"Sackcloth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... such a pretty lover, John. If I could only paint you in your sackcloth and ashes, I should die in content. What is it like, mon ami, to feel like moralizing in a rose-garden by moonlight? What do they tell you—the roses? Of the dull earth from which they come? Don't they whisper of the kisses of ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... physical troubles. I could neither get a sufficiency of food nor of clothing; but I suffered less from hunger than from cold. In hottest summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost in a state of nudity; no shoes, no stockings, no jacket, no trowsers; nothing but coarse sackcloth or tow-linen, made into a sort of shirt, reaching down to my knees. This I wore night and day, changing it once a week. In the day time I could protect myself pretty well, by keeping on the sunny side of the house; and in bad weather, in the corner of the kitchen chimney. The great difficulty was, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... graceful as cats, and the women have exactly the 'breasts like pomegranates' of their poetry. A tall Bedaween woman came up to us in the field yesterday to shake hands and look at us. She wore a white sackcloth shift and veil, und weiter nichts, and asked Mrs. Hekekian a good many questions about me, looked at my face and hands, but took no notice of my rather smart gown which the village women admired so much, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... as for me—in their sickness my clothing was sackcloth, With fasting I humbled my soul, And my prayer into my own ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... put on the sackcloth and ashes, when the striped bug came at four o'clock A.M., and we watched the tender leaves, and watered night and morning the feeble plants. "I tell you, Polly," said I, uncorking the Bordeaux raspberry vinegar, "there is not a pea here ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... you, grief and dreadful laughter; Sackcloth for banner, ashes in your wine. Go forth, go forth, nor ask me what comes after; The fifth stone shall not ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... himself prodigiously, "is not the fact, but this savage glee over it. It's as though a lot of caged animals set up a howl of delight every time the cage door was opened and a new pair was introduced into the pen. They ought to perform the wedding ceremony in sackcloth and ashes, after duly fasting, accompanied by a few faithful friends garbed in black ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... as Perseus, and who so joyful as all the AEthiop people? For they had stood watching the monster from the cliffs, wailing for the maiden's fate. And already a messenger had gone to Cepheus and Cassiopoeia, where they sat in sackcloth and ashes on the ground, in the innermost palace chambers, awaiting their daughter's end. And they came, and all the city with them, to see the wonder, with songs and with dances, with cymbals and harps, and received their daughter back again, as one alive ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... MISS ASHTON,—We, the undersigned, do regret in sackcloth and ashes our serious misconduct in going away at an improper time, and in an improper manner, on a sleigh-ride, without ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... shall repent of this in sackcloth and ashes! Detest and loathe as you please, you shall feel my lips upon your own! and ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... "it were wise that ye should wear a sackcloth garment next your skin, for penance;" and in this also did Sir Bors as he was counselled. And afterwards he armed himself and ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... They are built to the prescription of an Esquimo. They are woolly, fuzzy and the width of a finger thick. If I were a night-watchman, "doom'd for a certain term to walk the night," I should insist on English pajamas to keep me awake. If Saint Sebastian, who, I take it, wore sackcloth for the glory of his soul, could have lighted on the pair of pajamas that I bought on Oxford Circus, his halo would ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... doubt, for having visited it upon Arthur. Mr. Channing will be sorry; the precious magistrates will be sorry; that blessed dean, who wanted to turn him from the college, will be sorry. Not a soul of them but believes him guilty; and I hope they'll be brought to repentance for it, in sackcloth and ashes." ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of the Lord: "The holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months. And I will give power unto My two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.... And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... rude to interrupt, Marie. No sound but the Miserere would ever have broken the chill echoes of my lonely cell, nor should any raiment softer than sackcloth have come near ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... its azure expanse, bespangled with unnumbered stars, and adorned with the moon 'walking in brightness;' while the transparent surface both received and returned her silver image. Here, instead of being covered with sackcloth,[A] she shone with resplendent lustre; or rather with a lustre multiplied in proportion ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... it came to pass, when the king heard the words of the woman, that he rent his clothes; and he passed by upon the wall, and the people looked, and, behold, he had sackcloth within upon his flesh. ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... scenes in this wide world of ours. Far as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid ashen gray; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... grimly, "he is going to repent of that business in sackcloth and ashes before he dies; he has received his first instalment of punishment this morning, and there is ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... ancient Jewish maidens; for Isaiah, in calling upon the women to put away their personal adornments, says: "Instead of a girdle there shall be a rent, and instead of a stomacher (corset) a girdle of sackcloth." ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... times, contain many allusions to the repentance stool. A very good specimen of this old-time relic may be seen in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries, at Edinburgh. It is from the church of Old Greyfriars, of Edinburgh. In the same museum is a sackcloth, or gown of repentance, formerly used at the parish church ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... brave, strong, beautiful Billy did, when he asked me to marry him. It was King Cophetua wooing the beggar-maid—and the beggar was an impudent, ungrateful, idiotic little piece!" Margaret hissed, in her most shrewish manner. "She ought to be spanked. She ought to go down on her knees to him in sackcloth, and tears, and ashes, and all sorts of penitential things. She will, too. Oh, it's such a beautiful world—such a beautiful world! Billy loves me—really! Billy's a millionaire, and I'm a pauper. Oh, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... "love is imperfect, life frail, and joy mutable." A far more vivid touch is given by the mother who, when search for the fugitive has proved futile, ruins the nuptial chamber, destroys its decorations, and hangs it with rags and sackcloth,[12] and who, when the final discovery is made, reproaches the dead saint in a fashion which is not easy to reply to: "My son, why hadst thou no pity of us? Why hast thou not spoken to me once?" The bride has neither ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... felt at the first moment that time must pass by. He had become certain that her mad love for the man had perished. He had been made sure that she had repented her own deed in sackcloth and ashes. It had been acknowledged to him by her father that she had been anxious to be separated from her husband, if her husband would consent to such a separation. And then, remembering as he did his last interview with her, having in his mind as he did every circumstance ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... instant later, the old professor could have bitten out his tongue for his unholy jest. His penitence was in no wise lessened by the quality of Scott's answering laugh. Best leave those fellows to their ministerial sackcloth, without questioning the quality of the flax from which it was spun. A man of Scott Brenton's calibre would do no harm by his preaching. What was the sense of seeking to upset any orthodox beliefs he might happen ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... nation. Then Judith went to the House of the Lord and fell upon her face and called upon the Lord who breakest the battles to bless her purpose. She went thereafter to her house, put off the garments of widowhood and of sackcloth, and bathed, and anointed herself with precious ointment, and put on the garments of gladness, with bracelets and chains and rings and ornaments to lure the eyes of all the men that should see her. Then she ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... feel that she could not maintain her hostility against this man on behalf of her brother;—and yet she could not force herself to be other than hostile to him. Her heart was sore, and it was he that had made it sore. She had lectured herself, schooling herself with mental sackcloth and ashes, rebuking herself with heaviest censures from day to day, because she had found herself to be in danger of regarding this man with a perilous love; and she had been constant in this work of penance till ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Climates, and of such as dwell under those climates. From thence it commeth that the people of the East partes did breake and rent in peeces their garmentes when they had understanding of euil newes. Wherefore they did lye weltering and tumblinge upon the ground, put on sackcloth, put on ashes, or dust upon their heads, yea then, when they pretended to shew some repentance, and to manifest or set out an inward greefe: all which thinges would bee founde, and thought rediculous, foolish, and to bee laughed at amonge nations ...
— A Treatise Of Daunses • Anonymous
... penitent; but a severe and solemn form of discipline was instituted, which, while it served to expiate his crime, might powerfully deter the spectators from the imitation of his example. Humbled by a public confession, emaciated by fasting and clothed in sackcloth, the penitent lay prostrate at the door of the assembly, imploring with tears the pardon of his offences, and soliciting the prayers of the faithful. [147] If the fault was of a very heinous nature, whole years of penance were esteemed an inadequate satisfaction to the divine justice; and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... His authority lost and his kingdom on the point of going to pieces, Henry had but one thing to do—seek the pardon of the Pope. He found the Pontiff at Canoosa, but Gregory refused to admit the penitent to his presence. "It was winter, and for three successive days the king, clothed in sackcloth, stood with bare feet in the snow of the court-yard of the palace, waiting for permission to kneel at the feet of the Pontiff and to receive forgiveness." On the fourth day he was granted admittance to the presence ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... picture than that of this loving, tender-hearted, wretched old man as he sits there, waiting for Karloff and the ignominious end. Fortune gone with the winds, poverty leering into his face, shame drawing her red finder across his brow, honor in sackcloth ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... Ardworth, with a choking voice, "I ought to wear sackcloth all my life for having given you such a mother. When I think what I have suffered from the habit of carelessness in those confounded money-matters ('irritamenta malorum,' indeed!), I have only one consolation,—that my patient, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were well to lift the veil on the sackcloth of home, where weepeth the faithful, stricken mother, and the bruised father bendeth his aching head; where the bereft wife or husband, silent and alone, looks [10] in dull despair at the vacant seat, and the motherless little ones, wondering, huddle together, and repeat with quivering lips ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... legends.—The saint, who was aware of the frauds of the fiend, resolved to hold the balance himself.—He began by throwing in a pilgrimage to a miraculous virgin.—The devil pulled out an assignation with some fair mortal Madonna, who had ceased to be immaculate.—The saint laid in the scale the sackcloth and ashes of the penitent of Lenten-time.—Satan answered the deposit by the vizard and leafy-robe of the masker of the carnival.—Thus did they still continue equally interchanging the sorrows of godliness with the sweets of sin, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... had been so kind of jokey and frivolous, all about the good times she was having, and the parties she went to, and the new dresses she got. New dresses! When I read that letter of Anne's, I knew that all the purple and fine linen in the world was just like so much sackcloth and ashes to her as long as Gilbert was sulking out on ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... good meal is. Oh now I can fully enter into your feelings, ye holy saints, whom the world scorns and scoffs at, ye who did scatter your all, even down to your very raiment, among the poor, and did gird your loins with sackcloth, and did resolve as beggars to undergo the gibes and the kicks wherewith brutal insolence and swilling voluptuousness drive the needy from their doors, that by so doing you might thoroughly purge yourselves from ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... book entitled, "Truth cleared of Calumnies." His ability and sincerity have never been doubted; but some distrust of his reason may be forgiven, when we find the Quaker, a grave and happily married man, walking through the streets of Aberdeen, clothed in sackcloth and ashes, under the notion that he was commanded by the Lord to call the people unto repentance; he appealed to witnesses to prove the "agony of his spirit," and how he "had besought the Lord with tears, that this cup might pass away ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... light a heart or felt so well satisfied as since I smashed those murder mills. For years I had an aching, weeping heart. I would often put ashes on my head. I felt like wearing sackcloth. I can see the hand of God in my life. From a small child I loved the world, used to be fond of pets. It seemed that my pets always came to grief. Then I was very anxious to be thought smart. Would try to write and wanted a thorough education. I ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... of the West. Her sisterly warmth surprised the woeful spotted beauty with a reflection that this martial Janey was after all a woman of feeling, one whom her husband, if he came to know it and the depth of it, the rich sound of it, would mourn in sackcloth to have lost. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... buckler; with rich confusion of plume, and scarf, and banner, where purple, and scarlet, and green, and orange, and every gay colour, were mingled with cloth of gold and fair embroidery; instead of this, crept on the gloomy pageant of superstition, in cowl and sackcloth; with cross and coffin, and frightful symbols of human suffering. In place of the frank, hardy knight, open and brave, with his lady's favour in his casque, and amorous motto on his shield, looking, by gallant deeds, to win the ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... when He says in Matthew xi: "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... good things that God hath made lawful to you!"?'[FN293] (A.) 'My master (on whom God have mercy) told me that Ez Zuhak[FN294] said, "There was a people of the true-believers who said, 'We will dock our yards and don sackcloth;' whereupon this verse was revealed." But El Cutadeh[FN295] says that it was revealed on account of sundry Companions of the Apostle of God, Ali ibn Abi Talib and Othman ben Musaab and others, who said, "We will dock ourselves and don hair [cloth] and make us monks."' (Q.) 'What ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... said he, "how truly I spake when I called this slumbering watchman, this dumb dog, a worshipper of idols of wood and stone. This is his oratory; but instead of a godly laboratory which should turn carnal lead into spiritual gold, what see we but provocatives to sinful thoughts. Here are no sackcloth and ashes, camel's hair and leathern girdles; this prophet's chamber has its silks and sattins, stuffed cushions and curtains, screens and wrapping gowns. The walls are hung with paintings of fair Jezebels, whom ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the tokens of mine anger; I will clothe the heavens with darkness, and make sackcloth ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... lapse of many centuries, when Jonah came to Nineveh, and prophesied the overthrow of the city on account of the evil done by the people, it was Pharaoh who, seized by fear and terror, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes, and with his own mouth made proclamation and published this decree through Nineveh: "Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not feed nor drink water; for I know there is no god beside Him in all ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... yourself with this: you'd be a long sight worse off when you got through than when you started, and you'd either go to smash altogether or spend the rest of your life trying to get back where you were before; and sackcloth hurts. There isn't one bit of joy to be got out of it. If you can't get the very best in this world, take nothing. That's the only religion for a woman to cling to, and if she does cling to it she ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of seven or fourteen years transportation, who could generally become candidates for a seat in the legislative assembly? How many of this description have been detected in their first offence, in their very offset in the career of criminality? How many ever afterwards deplore their errors in sackcloth and ashes, and conduct themselves in the most correct and unexceptionable manner? And shall no distinction be made between them and the still persevering offender whom no inducements can withhold, no punishments deter from the commission of fresh enormities? ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... ornaments his countenance; and then, there is something venerable about his nicely-combed gray whiskers, his white cravat, his snowy hair, his mild brown eyes, and his pleasing voice. One is almost constrained to receive him as the ideal of virtue absolved in sackcloth and ashes. As an evidence of our generosity, we regard him an excellent Christian, whose life hath been purified with an immense traffic in human—(perhaps some good friend will crack our skull for ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... not, nor inquired—a scene of blood, Of resignation amid mortal pangs, And other things, exceeding all belief. Hither the aged Opas of Seville Walked slowly, and behind him was a man Barefooted, bruised, dejected, comfortless, In sackcloth; the white ashes on his head Dropped as he smote his breast; he gathered up, Replaced them all, groaned deeply, looked to heaven, And held them, like ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... darken'd conscience clothes The world in sackcloth; and, I fear, The stain of life this new heart loathes, Still clouds my sight; but ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... "Can sackcloth clothe a fault or hide a shame? Or do thy hands make Heaven a recompense, By strewing dust upon thy briny face? No! though thou pine thyself with willing want, Or face look thin, or carcass ne'er so gaunt; Such holy madness God rejects ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... them to her bosom as treasures to be loved as long as a single thread of them might hang together? She had taken such alms before—from her aunt Sophie—taking them in bitterness of spirit, and wearing them as though they were made of sackcloth, very sore to the skin. The acceptance of such things, even from her aunt, had been gall to her; but, in the old days, no idea of refusing them had come to her. Of course she must submit herself ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... uselessly implore the assistance of Heaven? Credulous people! in your adversities redouble your prayers, your offerings, your sacrifices; besiege your temples, strangle countless victims, fast in sackcloth and in ashes, drink your own tears; finally, exhaust yourselves to enrich your gods: you will do nothing but enrich their priests; the gods of Heaven will not be propitious to you, except when the gods of the earth will recognize that they are men like yourselves, and ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... small still voice breathes out With subtle sweetness silencing the loud Hoarse vaunting of the proud,— A song of exaltation for the vale, And how the mountain from his height shall fail! How God's true heroes, since this earth began, Go sackcloth-clad through scourge and sword and scorn, Crown'd with the bleeding thorn, Down-trampled by man's heel as foes to man, And whispering Eli, Eli! as they die,— Martyrs of ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... tho he is ashamed to have it challenged in so publick a Manner. It must be allowed, that any young Fellow that affects to dress and appear genteelly, might with artificial Management save ten Pound a Year; as instead of fine Holland he might mourn in Sackcloth, and in other Particulars be proportionably shabby: But of what great Service would this Sum be to avert any Misfortune, whilst it would leave him deserted by the little good Acquaintance he has, and prevent his gaining any other? As the Appearance of an easy Fortune is necessary towards making ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... nothing remarkable about the dress, except her wearing of it. There is a grace of carriage that will make purple of sackcloth. Still, the gown was well cut of fawn-coloured stuff, which her stockings and shoes matched. Her face was generous—proud, too, yet tender and very beautiful. The soft rose of her cheeks, the misty blue ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... a ball of cotton. But what do you care so you can get your brandy-and-water? There's the girls, too—the things they want! They're never dressed like other people's children. But it's all the same to their father. Oh, yes! So he can go with his Skylarks they may wear sackcloth for pinafores, ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... walk alone; Put a shirt of sackcloth on: Never keep a fast, or pray For good luck ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... another. His words were a cry of the heart, an appeal to the consciences of all his fellow-citizens, almost recalling the passionate utterances of the prophets of Israel. Like those witnesses for Jehovah the "little poor man" of Assisi had put on sackcloth and ashes to denounce the iniquities of his people, like theirs was his courage and heroism, like theirs the divine ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... silken cord, and break the golden bowl. These are the consequences of a persistency in sectional strife and domination, foreseen and foretold by me in the "Southern Monitor," published in Philadelphia; no one regarded the warning. Now hundreds of thousands are weeping in sackcloth and ashes over the untimely end of hundreds of thousands slain in battle! And thousands yet must fall, before the strife ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... such a savage vengeance had never entered his mind, It was too late, however, to regret his behavior. Right or wrong, he had been the cause of the bloody sentence, and he roused himself to avert the awful catastrophe. With rent garments, and sackcloth on his head, he travelled the city with a loud and bitter cry, and his voice rang even over the walls of the palace, in tones that startled ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... viz., the writings of Jeremiah, "the number of the years whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah,—that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem. And I set my face to the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes" (Dan 9:2,3). So that I say, as the Spirit is the helper and the governor of the soul, when it prayeth according to the will of God; so it guideth by and according to, the Word of God and his promise. Hence it is that our Lord Jesus Christ himself ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... as an officer, was acting. "We are all preparing to leave the Mediterranean, a measure which I cannot approve. They at home do not know what this fleet is capable of performing; anything, and everything. Much as I shall rejoice to see England, I lament our present orders in sackcloth and ashes, so dishonourable to the dignity of England." To the British minister at Naples his words were even stronger: "Till this time it has been usual for the allies of England to fall from her, but till now she never was known to desert her friends whilst she had the power ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Adam was sore grieved, and he put on sackcloth and ashes, and he fasted many, many days, until God appeared unto him, and said: "My son, have no fear of Samael. I will give thee a remedy that will help thee against him, for it was at My instance that he went ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... does mean when it believes in the Highest—a thing poor Dryasdust never did, nor will do. The hapless generation that now reads these words ought to hold its peace when it has read them, and sink into unutterable reflections, not unmixed with tears, and some substitute for 'sackcloth and ashes,' if it liked. In its poor canting, sniffling, flimsy vocabulary, there is no word that can make any response to them. This man has a living God-inspired soul in him, not an enchanted artificial 'substitute ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... healthier sign, however, that the more recent biographers of Burns snap their fingers in the face of convention, and, looking to the legacy he has left the world, refuse to sit in sackcloth and ashes round his grave, either in the character of moralising mourners or charitable mutes. Whatever has to be said against them nowadays, the 'cant of concealment'—to adopt another of Gilfillan's phrases—is not to be laid to their charge. Rather ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... Berkeley Nightly I watch the West. There lies new San Francisco, Sea-maid in purple dressed, Wearing a dancer's girdle All to inflame desire: Scorning her days of sackcloth, Scorning her ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... no! speed is my best hope;' and at once mounted the stairs, and entered a room, where the large stone crucifix, a waxen Madonna, and the holy water font gave a cell-like aspect to the room; and a straw pallet covered with sackcloth was on the floor, a richly curtained couch driven into ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... smother mankind in thy flood, The sun is as sackcloth, the moon is as blood, The stars fall to earth as untimely are cast The figs from the fig-tree that ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of the Morning, Fresh as a daisy dipt in the dew, Hearken to me and receive my warning: Though rents be heavy, and bunks be few And most of them troubled with rat or mouse, Never take rooms in a corner house; Or sackcloth and ashes and sad self-scorning Shall be for ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... a strange God! Mark thou, I doubt Him not! But ai! I should face Him for ever in sackcloth and ashes lest He smite me for smiling and living my ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Empress Dowager, to whom she was engaged, though she had never seen him, died before they were married. After his death, but before his funeral, she dressed herself as a widow, and in a chair covered with white sackcloth went to his home, where she performed the ceremonies proper for a widow, which entitled her to take her position as his wife. Such an act is regarded as very meritorious in the eyes of the Chinese, and no women are more highly honoured than those who have ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... by one voice fired, one heart of flame, Though broken reeds, had risen, and were men, They rushed upon the spoiler and o'ercame, Each arm for freedom had the strength of ten. Now is their mourning into dancing turned, Their sackcloth doffed for garments of delight, Week-long the festive torches shall be burned, Music and revelry wed day ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... causes combined to concentrate official vigilance upon it; there had been a scare about spies carrying explosives in small objects, and one of those experimental orders which pass like waves over bureaucracy had decreed first that all visitors should change their clothes for a sort of official sackcloth, and then (when this method caused some murmurs) that they should at least turn out their pockets. Colonel Morris, the officer in charge, was a short, active man with a grim and leathery face, but a lively and humorous eye—a contradiction borne out by his conduct, for ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... form of the Christian religion to another are often marked with a real and permanent exaltation of the whole character. But it does not follow that certain religious beliefs and ordinances are in themselves just, because they thus touch the great heroic master-chord of the human soul. To wear sackcloth and sleep on a plank may have been of use to many souls, as symbolizing the awakening of this higher nature; but, still, the religion of the New Testament is plainly one which calls to no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... has been made on American soil for liberty, one of these descendants of the youth who landed on American soil with Columbus, in 1492, has been found. They disliked Andros, and the members of this now extensive and widely scattered family were in sackcloth and ashes, so to speak, when King James, in 1688, gave Andros a vice-regal commission to rule New ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... fancied that he seemed to be much dirtier than any that had been seen on the preceding day. On a nearer inspection, his head, and the whole of his body were found to be covered with ashes, and a very dirty piece of sackcloth fastened round his loins; besides this he appeared to be suffering great distress of mind, and presented a most wretched and woeful appearance. Lander asked him the cause of his grief, and why he had covered himself with ashes in such a manner, when he gave ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... some day to have shown such disdain for advantages like these, etc. And to all these things, which were so true and sensible, I could find only one word to say: his name, Gontran, Gontran, Gontran! Gontran or the convent, and the most rigorous one of all, the Carmel, in sackcloth and ashes! Oh, Aunt Louise, do look at him! He listens to all this with an unbearable little air ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until the water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest upon them by day, nor the beasts ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... shall try for the future to avoid perjury. As it is, I have no doubt that various people have set me down as 'full of arrogance and assumption,' at which the gods must laugh, for really, if truths could be known, I feel even morbidly humble just now, and could show my sackcloth with anybody's sackcloth. But it is difficult to keep to the conventions rigidly, and return visits to the hour, and hold engagements to the minute, when one has neither carriage, nor legs, nor time at one's disposal, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... hoping that Reverend Mother would not scold her for what she had done, when suddenly another cliff, white as the cliffs of Dover, glimmered through the haze. Then she forgot her sackcloth, for, according to the Frenchman, this was old Grisnez, pushing its inquiring nose into the sea; and beyond loomed the tall lighthouse ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... aloud for thee, my son, nor rend our garments, nor put on sackcloth, nor pour dust upon our heads. He who hath bereaved thee of life, would bereave thee even of our tears; but thou art resting on Abraham's bosom, where the tyrant can reach thee ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... from their ships, they shall stand upon the land, And shall cause their voice to be heard over thee, and shall cry bitterly, And shall cast up dust upon their heads, and wallow in the ashes; And they shall make themselves bald for thee, and gird them with sackcloth, And they shall weep for thee in bitterness of soul with bitter mourning. And in their wailing they shall take up a lamentation for thee, And lament over thee saying, Who is there like Tyre, Like her that is brought to silence in the midst of the sea? When thy wares went forth out ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... humility and ascetic poverty and seclusion till they obliterated themselves out of all human remembrance, and buried themselves in retreats of silence and of prayer. Yes, you are quite right. A garment of sackcloth may cover an unsanctified heart; and the fathers of the desert did not all escape the depths of Satan and the plague of their own heart. Quite true. A contrite heart may be carried about an applauding city in a coach and six; and a crucified heart may be clothed ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... a shop where were no jewels, nor gold, nor costly silks, nor pearls of great price; but all that was in it was coarse sackcloth, and rough and hairy garments, and heaps of ashes, and here and there a loaf of bitter bread, and bitter herbs, and bottles wherein tears were stored. As he gazed on this shop something seemed to whisper to his heart, "Go and buy." So he went with his sorrowful heart, as one ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... be a cold frost within us, when our friend is in the glow of a summer sunset: and we call him unsympathetic and unfeeling. If we let him know the state of our world, we should see the rosehues fade from his, and our friend put off his singing robes, and sit down with us in sackcloth and ashes, to share ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... fashionable people finish the season by going to Goodwood—and to Goodwood Elinor was going with a party, Lady Mariamne and a number of the "set." She told her mother, to amuse her, of the new dresses she had got for this important occasion. "Phil says one may go in sackcloth and ashes the remainder of the year, but we must be fine for Goodwood," she said. "I wanted him to believe that I had too many clothes already, but he was inexorable. It is not often, is it, that one's husband is more anxious than one's self ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... got wedged in (as was concerted) betwixt Christmas & Lord Mayor's Days. Lord! how he laid about him! Nothing but barons of beef & turkeys would go down with him to the great greasing & detriment of his new sackcloth bib and tucker. And still Christmas Day was at his elbow, plying him with the wassail-bowl, till he roared, & hiccupp'd, & protested there was no faith in dried ling, a sour, windy, acrimonious, censorious ...
— A Masque of Days - From the Last Essays of Elia: Newly Dressed & Decorated • Walter Crane
... her flesh, a little above the ankle-bones—of discomfort, rather, in comparison with the anguish throbbing and biting across her shoulder-blades. Some one—it may have been in unthinking mercy—had drawn down the sackcloth over her stripes, and the coarse stuff, irritating the raw, was ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... days to go from one end to the other with his message of destruction; but at the end of the first day "the people of Nineveh believed God; and when the word came unto the king of Nineveh he arose from his throne, and laid his robe from him, and put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes and said: Let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yea, let them turn, every one from his evil way. And God saw their works, that they turned ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... were allowed to unite in prayers offered in their own behalf. Here they were called genuflectentes. In the fourth degree they were allowed to approach the altar and were called consistentes. In the taking of these degrees the penitents were compelled to appear in sackcloth and ashes, and in some places the men were obliged to shave their heads and the women to wear veils. The duration of their penitence was regulated by the bishop. He could make the time of taking these degrees short, or extend it to any length. ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... contemptously. "She don't know what she wants, or what is good for her. Women rarely do. They make their matrimonial selections like the blindest of bats, the most egregious of fools, and then, when the mischief is done, go in for unending sackcloth, or a divorce court. Pocahontas will get hold of a fellow some day who will wring her heart—with her rubbishing longing after novelty and intellect, and fine scorn of homespun truth and loyalty. Were I a woman, I should esteem the size of my husband's heart, and ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... Chandos," explained Lily Dallam in her usual staccato, following Honora's gaze, "at the piano, in ashes of roses. She's stopped mourning for her husband. Trixy told her to-night she'd discarded the sackcloth and kept the ashes. He's awfully clever. I don't wonder that she's crazy about him, do you? He's standing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... against all these offences; and the persecution of the Quakers was again renewed. A Quaker woman had recently frightened the Old South congregation in Boston by entering that meeting-house clothed in sackcloth, with ashes on her head, her feet bare, and her face blackened, intending to personify the small-pox, with which she threatened the colony, in punishment for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... were first brought to Ireland of the capture of Constantinople by the Turks. On receipt of this intelligence, which sent a thrill through the heart of Europe, Tregury, Archbishop of Dublin, proclaimed a fast of three days, and on each day walked in sackcloth, with his clergy, through the streets of the city, to the Cathedral. By many in that age the event was connected with the mystic utterances of the Apocalypse, and the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... astronomy. Boccaccio and the Troubadours should have been burned instead, and if this had been done all the abominable modern literature which would persuade the faithful that this world is not all sackcloth and ashes would never have been written. Away with him who says that the earth is as beautiful as heaven," and Gautier's phrase, "Moi, je trouve la terre aussi belle que le ciel, et je pense que ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... great opportunities for renunciation come not in the guise of temporal and material things; whether one shall eat or drink this thing or the other; whether he shall forego the theatre, or deprive himself of music, or array himself in sackcloth and ashes, or in purple and fine linen. The real question comes in the ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... he, "would you make Florence Annaly feel to the quick —would you make her repent in sackcloth and ashes—would you make her pine for you, ay! till her ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... she said, in keen self-reproach, and her voice thrilled him like the subtle melody of a passion song. "Howard, dear, I—I'm sitting in sackcloth and ashes. I saw it all—with my own eyes, and I could neither run nor scream. Oh, it was splendid! I never dreamed that any man could rise by the sheer power of his will to such a pinnacle of courage. Does that make amends—just a little? And won't you come ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... you did I don't know as I blame you, George. A night like that is enough to lose any one's temper. I lost mine. The Foam Flake ran away with it. But he's repentin' in sackcloth and ashes, I guess. Judah says the old horse ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... to imitate, perhaps to surpass, the example of Justinian the Second, who had chastised a former rebellion by the choice and execution of fifty of the principal inhabitants. The women and clergy, in sackcloth and ashes, lay prostrate in prayer: the men were in arms for the defence of their country; the common danger had united the factions, and the event of a battle was preferred to the slow miseries of a siege. In a hard-fought day, as the two armies alternately ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... on the Missouri question, there was a fair trial of strength between the friends of Slavery and the friends of the Constitution. The former triumphed, and by the prime agency of one whose raiment, the remainder of his days, ought to be sackcloth and ashes,—because of the disgrace he has continued on the name of his country, and the consequent injury that he has inflicted on the cause of Freedom throughout the world. Although all the different ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... been biting her nails) And then ... and doubtless ... and strangely ... And not more thriftiness in Bergthorsknoll Where Njal saves old soft sackcloth for his wife. Oh, I must sit with peasants and aged women, And keep my head ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... nothing left her but to die, and all that sort of thing; and for three days she was little better than a mad woman. At the end of that time, after the fashion of her people, she retired to her own room, covered herself with sackcloth and ashes, and remained hidden from all eyes for the space of a fortnight, weeping and wailing constantly and touching nothing but bread ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... body, and then back again. At last, with a start, he did as he was bidden. He had almost expected the sight that met his eyes, and yet the shock was cruel. To see, fixed in the rigidity of death and naked on that coarse layer of sackcloth, the man whom he had left well clad and full of meat and sin upon the threshold of a tavern, awoke, even in the thoughtless Fettes, some of the terrors of the conscience. It was a CRAS TIBI which re-echoed in his soul, that two whom he had known should have come to lie upon these icy tables. ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... talk with you. Free trade seems working mischief faster than the most fearful of us predicted, and Manchester houses, as I am told, 'failing in rows,' ashamed to do penance in public, are secretly weeping in sackcloth and ashes, and heartily praying that Peel and Cobden had been hanged before they were allowed to ruin ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... which have continued with me in my temptations, and I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me, that ye may eat and drink at my table,' he began to draw his breath more slowly. We saw that he was just going, so he was removed from his bed, and laid upon sackcloth and ashes. And thus, the whole family of his children being collected round him, he gave up his last breath into the hands of his ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... all! When this last enormity was let loose upon us Norty said solemnly, "Where's the nearest point policeman?" And, instead of taking the hint, the creature began to hold forth about "that fine body of men, the London police!" Wee-Wee was in sackcloth and ashes about it afterwards. She says that sort of thing is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... the penance strange and long, And hard for flesh to bear; The prayer, the fasting, and the thong, And sackcloth shirt of hair. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... this; see whether it is your son's coat or not." He recognized it and said, "It is my son's coat! A wild beast has devoured him! Joseph surely is torn in pieces." Then Jacob tore his clothes, put sackcloth about his waist, and mourned for his son many days. All his sons and his daughters tried to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted, saying, "I shall go down to the grave mourning for my son." Thus ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... I accordingly went, and found her alone, as usual, in her little, close, dark cottage, redolent of smoke and confined air, but as tidy and clean as she could make it. She was seated beside her little fire (consisting of a few red cinders and a bit of stick), busily knitting, with a small sackcloth cushion at her feet, placed for the accommodation of her gentle friend the cat, who was seated thereon, with her long tail half encircling her velvet paws, and her half-closed eyes dreamily gazing on the low, ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... a large village situated a short distance from Montserrat, he determined to procure a garment to wear on his journey to Jerusalem. He therefore bought a piece of sackcloth, poorly woven, and filled with prickly wooden fibres. Of this he made a garment that reached to his feet. He bought, also, a pair of shoes of coarse stuff that is often used in making brooms. He never wore but one shoe, and that not for the sake of the comfort to be derived ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... name to the pirate ship "Alabama" now votes for tariffs to exclude the iron, steel, and coal of England. Sheffield is in sackcloth and ashes because Pennsylvania has taken away from her the Russian order for armor plates, and countless millions of British dollars are invested in American factories, giving high wages to tariff-protected American workmen instead of sweaters' wages to the ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... for pleasures, bent to try All gamesters that would bid. I played with fire, did counsel spurn, Made life my common stake; But never thought that fire would burn, Or that a soul could ache. Glorious deceptions, gilded mists, False joys, fantastic flights, Pieces of sackcloth with silk lists, These were my prime delights. I sought choice bowers, haunted the spring, Culled flowers and made me posies; Gave my fond humours their full wing, And crowned my head with roses. But at the height of this career ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... frequent pilgrimages to the baths, and to the tombs of the most popular saints; the monks applauded his penance, and, except restitution, (but to whom should he have restored?) Michael sought every method of expiating his guilt. While he groaned and prayed in sackcloth and ashes, his brother, the eunuch John, smiled at his remorse, and enjoyed the harvest of a crime of which himself was the secret and most guilty author. His administration was only the art of satiating his avarice, and Zoe became a captive in the palace ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... nations, as the Dacotas, for example, have a custom, that, when the husband deceases, his widow immediately manifests the deepest mourning, by putting off all her finery, and dresses herself in the coarsest Indian attire, the sackcloth of Indian lamentation. Meanwhile she makes up a respectable sized bundle of her clothes into the form of a kind of doll-man, which represents her husband. With this she sleeps. To this she converses and relates the sorrows of her desolate heart. It would be indecorous for any warrior, ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... which thou hast given me, but I beseech thee of thy mercy that my soul may be brought to the light which hath no end. Having said thus, he stript himself of the royal robes adorned with gold in which he was arrayed, and took the crown from his head and placed it upon the altar; and he put sackcloth upon the carrion of his body, and prayed to God, confessing all the sins which he had committed against him, and took his acquittal from the Bishops, for they absolved him from his sins; and forthwith he there received ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... laughed inwardly at the folly: but he must obey orders. Yet he hesitated, when he landed and saw the Jews come to him in thousands, covering the country like a cloud, young and old, rich and poor, unarmed, many clothed in sackcloth and with ashes on their heads, and beseeching him that he would not commit this abomination. He rebuked them sternly. He had a whole army at his back, and would compel them to obey. They answered that they must obey God rather than man. Petronius's heart relented; ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... kind of glory? Is it in my power to say that he shall not make his confessions in the style of St. Austin or of Rousseau? that he shall not assume the character of the penitent and flagellant, and, grafting monkery on philosophy, strip himself of his regal purple, clothe his gigantic limbs in the sackcloth and the hair-shirt, and exercise on his broad shoulders the disciplinary scourge of the holy order of the Sans-Culottes? It is not in me to hinder kings from making new orders of religious and martial knighthood. I am ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... by trimming it off short with scissors. No Turk could have more indignantly resented the process than did that small quadruped,—his Celtic feelings being so severely wounded by it, in fact, that he abstained from sustenance for three days, putting himself into moral sackcloth and ashes for that period by retiring into his penitential cell under a chest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... now truth is my punishment. I violated it to my papa, and now my papa is the medium of that punishment. Well, then, there's a Providence proved. But, in the mean time, mamma, what has become of my beauty? It is gone—it is gone—and now for humility and repentance—now for sackcloth and ashes. I am now no longer beautiful!—so off, off go the ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... glee by declaring that I was now a partner in a prosperous undertaking establishment, and that written jokes might go hide their heads in sackcloth ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... "They have no wine!" while the others respond "Love ye those who have wrong'd you." These are those who, having sinned through envy, can be freed only by the exercise of charity. Then, bidding Dante gaze fixedly, Virgil points out this shadowy host, clothed in sackcloth, sitting back against the rocks, and Dante takes particular note of two figures supporting each other. He next discovers that one and all of these victims have their eyelids sewn so tightly together with wire that passage is left only for streams of ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... her, she was able to dress and undress me, though I never gave her that trouble when she would let me do either myself. She made me seven shirts, and some other linen, of as fine cloth as could be got, which indeed was coarser than sackcloth; and these she constantly washed for me with her own hands. She was likewise my school-mistress, to teach me the language: when I pointed to any thing, she told me the name of it in her own tongue, so ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... compare the dull forlorn state I had held yesterday, with this morning's comfort and this morning's entertainment. As to the waiter's familiarity, it was quenched as if it had never been. He attended on us, as I may say, in sackcloth and ashes. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... very commonly indicate the meaning of the symbols which they employ. Thus the prophet Isaiah is directed to loose the sackcloth from his loins, and put off his shoe from his foot, walking naked and barefoot. Chap. 20:2. Then follows the explanation of this symbolical transaction: "Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... taste for rubbish and something worse, in the shape of books. No good thing but has its shadow of evil attendant upon it. And if we had only to estimate by visible or human forces, we might well sit down and wrap ourselves in the sackcloth of pessimism. 'We see not yet all things put under Him'; but 'we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour,' and the vision that cheered the first martyr—of Christ 'standing at the right hand of God'—is the rebuke of every fear and every gloomy ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... disadvantage, Louis was taken prisoner. With serene patience he underwent suffering, for which the Saracens, so Joinville tells us, frankly confessed that they would have renounced Mahommed; and, when the payment of his ransom set him free, he made a pilgrimage in sackcloth to Nazareth in 1250. As a general he achieved nothing, but his humiliation involved no dishonor; and the genuineness of his faith, his devotion, and his love had been fully tested in ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... the Black Book still missing. Greatest loss of all—the old flag of the school. It waves over the school no longer. We have doffed the cap and bells, and gone into sackcloth and ashes. Our heart is heavy. We can smile no longer. We can only whistle one tune—the Dead March. Our heart will continue heavy. Our noble frontispiece will never beam again. Our lips will continue to ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... discoursing upon the painful event which had just happened to Sir Barnes. When we fail, how our friends cry out for us! Mrs. Hobson's homilies must have been awful. How that outraged virtue must have groaned and lamented, gathered its children about its knees, wept over them and washed them; gone into sackcloth and ashes and tied up the knocker; confabulated with its spiritual adviser; uttered commonplaces to its husband; and bored the whole house! The punishment of worldliness and vanity, the evil of marrying out of one's ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mourning Jerusalem, in which the covenant-people appears to the Prophet as personified. (Jerusalem does not stand for "the carried away Zionites;" it is an ideal person, the afflicted and bowed down widow sitting on the ground in sackcloth; the distressed and mourning mother of the children partly carried away, and partly killed,—compare chap. iii. 26, where Jerusalem, desolate and emptied, sits upon the ground.) But this salvation can be granted to those only whose hearts ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... Then Mattathias and his sons rent their clothes, and put on sackcloth, and mourned ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... thought very well of. But now, as he spread out the whole array on his bed, it seemed too emblematic of a light and blameless spirit for his wear. He ought to put on something as nearly analogous to sackcloth as a modern stock of dry-goods afforded; he ought, at least, to wear the grave materials of his winter costume. But they were really insupportable in this sudden access of summer. Besides, he had grown thin during his sickness, and the things bagged about him. If he were going to ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... willing to die with so great a purpose unaccomplished, since God does not now will you to depart. You mistake physical debility for resignation, weariness of life for desire for heaven. Oh, Mittie, not in the sackcloth and ashes of selfish sorrow should the spirit be clothed ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... people, who can run the career of history exempted from the passions which have disturbed and corrupted the rest of mankind? If we are like other races of men, with similar follies and vices, then I greatly fear that our posterity will have reason to deplore in sackcloth and ashes ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... followed? A. They then deprived me of my outward apparel, sash and sword, and having confined my hands and feet in chains, the links thereof were of a triangular form, they put sackcloth and ashes on ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... their mirth—ere Lenten days begin, That penance which their holy rites prepare To shrive from Man his weight of mortal sin, By daily abstinence and nightly prayer; But ere his sackcloth garb Repentance wear, Some days of joyaunce are decreed to all, To take of pleasaunce each his secret share, In motley robe to dance at masking ball, And join the mimic train of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... you last, I was in the dumps. It was a dull world, and all the tigers I had ever shot were mounted on sackcloth, or stuffed with ashes. Sounds disgusting, doesn't it? But suddenly, the sun broke out, and dulness and tigers fled together. I suppose I must always have been a creature of moods, and didn't know it; for all it took to change gray Purgatorio to blue Paradiso was a few words from a girl. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... fall within her view of the proprieties that young people should take their elders to task in furious letters. But she had been totally in the wrong, and her fault was irreparable, because important things had happened in consequence of it; she might repent the fault in sackcloth and ashes, but she couldn't stop the things. Would she, then, honorably wear the sackcloth, or would she dishonestly shirk it under the false issue of her nephew's improper tone to her? Women can justify themselves with more ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... monasteries, January 1, 1049, being then eighty-seven years old, and having been fifty-six years abbot. He would be carried to the church, to assist at the divine office, even in his agony; and having received the viaticum and extreme-unction the day before, he expired on sackcloth strewed with ashes on the ground. See his life, by his disciple Lotsald, as also, by St. Peter Damian, who wrote it soon after the saint's death, at the request of St. Hugh of Cluni, his successor, in Bollandus, and Bibliotheca Cluniacensis by Dom Marrier, and ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... to Dickory: "Now, go you, and tell the young woman who sent you here she must come in sackcloth and ashes, if she can get them, and she must tell me her tale and her father's tale, without a lie mixed up in them; and when she has done this, and has humbly asked my pardon for the foul affront she has put upon me, then it will be time enough to talk of fine clothes ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... said Tom, "people don't go much on hermits, nowadays, like they used to in old times, but a pirate's always respected. And a hermit's got to sleep on the hardest place he can find, and put sackcloth and ashes on his head, and stand out ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... night grew The gray cloud that had covered the sky like sackcloth Fell in ashen folds about the hills, Like hooded virgins, pulling their cloaks about them... There must have been a spent moon, For the Tall One's veil held ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... however, is slow to betake itself to sackcloth and ashes. On the whole it is clear, that though the last years of Edward III were a season of failure and disappointment,—though from the period of the First Pestilence onwards the signs increase of the king's unpopularity and of the people's discontent,—yet ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... congratulate you upon your marriage. But seriously, Herr Comrade, I ought to call you to account for your robbery of an artist from our midst. Please tell your wife that the whole city is in sackcloth and ashes ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... 'entrainement de jeunesse?' I have repented in sackcloth and ashes, and made what reparation I could by adopting and giving my name to one who is a perpetual reminder to me of a moment's infatuation. He little knows, poor boy, and never will, I hope. 'Il n'a plus que ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... of Ely walked out barefoot to St. Etheldreda's well, with Torfrida at their head clothed in sackcloth, and with fetters on her wrists and waist and ankles; which she vowed, after the strange, sudden, earnest fashion of those times, never to take off again till she saw the French host flee from Aldreth before the face of St. Etheldreda. So they prayed, while Hereward and ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... convulsive shocks, and the wind over the roofs brought ghostly and abominable smells into our streets; and if that were to haunt us by day and night, a phantom from which there was no escape, to remain till the sins of Europe were expiated, we should soon forget politics and arguments, and be in sackcloth and ashes, positive no longer, but down on our knees before Heaven in awe at this revelation of social guilt, asking simply what we must do to ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... was Mary Dyer. In the year 1660 she returned to Boston, although she knew death awaited her there; and, if Grandfather had been correctly informed, an incident had then taken place which connects her with our story. This Mary Dyer had entered the mint-master's dwelling, clothed in sackcloth and ashes, and seated herself in our great chair with a sort of dignity and state. Then she proceeded to deliver what she called a message from Heaven, but in the midst of it they ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the citizens of this country in legal bondage, and the hull country cowering under a crime and danger protected and legalized; if I didn't want to make myself a mark for demon laughter I'd quit such talk till I repented my sins in sackcloth and ashes." ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... us had better go up in sackcloth, and throw ashes on our foreheads as we meet Hopkins in the garden," said Lily, "and then I know he'll heap coals of fire on our heads by sending us an early dish of peas. And Dingles would bring us in a pheasant, only that pheasants don't ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... interposition. Hastily summoning the Bishops of the realm, and gathering a body of men-at-arms, the Archbishop Desiderius proclaimed from the Jesus altar of the High Church the deposition of the King Orgulous. Talisso was seized and stripped of his royal robes; a width of sackcloth was wrapped about his body, and with a rope round his neck he was led to the Mound of Coronation. There, on the height whereon he had thrust his sword into the four regions of ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... fairly into the wine. The cura had thrown aside his sanctity and become human like the rest; the padres had forgotten their sackcloth and bead-roll, and the senior of them, Padre Joaquin, entertained the table with spicy adventures which had occurred to him before he became a monk. Echevarria related anecdotes of Paris, with many adventures he ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... fine linen, and the hoods, and the veils. And it shall come to pass that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair, baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and burning instead ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... passion which would have startled the friends who had seen in him nothing but the perfectly self-possessed, cold-natured, well-mannered man of the world, "what a fool a man can make of himself in his youth, and repent it all his life afterwards in sackcloth and ashes—yet ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant |
