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Austerity   Listen
noun
Austerity  n.  (pl. austerities)  
1.
Sourness and harshness to the taste. (Obs.)
2.
Severity of manners or life; extreme rigor or strictness; harsh discipline. "The austerity of John the Baptist."
3.
Plainness; freedom from adornment; severe simplicity. "Partly owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and partly to the lack of demonstration in her manners."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Austerity" Quotes from Famous Books



... the Narrows. The rocks are polished smooth and bare as they rise from the water's edge, and it is as desolate and barren a land as one's imagination could picture, but withal possesses a rugged grand beauty in its grim austerity that is impressive. ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... place at the hotel of Prince Eugene, where the King of Prussia resided in Paris. We waited for some minutes in the salon, and when Frederick William entered from his cabinet I remarked on his countenance an air of embarrassment and austerity which convinced me that he had been studying his part, as great personages are in the habit of doing on similar occasions. The King on entering the salon first noticed Berthier, whom he addressed with much kindness, bestowing ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... gaze quickly, but his heart sang, "She cares! she cares!" And quite suddenly he felt he wished to postpone speaking as long as possible, that the savour of this suspended bliss was too sweet to lose. A tremor ran through Blanche as their eyes met. She recognised that in him was an austerity against which even she ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... quantity. In this emergency Mulrady thought of sinking an artesian well on the sunny slope beside his house; not, however, without serious consultation and much objection from his Spanish patron. With great austerity Don Ramon pointed out that this trifling with the entrails of the earth was not only an indignity to Nature almost equal to shaft-sinking and tunneling, but was a disturbance of vested interests. "I and my fathers, San Diego rest them!" ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte

... religious duties need not be attended by any preciseness or austerity of manner. On the contrary, I should wish you to be at all times cheerful and good humoured, ready to take part in any innocent gaiety. My object is to impress upon you the absolute necessity of always putting religion in the first place. If you really believe what you profess to believe, do not ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens

... been faithful to her husband; her whole widowhood had hitherto passed without attack.... Well, the long and the short of it was: if he wished to make her his wife she would be very glad, but she would reject any bolder proposal with the same austerity as ... as ... twelve years before, when he had showed her his window ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler

... asked herself many times, to bring a strength-giving peace to her father's troubled mind. Even Mrs. Porter, implacably bitter against racing, must condone what was so evidently Allis's study, if it tended to their happiness; the mother had softened somewhat in the austerity of ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... might look at the reverse side of the picture, and endeavour to show how the narrow limits of Wordsworth's power are connected with certain moral defects; with the want of quick sympathy which shows itself in his dramatic feebleness, and the austerity of character which caused him to lose his special gifts too early and become a rather commonplace defender of conservatism; and that curious diffidence (he assures us that it was 'diffidence') which induced him to write many thousand lines of blank verse entirely about himself. But the task ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... us are too good," said Mrs. Avenel with great austerity, "and I beg you will not talk in that way. Good-night—I must get your poor father ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... The government nonetheless faces serious challenges in the economic arena. It has funded reconstruction by borrowing heavily - mostly from domestic banks. In order to reduce the ballooning national debt, the re-installed HARIRI government began an economic austerity program to rein in government expenditures, increase revenue collection, and privatize state enterprises. The HARIRI government met with international donors at the Paris II conference in November 2002 to seek bilateral assistance restructuring its domestic debt ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... in stature, in figure graceful, in countenance dignified." "In manner he was most modest; in eloquence most sweet; in chastity without stain." We may readily imagine his appearance; with that feminine austerity of expression which, as has been well said, belongs so peculiarly to the features of the ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... note through it all, austerity even in the pictures upon the walls. They were prints, old prints, coloured or plain, representing boxers of the old school, stripped to the waist, the ugly muscles flexed and bulging as they raised their lithe arms in the attitude of defence. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... out over the wide winter world, rejoicing in its austerity, its solemn beauty. Physically he was conscious of recovered health; and in the mind also there was a new energy of life and work. Nature seemed to say to him, "Do but keep thy heart open to me, and I have a myriad aspects and moods wherewith ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... than into a more serious and determined hostility. But my endeavours on this head were by no means uniformly successful, even when my plans were the most wittily concocted; for my namesake had much about him, in character, of that unassuming and quiet austerity which, while enjoying the poignancy of its own jokes, has no heel of Achilles in itself, and absolutely refuses to be laughed at. I could find, indeed, but one vulnerable point, and that, lying in a personal peculiarity, arising, perhaps, from ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... handling a matter which unluckily it was not possible to handle on the stage with absolute and positive delicacy of feeling or expression. Dr. Johnson—in my humble opinion, with some justice; though his verdict has been disputed on the score of undeserved austerity—"could not reconcile his heart to Bertram"; and I, unworthy as I may be to second or support on the score of morality the finding of so great a moralist, cannot reconcile my instincts to Helena. ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... him. She had expected to see a man, reserved almost to the point of austerity. And she found his first look even more awe-compelling than her imagination had pictured; so much so indeed, that her resolution faltered, and she took a quick step backward; which seeing, he smiled and her heart and hopes grew warm again. That ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various

... Red King was not only grievous, it was arbitrary, capricious, cruel, and without semblance of law. The austerity of the Conqueror had been conspicuous; equally conspicuous was the debauchery of his son. The Conqueror had been faithful and conscientious in seeing that vacancies in the Church were filled up quickly and wisely. The Red King preferred to leave bishoprics and ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... me that he lives, And thou shall be the ruler of my fate, For ever hide me in a convent's gloom, From cheerful day-light, and the haunts of men, Where sad austerity and ceaseless prayer Shall share my ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More

... bloody Circus stands, A noble wreck in ruinous perfection, While Caesar's chambers, and the Augustan halls, Grovel on earth in indistinct decay.— 30 And thou didst shine, thou rolling Moon, upon All this, and cast a wide and tender light, Which softened down the hoar austerity Of rugged desolation, and filled up, As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries; Leaving that beautiful which still was so, And making that which was not—till the place Became religion, and the heart ran o'er With silent ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... life He included the austerity of the Indian monks, of John the Baptist and the Nazarenes on the one hand; and on the other the Confucian moderate feasting, in the houses of friends, at the marriage feast ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic

... counterplotting, temporizing, nattering, cozening, dissembling, [362]"that of necessity one must highly offend God if he be conformable to the world, Cretizare cum Crete, or else live in contempt, disgrace and misery." One takes upon him temperance, holiness, another austerity, a third an affected kind of simplicity, when as indeed, he, and he, and he, and the rest are [363]"hypocrites, ambidexters," outsides, so many turning pictures, a lion on the one side, a lamb on the other. [364]How would Democritus have been ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... satisfaction. The bond of sympathy between Seagreave and Jose was probably that they both performed all manual tasks with a sort of beautiful precision. Gallito had characterized Harry's cabin as the cell of a monk. It was indeed simple and plain to austerity, and yet it possessed the beauty of a prevailing order and harmony. Shelves his own hands had made lined the rough walls and were filled with books; beside the wide fireplace was an open cupboard, displaying ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... considered as such. Those who come from Espana do not recognize it—not because there is a lack of observance there, but because the habit here is most severe; and since the country is so unsuitable for austerity, necessarily that is a cause for keen regret, and those who wear the habit are wont to wear a hair-shirt perpetually. These most religious fathers have charge of the Sangleys, for whom they have had finished linguists, and they do not lack such now. They have built so fine a wooden ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various

... been drinking tea ever since rising, dared not present his face, which showed the effects of his debauch of the night before, to the mistress of the house, whose exacting and aristocratic austerity he very much feared. He pretended to be ill, in order to delay the moment when he should be forced to make his appearance. Madame de Bergenheim did not leave her aunt, and thus avoided being alone with Octave—who, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... is based on the processing of agricultural products, durable consumer goods, minerals, and chemicals. Unemployment is officially reported at about 30%, but there is considerable underemployment. A fiscal austerity program has brought inflation under control, but in 1991 the economy contracted for a second straight year. GDP: exchange rate conversion - $7 billion, per capita $950; real growth rate -2% (1991 est.) Inflation rate (consumer prices): 9% (1991 est.) Unemployment rate: ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... more courteous; and although, as heretofore, he kept himself entirely aloof, except when occasions of duty brought them together, still, when they did meet, there was more of conciliation in his manner, and less of austerity in his speech. There was, moreover, a dejection in his eye, strongly in contrast with his former imperious glance; and more than one officer remarked, that, if his days were devoted to the customary practical arrangements for defence, his pallid countenance ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... your opinions, and we love your person. But virtue is not allied to rigour and austerity. Its boundaries are unconstrained, and graceful, and sweeping. It is a robe which sits easily on those who are formed to wear it. It gives no awkwardness to their manner, and puts no force upon their actions. Partake then, my Imogen, in those refreshments we have ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... the highest social circles. Men marvelled at his knowledge, at his unfailing equanimity, and at his political strength; but even to those who were spellbound by his eloquence, or captivated by his adroit, skilful conduct of a lawsuit, he was always "Prince John." There was not a drop of austerity or intolerance or personal hatred in him. The Dutch blood of his father, traced from the Princes of Orange to the days of the New Netherland patroons, kept him within the limits of moderation if not entirely unspotted, and his finished manners attracted the common people as readily ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... slight and thin—his cheeks hollow and colourless, with a profusion of black silken ringlets that almost descended to his shoulders. His eyes, deeply sunk into his head, were large and intensely brilliant; and a thin moustache, curling downwards, gave an additional austerity to his mouth, which was closed with gloomy and half-sarcastic firmness. He was not dressed as people dress in general, but wore a frock of dark camlet, with a large shirt-collar turned down, and a narrow slip of black silk twisted rather than tied round ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... forward with an affectation of stern dignity, the burlesque humour of which delighted all those lively revellers. And when with adroit mimicry their slight arms and mincing steps mocked that grand and masculine measure so associated with images of Spartan austerity and decorum, the exhibition became so humorously ludicrous, that perhaps a Spartan himself would have been compelled to laugh at it. But the merriment rose to its height, when the Egyptian, who had withdrawn for a few ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... His zeal and enthusiasm appealed to her love of everything pertaining to mysticism, and he seemed to make the chord of religious poetry, which she possessed in common with every woman, vibrate within her. His austerity, his contempt for every luxury and sensuality, his disdain for the things that usually occupy the thoughts of men, his love of God, his youthful, intolerant inexperience, his scathing words, his inflexible will made Jeanne compare him, in her mind, to the early martyrs; and she, who had already suffered ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... is farming or nothing for you now, my dear fellow," Felix was saying, among other things, to his youngest brother, as he looked through his spectacles at the distant fields with sad austerity. "And, therefore, we must make the best of it. But I do entreat you to endeavour to keep as much as possible in touch with moral ideals. Farming, of course, means roughing it externally; but high thinking may go ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... coats. Clad according to his convention, the limbs of the weakling escape contempt, and the athlete is unobtrusive, and all is well. But there is also a social reason for the triumph of our costume—the reason of economy. That austerity, which has rejected from its toilet silk and velvet and all but a few jewels, has made more ample the wardrobes of Dives, and sent forth Irus nicely dressed among his fellows. And lastly there is a reason of psychology, most potent of all, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... learn to take a reprimand from the representative of Republican Law. Seriously, mon cher, thou must be sober for the next three or four days; after the crisis is over, thou and I will drink a bottle together. Come, Dumas relax thine austerity, and shake hands with our friend. ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... said Lady Mountjoy, in her most austere voice. She had a voice which could assume austerity when she knew her power to be in the ascendant. As Florence entered the room Miss Abbott left it by a door on the other side. "Take that chair, Florence. I want to have a few minutes' conversation with you." Then Florence sat down. "When a young lady is ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... preached it, but my father, who practised and embodied it. I loved him, but he made of righteousness a stern and terrible thing implying not joy, but punishment, the, suppression rather than the expansion of aspirations. His religion seemed woven all of austerity, contained no shining threads to catch my eye. Dreams, to him, were matters for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... have been predestined to the tavern (H. 20. 4); who asks indulgence if he turns aside from the mosque to the wine-house (H. 213. 4); who drinks his wine to the sound of the harp, feeling sure that God will forgive him (H. 292. 5); who is above the reproach of the boasters of austerity (H. 106. 3); and who, finally, asks that the cup be placed in his coffin so that he may drink from it on the day of resurrection (H. 308. 8). But when Platen flings away the Quran he certainly is not in accord with his Persian model, for, ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy

... him, and had held up Voltaire himself as a proper object for the persecutions of Geneva. But there was a still deeper root of discrepancy, which we have already pointed out. Rousseau's exaggerated tone was an offence to Voltaire's more just and reasonable spirit; and the feigned austerity of a man whose life and manners he knew assumed in his eyes a disagreeable shade of hypocrisy.[36] Besides these things, he was clearly apprehensive of the storms which Rousseau's extraordinary hardihood had the very natural effect of raising in the circles of authority, though it is true that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... too good," said Mrs. Avenel, with great austerity, "and I beg you will not talk in that way. Goodnight,—I must get your poor father ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... mother dear, you are quite right," and to have much sympathy with the learned Scotch lawyer who observed that there was not whisky enough in all Scotland to make him frank with his wife. Mr. Hamerton, in fact, spoiled son of fortune that he is, cannot keep for a long time the austerity of tone which belongs to a deliberate apology for culture: he therefore does what is better in taking the desirableness of his ideal for granted, and in lifting it out of the sloughs into which it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... Bessieres, and his Majesty's aides-decamp, Rapp, Lebrun, Lauriston, Mouton, etc., were exceedingly affable, and every one was most politely received by them; their dignity never became haughtiness, nor their ease an excessive familiarity, though their manners were at all times slightly tinged by the austerity inseparable from the character of a warrior. This was not the idea held in the army in regard to a few of the ordnance and staff officers (aides-de-camp); for, while according them all the consideration due both to their education and their courage, they called them ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... Self-abnegation and austerity were now to take the place of pleasant frivolities and fashionable amusements. Her conviction was that her mind required the ties and bonds of Quakerism to fit it for immortality. Not that she, in any way, trusted in her own righteousness; for she gives it as ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... poorest towns of Italy. The signs of warlike occupation which they offer, and their sinister aspect of vigilance, are thoroughly prosaic. They seem to suggest a state of society in which feud and violence were systematised into routine. There is no relief to the savage austerity of their forbidding aspect; no signs of wealth or household comfort; no trace of art, no liveliness and gracefulness of architecture. Perched upon their coigns of vantage, these villages seem always menacing, as if Saracen pirates, or Genoese ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... seemed to grow in magnitude, she gradually arrived at the conclusion that it was John's fault. Half an hour ago, in the flush of triumph she had indignantly denied that anything could be John's fault. She now resolved to behave to him with great austerity. Such an occurrence as his falling in love could not be passed over with indifference. It seemed best that he should ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford

... them. Her father had thought at first to house her with his old friend Edward Gering, but he loved the Cavalier-like tone of Colonel Nicholls's household better than the less inspiriting air which Madam Puritan Gering suffused about her home. Himself in early youth had felt the austerity of a Cavalier father turned a Puritan on a sudden, and he wished no such experience for his daughter. For all her abundancy of life and feeling, he knew how plastic and impressionable she was, and he dreaded to see that exaltation of her fresh spirit touched with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... non firmitate sed jejunio consequuntur." That is why they so unanimously hate every firmitas, because it bears testimony to a kind of health quite different from theirs; hence their one wish to throw suspicion upon all austerity and terseness, upon all fiery and energetic movement, and upon every full and delicate play of muscles. They have conspired to twist nature and the names of things completely round, and for the future to speak of health only there where we see weakness, and to speak of illness and excitability ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... were noted for their excessive pride and pretensions to strict orthodoxy in all outward observances. Abdulmelik ben Salih, who was a well-known general and statesman of the time, was especially renowned for pietism and austerity of manners. ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... perfectibility of man, need not be alarmed at it. He then proceeds to remove the difficulty in a manner which I profess not to understand. Having observed, that the ridiculous prejudices of superstition would by that time have ceased to throw over morals a corrupt and degrading austerity, he alludes, either to a promiscuous concubinage, which would prevent breeding, or to something else as unnatural. To remove the difficulty in this way will, surely, in the opinion of most men, be to destroy that virtue and purity ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus

... Thursday.—With that austerity that since Stuart times has marked relations of House of Commons with royalty Mr. HOGGE is known at Westminster simply as the Member for East Edinburgh, a position he with characteristic modesty accepts. But blood, especially royal blood, like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various

... fruit nor depart, God will take his name out of thy mouth (Jer 44:26). He will have fruit. And I say further, if thou wilt do neither, yet God in justice and righteousness will still come for fruit. And it will be in vain for thee to count this austerity. He will reap where he hath not sowed, and gather where he hath not strewed (Matt 25:24-26). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... affected great cynicism in clothes, a Spartan austerity in its food, the profound contempt of a barbarous people for arts and enjoyments. The Thermidorian reaction was, on the contrary, elegant, opulent, adorned; it exhausted all luxuries, all voluptuous pleasures, as in the days of ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... deemed that sullenness enhanced dignity. I never in the whole course of my acquaintance saw him kithe so unfavourably as he did on that occasion. In the course of the evening, however, he condescended to thaw, and before the party broke up, his austerity began to leaf, and hide its thorns under the influence of a relenting temperament. It was, however, too evident—at least it was so to me—that without intending wrong, or any offence, the unchecked humour of his temper was, by its caprices, calculated to prevent him from ever gaining ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... with the severe and ascetic minds who think that true morality has nothing to do with art, or even that everything moral should be destitute of art. These people are completely deceived and unwittingly promote pornography, by repelling humanity with their austerity and driving it to the opposite extreme. The aesthetic and moral sentiments should be harmoniously combined with intelligence and will, each of these departments of the mind participating by its special energies in the ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... Austerity doth not become us, neither in doctrine nor in conversation. We ourselves live by grace; let us give as we receive, and labor to persuade our fellow-sinners whom God has left behind us, to follow after, that they may partake with us of grace. We are saved by grace, let us live like them that ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... element in their art is that of the grotesque and burlesque, never, of course, quite absent even from early books, but now most prominent and most delightful. The defect of the art of this time is lack of strength and austerity; its delicacy is ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... sir!" cut in the Count, with the austerity that makes the continental nobleman what ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... accredited to some dissolute court, such as that in which the Marchioness of Montespan had lately been dominant. But there was an obvious impropriety in sending him on an embassy rather of a spiritual than of a secular nature to a pontiff of primitive austerity. The Protestants all over Europe sneered; and Innocent, already unfavourably disposed to the English government, considered the compliment which had been paid him, at so much risk and at so heavy a cost, as little ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... now became one of the slightly bored-looking men he had observed earlier, strolling about, claque under arm, in the rigid black and white which took on an effect of austerity amid the blossom-colors of the costumes. He sincerely hoped no one would approach him to intrigue him, and the hope found expression, more than he knew, in his countenance. He felt unable to meet such an adventure in a manner that would satisfy his taste. It marked a fundamental difference ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... Yet when the Jews asked him why he baptized, he confirmed his office by the authority of Scripture, saying: "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness," etc. as related, John 1:23 (cf. Isa. 40:3). Moreover, the very austerity of his life was a commendation of his office, because, as Chrysostom says, commenting on Matthew (Hom. x in Matth.), "it was wonderful to witness such ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... Adeline's serene severity Was not confined to feeling for her friend, Whose fame she rather doubted with posterity, Unless her habits should begin to mend: But Juan also shared in her austerity, But mix'd with pity, pure as e'er was penn'd: His inexperience moved her gentle ruth, And (as her junior by ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... Miss Granger was in a manner compelled to relax the austerity of her demeanour. She even smiled in a frosty way as she shook hands with him; but she had no less a sense of the fact that her father had out-manoeuvred her, and that this invitation to Mr. Tillott was a crafty design whereby he intended to have Clarissa ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... the house in the coaching parade came to Mrs. Milray aver a welsh-rarebit which she gave at the close of the evening. The party was in the charge of Gregory, who silently served them at their orgy with an austerity that might have conspired with the viand itself against their dreams, if they had not been so used to the gloom of his ministrations. He would not allow the waitresses to be disturbed in their evening leisure, or kept from their sleep ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... persuaded themselves that they had not done even the things which they were commanded to do, but that the things left undone outnumbered the things already well done. Again, he that was far behind in austerity, perchance through bodily weakness, would disparage and blame himself, attributing his failure to slothfulness of mind rather than to natural frailty. So each excelled each, and all excelled all ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... said, came from our North American colonies, and carried back to those colonies the spoils gained by crime. Adventurers who durst not show themselves in the Thames found a ready market for their illgotten spices and stuffs at New York. Even the Puritans of New England, who in sanctimonious austerity surpassed even their brethren of Scotland, were accused of conniving at the wickedness which enabled them to enjoy abundantly and cheaply the produce of Indian looms and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to me by a lady from her own childish experience. The lady is still living, though now of unusually great age; and I may mention—that amongst her faults never was numbered any levity of principle, or carelessness of the most scrupulous veracity; but, on the contrary, such faults as arise from austerity, too harsh perhaps, and gloomy—indulgent neither to others nor herself. And, at the time of relating this incident, when already very old, she had become religious to asceticism. According to my present belief, she had completed her ninth year, when playing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... vine in the direction in which the vine is to be bent. The trunk is then laid on the earth and sufficient soil placed on it to keep it in place on the ground. If the danger of winter-killing is great because of the tenderness of the variety or the austerity of the climate, it often becomes necessary to cover the whole plant lightly with earth. Small growers often make use of coarse manure, straw, corn-stalks or similar covering, in which case the vines are held on the ground by fence-rails or other timbers; but protecting with material that must ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... Mr. Goodworth was thinking profoundly, the rain was falling inveterately, the fog was thickening dirtily, and the austerity of the severe-looking parlor was hardening apace into its most adamantine Sunday grimness, as Zack was brought to say his lesson at his father's knees. He got through it perfectly again; but his childish manner, during this third trial, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... enough for one shipment, they do not suffice for the succor of so many souls as that province has in its charge, and for the new conversions which continually present themselves. Moreover, with the long voyage, the unaccustomed climates, the continual toil, and the austerity which is observed by this province—which follows the primitive rule of its order—the number of its members must necessarily diminish. This has actually been the case, since from the time when permission was given for the last shipload of religious, which was nine ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... water-sponges. The Basilian order of monks were pledged to austerity; but probably Lamb intended merely a joke upon his friend Basil Montagu's teetotalism (see note in Vol. I. to "Confessions of a Drunkard," a paper quoted in Montagu's Some Enquiries into the Effects of Fermented Liquors). In John Forster's copy of the Last Essays of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... the benediction are taken as a test of the popularity of the Pope, though I suppose the weather has a good deal to do with it. Leo XII. was very unpopular from his austerity, and particularly his shutting up the wine shops. The first time he gave the benediction after that measure hardly anybody came to ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... Christmas festivities of England, and am tempted to illustrate them by some anecdotes of a Christmas passed in the country; in perusing which I would most courteously invite my reader to lay aside the austerity of wisdom, and to put on that genuine holiday spirit which is tolerant of folly, ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving

... renew their acquaintance, and though she saw that Gillian was in an agony to speak about something, did not guess what an ordeal the girl felt it to have to begin with the father, unseen for four years, and whose searching eyes and grave politeness gave a sense of austerity, so that trepidation was spoiling all the elation at having a father, and such a father, ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... from many temptations to falsehood. They should be encouraged to talk freely of all their amusements to their parents, and to ask them for whatever they want to complete their little inventions. Instead of banishing all the freedom of wit and humour, by the austerity of his presence, a preceptor, with superior talents, and all the resources of property in his favour, might easily become the arbiter deliciarum ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... voice said to him—Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over other fields than these.—But how to come out of this condition and actually migrate thither? All that he could think of was to practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself with ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... their minds was often injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach: and we know that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant austerity, that they had their anchorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their De Montforts, their Dominics and their Escobars. Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to pronounce ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... stay in bed, and he could not hang about the house. He did not know how to demean himself to either of the young men when he met them. He could not be cordial as he ought to be with Urmand; nor could he be austere to George with that austerity which he felt would have been proper on his part. He was becoming very tired of his dignity and authority. Hitherto the exercise of power in his household had generally been easy enough, his wife and Marie had always been loving and pleasant in their obedience. Till within these last ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope

... grandmother's time, as she had arranged it after she had quitted the Island, and come to the mainland.—A little later I will speak of this Island which had already a mysterious attraction for my youthful imagination.—It was a simple country house, notable for its Huguenot austerity; and it was a home where immaculate cleanliness and extreme order were the ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... out of daily fortune ever taints The happy man; whether defect of judgment, To fail in the disposing of those chances Which he was lord of; or whether nature, Not to be other than one thing, not moving From the casque to the cushion, but commanding peace Even with the same austerity and garb As he controll'd the war; but one of these,— As he hath spices of them all, not all, For I dare so far free him,—made him fear'd, So hated, and so banish'd: but he has a merit To choke it in the utterance. So our virtues Lie in the interpretation ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... had kept the images clear of the ivy that covered the rest of the fabric. Mark did not put this to the credit of the antiquarians; but now perceiving for the first time these two austere shapes of divine women under conditions of atmosphere that enhanced their austerity and unearthliness he ascribed their freedom from decay to the interposition of God. To Mark's imagination, fixed upon the images while Esther wandered solitary in the field beyond the chapel, there was granted another of those moments of vision which marked like milestones ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... of Burns is due chiefly to his songs. The Puritan austerity of the centuries following the Reformation had discouraged secular music, like other forms of art, in Scotland; and as a result Scottish song had become hopelessly degraded in point both of decency and literary quality. From youth Burns had been interested in collecting ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... of speaking was exactly what a conventional demagogue's ought not to be. It was pure to austerity; it was stripped of all superfluous ornament. It never gushed or foamed. It never allowed itself to be mastered by passion. The first peculiarity that struck the listener was its superb self-restraint. The orator at his most powerful passages appeared as if he were rather ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... in their expression a fixity indicative of his character, a purpose settled and unalterable. Of all the men I have ever known, Washington was the only one who never descended from the stilts of his dignity, or relaxed the austerity of his bearing. It has been said that he swore at General Charles Lee at the battle of Brandywine—I could never have it authenticated. He asked excitedly of General Lee, by what ill-timed mistake ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... Kofirans is called Bigotry, or misplaced Devotion. The Customs and religious Notions of this Nation, which were more free and rational than in the Country of this Princess, had been a Constraint upon her Inclination, without lessening her mistaken Austerity. It was on this Side, that Jeflur spread his Snares. He placed near the Queen a Dervise, one of those sly finished Villains, who, being Masters of the execrable Art of giving Sin an Appearance of ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon

... loyal subject of the king, God bless him!" Here a general shout burst from the bystanders.—"A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!" It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and, having a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown culprit, what he came there for, and whom he was seeking. The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neighbors, who used to keep ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... the attack. Drawn on by Ferrier's interrogative glance, she quietly repeated, with more detail, and even greater austerity, the arguments and considerations she had made use of in her wrestle with Sir James. Chide clearly perceived that her opposition was hardening with every successive explanation of it. What had been at first, no doubt, an instinctive recoil was now being converted into a plausible and reasoned ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... this kind can be found with 'Ghosts,' that drastic tragedy of a house built on the quicksands of falsehood, that appalling modern play with the overwhelming austerity of an ancient tragic drama, that extraordinarily compact and moving piece, in which the Norwegian playwright accomplished his avowed purpose of evoking "the sensation of having lived thru a passage of actual life." A few years only before Ibsen brought forth his ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... be said," he admonished her, after a moment's pause, and speaking with carefully measured austerity. "Least of all are they to be said to ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... the good demands that in all expenditure on the sanctuary anything that might serve the comfort of the worshipper should be conspicuously absent. If any element of comfort is admitted in the fittings of the sanctuary, it should be at least scrupulously screened and masked under an ostensible austerity. In the most reputable latter-day houses of worship, where no expense is spared, the principle of austerity is carried to the length of making the fittings of the place a means of mortifying the ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... here being granted, Malone's inference, that the play was made soon after the King's accession, and before the effect of his unlooked-for austerity on this score had spent itself, was natural enough. Nor is the conjecture of Ulrici and others without weight, "that Shakespeare was led to the composition of the play by the rigoristic sentiments and arrogant virtue of the Puritans." ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... case," said I through my teeth. But for all my austerity, and all his bonds, the prisoner continued to regard me with quiet but ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... admit an error than to be the slave of consistency. And this same feeling showed itself in other matters besides art: in ethics, as is shown by some verses which he addressed to a young friend, urging him not to be bound by a too rigid austerity: ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... such austerity been seen in my conduct before. The whole council sat in astonishment; and Mr Keelevine prepared his pen, and took a sheet of paper to draw out a notation of the minute, when Mr Peevie rose, and after coughing three times, and looking first ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... his lordship that he will make interest for her removal. Thus it should appear that this unfortunate lady did not sufficiently "remember her safety" in forming this connexion, obscure and humble as it was; for all matrimony had now become offensive to the austerity or the secret envy ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... haughty speech he provoked Vicvamitra, and in consequence of his wrath the Sciences instantly perished. (In the 'Chanda Kaucikam,' as far as I remember, we are told that the anger of Vicvamitra interfered with the success of his austerity.) The king says he had only done his duty as a king, which involves the bestowal of gifts on Brahmans and the succour of the weak. Vicvamitra thereupon demands from the king as a gift the whole earth, everything ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous

... Ximenes, did, carry with me to Court the austerity of a monk; nor, if I had done so, could I possibly have gained any influence there. Isabella and Henry were different characters, and their favour was to be sought in different ways. By making myself agreeable to the latter, I so governed ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... ignorance, after many ages of priestcraft and superstition, learning and genius visited our Island in the days of the renowned Queen Elizabeth. It was then that liberty began to dawn, and the people having shook off the restraints of priestly austerity, presumed to think for themselves. At an AEra so remarkable as this, so famous in history, it seems no wonder that the nation would be blessed with those immortal ornaments of wit and learning, who all conspired at once to ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... would have been fanaticism. While her husband was a worshiper from a love of God and his holy laws, she was prompted by fears of the wrath to come. He bowed in thankfulness, even while he wept their loss, to the Power that had borne his little ones to a brighter world, while her life gained new austerity from the thought that they had been taken from her as a judgment on her worldliness and idolatry. She loved to dwell upon the sufferings of the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, and emulate their rigid lives, forgetting that it ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... particular attention to the latter part of the king's discourse, for, indeed, the beginning was far more interesting to me; but when I afterwards learnt that madame Louise had quitted the grandeurs of Versailles for the gloom and austerity of a convent I recollected it, and easily comprehended that it was spoken in allusion to an event which took place some time afterwards, and of which I shall speak in its proper place. However, the king's prediction was exactly verified; and the report in general circulation was, that the princesses ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... large power and merit is Yoga. It is inculcated in the Yoga philosophy and is supposed to stand for a high mental discipline which speedily qualifies one for absorption into the Deity. It is manifested in the form of abstract meditation and austerity—an austerity embodied in asceticism and self-mortification. From early times this method has been held high in honour, and today is universally esteemed as the most powerful and speedy boat wherewith to cross the sullen stream of human existence. ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... strangers were received under the protection of the gods? In that case the supposed butcher-shop must have been a sort of office, and the triclinium a dormitory. However that may be, the table and the altar, the kitchen and religion, elbow each other in this strange palace. Our austerity revolts and our frivolity is amused at the circumstance; but Catholics of the south are not at all surprised at it. Their mode of worship has retained something of the antique gaiety. For the common people of Naples, Christmas is a festival of eels, Easter a revel of casatelli; ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... of those gales whose memory in after-years returns, welcome in dignified austerity, as you would remember with pleasure the noble features of a stranger with whom you crossed swords once in knightly encounter and are never to see again. In this way gales have their physiognomy. You remember them by your own feelings, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... accommodated ourself to our companion, by throwing as much seriousness into our conversation as our habits will admit, he, on the other hand, moved by our liberal example, hath divested his manners of part of their austerity; and our conversation has, in consequence, been of that pleasant texture, betwixt the useful and agreeable, which best resembles "the fairy-web of night and day," usually called in prose the twilight. It is probable both parties may, on such occasions, have been the better ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... apiece,—in English money from eight to twelve shillings. They were painted in a theatrical style, which Millet himself detested—all pink cheeks, and red lips, and blue satin, and lace collars; whereas his own natural style was one of great austerity and a certain earnest sombreness the exact reverse of the common Parisian taste to which he ministered. However, he had to please his patrons—and, like a sensible man, he went on producing these cheap daubs to any extent required, for a living, while he endeavoured ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... modify the severe expression by saying pleasant things while helping seat her in a good position, but only half succeeded; and the picture which we have of her does not do her entire justice, since it gives an impression of austerity not in keeping with her usual disposition ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... Accordingly he flung the bone, which he had stripped in eating the meat, in the face of the harlequin, and drove the wind violently out of his puffed cheeks, so that they collapsed. By this he showed how his austerity loathed the clatter of the stage; for his ears were stopped with anger and open to no influence of delight. This reward, befitting an actor, punished an unseemly performance with a shameful wage. For Starkad excellently judged the man's ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... knightly fervor of his forefathers came upon him, and he saw a sweet and golden lady set far above him upon a throne. Her clear eyes gazed afar, serene and untroubled. She sat wrapped in a sort of virginal austerity, unaware of the base passions of men. The other women whom Ste. Marie had—as he was pleased to term it—loved had certainly come at least half-way to meet him, and some of them had come a good deal farther than that. He could not, by the wildest flight of imagination, conceive this girl doing ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... stage of human progress, and turned over the last leaf in the volume of human improvements. The day when this is said and believed marks the end of a nation's life. Is it possible that, after all, our old protestant spirit, with its rationality, its austerity, its steady political energy, has been struck with something of the mortal fatigue that seizes catholic societies after ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... creatures who arrogantly boast that they are civilised—he was too angry for that. He was only conscious that a vain and impertinent echo of the town had, by his instrumentality, found its way into and vilified the secret refuge of God's austerity. Tearing back the bolts from the storehouse door and lifting the latch, he rushed ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... friendship, which served to endear the parties to each other. Their faces daily lost something of that deathlike hue which had at first marked them, and they visibly improved in strength. They began to throw off some of that cold reserve and forbidding austerity, which had kept the hunter so long in ignorance of their true character. Every day, their appearance and behaviour approximated more nearly to that of the beings of ordinary life. One evening the hunter returned very late, after having ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... learn from her what the future had in store for them. Frequently a warrior left her abode with a consuming fire kindled in his breast which would rob him of sleep for many a long night, yet none dared to declare his love to her, for, lovely though she was, there was an air of austerity, an atmosphere of mysticism about her which commanded awe and reverence, and ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... face, which even his smiles could never soften, or his utmost gaiety render placid and serene; but when that sternness of visage was increased by rage, it is scarce possible to imagine looks or features that carried in them more terror and austerity."—ORRERY. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray



Words linked to "Austerity" :   nonindulgence, asceticism, self-denial, austere



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