"Nun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thirty-six. Her hair had thinned, and was full of silver threads; a wrinkle invaded either cheek, and she was angular and bony; but something painfully sweet lingered in her face, and a certain childlike innocence of expression gave her the air of a nun; the world had never touched nor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... city of Brussels, in the year 1677, when the viscount, then Thomas Esmond, was serving with the English army in Flanders; he could show, he said, that this Gertrude, deserted by her husband long since, was alive, and a professed nun in the year 1685, at Brussels, in which year Thomas Esmond married his uncle's daughter, Isabella, now called Viscountess Dowager of Castlewood; and leaving him, for twelve hours, to consider this astounding ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stopped to ask an asylum, and made Huon dismount also. But at that moment they were joined by the dwarf, who blew a blast upon an ivory horn which hung from his neck. Immediately the good Sherasmin, in spite of himself, began to dance like a young collegian, and seizing the hand of an aged nun, who felt as if it would be her death, they footed it briskly over the grass, and were imitated by all the other monks and nuns, mingled together, forming the strangest dancing-party ever beheld. Huron alone felt no disposition to dance; but he came near dying of laughter at seeing ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... grand about her, though she dresses as gravely and poorly as a nun. Her face is sweet and sad, and can be stern. ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... Pope a commission to the Patriarch of Lisbon, empowering him to inquire into the facts of the case; and that prelate's report being favorable, the lover was made happy with a bull annulling the religious vows of the nun, and authorizing their marriage. It is uncertain how long this affair remained undecided; but a Portuguese Jesuit having warned Vieira that at home he ran the risk of being punished by confiscation of ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... first, That one is one is an identical proposition, from which we might expect that no further consequences could be deduced. The train of consequences which follows, is inferred by altering the predicate into 'not many.' Yet, perhaps, if a strict Eristic had been present, oios aner ei kai nun paren, he might have affirmed that the not many presented a different aspect of the conception from the one, and was therefore not identical with it. Such a subtlety would be very much in character with the Zenonian dialectic. Secondly, We may note, that the conclusion is really involved ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... outbreaking of stifling passion and terrible ante-Protestantism. Over this path, on which, in earlier ages, the mitre and rosary and violet robe and confessional, and doctrines of celibacy and monkery and nun-nism, and bell and consecrated taper, and still deeper dogmas or doctrines, wandered from the East into the Church, came also heresies, terrible as Knights Templars', which in due time warred against the Church, and cleft it in twain. The doctrines of wild sects, more or less Manichaean, which came ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the age of thirty-three, a Mlle. Martin, "d'une bonne famille de Sens,"[45] whom he had the misfortune to lose within two years (in 1723), and whom he "regretted all his life."[46] She left him with an only daughter, who later became a nun and took the veil at ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... ist nun das Geschick der Grossen fiier auf Erden, Erst wann sie nicht mehr sind; ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... mourning finery—her black tulles and silks and bugles and jet jewelry—and she took to wearing the plainest black alpacas and the plainest white muslin caps. She looked more like a Protestant nun than a "sparkling" young widow. But she looked prettier and more interesting than ever, ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... nun, I trow, While apple bloom is white as snow, But far more fair to see; I'll never wear nun's black and white While nightingales make sweet the night Within the ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... Bless us! if you should take a vagary and make a rash resolution on your wedding night, to die a maid, as she did; all were ruined, all my hopes lost. My heart would break, and my estate would be left to the wide world, he? I hope you are a better Christian than to think of living a nun, he? ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... he has promised to come round along with a few of the Ghost-Dancers to let me see what I think of them. Fancy the ballet has been done before. That clever cuss GUS, must have used it at Covent Garden when he put up Robert the Devil. It seems like the Nun Ballet—uncommonly. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... fashion of the day; but Mme. Ricard wore no hoops; she went with ease and silence where others went with a rustle and a warning to clear the way. The back of her head was covered with a little cap as plain as a nun's cap; and I never saw an ornament about her. Yet criticism never touched Mme. Ricard. Not even the criticism of a set of school-girls; and I had soon to learn that ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... were Mr. George Bradford, who always reminded me of a priest of the true type; and Miss Hoar, whose vestal soul, celebrating constant rites over the memory of her dead betrothed, made her the image of a nun. This welcome delicacy and loftiness of self-consecration my mother also observed in the ranks of the sometimes harshly criticised friars. At Fiesole, "A young monk unveiled the picture for us. He was very courteous, and had an air of unusual ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... goes," whispered the nun, "she always says that he is dead, and cries herself quietly to sleep; when Monsieur returns, she says he is come to life again. Some one, I suppose, once talked to her about death; and she thinks when she loses sight of any one, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... having been brought up at a brilliant court, and being more beautiful than any of the contemporary princesses, she was fond of costly fabrics, of chains, pearls, gold bracelets and rings; but now and even for several years past, she not only wore the dress of a nun, but she even covered her face, fearing that the thoughts of her beauty might arouse in her worldly vanity. In vain Jagiello, having learned of her condition, in a rapture of joy ordered her sleeping apartment ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... which she had passed, and crushed in spirit by the dreadful scenes to which her brother had exposed her, now determined to withdraw wholly from the scene. She took the veil in the convent where she was confined, and went as a nun into the cloisters with the other sisters. The name that she ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... painted. Elaine sat on a dais, her hands folded in her lap; about her head twisted nun's-veiling gave her the old-fashioned quality of a Cosway miniature—the very effect he had sought. It was to be a "pretty" affair, this picture, with its subdued lighting, the face being the only target he aimed at; all the rest, the suave background, the gauzy draperies, he would ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... spoke she pulled out a pink nun's-veiling, made up with innumerable ruffles and frills and laces and embroidery, a really very pretty dress for quite a gay party, but totally unsuitable for a schoolgirl of Kitty ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... and all round me had the look of regal luxury. But one object suddenly caught my gaze, and left me no power to glance at any other. In a recess, which had hitherto been obscure, but over which now blazed a brilliant girandole, hung a full-length portrait of a nun, which, but for the dress, I should have pronounced to be Clotilde; the same Greek profile, the same deep yet vivid eye, the same matchless sweetness of smile, and the same mixture of melancholy and enthusiasm, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... smiling nun (I wonder, do they always choose the most agreeable and best-humored sister of the house to show it to strangers?) came tripping down the steps and across the flags of the little garden-court, and welcomed us with much courtesy into the neat little old-fashioned, red-bricked, gable-ended, ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the life of the Brazilian senhora in any of the smaller towns. In the northern provinces, especially, old Portuguese notions about shutting women up and making their home-life as colorless as that of a cloistered nun, without even the element of religious enthusiasm to give it zest, still prevail. Many a Brazilian lady passes day after day without stirring beyond her four walls, scarcely even showing herself at the door or window; for she is always in a careless ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... third, he fights a duel with a rival, and kills him: whereupon the mistress of his victim takes poison, and dies, in great agonies, on the stage. In the fourth act, Don Juan, having entered a church for the purpose of carrying off a nun, with whom he is in love, is seized by the statue of one of the ladies whom he has previously victimized, and made to behold the ghosts of all those unfortunate persons whose deaths ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to observe from some higher place." Cf. Aristoph. "Wasps," 361, {nun de xun oplois} | {andres oplitai diataxamenoi} | {kata tas diodous ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... The nun held out a pie pan, rattled a few coins in it. "Contribute to the Radiation Victims' Relief?" the ...
— Death of a Spaceman • Walter M. Miller
... donkey reace were star o' t' pleace, For awd an' young observers; 'Twad meade a nun fra t' convent run An' ne'er ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... pretty—there's no denying that. But where is her Jewish impudence? She looks as demure as a nun. I suppose she learned ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... circumnavigated Africa from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, a voyage stated to have been accomplished in three years. Apart from the reported circumnavigation of the continent, the west coast was well known to the Phoenicians as far as Cape Nun, and c. 520 B.C. Hanno, a Carthaginian, explored the coast as far, perhaps, as the Bight of Benin, certainly as far as Sierra Leone. A vague knowledge of the Niger regions was also ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... anger. The features of his face became even harsher, coarser, and more unpleasant. When Abogin held out before his eyes the photograph of a young woman with a handsome face as cold and expressionless as a nun's and asked him whether, looking at that face, one could conceive that it was capable of duplicity, the doctor suddenly flew out, and with flashing eyes said, ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Mochuda himself was the last to pass over and the path across was so level that it offered no obstacle to foot-passengers or chariots but was like a level plain so that they crossed dryshod, as the Jordan fell back for Josue the son of Nun [Josue 3:17]. Soon as Mochuda had crossed over he blessed the waters and commanded them to resume their natural course. On the reuniting again of the waters they made a noise like thunder, and the name of the place is The Place of Benedictions, from ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... court to marry his sister. He would not venture upon that, before the eyes of all Europe. It is the strain and the pressure that I fear. A girl who is sent to a nunnery, however much she may hate becoming a nun, can no more escape than a fly from the meshes of a spider. I doubt not that it seems, to all the Huguenots of France, that for me to marry Marguerite of Valois would be more than a great victory won for their cause; but I have my doubts. However, in a matter like ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... away from his neighbors on the third story; but when he heard Hanne's light step on the planking over there, he used to peep furtively across the well. She went her way like a nun—straight to her work and straight home again, her eyes fixed on the ground. She never looked up at his window, or indeed anywhere. It was as though her nature had completed its airy flutterings, as though it ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... I will never believe he could be so ungallant. But Hilda, I hear that really you live in positive seclusion, like a nun without a convent. My dear, how tragic, to pass your best years in this way! I told mamma that I should positively implore you to come to me this winter, and she said it was my DUTY. To think of YOU, Hilda, forswearing the world! It is too BIZARRE! But we have ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... stir not for passion or prayer, And makest no sign of the lips or the eyes, With a nun's strait band o'er thy bright black hair— Blind to mine anguish and deaf to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... not present himself at her drawing-room in Claridge's Hotel: when absent in Russia or on the Continent, she received from him weekly letters, though he used to complain that writing to a lady through the poste restante was like trying to kiss a nun through a double grating. These letters, all faithfully preserved, I have been privileged to see; they remind me, in their mixture of personal with narrative charm, of Swift's "Letters to Stella"; except that Swift's ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... was above all things a chaste-minded man, modest as a nun. To the immodesty rampant about him he was in the habit of closing his eyes and his ears, until the flagrancy or the noise of it grew to proportions to which he might ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... named Keller, is said to have been very kind to him in the days of his poverty, and out of gratitude Haydn gave music-lessons to his daughters. One of them, the youngest, was very pretty, and Haydn fell in love with her. But she became a nun; and the father then prevailed upon Haydn to marry the elder one, who was three years older than he—a sour-tempered, bigoted, and abominably selfish woman, who contributed little to the happiness of his life, and was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... simple enough. Some time to-night you will suddenly awake and see before you a Carmelite nun who will look fixedly at you, say distinctly and very sadly, 'I cannot sleep,' and then vanish. That is all, it is hardly worth speaking of, only some people are terribly frightened if they are visited unwarned by strange apparitions; ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... it is, but you remind me of a nun," Clara said, glancing at her in some perplexity. "The effect is quite charming, but ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... They've let you be with me more as a novice than you could be as a professed nun. Still, you'd have been under the same roof. I could have seen you often. But I am glad. I'm not thinking of myself. And we'll meet just as soon as we can, when my time's up here. Father's coming back to his dear native Fifeshire ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... we got to know this girl in the interval. She is awfully nice and she says she really did not do it on purpose for she is frightfully pious and perhaps she's going to be a nun. I am pious too, we go to church nearly every Sunday, but I would not go into a convent, not I. Dora says people generally do that when they've been crossed in love, because then the world seems empty and hateful. She ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... wear have a dull finish. Henrietta, imperial serges, tamese cloth and nun's veiling are the standard fabrics. A lusterless silk is sometimes employed, also ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... loftier Brother shall be King, High-priest art thou to Brahma unrevealed, While thy white sanctity forever sealed In icy silence leaves desire congealed. In ghostly ministrations to the sun, And to the mendicant stars and the moon-nun, Be holy still, till East to West has run, And till no sacrificial suffering On any shrine is left to ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... sounds also "filled his herte with pleasure and solass," and the early crowing of the cock was a part of the minstrelsy he loved. Perhaps when lying awake during the dark quiet hours, and listening to just such a note as this, he conceived and composed that wonderful tale of the "Nun's Priest," in which the whole character of Chanticleer, his glory and his foibles, together with the homely virtues of Dame Partlett, are so admirably ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... not to speak in the Church; but let the men preach, because of the command that they are to be subject to their husbands—as St. Paul teaches us, I. Cor. xiv.: Such order God permits to remain, but makes no distinction of the election. But where there are no men, but women only, as in the Nun's Cloisters, there a woman may ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... majesty, of the majesty, of the majesty, of Thy gl-o-o-ry," sang Elizabeth. And was at once a nun and a principal in a sentimental dream ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... painful that I decided not to write to Madame Schewitsch about it. I have therefore no absolute corroboration of the fact that the lady mentioned had a sister who became a nun, or who was connected with some such establishment, and had passed over. This, however, is much more probable than not, because in every high-born Catholic family in Austria, one member in a large family almost invariably takes the veil. I have given the real name in this case, hoping Madame ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... nipote of Alexander VI, who was sent to smooth matters over, was dismissed with public contempt. All the while the two leaders of the ruling house, Guido and Ridolfo, were holding frequent interviews with Suor Colomba of Rieti, a Dominican nun of saintly reputation and miraculous powers, who under penalty of some great disaster ordered them to make peace naturally in vain. Nevertheless the chronicle takes the opportunity to point out the devotion and piety of the better men in Perugia during ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... never been any particular mental shock, and the mother has always felt that Janet was particularly free from contamination by bad children. At times she seems to realize her own bad behavior, and not long ago said she would become a nun, for in the tranquil life of the convent her tendency to lying would ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... unlucky wight who, purposely or through negligence, failed to doff his hat or drop a coin into the box placed in convenient proximity! He was an impious man, a heretic, and fortunate was it for him if he escaped with his life. To refuse to swell the collection of the monk or nun that came to a man's own door to solicit funds for the trial of the Protestants, was equally perilous. In short, it was no unfrequent device for a debtor to get rid of the importunity of his creditor by raising the cry, "Au Christaudin, an Lutherien!" It went hard with the former if he ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... the dressing-room, and soon reappeared, looking demure and nun-like in her white hood and black-and-white plaid shawl. How she dreaded the ride home with Christian! and yet for a whole week she had been longing for this very thing. The thought of the party had always brought the throbbing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... Arab's tent, Pitched for the night beneath a palm, Or when was heard the vesper psalm, With the pale nun ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... Papal forces, Alessandro settled at Milan, where he dwelt, honoured by the Sforzas and allied to them by marriage, till his death in 1532. He was buried in the monastery by the side of his sister Alessandra, a nun of the order. Luini has painted the illustrious exile in his habit as he lived. He is kneeling, as though in ever-during adoration of the altar mystery, attired in a long black senatorial robe trimmed with furs. In his left hand ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... cannot help transferring them, in some degree, to all the personages whose secret and unknown nature we propose to reveal. Thus, it is always ourselves that we disclose in the body of a king or an assassin, a robber or an honest man, a courtesan, a nun, a young girl, or a coarse market woman; for we are compelled to put the problem in this personal form: "If I were a king, a murderer, a prostitute, a nun, or a market woman, what should I do, what should I think, how should I act?" We can only vary our characters by altering the age, the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... pirate fashion. A house of Benedictine nuns was founded in Wilton at an early date and was enlarged and re-endowed by Alfred. St. Edyth, one of the nuns, was a daughter of King Eadgar and Wulftrude, who had been a nun herself. When the Queen died Wulftrude refused to become the King's consort, and eventually became Abbess of Wilton. The site of the Abbey is ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... did not attempt to question. But they were all of them wrong, incorrect; and no matter how holy their lives, how self-sacrificing their actions, they would have to suffer for their inexactitude through aeons of undefined torment. He would speak with a solemn complacency of the aged nun, who, after a long life of renunciation and devotion, died at last, 'only to discover ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... sat sister, Cecily St. John, a professed nun at Romsey till her twenty-eight year, when, in the dispersion of convents, her sister's home had received her. There had she continued, never exposed to tests of opinion, but pursuing her quiet course according to her Benedictine rule, faithfully keeping her vows, and following ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nun of the Gandersheim cloister, in the tenth century, made the earliest attempt recorded to invest church plays with artistic worth. Her six religious dramas, written in Latin for the use and edification of her sister nuns, ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... me made a nun—but first I will bring nunneries back from across the seas to this ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... cruel, to deny me every innocent pleasure," said Camilla, with a harsh, displeased voice. "I must live like a nun who has taken an eternal vow; ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... pie pan, rattled a few coins in it. "Contribute to the Radiation Victims' Relief?" the nun ...
— Death of a Spaceman • Walter M. Miller
... romantic. "A more modern sentimentalist would probably express his feelings[4] by describing some past state of society. He would paint some ideal society in mediaeval times and revive the holy monk and the humble nun for our edification." He attributes the subsequent interest in the Middle Ages to the progress made in historical inquiries during the last half of the eighteenth century, and to the consequent growth of antiquarianism. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... and Arthur looked up, with a glance full of astonishment. "What do you mean, Ella? Has she become a nun?" ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... are faint shades leaving no impression on the memory; but there is another spirit, clad in the sombre garb of a Carmelite nun, who, standing aloof, looks with the calm eyes of peace on the motley throng. It is Louise, the youngest sister of all, who, deeply grieved by her father's infatuation for the Du Barry—an infatuation which, beginning within a month of Marie Leczinska's ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... possible—there was, we repeat, in this "you" a complete poem. It recalled to La Valliere her old recollections of Blois, and her new recollections of Fontainebleau; it said to her, "You, who might be happy with Raoul—you, who might be powerful with Louis, you about to become a nun!" ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... has been thought by some that the boats advanced until the foaming waters of the Lachine rapids forbade all further progress. Others have it that the boats were halted at the foot of St Mary's current, and others again that Nun Island was the probable place of landing. What is certain is that the French brought their boats to shore among a great crowd of assembled savages,—a thousand persons, Cartier says,—and that they were received with tumultuous joy. The Indians leaped and sang, their familiar mode ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... wardrobe there was a lack of things fashionable, and as she sat at dinner this evening she had on a dress of black alpaca, made after a very quiet and nun-like style; with a thin streak of snow-white collar and cuff round throat and wrist; but without any ornament save a necklace of bog-oak, cut after an antique pattern, and a tiny gold locket in which was a photographic ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... example, the rules prescribed the age of the Virgin to be from twelve to thirteen, and the hair to be of golden hue. Murillo sometimes pictured her as a dark-haired woman. It is said that when he painted the Virgin as very young his daughter Francesca was his model; later the daughter became a nun in the convent of the ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... two, Don Jorge; they were by no means frequent. The last that I remember was a case which occurred in a convent at Seville: a certain nun was in the habit of flying through the windows and about the garden over the tops of the orange trees; declarations of various witnesses were taken, and the process was arranged with much formality; the fact, I believe, was satisfactorily proved: of one thing I am ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... reference to religious standards: as a layman he was perfectly free to seduce Heloise; the scandal, the horrible sin, was not the seduction, but the profanation by married love of the dress of a nun, the sanctuary of the virgin. So it is with the renunciation of all the world's pleasures and interests. The ascetic sacrifice of inclination, which the stoics had conceived as resistance to the tyrant without and the tyrant within, as a method for serene ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... seen in the streets, rushing here and there, shrieking and crying out as if they were pursued. Their terror, however, was imaginary, for, savage as the image-breakers might have appeared, they had but one object in view, and not a nun or monk was in the slightest degree injured. In the prison of the Barefooted Monastery they found an unhappy monk who had been shut up for twelve years for his heretical opinions, and with loud shouts of joy they liberated him from ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... hadn't a shapely white neck, and he had never lived among celebrated reformers. She wanted, just now, to have a cell in a settlement-house, like a nun without the bother of a black robe, and be kind, and read Bernard Shaw, and enormously improve a horde ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... black dress, severe in its simplicity. A narrow belt held it at the waist and the sleeves were gathered into close fitting wristbands. She had discarded her hoopskirt and appeared not unlike a nun. Beneath the folds of her bodice nestled the old locket. She never displayed it now. It had returned to her sanctified in her eyes; made precious as material things sometimes are by being forever identified with a significant ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... contents. Now the great city is thoroughly awake. The miser and the beggar jostle each other on the crowded pavement, the little children are taken out for their morning airing by the white-capped nurse, a black robed nun glides along on some errand of mercy, with a face like a mediaeval saint, jostling her as he passes can be seen the excited face of the gambler who has staked his all and lost, and again another flower-girl bearing her bright burden, now seen ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... himself—as I have said, for the only time in his life. He was friendly with the family of a wig-maker named Keller, and gave lessons to his two daughters. He fell in love with the younger. That might have been well enough. But the girl elected to become a nun, and Haydn, either of his free and particularly asinine will, or through persuasion, married the elder, Anne Marie, on November 26, 1760. He was fully aware that his master, Count Morzin, would keep no married man in ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... gentleman to take any young lady for what he calls (I deeply regret to say) a joy ride; but at least the man goes with the woman as much as the woman with the man. In France the young woman is protected like a nun while she is unmarried; but when she is a mother she is really a holy woman; and when she is a grandmother ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... Mrs. Charlot Gett-all go away with Wilding! A Man of Wilding's extravagant Life Get a Fortune in the City! Thou mightst as well have told me, a Holder-forth were married to a Nun: There are not two such Contraries in Nature, 'Tis flam, 'tis foolery, 'tis ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... awaiting the arrival of the people, which I knew must soon take place. I was then without a symptom of beard; and from the hardship and ill-treatment which I had received on board of the Genoese, was thin and sallow in the face. It was easy in a nun's dress to mistake me for a woman of thirty-five years of age, who had been secluded in a cloister. In the pockets of her clothes I found letters, which gave me the necessary clue to my story, and I resolved to pass myself off as La Soeur Eustasie, rather than he put in prison, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... than in her grandest fanes or the sight of her most august ceremonies, with praying priests, swinging censers, tapers and pictures and images, under a gloomy heaven of cathedral arches. There, indeed, the faithful have given their substance; but here the nun has given up the most precious part of her woman's nature, and all the tenderness that clings about the thought of wife ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... at Ghent, I went to see an English Nun initiated, where I beheld the pretty Innocent, deliver'd up a Victim to foolish Chastity; but among the Relations, then attending the Sacrifice, was a fair Sister of the young Votress, but so surpassing all I'ad ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... pulpit of the parish church. A circular sun-dial bearing the motto "We stay not," and the date 1782, appears above the porch, and the church is entered by a fine old door of the Perpendicular period. A paddock on the west side of the graveyard is known as the nun's field, but I have no knowledge of any monastic institution having existed at Middleton. Aislaby, the next village to the west, is so close that one seems hardly to have left Middleton before one reaches the first cottage of ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... visits one of Mr. Champagne Wright's masquerades, where he falls in love with a fresco nun. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... said, half raising himself on his elbow with a mighty effort. "Well taught!—yes, I know the sort of teaching she will get there; she will be taught to hate and despise me, and then they will make her a nun—they will try to do it, but that shall never be! I will make Madelon promise me that. My little one a nun!—I will not have it! Ah! I risk too ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... and you Breathe through my soul tonight, You in your gown, impossibly white— I marvel greatly that it fail To glow and pale With iridescent light— How can it hang in silent nun-like folds? Think of the flaming mystery it holds, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... in low, swift whisper, "a few days, a week ago—it seems like a year!—I was of some assistance to refugees fleeing from Mexico into the States. They were all women, and one of them was dressed as a nun. Quite by accident I saw her face. It was that of a beautiful girl. I observed she kept aloof from the others. I suspected a disguise, and, when opportunity afforded, spoke to her, offered my services. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... not, stay, oh, stay! let me at least be conscious, that there is a human being near me— that I am not the only thing within these mournful walls, which possesses life and feeling! stay, stay, in charity! (the nun breaks from her and exit) they leave me— they are gone! hark! a door closes! I hear their retiring footsteps! alas! alas! even in the noise of that closing door, even in the echo of those departing steps, there was some little ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... misleading, world maps of learned geographers. If a sailor wished to navigate the Mediterranean and its adjacent waters, if he planned to sail up the coast of Europe to the British Isles and on into the Baltic, or to pass down the Atlantic coast of Africa to Cape Nun, he might rely on the maps and charts which the Italian geographers could furnish him. Or if he launched his galleys on the Red Sea he might use their guidance down the east coast of Africa to the equator. He would also find tolerably accurate ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... town called Doullens on our way from Tramecourt to Albert. And there, that morn, I saw an old French nun; an aged woman, a woman old beyond all belief or reckoning. I think she is still there, where I saw her that day. Indeed, it has seemed to me, often, as I have thought upon her, that she will always be there, gliding silently through the deserted ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... this time a young nun of the Order of St. Dominic, who walked in the way of St. Catherine of Siena, Colomba da Rieti by name. You will find some marvellous things about her in the Perugian chronicles of Matarazzo, which, for that matter, abound in marvellous things—too ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... Nun, James, ein paar Wochen werden uns gut thun. Wohin, das wei ich selbst noch nicht, wir gehen zuerst nach dem Kontinent, ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... give his consent, darling," my little sweetheart had whispered often in my ear, "I shall tell him that I will go and be a nun." ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... fetishism. By-and-bve counterfeits are made of animals and men, or amalgams of both, and the fetishistic sentiment is transferred to these. This is the beginning of polytheism. And how far it extends even into civilised periods, let the superstitions of Europe attest. The nun who tells her beads, and the lady who wears an ornamental crucifix, are to some extent fetishists; while the Catholic worship of saints ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... to see a tall, meagre, yellow, conventual image in black, with a close white cap, bandaged under the chin like a nun's head-gear; whereas, there stood by me a little and roundly formed woman, who might indeed be older than I, but was still young; she could not, I thought, be more than six or seven and twenty; she was as fair ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... marquis is the choice he has made, as chief assistant in his son's election, of an old Ursuline nun, with whom he seems to have made a bargain, in which, strange to say, you have unconsciously played a part. Yes, madame, the Saint-Ursula for which, unknown to yourself, you were posing, will have, to all appearances, a considerable ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... than Catholicism because there is less of it. Protestantism does not teach that a monk is better than a husband and father, that a nun is holier than a mother. Protestants do not believe in the confessional. Neither do they pretend that priests can forgive sins. Protestantism has fewer ceremonies and less opera bouffe, clothes, caps, tiaras, mitres, crooks and holy toys. Catholics have an infallible ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Young Lady, Cousin to the Author, and very dear to Him To D—— To Caroline To Caroline [second poem] To Emma Fragments of School Exercises: From the "Prometheus Vinctus" of AEschylus Lines written in "Letters of an Italian Nun and an English Gentleman, by J.J. Rousseau: Founded on Facts" Answer to the Foregoing, Addressed to Miss—— On a Change of Masters at a Great Public School Epitaph on a Beloved Friend Adrian's Address to his Soul when Dying A Fragment To Caroline [third poem] To Caroline [fourth poem] ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... ahl mee | | ee'ohm dah teh'oh? Call the | Alvoku la servistinon | ahlvo'koo la stewardess | | sehrvistee'nohn Where is the | Kie estas la | kee'eh eh'stahss la steward? | provizisto? | proveezist'o? Where are we now? | Kie ni estas nun? | kee'eh nee eh'stahss | | noon? We are nearly | Ni preskaux alvenis | nee preh'skahw there | | ahlveh'nees Passengers are | La pasagxeroj estas | la pahsah-jehr'oy requested to | petataj, ne restadi | eh'stahss keep clear of | sur la pasponteto ...
— Esperanto Self-Taught with Phonetic Pronunciation • William W. Mann
... twilight of a clear summer night when Natalie reached the cloister in which she was on the next day to take the vows and exchange her ordinary dress for the robe of hair-cloth and the nun's veil. ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... I've never worn it here. The folks at home all said it was too severe for me—and so it is. Nothing suits me but the fluffy, chuffy things with a tilt to them. Gil—er—I mean—well, yes, Gilbert always declared that dress made me look like a cross between an unwilling nun and a ballet girl, so I took a dislike to it. But it's as lovely as a dream. Oh, when you see it your eyes will stick out. You must wear it tonight. It's just your style, and I'm sure it will fit you, for our figures are so ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the Princess and her ladies had bathed. The tank, however, as you may conceive, was no longer used as a bath; for the washing of the body is an indulgence forbidden to cloistered virgins; and our Abbess, who was famed for her austerities, boasted that, like holy Sylvia the nun, she never touched water save to bathe her finger-tips before receiving the Sacrament. With such an example before them, the nuns were obliged to conform to the same pious rule, and many, having been bred in the convent from infancy, regarded all ablutions ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... and now two whole years had passed without his giving any sign of life. On a certain day in spring he went off with a donkey laden with relics, and, worse still, he had taken with him Catherine dressed as a nun. Nobody knew what had become of them, but there was a rumour at the Little Bacchus that the little friar and the little sister had had some sort of difference with the authorities between Tours and Orleans. Without forgetting ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... very year that Champlain had first come to the St. Lawrence there had been born in Normandy, of noble parentage, a little girl who became a passionate devotee of Canadian missions. To divert her mind from the calling of a nun, her father had thrown her into a whirl of gayety from which she emerged married; but her husband died in a few years, and Madame de la Peltrie, left a widow at twenty-two, turned again heart and soul to the scheme of endowing a Canadian mission. Again her ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... at me doubtfully for a minute. Then she stepped out, shutting the door carefully behind her. I caught a glimpse of the little nun's face, and thought there was a look of disappointment on it. The old lady and I began to walk along the path that led ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... them in a mood which crowns the landscape with a religious halo. That the time is holy they all feel; and now, to make its tranquillity appreciable by filling the heart with it, the poet adds—"is quiet as a nun breathless with adoration." By this master-stroke of poetic power the atmospheric earthly calm is vivified with, is changed into, super-earthly calm. By a fresh burst of spiritual light the mind is set aesthetically aglow, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... will, for the present, bring forth but one picture. That of a Black Nun was wont to fetter the eyes of visitors in the royal galleries of France, and my Sister of Mercy, too, is of that complexion. The old woman was recommended as a laundress by my friend, who had long prized her. I was immediately struck with ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... her goods secreted round about: whether she here performed penance like a nun in her cell; or was moved to this unaccountable freak by the powers of the air; no ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... of breaking her inflexible spirit, except by the agency of a minister of religion; for it was not enough to put her to death, the poisons must perish with her, or else society would gain nothing. The doctor Pirot came to the marquise with a letter from her sister, who, as we know, was a nun bearing the name of Sister Marie at the convent Saint-Jacques. Her letter exhorted the marquise, in the most touching and affectionate terms, to place her confidence in the good priest, and look upon him not only as a helper ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... got no further with it. Her back was turned to him, and he threw the berry out of the window. She felt rather than saw what he had done. She saw that he was fagged. She instantly thought of a cordial she had in the house, the gift of a nun from the Ursuline Convent in Quebec; a precious little bottle which she had kept for the anniversary of her wedding day. If she had been told in the morning that she would open that bottle now, and for a stranger, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his works, by their number and extent, will receive the reverence due to the Homer of music. From among all the scores that we owe to his great genius, the nun seemed to have chosen Moses in Egypt for special study, doubtless because the spirit of sacred music finds therein its supreme expression. Perhaps the soul of the great musician, so gloriously known to Europe, and the soul ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... standing behind the ivy that draped the little balcony, watching the moon in its setting of Swiss skies and mystic landscape. How white and calm and spotless it appeared! It was not a man's face she saw there—but that of a woman—the face of a nun in its saintly, virgin purity, suggesting only sweet inspiring thoughts of the glory of fidelity to duty, of the comfort and peace and rest ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... of young Col. Dr. Johnson slow of belief without strong evidence. La Credulite des incredules. Coast of Mull. Nun's Island. Past scenes pleasing in recollection. Land on Icolmkill. October 20. Sketch of the ruins of Icolmkill. Influence of solemn scenes of piety. Feudal authority in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... the grey old garden of the nunnery, the sister who was his guide silently pointing out to him the figure of the little actress, whose bright garments were in striking contrast to the severe simplicity of her surroundings. When the Englishman turned to thank the nun, she had disappeared, and he and Miss Arminster had ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... me my children, and fetch them with speed, The Old Woman of Berkeley said, The monk my son, and my daughter the nun Bid them hasten or ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... gipsy business. I mean him to take me to Ronda, where I have a sister who is a nun' (here she shrieked with laughter again). 'We shall pass by a particular spot which I shall make known to you. Then you must fall upon him and strip him to the skin. Your best plan would be to do for him, but,' she added, ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... there very willingly. Of the money I had brought to Florence, I left the greater part with my good father, promising to help him wherever I might be, and confiding him to the care of my elder sister. Her name was Cosa; and since she never cared to marry, she was admitted as a nun in Santa Orsola; but she put off taking the veil, in order to keep house for our old father, and to look after my younger sister, who was married to one Bartolommeo, a surgeon. So then, leaving home with my father's blessing, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... requesting me to eat it quick, for fear some of the priests might come in and detect us. Thus I saw that she feared the priests as well as the rest of us. Truly, it was a terrible crime she bad committed! No wonder she was afraid of being caught! Giving a poor starved nun a piece of bread, and then obliged to conceal it as she would have done a larceny or a murder! Think of it, reader, and conceive, if you can, the state of that community where humanity is a crime—where mercy is considered a weakness of which one should be ashamed! If a pirate ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... consequently before 1406. 'The Catalans and the Normans frequented the western coast of Africa as far as the Tropic of Cancer at least forty-five years before the epoch at which Don Henry the Navigator commenced his series of discoveries beyond Cape Nun.'"[6] ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... answered readily. "I love both places very much, and the sisters are so sweet. Sister Hyacintha is my favorite,—a dear old nun with the face of a saint. Do you like old-timey, quiet places, Mr. Stone? St. Rose church is perhaps the oldest building in the county. St. Catherine's is not half a mile from it, and the sisters conduct a boarding-school there. Had I been a Catholic, I ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... near the "Observatoire" an old nun stopped me, and in broken English asked how the war was progressing. (The people in the shops did too, as if I had come straight from G.H.Q.!) She then went on to tell me that she was Scotch, but had ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... may defend adversely against the world. Even those religious orders who make the most stringent vows of poverty have found it necessary to relax the rule a little in favor of the human heart made unhappy by reduction to too disinterested terms. The monk must have his books: the nun must have her little garden, and the images and pictures ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... tower he wedded a Nun, To St. Edmond's his bride he bore, On this eve her noviciate here was begun, And a Monk's gray ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Inextricable. Or dost dare prefer The Woodbine, for her fragrant summer breath? Or Primrose, who doth haunt the hours of Spring, A wood-nymph brightening places lone and green? Or Cowslip? or the virgin Violet, That nun, who, nestling in her cell of leaves, Shrinks from the world, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... about to disclaim matrimony, like a silly girl, who dreams of nothing else from morn till night; but I am a nun here, without the vow of celibacy. Where shall I find a husband in ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... cried. "It would be a sort of sacrilege. I am going to be a nun. Besides, why should you? I can quite well understand your feeling for Judas. But how is Judas more disgraced than any other College? If it were only the Judas undergraduates ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... case, the merry side finds its satisfaction in amusements that demand active physical exercise, while the loving side finds its joy in religious expansion, in which the idealised figure of Jesus becomes the object of passion, and the life of the nun becomes the ideal life, as being dedicated to that one devotion. To the girl, of course, this devotion is all that is most holy, most noble, most pure. But analysing it now, after it has long been a thing of the past, I cannot but regard it as a mere natural outlet for the dawning ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant |
