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With reason, therefore, everybody admired Cato, when they saw others sink under labors, and grow effeminate by pleasures, but beheld him unconquered by either; and that, too, not only when he was young and desirous of honor, but also when old and gray-headed, after a consulship and triumph; like some famous victor in the games, persevering in his exercise and maintaining his character to the very last.
Dickens's later assaults upon the 'Circumlocution Office, the Court of Chancery, were signal instances of this impatient, irritable, and effeminate levity. Fitzjames elaborated this view in an article upon 'the license of novelists' which appeared in the 'Edinburgh Review' for July 1857.
From the age of puberty to twenty-five, and even to the day of death, his voice had never changed and his manners were decidedly effeminate. He always sang soprano in concert with females. After the age of twenty-five, however, his voice became more grave and he could not accompany females with such ease.
Charley Biggers was short and boyish, with a fat, round face. When he laughed he showed a fine set of big, sensual teeth. His eyes were jolly, flighty, insincere. Weakness was written all over him, from a derby hat sitting back rakishly on his forehead to the small, effeminate boot that fitted so neatly his small effeminate foot.
The adjectives and derivatives based on woman's distinctions are alien and derogatory when applied to human affairs; "effeminate" too female, connotes contempt, but has no masculine analogue; whereas "emasculate" not enough male, is a term of reproach, and has no feminine analogue. "Virile" manly, we oppose to "puerile" childish, and the very word "virtue" is derived from "vir" a man.
Patriotism can only be a crime in a tyrannical people, because then it is rapine under a beautiful name, but however perfect humanity may become, patriotism will always be a virtue among oppressed peoples, because it will at all times mean love of justice, of liberty, of personal dignity nothing of chimerical dreams, of effeminate idyls!
Contempt also is often the cause of their destruction: for though, for instance, those who raised themselves to the supreme power generally preserved it; but those who received it from them have, to speak truth, almost immediately all of them lost it; for, falling into an effeminate way of life, they soon grew despicable, and generally fell victims to conspiracies.
"All that is true enough, Amuba, and I do not say that I, too, am not filled with admiration, and yet you know the Rebu several times drove back their forces, and man for man are more than a match for their soldiers. Our people are taller than they by half a head. We have not so much luxury, nor did we want it. All this must make people effeminate."
Without the lofty spirit and beautiful mind of Pericles, without the prodigal but effeminate graces of Alcibiades without, indeed, any of their Athenian poetry in his intellectual composition, he yet possessed much of their powers of persuasion, their ready talent for business, and their genius of intrigue.
Her thoughts and memories went back to harsher times, and she looked upon the England around her as a degenerate and effeminate land which had fallen away from the old standard of knightly courtesy and valor.
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