Matron Quotes

I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have not been ugly, and even among those "lords of their kind," the British, squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions are not startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love amongst us. I have a friend or two whose class of features is such that the Apollo curl on the summit of their brows would be decidedly trying; yet to my certain knowledge tender hearts have beaten for them, and their miniatures - flattering, but still not lovely - are kissed in secret by motherly lips. I have seen many an excellent matron, who could have never in her best days have been handsome, and yet she had a packet of yellow love-letters in a private drawer, and sweet children showered kisses on her sallow cheeks. And I believe there have been plenty of young heroes, of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana, and yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a wife who waddles. Yes! Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty - it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it. ~ George Eliot

The wards were to my right. I stepped into the hall and walked confidently forward, yet fully expecting Matron to come bearing down upon me at any moment, like a pirate ship under full sail.
I must say, though, that I was not afraid. I would deal with her.
The new, stony Flavia de Luce would turn her away: send her scurrying with her tail between her legs.
The very idea delighted me. ~ Alan Bradley

I grew up in a family full of strong women. A great aunt on my mother's side had been a matron on a hospital ship in World War II, and one on my father's side had served in the Women's Royal Naval Service. ~ Nick Earls

Deciding to spit in the eye of every homely matron who ever warned her children not to stare into the sun directly, you crank the titanic telescope around to look directly towards the sun, the center of our solar system. ~ Daniel Keidl

Now, sitting on his bed in the grip of this numbing hangover, rainwater spilling its lazy courses down the window beside him, his grief came for him fully, like some gray matron from Ward Nine in purgatory. It came and dissolved him, unmanned him, took away whatever defenses remained, and he put his face in his hands and cried, rocking back and forth on his bed, thinking he would do anything to have a second chance, anything at all. ~ Stephen King

For two years I've read the scrolls and learned the language, and I know more about magick than anyone here...You ask what the greatest power is, and I know that niether the dwarf magick of Terus, nor the dragon power of Victus is superior, even though I should say that Terus is because my father's a Mender and his spells come from the Green book. Even the elf magick that is so rare that none in Darton is a master or matron of it, is still just one of the three colours and no better than any other. That's the whole point of the system, and it's stupid...None of the scrolls explain anything, and niether do you. Instead we have to run around an obstacle course, trade jewels between rings and sit here and write rubbish answers to a trick question. And to end it all we have to listen to a Wizard from Celenia and hope to hear some more spells. Well I know as many spells as anyone here, but they're as useless as whistling to me. ~ T.B. McKenzie

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus' lodging: such a wagoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway's eyes may wink and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:
Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them. O, here comes my nurse,
And she b ~ William Shakespeare

Death will find me long before I tire of contemplating an evening spent in his company during which he enthralled a mixed audience consisting of a fur trader, a Cree Indian matron, and an Anglican missionary, with an hour-long monologue on sexual aberrations in female pygmy shrews. (The trader misconstrued the tenor of the discourse; but the missionary, inured by years of humorless dissertations, soon put him right.) ~ Farley Mowat

A Nightingale!" he marvelled. Ah, so Matron had told him that much. Lib was always shy of introducing the great lady's name into conversation and loathed the whimsical title that had come to be attached to all those Miss N. had trained, as if they were dolls cast in her heroic mould. "Yes, I had the honour of serving under her at Scutari." "Noble labour." It ~ Emma Donoghue

The world is a cruel mother, a matron of darkness, selfishness, greed, and misery. For most, their time suckling at her breast is naught but a scramble through stinging, tearing briars before a naked, shameful collapse as the flesh gives out. And yet in the bright eyes of every newborn, there lies a spark, a potential for goodness, the possibility of a life worth living. That spark deserves its chance. And though most of them will turn out to be as worthless as the parents who sired them, while the cruelty of the earth will tell them to release their innocence and join in the drawing of daggers, every now and then one manages to clutch to its beauty and refuses to release it into the dark. ~ Ed McDonald

Somewhat overly legibly, I wrote on a sheet of paper, "We're held up indefinitely by the parade. We're going to find a phone and have a cold drink somewhere. Will you join us?" I folded the paper once, then handed it to the Matron of Honor, who opened it, read it, and then handed it to the tiny old man. He read it, grinning, and then looked at me and wagged his head up and down several times vehemently. I thought for an instant that this was the full and perfectly eloquent extent of his reply, but he suddenly motioned to me with his hand, and I gathered that he wanted me to pass him my pad and pencil, I did so- without looking over at the Matron of Honor, from whom great waves of impatience were rising. The old man adjusted the pad and pencil on his lap with the greatest care, then sat for a moment, pencil poised, in obvious concentration, his grin diminished only a very trifle. Then the pencil began, very unsteadily, to move. An "i" was dotted. And then both pad and pencil were returned personally to me, with a marvellously cordial extra added wag of the head. He had written, in letters that had not quite jelled yet, the single word "Delighted." The Matron of Honor, reading over my shoulder, gave a sound faintly like a snort, but I quickly looked over at the great writer and tried to show by my expression that all of us in the car knew a poem when we saw one, and were grateful.

На едно листче - някак прекалено четливо - написах: „Парадът ще ни задържи неопреде ~ J.D. Salinger

Come, evening, once again, season of peace;
Return, sweet evening, and continue long!
Methinks I see thee in the streaky west,
With matron step, slow moving, while the night
Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employ'd
In letting fall the curtain of repose
On bird and beast, the other charged for man
With sweet oblivion of the cares of day. ~ William Cowper

They are a lie, as our-no, your peole are a lie!" "Your skin is as dark as mine"' Malice reminded him. "You are a drow, though you have never learned what that means!" "Oh, I do know what it menas." "Then act by the rules!" Matron Malcius demanded. "Your rules? Drizzt growled back. "But your rules are a damned lie as well, as great as lie as that filthy spider you claim as a deity!" "A ture god damn you all!" "And damn that Spider Qyeen as well! ~ R.A. Salvatore

The matron glanced at the old man and suppressed a smile. "He is absolutely miserable."
"I enjoy miserable. It gives one a contrast to all the delectabilities of life. But is he housebroken, inpala? He is rather rumpled. He will look well on my ship, but will he wash well? Do professors fray as a general rule? I will not have my ship looking ragged."
"They do tend to fade after a few years of hard use. ~ Michelle Franklin

When you look around Addis and see children barefoot and shivering in the rain, when you see the lepers begging for their next morsel, does any of that Monophysitic nonsense matter the least bit?" Matron ~ Abraham Verghese

Damn you to Lolth's web!" he said. "Don't you dare pretend if doesn't matter to you!" "Why do you care?" Drizzt growled back at him. "No one who has ever made a difference?" "Do you believe that?" "What do you want from me, son of Baenre?" "Just the truth-your truth. You believe that you have never made a difference?" "Perhaps there is no difference to be made," Drizzt replied. "Do not ever say that," Jarlaxle said to him. "Why do you care?" Drizzzt asked. "Because you were the one who escaped," Jarlaxle replied. "Don't you understand? Jarlaxle went on. "I watched you-we all watched you. Whenever a matron mother, or almost any female of Menzoberranzan was about, we spoke your name with vitriol, promising to avenge Lolth and kill you." "But whenever they were not around, the name of Drizzt Do'Urden was spoken with jealousy, often reverence. You do not understand, do you? You don't even recognize the difference you've made to so many of us in Menzoberranzan." "How? Why?" "Because you were the one who escaped!" "You are here with me!" Drizzt argued. "Are you bound to the City of Spiders by anything more than your own designs? By Bregan D'Aerthe?" "I'm not talking about the city, you obstinate fool," Jarlaxle replied, his voice lowering. Again Drizzt looked at him, at a loss. "The heritage," Jarlaxle explained. "The fate. ~ R.A. Salvatore

with offense - a high- bosomed matron opposite emitted ~ Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

In London, she'd overheard more than one matron decrying what they considered Esme Byron's inappropriate eccentricities, aghast that she was allowed so much personal freedom and the ability to voice opinions they considered unsuitable for an unmarried young woman barely out of the schoolroom. But her family always stood by her, proud of her artistic talent and uniformly deaf to the complaints of any critics who might say she needed a firmer hand.
'What must Ned and Mama be thinking now?' Were they regretting that they had not listened to those critics? Wishing they'd kept a tighter rein on her activities rather than letting her venture out as she chose?
But she would have gone mad being constrained and confined the way she knew most girls her age were. She could never have been borne the suffocating restrictions, the smothering tedium of being expected to go everywhere with a chaperone in tow, or worse, being cooped up inside doing embroidery or playing the pianoforte. ~ Tracy Anne Warren

Alexia seemed to recall hearing one matron complain that the Italians were very passionate in their support of balls. ~ Gail Carriger

Count no matron happy until she hath passed thirty, and hath not waxed fat. ~ Gelett Burgess

You must know something."
"And why is Archer Cross here?" That was from Jenna. His voice had apparently changed over the summer, since he actually said the words instead of squeaking them. "He's an Eye."
"Didn't he try to kill you?" Nausicaa had drifted up, and she narrowed her eyes at me. "And if so, why exactly were you holding his hand earlier?"
Conversations like this usually ended in pitchforks and torches, so I held my hands out in what I hoped was an "everyone just calm the heck down" gesture. But then Jenna spoke up. "Sophie doesn't know anything," she said, nudging my behind her. That might've been more effective if Jenna weren't so short. "And whatever reason we're here, the Council had nothing to do with it." Jenna didn't add that that was because the entire Council, with the exception of Lara Casnoff and my dad, was dead. "She's just freaked out as the rest of us, so back. Off." From the expressions on the other kids' faces, I guessed Jenna had bared her fangs, and maybe even given a flash of red eyes.
"What's going on here?" a familiar voice brayed. Great. Like this night didn't suck out loud enough already. The Vandy-who had been a cross between school matron and prison guard at Hex Hall-shoved her way through the crowd, breathing hard. Her purple tattoos, marks of the Removal, were nearly black against her red face. "Downstairs, now!" As the group began moving again, she glared at Jenna and me. "Show your fangs again, Miss Talbot, and I'll w ~ Rachel Hawkins

A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat. Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there. ~ Maya Angelou

If any-one accosts young girls who are dressed in the clothes of slaves, his offence will be seen as minor, and even more so if the women are dressed as prostitutes, and not as [respectable] mothers of families. Therefore, if a woman is not dressed as a matron and some-one calls out to her or entices away her attendant, he will not be liable to the action for injury ~ Alexandra Croom

matron of honor, that's where I'd advise you ~ J.D. Robb

INCOMPATIBILITY, n. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination. Incompatibility may, however, consist of a meek-eyed matron living just around the corner. It has even been known to wear a moustache. ~ Ambrose Bierce

And the matron sighed over the destiny of ladies in good society, whose moral judgement led them to love unabashedly and whose depravity led them to pay for it. ~ Michelle Franklin

She introduced herself to me as Ray's wife. I was only mildly surprised to realize that Ray had this pleasant-looking matron for a partner, a little glassy-eyed, tagged by forty years of marriage like a dead deer on a car roof. ~ Keith Hollihan

I bring you this stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chow, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Phillipines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and a towel, but hide the looking-glass. ~ Mark Twain

Matron Malice, her belly swollen in the final hours of pregnancy. ~ R.A. Salvatore

Many a man has known that startling instant in which Dan Cupid, that busy young rascal, took things in hand, and told him that his baby girl was not a baby girl now, and was about to fly away from him. It is both a happy and a sad thrill that shoots through a man at such an instant. Happy and joyous at his girl's arrival at maturity; sad, as it brings to mind that awkward fact that his own youth is now but a myth; and that his scalp is showing vacant spots. His baby girl in a bridal gown! His baby girl a Matron! His baby girl proudly placing a grandchild in his lap!! It's an impossibility!! But this big world is full of this kind of impossibility, and will stay so as long as Man lasts. ~ Ernest Vincent Wright

In less than seven years the vestiges of the Gothic invasion were almost obliterated, and the city appeared to resume its former splendour and tranquillity. The venerable matron replaced her crown of laurel, which had been ruffled by the storms of war, and was still amused in the last moment of her decay with the prophecies of revenge, of victory, and of eternal dominion. ~ Edward Gibbon

What place is this," Drizzt asked the cat quietly, "that I call home? These are my people, by skin and by heritage, but I am no kin to them. They are lost and ever will be. "How many others are like me, I wonder?" Drizzt whispered, taking one final look. "Doomed souls, as was Zaknafein, poor Zak. I do this for him, Guenhwyvar; I leave as he could not, His life has been my lesion, a dark scroll etched by the heavy price exacted by Matron Malice's evil promises. "Goodbye, Zack!" he cried, his voice rising in final defiance. "My father. Take heart, as do I, that when we meet again, in a life after this, it will surely not be in the hellfire our kin are doomed to endure. ~ R.A. Salvatore

Miss Haxby, I thought, gazed at the plodding women with a kind of satisfaction. 'See how they know their places,' she said. 'There must be kept a certain distance, look, between each prisoner.' If that distance is breached, the offending woman is reported and loses privileges. If there are women who are old or sick or feeble, or if there are very young girls - 'We have had girls in the past - haven't we, Miss Ridley? - of twelve and thirteen' - then the matron sets them walking in a circle of their own. ~ Sarah Waters

Let not thy sword skip one:
Pity not honour'd age for his white beard;
He is an usurer: strike me the counterfeit matron;
It is her habit only that is honest,
Herself's a bawd: let not the virgin's cheek
Make soft thy trenchant sword; for those milk-paps,
That through the window-bars bore at men's eyes,
Are not within the leaf of pity writ,
But set them down horrible traitors: spare not the babe,
Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their mercy;
Think it a bastard, whom the oracle
Hath doubtfully pronounced thy throat shall cut,
And mince it sans remorse: swear against objects;
Put armour on thine ears and on thine eyes;
Whose proof, nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes,
Nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding,
Shall pierce a jot. There's gold to pay soldiers:
Make large confusion; and, thy fury spent,
Confounded be thyself! Speak not, be gone. ~ William Shakespeare

Death, cruel and cunning, waited in that gold-flecked onyx stare. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Katherine of Aragon was a staunch but misguided woman of principle; Anne Boleyn an ambitious adventuress with a penchant for vengeance; Jane Seymour a strong-minded matriarch in the making; Anne of Cleves a good-humoured woman who jumped at the chance of independence; Katherine Howard an empty-headed wanton; and Katherine Parr a godly matron who was nevertheless all too human when it came to a handsome rogue. ~ Alison Weir

Fear, born of the stern matron Responsibility, sits on one's shoulders like some heavy imp of darkness, and one is preoccupied and, possibly, cantankerous. ~ William McFee

I know an elderly society matron in Singapore who would rather walk in the scorching sun for blocks on end rather than have her chauffeur drive into the Central Business District at peak hour and pay the $1.50 surcharge. ~ Kevin Kwan