was an illegitimate daughter of Liszt by the Countess d'Agoult. In 1861 Richard and Wilhelmina Wagner separated, and in 1866 she died. Four years later, Cosima, then divorced from Von Buelow, was married to Wagner, whom she both worshipped and well understood. Their union was ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... slave labour multiplied, and issued in servile insurrections. In Numidia, the able Masimissa had been succeeded by Micipsa. On Micipsa's death, the rule was usurped by his illegitimate nephew Jugurtha, whose story has been told by Sallust. The war was at least terminated less by the low-born general in command, Marius, than his brilliant lieutenant Sulla. But Marius re-organised the army on the basis ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... strongest of arguments, his defeat for the place was thereby rendered well-nigh impossible. Senator Hanway had undertaken no child's task when he went about the gavel elevation of the popular, yet—by House usage—the illegitimate ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... character of Falconbridge, with which one instinctively feels its creator's sympathy, I am convinced that Shakespeare portrayed the personality of Sir John Perrot, an illegitimate son of Henry VIII., and half-brother to Queen Elizabeth. The immense physical proportions of both Perrot and Falconbridge; their characteristic and temperamental resemblances; their common illegitimate birth; ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson

... every factious leader who could entertain hopes of ascending the throne, threw the state into confusion [k]. Egbert, who first succeeded, reigned but two years; Cuthred, brother to the King of Mercia, six years; Baldred, an illegitimate branch of the royal family, eighteen; and, after a troublesome and precarious reign, he was, in the year 827, expelled by Egbert, King of Wessex, who dissolved the Saxon Heptarchy, and united the several kingdoms under his dominion. [FN [h] Higden, lib. 5. [i] Chron. Sax. p. 52 [k] Will. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... was long kept a secret, might have unveiled a horrible mystery which Lucien himself had known but a few days. Carlos was ambitious for two; that was what his conduct made plain to those persons who knew him, and who all imagined that Lucien was the priest's illegitimate son. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... of business, John, is that traffic which does not result In reciprocal advantages to buyer and seller is illegitimate, or at least abnormal." ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... you think that he would have waited until the last moment, and have chosen this very evening—this supreme moment—to say good-bye to this poor, dying woman, and to reveal to you the existence of his illegitimate son? No, men hide these unfortunate children when and how they please. You know that as well as I, Monsieur. To run the risk of throwing us all into such a state of emotion and threatening his own future, ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... act dysgenically within the family under present conditions. Conventional education of girls a dysgenic influence. Prostitution and the family. Influence of ancient standards of "good" and "bad." The illegitimate child. Effect of fear, anger, etc., on posterity. The attitude of economically independent ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... tres et vnica{m} filia{m}. Wherbye we may inferre that Johne of Gaunte had these childrene by her after the mariage. Whiche is not soo for he had all his children by her longe before that mariage, so that they beinge all illegitimate were enforced afterwarde vppon that maryage to be legytymated by the poope; & also by acte of Parliamente, aboute the two & twentythe of kinge Richarde the seconde; so that yo{u} cannott saye, que postea nupta procreavit Lancastri ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne

... dignity as to overwhelm her with the coarsest and most cutting reproaches; and not satisfied with expatiating upon the treachery of which she had been guilty towards himself, he passed in review the whole of her ill-spent life, accusing her, among other enormities, of the birth of an illegitimate son,[17] and terminated his invectives by commanding her instantly "to quit Paris, and rid the Court ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... survey of his early years—the years of drudgery and privation. His father, a charming man who could never say "no," had so signally failed to say it on certain essential occasions that when he died he left an illegitimate family and a mortgaged estate. His lawful kin found themselves hanging over a gulf of debt, and young Granice, to support his mother and sister, had to leave Harvard and bury himself at eighteen in a broker's office. He loathed his work, and he was always ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... of parents before marriage is in Scotland rendered legitimate by their subsequent marriage, but in England the offspring remains illegitimate whether the parents marry or not after its birth. The offspring of voidable or invalid marriages may be made legitimate by ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... oppressive profits, you leave out of sight a motive which is strong among American business men—the interest in seeing a great business more efficiently managed, and the desire to exercise power beneficently; and your argument suffers from its illegitimate assumption of a simple cause. So in the same way if you are arguing for or against the advantages of the elective system in a school or a college, or of a classical education, or of athletics, it would be folly to assume that any one cause or effect covered the whole case. Whenever in ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... high and mighty seigneur are numbered, the physician becomes a personage of importance in the household. It is, therefore, not surprising to see a former bonesetter so familiar with the Duc d'Herouville. Apart from the illegitimate ties which connected him, by marriage, to this great family and certainly militated in his favor, his sound good sense had so often been proved by the duke that the old man had now become his master's most ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac

... Absolute power, with its temptations to luxury and unbridled selfishness, and the perils to which he was exposed from enemies and conspirators, turned him almost inevitably into a tyrant in the worst sense of the word. Well for him if he could trust his nearest relations! But where all was illegitimate, there could be no regular law of inheritance, either with regard to the succession or to the division of the ruler's property; and consequently the heir, if incompetent or a minor, was liable in the interest of the family itself to be supplanted ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... sojourn with the late Comte de Joinville. In the course of conversation, this Abbe is stated to have made most injudicious admissions, from which Lady Newborough gathered that he was the confidential agent of the Duke of Orleans, being currently said to be his illegitimate brother. ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... would protect the realm from false opinions, and especially from his unworthy sister; he had reflected that both the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth had been cut off by act of parliament from the succession as illegitimate;[10] the Lady Mary had been disobedient to her father; she had been again disobedient to her brother; she was a capital and principal enemy of God's word; and both she and her sister were bastards born; King Henry did not intend that the crown ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... out licensed immorality, such as polygamy and the importation of women for illegitimate purposes. To recur again to the centennial year, it would seem as though now, as we are about to begin the second century of our national existence, would be a most fitting ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... influence, holding the four chief offices in the Honor of Pickering, and at the commencement of the reign of Henry VIII. he was appointed Lieutenant of the Tower of London. He had no legal offspring, and his illegitimate son, a Sir Roger, who must not be confused with his uncle, was successively Chief Baron and Lord Chief Justice, died without issue. Sir Hugh Cholmley[1] tells us many facts concerning his great-grandfather Sir Richard, who was a nephew of the former Sir Richard. "His chief place ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... undertone of deprecation. It is here used for want of a better term that will adequately describe the same range of motives and of phenomena, and it is not to be taken in an odious sense, as implying an illegitimate expenditure of human products or of human life. In the view of economic theory the expenditure in question is no more and no less legitimate than any other expenditure. It is here called "waste" because this expenditure ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... occasion, and without a corrupt object, it might pass for a benevolent act. But to tell a man that you will reduce him to a situation in which he will miss his former comforts, and in which his family will be forced to beg their bread, is a cruel act. Corruption has a sort of illegitimate relationship to benevolence, and engenders some feelings of a cordial and friendly nature. There is a notion of charity connected with the distribution of the money of the rich among the needy, even in a corrupt ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... English snob he is, worthy man—and looked humbler than he does in the presence of his Maker, and so respectful and so blest that it was pleasant to behold him. Nevertheless, she is but a brummagem kind of countess, after all, being the daughter of Braham, the famous singer, and married first to an illegitimate son of an Earl Waldegrave—not to the legitimate son and possessor of the title (who was her first love)—and after the death of these two to the present old Mr. Harcourt. She is still in her summer, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... Varietes, there being three collaborators in the dramatizing, Theaulon, de Comberousse, and Jaime. Their adaptation possessed the same characters as the novel, but the roles are considerably modified. Victorine Taillefer becomes Goriot's illegitimate daughter, who is provided for by her father, yet brought up without ever seeing him and without the least inkling of her relationship to him. But Vautrin has discovered that a sum of five hundred thousand ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... Persian Customs and Religion tells us, It is their Opinion that no Man ever killed his Father, or that it is possible such a Crime should be in Nature; but that if any thing like it should ever happen, they conclude that the reputed Son must have been Illegitimate, Supposititious, or begotten in Adultery. Their Opinion in this Particular shews sufficiently what a Notion they must have had ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... conjunction with history, as it should be, none is of higher educational value. At the request of two clerical friends, I gave some geography lessons last year to the little boys in their schools. My methods were admittedly illegitimate. In the course of the last fifteen years I have sent hundreds of coloured picture-postcards of places all over the world, in Asia, Africa, Europe and America, to a small great-nephew of mine, now of an age when such things no longer appeal to him. Armed with my big ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... Hammes was universally denominated, was the illegitimate scion of a noble house. He was one of the most active of the early adherents to the league, kept the lists of signers in his possession, and scoured the country daily to procure new confederates. At the public preachings of the reformed religion, which soon ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... reference to be to King Jo[a]o II. If we read domado it can only be applied to the indomitable Jo[a]o II in the sense of having yielded to the will of Queen Lianor in acknowledging as heir her brother Manuel in preference to his illegitimate son Jorge. Perhaps however it is best to read damado, which recurs in the same play. Perhaps we may even see in the passage an allusion merely to an incident occurring in the time of Jo[a]o II and not to the King himself[22]. We may surmise that about this time, perhaps as early as ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente

... sir? Do you think me an illegitimate child? I say to you flat in your face, even if you kill me the next instant, that I have a mother. Perchance I am not of the lofty gentry who go about beating honest highwaymen to the earth, but I repulse with scorn any man's suggestion that I am illegitimate. In ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... also by the priest. If their parents refused to send them, the children were forcibly seized, taken away, and brought up in the Jesuit schools and nunneries. And lastly, when grown up into young men and women, they must be married by the priest, or their offspring be declared illegitimate. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... inmates of a jail were equally guilty on their arrival there. A large proportion of felons were orphans or illegitimate children; others, still more unfortunate, were the children of criminals who had taught them crime from their cradles. Great excuses were to be made for the general mass of criminals; excuses that ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... compensate the want of extension; and a boundless depth of misery may be a transformed expression for a boundless duration of misery. The most aged person, to all appearance, that ever came under my eyes, was an infant—hardly eight months old. He was the illegitimate son of a poor idiot girl, who had herself been shamefully ill treated; and the poor infant, falling under the care of an enraged grandmother, who felt herself at once burdened and disgraced, was certainly not better treated. He was dying, when I saw him, of a lingering malady, with ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... accompanied by blows from the under-servants of the members of the tribunal, and had our Lord not been supported from above, he could not have survived this treatment. Some of the base witnesses endeavoured to prove that he was an illegitimate son; but others declared that his mother was a pious Virgin, belonging to the Temple, and that they afterwards saw her betrothed to a man who feared God. The witnesses upbraided Jesus and his disciples with not having offered sacrifice in the Temple. It is true that I never did see either ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... to conduct Tempering considerations Not to be pressed too far Our action in realising our opinions depends on our social theory Legitimate and illegitimate compromise in view of that The distinction equally sound on the evolutional theory Condition of progressive change A plea for compromise examined A second plea The allegation of provisional usefulness examined Illustrated ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... dissatisfaction. "It was the guilt of Aegeus," said they, "which caused the wrath of Minos, yet Aegeus alone escaped its penalty; their lawful children were sacrificed to the Cretan barbarity, but the doubtful and illegitimate stranger, whom Aegeus had adopted, went safe and free." Theseus generously appeased these popular tumults: he insisted on being ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... child was not introduced to the phratores, it was considered illegitimate,(107) and could have no share in the rites ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm

... have preferred to believe the latter, but it is to be feared that his fair fame in this matter cannot be maintained unsullied. Among Sir Walter Raleigh's children one daughter appears to have been illegitimate, 'my poor daughter, to whom I have given nothing, for his sake who will be cruel to himself to preserve thee,' as he says to Lady Raleigh in 1603, and it may be that it was the birth of this child which brought down the vengeance of Queen ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... of the pen. And why not? No doubt it would bring him money and spread his name very widely. There was nothing that a friendly corporation could not do for a favorite. He would then really be a part of the great, active, enterprising world. Was there anything illegitimate in taking advantage of such an opportunity? Surely, he should remain his own master, and write nothing except what his own conscience approved. But would he not feel, even if no one else knew it, that he was the poet-laureate ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the people. He was born in Magdeburg, Germany, in 1808, the illegitimate child of a humble woman and her soldier lover. He became a tailor, and, as was the custom in Germany at that time, traveled extensively during his apprenticeship. In 1838 his first important work, "The World As It Is, and As It Might ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... three, and certainly possesses the greatest influence in state affairs. Of the concubines, the mother of the "Zil-i-Sultan" ("Shadow of the King") ranks the first in seniority. The Zil-i-Sultan is, though illegitimate, the Shah's eldest son, and is, with the exception of his father, the most influential man in Persia, the heir-apparent (Valliad) being a weak, foolish individual, easily led, and addicted to drink and ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... with deference, of course, and we got on very well together. At one time it seemed good luck for him to have illegitimate kindred; for I saved his life when he was tangled in the weeds of this river while bathing. You owe me no thanks. I thought twice about it, and if the name would have ended with him, I would never have used my basket-knife. ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... more than was necessary of his interview with the Vicar. The child was supposed to be illegitimate as well as unbaptised, and could not, therefore, be allowed to sleep his last sleep in the company ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... "The illegitimate son of Judge Henley and a negro mother. That's a clever forgery, that paper of legal adoption, I admit. Must have had legal advice for that. What did ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... of so great a city, and the establishment of an empire next in power to that of the gods, was due to the Fates. The vestal Rhea, being deflowered by force, when she had brought forth twins, declares Mars to be the father of her illegitimate offspring, either because she believed it to be so, or because a god was a more creditable author of her offence. But neither gods nor men protect her or her children from the king's cruelty: the ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... France, and war were to break out, he would always have this advantage, that he would be able to make it appear that the cause of war arose not in the want of moderation of Prussia, but in the illegitimate claims of France. Finally he had this to consider, that so long as France was discussing terms with him, there was no danger of their accepting the Russian proposal for a congress. Probably the one contingency which did not occur to him was that which, in fact, was nearest to the truth, namely, ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... starvation wages, on promises that it would be mine some time, and that he had neither taken me in partnership, nor left it to me in the will. She got her cousin to help her in the transfer of the papers; it was a lease and stumpage contract. He affixed a notary seal to it. The thing was illegitimate, of course. Shortly after that, young Houston came out here again, and I got her to come too. I wanted to see what he was up to. He fired me, and while he was in Denver, and Renaud away from the ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... attraction, except to forget it. Does she forget it? She does not. Do the men allow her to forget it? They do not. And one fine day Friend Dora has a baby and everybody says horrible, disgraceful! Rubbish! I maintain that the state should provide homes and proper care for the children we call illegitimate! What a word! I say all children are legitimate, all mothers should be honored, yes, and financially protected. A woman who gives a child to the nation, regardless of who the father is, renders a distinguished service. She is a ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... courted its lure. Their source was Virginia. They were of a thriftless, unstable class; that vagrant peasantry which had drifted westward to avoid competition with slave labor. The niece, Nancy, has been reputed illegitimate. And though tradition derives her from the predatory amour of an aristocrat, there is nothing to sustain the tale except her own appearance. She had a bearing, a cast of feature, a tone, that seemed to hint at higher social origins than those of ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... during the winter in still more distant spheres, although the conquest of German colonies was regarded by the pure strategist as belonging to the illegitimate and divergent rather than to the legitimate and subsidiary type of military operation. Policy may, however, outweigh strategy, and the circumstance that the victor only retains as the price of peace his conquests, or part of them, made in war, extenuates if it does not justify divergent operations. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... will have. His church is never established; the world does not follow him; only of Wisdom is he known, and of her children, who are children of light. He never speaks by their mouths who say "Shalt not." He knows that "shalt not" is illegitimate, puny, trying always to usurp the throne of ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... was the wicked baron's illegitimate child. As he had been saying extremely pretty things to her—for she was so bee-yoo-ti-ful!—you will readily perceive that fastidious people might find this "situation" what some critics love to call "unpleasant." Wicked barons, viewed in ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... men of letters and men of state.[A] The Monte de Piete acquaints us with the vicissitudes and expedients of fortune; the Hotel Dieu is a temple of ancient charity; the Hospice des Enfants Trouvees startles us with the astounding fact that half the children born in Paris are illegitimate; and the Morgue yields no less appalling statistics of suicide. In Vernet's studio we feel the predominance of military taste and education in France; in the Ecole Polytecnique, the policy by which her youth are bred to serve their country; at the manufactories ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... eyes to the fact that for him this marriage would be bigamy; that their children would be illegitimate in the eyes of the law if legal scrutiny ever laid bare their father's history; nor that by all the accepted dictums of current morality he would be leading an innocent woman into sin. But current morality had ceased to ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... one, then two, then more, from distances long and short, would creep into the council with pretexts ranging from the thin to the absolutely transparent, until one morning the whole seance ended in an unseemly fracas between the legitimate and the illegitimate seekers after help in word or kind, whereupon Hahmed, rising in his wrath, smote them verbally hip and thigh, and Jill departed in high dudgeon, leaving the culprits to wilt in the ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... stigma of the one form should be fertilised by pollen taken from the stamens of corresponding height in another form. So that with dimorphic species two unions, which may be called legitimate, are fully fertile; and two, which may be called illegitimate, are more or less infertile. With trimorphic species six unions are legitimate, or fully fertile, and twelve are illegitimate, or more or ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... Protestant, from the County Antrim in the north of Ireland, the illegitimate son of a gentleman of large property, who had procured him the situation which he held; he had been tolerably well educated; that is, he could read and write sufficiently, understood somewhat of the nature of figures, and had learnt, and since ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... for giving relief upon a definite plan are the results of haphazard benevolence that are all around us—feeble-minded women with illegitimate offspring, children crippled by drunken fathers, juvenile offenders who began as child-beggars, aged parents neglected by their children. Every form of human weakness and depravity is intensified by the charity ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... manifested less the courtesy of kindness than of respect. He took his arm, and leaning on it with a light touch, led him to the group at the window. It was composed of the most distinguished public men in the country, and among them (the Earl himself was connected through an illegitimate branch with the reigning monarch,) was a ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... (i.e., as Dr. Caldwell informs me MADURA, entitled by the Mahomedan invaders Shahr-Pandi, and still occasionally mispronounced Shahr-Mandi) 1200 crores (!) in gold. He had two sons, SUNDAR BANDI by a lawful wife, and Pirabandi (Vira Pandi?) illegitimate. He designated the latter as his successor. Sundar Bandi, enraged at this, slew his father and took forcible possession of Shahr-Mandi and its treasures. Pirabandi succeeded in driving him out; Sundar ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... privately married to her in January, 1686, she being then past fifty. Francoise d'Aubigne was born in 1635, of good family, but born and brought up in hard surroundings. She was married to Scarron in 1651; nine years later he died. Later, she was placed, in charge of the king's illegitimate children. She supplanted Mme. de Montespan, to whom she owed her promotion, in the king's favour. The correspondence in the years preceding the marriage is an invaluable record of that mixture of religion and gallantry, of dignity and weakness, to which the human heart ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... high descent and parentage requires to be somewhat modified. His father, Sir Patrick Hamilton of Kincavel, was an illegitimate son of James first Lord Hamilton, by a daughter of Witherspoon of Brighouse, and died in 1479. Sir Patrick afterwards obtained a letter of legitimation under the Great Seal, 20th January 1512-13; and in a charter ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... returning from the war this same Martin Kallikak married a respectable girl of good family. From this union 496 individuals have been traced in direct descent, and in this branch of the family there were no illegitimate children, no immoral women, and only one man who was sexually loose. There were no criminals, no keepers of houses of ill-fame, and only two confirmed alcoholics. Again the explanation is clear when it is stated that this branch of the family did not contain a single feeble-minded ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews

... corrupt rings and the purposes of selfish individuals, which he regarded detrimental to the public good; or through his support of wholesome measures, calculated to protect the body politic, and thwart their illegitimate designs ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various

... note, as it is essential for understanding the work of Alexandre Dumas fils. He, too, was a natural son, and his illegitimate birth had caused him much suffering. He was sent to the Pension Goubaux, and for several years he endured the torture he describes with such harshness at the beginning of L'Affaire Clemenceau. He was exposed to all kinds of insults and blows. His first contact with society taught ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic

... were entertaining their kind, the conversation at dinner touched upon a local petty sessions case, in which the nursemaid of one of those present had been punished for concealing the birth of an illegitimate ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... give to make that base-born brat Prince of Wales? Strange that while Lord Ross is trying to make his offspring illegitimate by Act of Parliament, his master's anxieties should all tend ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... A woman does not complain that her brother, who is younger than her, gets their common father's estate. Why then should a natural son complain that a younger brother, by the same parents lawfully begotten, gets it? The operation of law is similar in both cases. Besides, an illegitimate son, who has a younger legitimate brother by the same father and mother, has no stronger claim to the father's estate, than if that legitimate brother had only the same father, from whom alone ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... present moment, the poor in the Township of Clare are maintained by the inhabitants at large; and being members of one great family, spend the remainder of their days in visits from house to house. An illegitimate child is ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... two-headed calf they repeated that they had "never HEARD such funny ideas!" They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... on the 31st of January 1854, the Ministry were able triumphantly to refute the charge of illegitimate interference in State affairs which had been made by a section of the Press against Prince Albert; they were, however, severely attacked for not acting with greater vigour in Eastern affairs. In February, the Russian Ambassador left London, the Guards were despatched ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... she pleased him. At the expiration of two years he sent her home to her father; but his son by her, the gallant John of Invorscaddel, a son of Maclean of Ardgour, celebrated in the history of the Isles, was held to be an illegitimate offspring by ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various

... contended in the old lawyer's bosom as he heard the story; the former sentiment urging for the punishment of the delinquents, the latter pleading for forbearance; for amongst the transgressors was his illegitimate son, whose share in the offence, if brought into the light of the tribunal, would thence cast back a shadow upon the father, and point, publicly and anew, to their disreputable relationship. Others also, whose reputation was far dearer ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... legitimate and the illegitimate use is not very easy to draw; but there is an obvious difference between destroying pain for an ulterior purpose and destroying it merely to save the ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... [376] "An illegitimate and ungrammatical use of these words, either and neither, has lately been creeping into the language, in the application of these terms to a plurality of objects: as, 'Twenty ruffians broke into the house, but neither of them could be recognized.' 'Here are fifty pens, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... his bastard brother, the Abbot of Paisley (later Archbishop Hamilton). The Earl of Lennox, a Stuart, and Keeper of Dumbarton Castle, arrived from France. He was hostile to Arran; for, if Arran were illegitimate, Lennox was next heir to the crown after Mary: he was thus, for the moment, the ally of Beaton against Arran. George Douglas visited Henry, and returned with his terms—Mary to be handed over to England at the age of ten, and to marry ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang

... he was not the eldest son of old La Vauballiere, the former Duke; then another deed, by which he shows that old La Vauballiere (who seems to have been a disreputable old fellow) was a bigamist, and that, in consequence, the present man, styling himself Duke, is illegitimate; and finally, Morisseau brings forward another document, which proves that the REG'LAR Duke is no ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... model. This is the more remarkable, because it is a purely spiritual triumph. Mr. Beecher's person is not imposing, nor his natural manner graceful. It is his complete extirpation of the desire of producing an illegitimate effect; it is his sincerity and genuineness as a human being; it is the dignity of his character, and his command of his powers,—which give him this easy mastery over every situation in ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... The Queensberry then sent word, that she had made up her company, and desired to be excused from having Lady Emily's; but at the bottom of the card wrote, "Too great trust." There is no declaration of war come out from the other duchess: but I believe it will be made a national quarrel of the whole illegitimate royal family.' ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... are extremists, go so far as to claim that apart altogether from marriage vows, sexual intercourse should be the experience of all, and that knowledge of how to avoid the birth of illegitimate children should be ...
— Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation • Florence E. Barrett

... at the same age. On the contrary, the character, which the Marchese Ludovico had made for himself in Ravenna, was a rather diametrically opposite one. But he was strongly of opinion that in any enterprise of an illegitimate nature which his nephew might attempt with the young artist, he would have his trouble only for his pains. And, of course, any enterprise of any other nature was wholly out ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... the ceremonial magic of the Middle Ages and the following century or two certainly justifies SWEDENBORG in writing of magic as something evil. The distinction, rigid enough in theory, between white and black, legitimate and illegitimate, magic, was, as I have indicated, extremely indefinite in practice. As Mr A. E. WAITE justly remarks: "Much that passed current in the west as White (i.e. permissible) Magic was only a disguised goeticism, and many of the resplendent angels invoked with divine ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... of inheritance Rules governing the relations of the sexes Moral offenses Marriage contracts and payments Illegitimate children Extent of authority of father and husband Residence of the husband Crimes and their penalties Crimes The private seizure Penalties for minor offenses Customary procedure Preliminaries to arbitration General features ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... period. No commercial blockade was instituted by the enemy before February, 1813. Up to that time neutrals, not carrying contraband, had free admission to all American ports; and the British for their own purposes encouraged a licensed trade, wholly illegitimate as far as United States ships were concerned, but in which American citizens and American vessels were largely engaged, though frequently under flags of other nations. A significant indication of the nature of this traffic is found in the export returns of the year ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... fight ever occasion them. Athos especially, the most reflecting and sensitive of the four, continually reproaches himself with the share he took in that act of illegal justice. This woman has left a son, who inherits all her vices, and who, having been proved illegitimate, has been deprived of Lord De Winter's estates, and passes by the name of Mordaunt. He is now brought upon the scene. Raoul, Viscount of Braguelonne, the son of Athos, is proceeding to Flanders, in company with the young Count de Guiche, to join the army under ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... into Germany. The uncommonly large number of priests, to a great extent vigorous men, whose sexual wants were intensified by a lazy and luxurious life, and who, through compulsory celibacy, were left to illegitimate or unnatural means of gratification, carried immorality into all circles of society. This priesthood became a sort of pest-like danger to the morals of the female sex in the towns and villages. Monasteries and nunneries—and their number was legion—were not ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... retreat, if any references to the rebellion appear in the minutes of the year 1745. No references appear, as a rule, for that year; but, under 1746, there are brief accounts of church discipline being exercised in the case of a few illegitimate births,—the paternity being ascribed usually to ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... mended free of cost, regularly devoting to this purpose that part of the Sabbath which was not occupied in proving the non-existence of God. There was, for instance, poor Mary Henson—a loose deserted creature with illegitimate children of various paternity, and another always on the way—rejected by every charity in the parish,—to whom Hankin never failed to send needed footwear both for herself ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... would fail in anything like a detailed account of the life of this remarkable man. His only son, the boy who was with him at the flying of the kite, was an illegitimate child, and it is a remarkable instance of unlikeness that this only son became a royalist governor of New Jersey, was never an American in feeling, and removed to England and died there. The sum of Franklin's life is that ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this was his ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... his duty almost to conceal it. It is to be employed as apparatus for the formation of judgments rather than the embellishment of them, though, of course, it may be used reticently by way of illustration, explanation and the like. Yet it may be useful and not illegitimate for him sometimes to try to convince the reader that his criticism is from the pen of one who knows more about the subject than lies within the range of ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... approach the question whether the prince who thus became the Iron Mask was an illegitimate brother or a twin-brother of Louis XIV. The first was maintained by M. Quentin-Crawfurd; the second by Abbe Soulavie in his 'Memoires du Marechal Duc de Richelieu' (London, 1790). In 1783 the Marquis de Luchet, in the 'Journal ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... is the illegitimate son of the late Marquis of Hoopborough by a Spanish lady of rank. He received a first rate education, and was brought up in his father's house. At a very early age he obtained an appointment in a public office, was presented by the marquis at court, and ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... the village one day told the wife of the proprietor of Auteuil, Madame de Boulainvillier, that the peasant of Valois was in possession of family papers, according to which it was unquestionable that he was an illegitimate descendant of the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... in the middle of the eighteenth century by Lady Fanny Armine to her cousin, Lady Desmond, in Ireland, I have strung together one of the strangest of true stories—the history of Maria Walpole, niece of the famous Horace Walpole and illegitimate daughter of his brother, Sir Edward Walpole. The letters are a potpourri of town and family gossip, and in gathering the references to Maria Walpole into coherence, I am compelled to omit much that is ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington

... Louis XIV.," was the first to call special attention to this mystery, and since then numerous conjectures have been made as to who the Iron Mask really was. One writer has suggested that he was an illegitimate son of Anne of Austria, the queen-mother. Another identifies him with a supposed twin brother of Louis XIV., whose birth Richelieu had concealed. Others make him the Count of Vermandois, an illegitimate son of Louis XIV.; the Duke of Beaufort, a hero of the Fronde; ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... discourse delivered before the New York Academy of Medicine, November 7, 1855, Dr. John Watson remarked that the numbers and pretensions of the illegitimate sons of Esculapius were as great in ancient as in modern times. And they were quite as wont to receive the patronage of the upper classes. The Emperor Nero thus favored the shrewd Lydian practitioner, Thessalus, who maintained that all learning was ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... fond of children; and I dare say she dreaded taking this child to live with her for more reasons than one. My Lady Ludlow could not endure any mention of illegitimate children. It was a principle of hers that society ought to ignore them. And I believe Miss Galindo had always agreed with her until now, when the thing came home to her womanly heart. Still she shrank from having this ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... in his chair and his eyes twinkled. "I doubt whether it is true of Charles I.," he said; "but it certainly isn't true of his son and heir, for Charles II. used the peerage more or less as a sort of foundling hospital for his various illegitimate offspring." ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... heard no more of Louise or her child, and my fears gradually subsided. Yet I was consoled when the two children born to me by Janet died in their infancy. Had they lived, who can tell whether something might not have transpired to prove them illegitimate. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... estate,—an absolute model in that way to all after-sovereigns,—was denied by fortune an opportunity to round and perfect his character as a domestic despot. Only one of his legitimate sons lived even to boyhood, Edward VI., and Henry died when the heir-apparent was in his tenth year. Of his illegitimate son, the Duke of Richmond, Henry was extravagantly fond, and at one time thought of making him heir-apparent, which might have been done, for the English dread of a succession war was then at its height. Richmond died in his seventeenth year. Having no sons of a tormentable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... of these shattered and overthrown States, Congress should begin with a clean slate, and make clean work of it. Let there be no hesitation. It would be a cowardly deference to a defeated and treacherous President, if any account were made of the illegitimate, one-sided, sham governments hurried into existence for a malign purpose in the absence of Congress. These pretended governments, which were never submitted to the people, and from participation in which four millions of the loyal people ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... making laws that are too bitter against women who marry a second time," he remarks,[264] "and we do not want to lead them, in consequence of such action, to the harsh necessity, unworthy of our age, of abstaining from a chaste second marriage and descending to illegitimate connections." He ordained, therefore, that the law mentioned above be annulled and that mothers should have absolutely unrestricted rights of inheritance to a deceased child's property along with the latter's brothers and sisters; and second marriage was never to create any prejudice.[265] ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... starve out a miserable existence in exile from the capital, it is yet looked upon by historians as the legitimate branch; while the northern dynasty, which enjoyed the luxury of a palace and of the capital, is condemned as illegitimate. ...
— Japan • David Murray

... regarded as illegitimate to wander from that position so tersely enunciated by Professor Huxley in his essay on "Sensation and the Sensiferous Organs:" "In ultimate analysis it appears that a sensation is the equivalent in ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... is a Jewess. Her name is Mirah, the anagram of Hiram, an Israelite mark that stamps her, for she was a foundling picked up in Germany, and the inquiries I have made prove that she is the illegitimate child of a rich Jew banker. The life of the theatre, and, above all, the teaching of Jenny Cadine, Madame Schontz, Malaga, and Carabine, as to the way to treat an old man, have developed, in the child whom I had kept in a respectable and not too expensive way of life, all ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... more remarkable, as this young man has neither a father nor a mother. He is alone in the world with his income of twenty thousand francs. I have heard him say, jestingly, that some good fairy must be watching over him; but I know that he believes himself to be the illegitimate son of some great English nobleman. Sometimes, when he has drunk a little too much, he talks of going in search of my lord, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau



Words linked to "Illegitimate" :   invalid, left-handed, spurious, misbegot, base, progeny, misbegotten, unauthorized, bastardly, issue, legitimate, unauthorised, fatherless, wrongful, adulterine, offspring, baseborn, illegal



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