"Recluse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... governor, forcing a laugh; "who would believe that a mere recluse, a man almost dead, could have committed crimes so numerous, and so ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... kitchen, was tempted to linger. Sallie's conversation yielded, to the discerning, something of the rich essence of the past; and Agatha began to yearn for a better knowledge of the recluse who had been her friend, unknown, through all the years. But she remembered her industrious plans for the day and postponed her ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... with a little surprise, he saw that it was nothing to the subject of his thoughts, either because her own were elsewhere, too, or because they were in league with a nice taste, that permitted them to take no interest in what was going on. Even her eyes, trained as they had been to recluse habits, were far less busy than those of her companions; indeed, they were not busy at all; for the greater part of the time, one hand was upon the brow, shielding them from the glare of the gas-lights. Ostensibly but the very quiet air of the face led him to guess ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... what you say, Mr. Fuller," said the old man, who had a bearing of sad and gentle dignity, and gave, in a curious and not easily explainable way, the idea that he spoke but seldom and was something of a recluse. "There's a deal in what you say, Mr. Fuller, but the fiddle is not a thing as can be played like any ordinary instryment. A fiddle's like a wife, in a way of speaking. You must offer her all you've got. If she catches you ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... of interest to two of the students; in regard to whom I cannot do better than quote Mr. Lathrop. One of these young men "is Edward Wolcott, a wealthy, handsome, generous, healthy young fellow from one of the sea-port towns; and the other Fanshawe, the hero, who is a poor but ambitious recluse, already passing into a decline through overmuch devotion to books and meditation. Fanshawe, though the deeper nature of the two, and intensely moved by his new passion, perceiving that a union between himself and Ellen could not be a happy one, resigns the hope ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... so close to each other, of Professor Knight's careful and elaborately annotated Selections from William Wordsworth, of Messrs. Macmillan's collected edition of the poet's works, with the first book of The Recluse, now published for the first time, and of an excellent introductory essay by Mr. John Morley, forms a welcome proof that the study of the [92] most philosophic of English poets is increasing among us. Surely nothing could be better, ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... exhaustion' of his style. It were useless to pretend that Gissing belongs of right to the 'first series' of English Men of Letters. But if debarred by his limitations from a resounding or popular success, he will remain exceptionally dear to the heart of the recluse, who thinks that the scholar does well to cherish a grievance against the vulgar world beyond the cloister; and dearer still, perhaps, to a certain number of enthusiasts who began reading George Gissing as a college night-course; ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... religious recluse whom Alexander found residing on Inchcolm is described by Fordun and Boece as leading there the life of a hermit (Eremita), though a follower of the order or rule of Saint Columba. The ecclesiastical writers of these early times not unfrequently refer to ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... resolved to visit him, and fearing a doubtful reception he carried with him a pamphlet he had written in 1889, an eulogium of the painter. On the way he asked his fellow-travellers for Cezanne's address, but in vain; the name was unknown. In Aix he met with little success. Evidently the fame of the recluse had not reached his birthplace. At last Bernard was advised to go to the Mayor's office, where he would find an electoral list. Among the voters he discovered a Paul Cezanne, who was born January 19, 1839, who lived at 25 Rue Boulegon. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... behind the Prelate's authority, to avoid doing that which I proclaim my readiness, though not my willingness, to do, I can only say, that you are the first who has doubted the faith of Hugo de Lacy."—And while the proud Baron thus addressed a female and a recluse, he could not prevent his eye from sparkling, and ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... point-device, not only in every curl and ruffle, but in every attitude and step; men with full satin roses on their shining shoes; diamond tablet rings on their forefingers; with snuff-boxes, the worth of which might almost purchase a farm; lace worked by the delicate fingers of some religious recluse of an ancestress, and taken from an altar-cloth; old point-lace, dark as coffee-water could make it; with embroidered waistcoats, wreathed in exquisite tambour-work round each capricious lappet and pocket; with cut steel ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... changed was the soul of the young recluse and mystic. The consciousness of God had vanished from it; the visions of the spiritual world no longer visited it; he ceased to pray in secret, and the petitions which he offered at the family altar were so dull and spiritless ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... is withheld, ignorance becomes a reasonable excuse; and one would charitably hope that the people of England do not encourage cruelty from choice but from mistake. Their recluse situation, surrounded by the sea, preserves them from the calamities of war, and keeps them in the dark as to the conduct of their own armies. They see not, therefore they feel not. They tell the tale that is told them and ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... attractions for the hermits who fled from the world to embrace an ascetic life. Thus the islands each gradually got its hermit, and the great monasteries grew up by degrees, starting usually in the cell of some recluse. Guthlac, who lived in the seventh century, was of the royal House of Mercia, and voluntarily exiled himself in the Fens. This region was then, according to popular belief, the haunt of myriads of evil spirits, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... men who lie but seldom, he lied well. Drummond smoked his cigarette meditatively. He remembered that he had heard stories about the wonderful likeness between these two sisters, one of whom was an artist and a recluse, whilst the other had attached herself to a very gay and a very brilliant little coterie of pleasure-seekers. There was a bare chance that he had been mistaken. He thought it best to let the matter drop. A few minutes later Sir John ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... robes. The youth here by my side cannot be weary of the fragments from the life of Sappho. He will not believe they are not addressed to himself, or that he to whom they were addressed could be ungrateful. A recluse of high powers devotes himself to understand and explain the thought of Eloisa; he asserts her vast superiority in soul and genius to her master; he curses the fate that casts his lot in another age than hers. ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the autobiographic details in his Confessions and elsewhere, anybody who chooses may put those Sibylline leaves together for himself. It would only appear certain that for ten years he led the life of a recluse student and a hard laudanum-drinker, varied by a little society now and then; that in 1816 he married Margaret Simpson, a dalesman's daughter, of whom we have hardly any personal notices save to the effect that she was very beautiful, and who seems ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... weary. "My friend, I had meant in these lines to regather, and send To our old home, my life's scatter'd links. But 'tis vain! Each attempt seems to shatter the chaplet again; Only fit now for fingers like mine to run o'er, Who return, a recluse, to those cloisters of yore Whence too far I have wander'd. "How many long years Does it seem to me now since the quick, scorching tears, While I wrote to you, splash'd out a girl's premature Moans of pain at what women in silence endure! To your eyes, friend of ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... here on a Bering Sea seal-hunting schooner. Cabin-boy! I had never done any hard manual labour, or scullion labour, in my life. I had lived a placid, uneventful, sedentary existence all my days—the life of a scholar and a recluse on an assured and comfortable income. Violent life and athletic sports had never appealed to me. I had always been a book-worm; so my sisters and father had called me during my childhood. I had gone camping but once in my life, and ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... and strove the world moved on, and with it that small fraction of it whose movements most nearly bore on the fortunes of the recluse. ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... insignia of many a defunct Knight of the Garter. I wondered if posterity would care much for George the Fourth, or Third, or Second, or First, whose portraits I had just been gazing at; I was sure that a good many would remember the recluse scholar of Pembroke Hall, the Cambridge Professor of Modern History, who cared for nothing but ancient history; who projected twenty great poems, and finished only one or two; who spent his life in commenting upon Plato and studying botany, and in writing letters to his friend ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... no recluse, He went out amongst men and sought them (Mark 10:45) in the market-place, in the fields and by the lakeside. Everywhere He entered into personal conversation, with those whom He met, about the kingdom of God; now it was with Nicodemus (John 3:1-21), then again with the woman of Samaria ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... that we might as well pull it down, and so form a mound over the skeleton. Jack, therefore, with his axe, cut down the other door-post, which, when it was done, brought the whole hut in ruins to the ground, and thus formed a grave to the bones of the poor recluse and his dog. Then we left the spot, having brought away the iron pot, the pistol, and the old axe, as they might be of much use ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... took up the subject where Bowman had left it, he poured out his soul with all the fervour and abandon of which only the shy are capable. Williams was afraid of his own past. It was not a hideously criminal one, for his life had been that of a bookworm and recluse. But out of that past Williams would conjure up the slightest incident—a trifling breach of manners, a mere word out of place, a moment in which he had lost control of his emotions, and the memory of it would put him into a cold sweat ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... and was educated a Roman Catholic, in the college of the English Benedictines, at Doway in Flanders, but being born with a poetical turn, and consequently too volatile to be confined within the walls of a cloister, he threw off the restraint of his education, quitted a recluse life, came over to England, and commenced Protestant[1]. Sir Robert having good interest, found the change of religion prepared the way to preferment; he was made gentleman usher of the privy chamber to King Charles II. then Prince of Wales; we find him afterwards adhering ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... spreading shade. Absorbed in thought, in contemplation lost, Unconscious that a day and night had passed. I cannot reason with such earnestness— I dare not chide such deep and tender love, But much I fear his reason's overthrow Or that he may become like that recluse He shuddered at, and not a mighty king With power to crush the wrong and aid the right. How can we turn his mind from such sad thoughts To life's full joys, the duties of a king, And his great destiny so ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... skill in the art of writing. Watts-Dunton told me he had heard of this from Swinburne. 'I myself,' he said, 'very seldom read the magazines. But Algernon always has a look at them.' There was something to me very droll, and cheery too, in this picture of the illustrious recluse snatching at the current issues of our twaddle. And I was immensely pleased at hearing that my article had 'interested him very much.' I inwardly promised myself that as soon as I reached home I would read the article, to see just ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturb'd, Give me for marriage a sweet-breath'd woman of whom I should never tire, Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the world a rural domestic life, Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own ears only, Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... robe, a turban on his head like a Saracen in Granada. His left hand held a great, old-fashioned two-bladed axe, his right hand led an elephant covered with silk. On its back was a castle wherein sat a lady looking like a nun, wearing a mantle of black cloth and a white head-dress like a recluse.[7] ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... rough garb—belted woolen jacket, trousers awkwardly patched, leggings rolled above the knee, and yellow moccasins. Although he was the ordinary type of the woods recluse, there was kindliness in his expression, as well as a benignant gleam in his eye ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... talk was for her meaningless, and she had not the patience to listen to any conversation that rose above the food and business of the day. She was confused and bewildered by everything the strange recluse on the hill said to her,—she could not follow him at all,—and yet, the purely physical attraction he exercised over her nature drew her to him like a magnet and kept her in a state of feverish craving for a love she knew she could never win. She would have gladly been his ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... first sight almost beyond any other tragic actor. But he could not hold it. To understand this obstacle, we must go back a few years to those appalling reveries at Charnwood. Those illusions, which had vanished before the dissipation of a less recluse life and more free society, now in his solitary tragic studies, and amid the intense calls upon feeling incident to tragic acting, came back upon him with tenfold vividness. In the midst of some most pathetic passage, the parting of Jaffier with his dying friend, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... she was inevitably romantic. Living what amounted to the life of a recluse, it was only to be expected that she should live her illusions and dreams. Her mind was a storehouse of folklore, romance, poetry and religion; her rationalistic readings had not in any way become part of her, though facts and ratiocinations, by mere feat of memory, were stored in her mind ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... of all instruments, and although on account of its nature it is excluded from the concert hall, it is the companion of the recluse. The latter says to himself: 'Here I can produce the feelings of my heart, can shade fully, drive away care, and melt away a tone through all its swellings,'" This critic ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... French?" asked Alleyne, to whom the archer's light gossip had all the relish that the words of the man of action have for the recluse. ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... kinsman, the Baron Longueville, guardian of his castle; but under the hope of coming into the property, the baron set fire to the castle, intending thereby to kill the wife and her infant boy. When De Valmont returned and knew his losses, he became a wayward recluse, querulous, despondent, frantic at times, and at times most melancholy. He adopted an infant "found in a forest," who turned out to be his son. His wife was ultimately found, and the villainy of Longueville ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... grave and dreamy; when quiet as calm as a dove, as fierce as a hawk when aroused; moving always in an eccentric orbit, which few understood; flashing out now and then gleams which some said were sparks of genius but which most people said were mere eccentricity, he had sunk into a recluse. He was in this state when he met HER. He always afterward referred to her so. He was at a reception when he came upon her on a stairway. A casual word about his life, a smile flashed from her large, dark, luminous eyes, lighting up ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... they saw before them; who, though in a morning-dress, which the distance of his residence, and the freedom of the place, made excusable, had, even in the minute points of his exterior, none of the negligence, or wildness, which might be supposed to attach to the vestments of a misanthropic recluse, whether sane or insane. As he paid his compliments round the circle, the scales seemed to fall from the eyes of those he spoke to; and they saw with surprise, that the exaggerations had existed entirely in their ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... love, and choose in ways that differ quite as much as our bodily appearance. There is no uniformity in the spiritual sphere;—this we know from its manifestations in conduct and history. One man is heroic and another tender, one a reformer and another a recluse, one conservative and another radical. The same Bible has passages as widely contrasted as the twenty-third and the fifty-eighth Psalms, and characters as unlike as Jacob and Jesus. Indeed, may it not ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... City proper—its individuality dependent upon the measure and form in which ideals are expressed and harmonised in social life and polity, ideas synthetised in culture, and beauty carried outwards from the study or chamber of the recluse into the world ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... (after herself) accepting every congratulation and allusion, touching the event, with the most impenetrable suavity. The marbles and pictures, upholstery and services, were delivered over to the order of Miss Bellairs, and Philip, disposed, apparently, to be very much a recluse in his rooms, or, at other times, engrossed by troops of welcoming friends, saw much less of his bride elect than suited her wishes, and saw her seldom alone. By particular request, also, he took no ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... believe, from books, which are his sole amusement, and with which he is amply furnished from the library at the Hall,) that I invited myself to come over and spend an evening with him. The old fox took the alarm at this. He told me that he was quite a recluse, and never received company; but that some evening, when I was quite alone, he would step in and take a cup of coffee with me—a luxury which he has never allowed himself for the last ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... the neighbourhood whom Master Austin was gracious enough to approve. This was a certain Mr Roger St Aubyn, a man of taste and culture, who possessed a very rare collection of fine pictures and old engravings which nobody had ever seen. St Aubyn was, in fact, something of a recluse, a student who seldom went beyond his park gates, and found his greatest pleasure in reading Greek and cultivating orchids. It was by the purest accident that the two came across each other. Austin was lying one afternoon on a bank of wild hyacinths just outside Combe Spinney, lazily admiring the ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... reading Montaigne, whose cheery scepticism his revelations recall. But Pepys has all the advantage of the man living in the busiest world over the recluse in that famed library, with the mottoes on the wall. Montaigne wrote in a retired and contemplative home, viewing life, as Osman Digna has viewed strife, "from afar," almost safe from the shots of fortune. But Pepys writes day by day, like a war correspondent, in the thick ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... she; "I understood it all. But I must not do anything more to-day, for every day I grow weaker. We must be better acquainted, and a poor sick recluse may certainly claim forbearance. We meet to-morrow evening, at the same hour; ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... brother, who was married and had children, and, in exchange, took the Neapolitan estates and title, which had just fallen back to the main branch by the death of a childless Marchese di San Giacinto. Late in life this old recluse invalid married, contrary to all expectation—certainly contrary to his own previous intentions. However, a child was born—a boy. The old man found himself deprived by his own act of his principality, and the succession turned from his son to the son of his younger ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... we discussed the permanent contribution to English literature of Thomas Carlyle; and it is curious to note how complete a contrast these two famous writers present. Carlyle was a simple, self-taught, recluse man of letters: Macaulay was legislator, cabinet minister, orator, politician, peer—a pet of society, a famous talker, and member of numerous academies. Carlyle was poor, despondent, morbid, and cynical: Macaulay was rich, optimist, overflowing with health, high spirits, and good nature. ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... wisdom: one of the sad stories which will ever excite the sympathy of the heart. Early sent to this university, he seems like Gibbon to have lived alone; and in the solitude of that impulsive and recluse spirit which formed his life-long peculiarity, to have nursed a spirit of atheism and wild schemes of reform. Charged by the authorities of his college with the authorship of an atheistical pamphlet,(644) ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... of civilized beings descended from these great cats would have been rich in hermits and solitary thinkers. The recluse would not have been stigmatized as peculiar, as he is by us simians. They would not have been a credulous people, or easily religious. False prophets and swindlers would have found few dupes. And what generals they would have made! what ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... of witchcraft memory. Hathorne, Joseph. Hathorne, William, emigrant planter. Hathorne, Nathaniel. Hawthorne, Elizabeth; her mental resemblance to Nathaniel; quoted; "an invisible entity,". Hawthorne, Julian; quoted. Hawthorne, Louisa; letter from Nathaniel to, quoted; no recluse; letters to Nathaniel quoted; death of. Hawthorne, Mrs., mother of Nathaniel; relations with her son; her solitary life; Elizabeth Peabody's description of; delight in her grandchildren; her home in Herbert Street; moves to Mall Street; death. Hawthorne, Nathaniel parentage; ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... In the most exciting parts of Wordsworth—and these sonnets are not very exciting—you always feel, you never forget, that what you have before you is the excitement of a recluse. There is nothing of the stir of life; nothing of the brawl of the world. But Milton though always a scholar by trade, though solitary in old age, was through life intent on great affairs, lived close to great scenes, watched ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... and Cecile Shepard Mr. Northrup appeared very well indeed at dinner that night in the Corner House. They learned he could be very entertaining if he wished; that he had not forgotten how to interest women if he had been a recluse for so long; and that even Tess and Dot found something about him to admire. The former said afterward that Mr. Northrup had a voice like a distant drum; Dot said he had a "noble looking forehead," meaning that it was ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... was toying with the idea of becoming a recluse, of living in some hushed retreat where the turmoil of life would be muffled—as in those streets covered with straw to prevent any sound ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... tone such as she never would have dared to use in the days when Jacqueline was a model of elegance: "Oh, how fine you are!" Then again, Madame d'Avrigny, notwithstanding the good manners on which she prided herself, could not conceal that the obligation of sending home the recluse to the ends of the earth, at a certain hour, made trouble with her servants, who were put out of their way. Jacqueline seized on this pretext to propose to give up the Monday music-lesson, and after some polite hesitation her offer was accepted, ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... somewhat of a recluse in her habits; she was a nervous, diffident woman, who made weak health an excuse for shutting herself out from society. Fay had lived with her ever since her father's death; but during the last year Miss Mordaunt had ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... crowning all their undertakings with success; but wisdom makes her followers bashful, sneaking and timorous, and therefore you commonly see that they are reduced to hard shifts; must grapple with poverty, cold and hunger; must lie recluse, despised, and unregarded; while fools roll in money, are advanced to dignities and offices, and in a word have the whole world at command. If any one thinks it happy to be a favorite at court, and ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... his precious glasses did more to soothe the ruffled spirit of the recluse than anything else. He wiped them tenderly, and looking through them, observed that they were all right. Then he sat in profound silence, while Susan, under Katherine's directions, cleared up the ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... his countenance—the start—the throb—the almost delirious outburst of hysteric exultation with which, when the whole truth was made known, he clasped the two messengers of glad tidings to his breast, with an energy that almost choked the aged recluse! "Ride, ride this instant to the Margravine—say I have wronged her, that it is all right, that she may come back—that I forgive her—that I apologize if you will"—and a secretary forthwith despatched a note to that effect, which was carried off ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which it was proper to make any allusions of the sort. But the letters had other charms. It was apparent, throughout, that the writer was ignorant that she wrote to an invalid, though she could not but know that she wrote to a recluse. Her aim evidently was to amuse Grace, of whose mental sufferings she could not well be ignorant. Lucy was a keen observer, and her epistles were filled with amusing comments on the follies that were daily committed in New York, as well as in Paris, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... reappeared again and again. If she wants New York Society, especially if she wants money for those starving children, I'll go the limit. But I'm going to find out about her all the same. I'll hunt up Harry Thornhill tomorrow—he's a recluse but he'll see me—and I'll get on the track of some Hungarian refugee. She can't be the usual rank impostor, that's positive. She has the same blood as Mary in her veins, and if she's Mary's daughter and wishes to keep it dark, that's her business. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... God and, so far as lies in his power, preparing for his supersession by some more public administration. Modern religion admits of no facile flights from responsibility. It permits no headlong resort to the wilderness and sterile virtue. It counts the recluse who fasts among scorpions in a cave as no better than a deserter in hiding. It unhesitatingly forbids any rich young man to sell all that he has and give to the poor. Himself and all that he has must be alike ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... the venerable recluse, giving me a farewell pat on the shoulder, "come back soon to your spiritual father who loves you, and amiably favor him with another tiny, tiny pinch of ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... throne we see a swan. The hind was really a type of solitude and purity of life, and as such is found in many ancient carvings and paintings accompanying various Saints. There is also a legend specially connecting this creature with S. Giles. In a retreat in a forest in the diocese of Nismes, the recluse, with one companion, is said to have lived on the fruits of the earth and the milk of a hind. Some dogs that were out hunting pursued this hind, and she took refuge in the dwelling of the Saint. The sportsman, Flavius Wamba, King ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... the point of making some bitter reply about the undesirability of any guardianship assumed by Willis Morgan, squaw man, recluse, and recipient of common hatred and contempt. But he kept ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... themselves. Still he had many friends, admirers of his transcendent talents; his presence in the house, his eloquence, address and imposing beauty, were calculated to produce an electric effect. Adrian also, notwithstanding his recluse habits and theories, so adverse to the spirit of party, had many friends, and they were easily induced to vote for a candidate of ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... number of disciples were grouped around him, sharing his life and studying his severe doctrine. We might imagine ourselves transported to the banks of the Ganges, if particular traits had not revealed in this recluse the last descendant of the ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... him, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Hartley, he told us that he had been visited by a hardened creature, whose name did not concern us, and who, in anticipation of a reward which she had heard was offered for the recovery of the recluse, disclosed the fact that she had, under an assumed name, become a sister of charity, and was at present an inmate in a convent in —— street, where we would, doubtless, be able to ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... elapsed since the first chest of the cargo of Useful Knowledge destined for the fortunate Maldives had been digested by the recluse Popanilla; for a recluse he had now become. Great students are rather dull companions. Our Fantasian friend, during his first studies, was as moody, absent, and querulous as are most men of genius during that mystical period of life. He was consequently ...
— English Satires • Various
... on the bleak promontory. It would be a fit abode, she thought, for some recluse, determined to eschew the society of his fellow-men; here he could dwell, solitary and apart, surrounded on three sides by the grey, dividing sea, and protected on the fourth by the steep untempting climb that lay betwixt the town and the lonely house ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... and capricious, and so prejudiced, that it requires a fund of good-nature like yours not to grow morose. Company keeps our rind from growing too coarse and rough; and though at my return I design not to mix in public, I do not intend to be quite a recluse. My absence will put it in my power to take up or drop as much as I please. Adieu! I shall inquire about your commission of books, but having been arrived but ten days, have not yet had time. Need I say?—no I need not—that nobody can be ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... not right for a young man to lead the life of a recluse of seventy. Here we are in the height of the London season, and I am sure you haven't been into ten houses, when a hundred of the very best are open to you—" I loathe the term "best houses." The tinsel ineptitude of them! For entertainment ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... before his death Alfred de Vigny wrote nothing. He lived in retirement, almost a recluse, in La Charente, rarely visiting Paris. Admitted into L'Academie Francaise in 1845, he describes in his 'Journal d'un Poete' his academic visits and the reception held out to him by the members of L'Institut. This work appeared ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sieur de Lenide, stimulated by similar suggestions, had conceived a great wish to meet the marquise; for, having got M. de Nocheres who no doubt regretted her prolonged retreat—to entrust him with a commission for his granddaughter, he came to the convent parlour and asked for the fair recluse. She, although she had never seen him, recognised him at the first glance; for having never seen so handsome a cavalier as he who now presented himself before her, she thought this could be no other than the Marquis de Ganges, of whom people had so often spoken ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... lore. He has lived alone all these fifty years, alone and for himself, amassing learning, and compiling a fortune. He comes home now at night alone from the club, where he has been dining freely, to the lonely chambers where he lives a godless old recluse. When he dies, his Inn will erect a tablet to his honour, and his heirs burn a part of his library. Would you like to have such a prospect for your old age, to store up learning and money, and end ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the universe; he was captured in the net laid for him! When the moon entered the shadow, four masked robbers (Jocrisse was their leader!) climbed into the Baroness Landsknechtsschild's windows. The hermit in his observatory beheld this incursion, and, being a knight as well as a recluse, what else could he do but rush to the rescue of his fair neighbor? His telescope had told him she was fair. Jocrisse played his part admirably. At the approach of the deliverer the "robbers" took to their heels, and ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... asleep, when a figure entered the room: 'tis a girl all clothed and veiled in white; on her forehead a fillet of black and gold. She sees him. In amazement she lifts her white hand: 'Am I, then, such a stranger in the house already? Alas, poor recluse!... But I am ashamed, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... their one o'clock dinner before the recluse made any sign. Then he gave note of his continued existence by bumping and thumping sounds within his state-room, as if some one were dressing there in a ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... sky shall you find it? The more solitary the recluse and the more confirmed and grounded his seclusion, the wider and more familiar becomes the circle of his social environment, until at length, like a very dryad of old, the birds build and sing in his branches ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... captum take, hold capacious, incipient *Caput, capitis head cape (Cape Cod), decapitate, chapter, biceps Cedo, cessum go concede, accessory Centum hundred per cent, centigrade *Civis citizen civic, uncivilized *Clamo shout acclaim, declamation *Claudo, clausum close, shut conclude, recluse, cloister, sluice Cognosco (see Nosco) *Coquo, coxi, coctum cook decoction, precocious *Cor, cordis heart core, discord, courage Corpus body corpse, incorporate Credo, credituin believe creed, discreditable Cresco, cretum grow crescendo, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... was piqued. For four days had passed and the recluse had not returned her call. True, there had come to her hotel a wicker full of superb wild tree blooms, and, again, a tiny box, cunning in workmanship of scented wood, containing what at first glance she had taken to be a jewel, until she saw that it was a tiny butterfly ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... worthy man and a good official, although his ideas are old fashioned; but it is reported of him that he thinks of nothing but his work, and mixes himself up in no way in politics, living the life almost of a recluse. It was one of his daughters you championed in the arena. She died soon afterwards, I ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... circulated that Sir Austin Feverel, the recluse of Raynham, the rank misogynist, the rich baronet, was in town, looking out a bride for his only son and uncorrupted heir. Doctor Benjamin Bairam was the excellent authority. Doctor Bairam had safely delivered ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... platform of the lonely mountain station, Spinrobin detected the atmosphere of the scholar, almost of the recluse, shot through with the strange fires that dropped from the large, lambent, blue eyes. All these things rushed over the thrilled little secretary with an effect, as already described, of a certain bewilderment, that left ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... these neighbors, and they knew that hot blood requires more than a generation to cool, but everything Ed did outraged them. In trying to show their sympathy for his wife they succeeded in wounding her more deeply, and Alaire withdrew into herself. She became almost a recluse, and fenced herself away not only from the curious, but also from those who really wished to be her friends. In time people remarked that Ed Austin's metamorphosis was no harder to understand than ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... democratic, and he could not make acquaintances below his own intellectual level. Solitude fostered a sensitiveness which to begin with was extreme; the lack of stated occupation encouraged his natural tendency to dream and procrastinate and hope for the improbable. He was a recluse in the midst of millions, and viewed with dread the necessity of going forth to fight ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... introspection, and he might well be accused of a species of Pharisaism, were these poems not so artlessly and passionately sincere, and often so tinged with religious awe. His withdrawal, in his verse, from the life of his times was the act of a natural recluse. ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... from the number of great men who have been convinced of its truth, after a serious consideration of the question. Grotius was an acute man, a lawyer, a man accustomed to examine evidence, and he was convinced. Grotius was not a recluse, but a man of the world, who certainly had no bias to the side of religion. Sir Isaac Newton set out an infidel[1337], and came to be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... coppice, not far from the eastern or more remote end of the island, Legrand had built himself a small hut, which he occupied when I first, by mere accident, made his acquaintance. This soon ripened into friendship—for there was much in the recluse to excite interest and esteem. I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. He had with him many books, but rarely ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and adorned with all the Graces and Embellishments of Wit: When Learning irradiates common Life, it is then in its highest Use and Perfection; and it is to such as Your Lordship, that the Sciences owe the Esteem which they have with the active Part of Mankind. Knowledge of Books in recluse Men, is like that sort of Lanthorn which hides him who carries it, and serves only to pass through secret and gloomy Paths of his own; but in the Possession of a Man of Business, it is as a Torch in the Hand of one who is willing and able to shew those, who ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... slight that it was finally decided to go to England and seek medical advice. On the 1st of July they reached England, and shortly afterwards went to London to consult Sir Andrew Clark and other eminent physicians. Mrs. Stevenson writes from there: "I suppose it comes from being so long a recluse, but seeing the few people I have seen has quite shattered my nerves, so that I tremble and can hardly speak. Louis, on the contrary, is quite calm, and is at this moment, after a hearty meal, resting quietly ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... hypocrites. Some of us feign for one matter, and some for other. I wis somewhat thereabout, child; for ere I came hither was I maid unto the Lady Julian [a fictitious person], recluse of Tamworth Priory. By our dear Lady her girdle! saw I nothing of ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... a lot of lies. A casual eye could see no change in the recluse: his head does not hang down on his breast, his locks are not long and matted, his sighs do not resound through the primeval forest and scare away the panthers. When you look closely at him, or have been with him long enough, you can see that he is a little ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... noble humour; but this form Was not intended to so dark a use. Had you been crooked, foul, of some coarse mould A cloister had done well; but such a feature That might stand up the glory of a kingdom, To live recluse! is a mere soloecism, Though in a nunnery. It must not be. I muse, my lord your brother will permit it: You should spend half my land first, were I he. Does not this diamond better on my finger, Than in ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... but as the course of instruction in that institution was not in harmony with his tastes, he soon withdrew, applying himself afterwards to the study of the French and German languages (a ready fluency in both of which he finally acquired), and especially to the art dearer than all other studies. A recluse, owning and soliciting no guidance but that of his text-book, in the quiet of the woods, or, if that were inaccessible, the retirement of his chamber, he devoted himself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... life of a perfect recluse with her child, during her husband's absence, at his villa somewhere in the south—near Marseilles, where the ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... o' laughin'—I know I shall!' On account of her extra-ordinary gift of repartee, and her inexhaustible fund of wit and humour, she was generally supposed to be an Irishwoman. But she was not: she was cockney to the marrow. Recluse as Rossetti was in his later years, he had at one time been very different, and could bring himself in touch with the lower orders of London in a way such as was only known to his most intimate friends. With all her impudence, and I may say insolence, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... mean? Was the Arab magician, recluse in his wretched hut below the castle, prepared to serve her? Was it through him and Foresto that she might hope to escape or at least to manage some revenge? Thereafter she often watched the renegade's window, from which, no matter how late the hour, shone a glimmering of lamplight. Was he busy ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... street, the monotonous drone of his bagpipe was reproduced in most comical imitation; and anon there was a gush of bird-songs, as if a whole aviary were in the vicinity. Indeed, no half-hour passed without audible indication that the little recluse was ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... offended his new companions. Hay did not return more than twice, Pringle never at all, and there came a time when Archie even desisted from the Tuesday Club, and became in all things - what he had had the name of almost from the first - the Recluse of Hermiston. High-nosed Miss Pringle of Drumanno and high-stepping Miss Marshall of the Mains were understood to have had a difference of opinion about him the day after the ball - he was none the wiser, he could not suppose ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... government, by dividing its powers—to the one board belonged the privilege of ordering and contriving measures; to the other, that of carrying them into execution. Theories, he said, which did not connect men with measures, were not theories for this world: they were chimeras with which a recluse might divert his fancy, but they were not principles en which a statesman would found his system. He maintained, that by the negative vested in the commissioners, the chartered rights of the company, on which stress ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... as silly as a goose." The greater includes the less. Your view from the mountain-side may be very pretty, but she who has taken one step higher commands your view and her own also. It was no dreamy recluse, but the accomplished and experienced Stendhal, who wrote, "The joys of the gay world do not count for ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the class common in those days of sinecurism and non-residence, who walked sixteen miles every Sunday to serve two churches, besides reading daily prayers at Huntingdon, and who regaled his friend with ale brewed by his own hands. In his attached servant the recluse boasted that he had a friend; a friend he might have, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... life of a recluse in his own observatory, which was situated in a lonely part of the country, had, or at any rate, believed that he had, opened up a communication with the inhabitants of Mars, by means of powerful electric lights, flashing in the manner of a signal-lantern or heliograph. I had set him down ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... him, to win him from the outset a reputation for pride and aloofness. If he had not been forced to mix with those of his own age, and if he had not resolutely set himself to overcome this feeling, he might have grown into a student and a recluse. Both at school and college he did 'attend to his book': at Harrow he roused the greatest hopes. His brilliant schoolfellow, Lord Byron, while claiming to excel him in general information and history, admits that Peel was greatly his superior as a scholar. The working of their minds, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... days of Knut,' falls madly in love, or fancies that he falls madly in love, with a rustic Perdita, a provincial Artemis who has 'a Gainsborough face, with wide-opened questioning eyes and tumbled auburn hair.' She is poor but well-born, being the only child of Mr. Vernon of Llanarth, a curious recluse, who is half a pedant and half Don Quixote. Guilderoy marries her and, tiring of her shyness, her lack of power to express herself, her want of knowledge of fashionable life, returns to an old passion for ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... to be achieved by solitary thinking. Some definite shape must be given to our thoughts before we can submit them to the operation of other minds; the greater the originality, the longer must be the process of solitary elaboration. The "Principia" was composed from first to last by recluse meditation; probably the attempt to discuss or debate any parts of it would have only fretted and paralysed the author's invention. Indeed, after an enormous strain of the constructive intellect, a man may be in no humour to have his work carped at, even to improve it. In the ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... had his foes believ'd, The loss of him ere long perceiv'd. To bring him back again intent, To his retreat alone he went: "My friend, you must return with me," He said, "your value now I see." "Forgive me," the Recluse replied; "Here I determine to abide. By sad experience well I know, Were I to court again to go, And all my best endeavors do, To serve my country, sir, and you, Art and intrigue so much prevail, Again I certainly should fail; Against your ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... Leroy, only son of Baron Barminster, was one of the most noted figures in fashionable society. His father, who since the death of Lady Barminster had lived almost as a recluse, spent the days in the old Castle, and had practically abdicated in favour of his son. So that the colossal income accruing from the coal mines of Wales, the rentals of the Leroy estates in the Southern Counties, and ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... The recluse, in hopes of a perquisite, led the two women toward the door of the hermitage, where his wife and daughter had appeared, to feast their eyes on the huge diamonds sparkling at the ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... peculiar mental condition and the fact that his identity was enveloped in a degree of mystery rendered him doubly interesting. In the case of each this was his introduction to the social life of Ophir. Each had been a resident of the town, the one as a student and recluse, the other as a business man, but each was a stranger to the stratum known as society. Each held himself aloof that evening from the throng: the one, through natural reserve, courteous but indifferent to the passing crowd; the other alert, watchful, studying the crowd; weighing, gauging ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... surroundings, the risks to be run every hour—every second—and you will understand that those two English gentlemen had something in them passing self-interest, passing all that the world has to offer. Ferrier never dreamed of becoming a nautical recluse; he was too full of the joy of life for that: but he had a purpose, and he went right at his mark like a bullet from a rifle. Once that evening he went on deck and tried to peer through the wall ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... Christian passion, in the eleventh century, for the deliverance of Jerusalem and the triumph of the Cross was fortunate in this respect. An obscure pilgrim, at first a soldier, then a married man and father of several children, then a monk and a vowed recluse, Peter the Hermit, who was born in the neighborhood of Amiens, about 1030, had gone, as so many others had, to Jerusalem "to say his prayers there." Struck disconsolate at the sight of the sufferings and insults undergone by the Christians, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... not a lonely habitation. He was no recluse, and when there he was always surrounded by his friends. I do not know precisely how one could constitute a list of them—but half a dozen men at least came and went there as they chose. Mr. Mooney, Mr. Hayden, "Long John" O'Connor, ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... you, was solitary and retired; my time chiefly passed in writing out documentary matters for the lawyers. The circumstance of my using the pen so incessantly became known, and I was looked on as a literary recluse. One day a lady personally unknown to me, but whose indefatigable zeal was always seeking the good of others, sent me a parcel of tracts. With equal wonder and delight I opened one of them, a simple, spiritual little production; and ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... shall the Cape Ann children shout in glee, Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse; Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose Go honking northward over Tennessee; West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie, And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung, And yonder where, gigantic, willful, young, Chicago sitteth at the northwest ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... a blest recluse, In this green Eden of the leafy West; And felt sweet Peace her softest balm infuse, Into his once too world-disturbed breast: There did he find a deep and quiet rest: The mockbird sang his vespers, while the star Shone sweetly o'er the rippling river's ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... to be a youth of great promise, destined to become distinguished. But the years slipped by, and his literary performance, consisting of desultory essays and several slight volumes of verse, was not enough to justify the prophecy. His life more and more became that of a bachelor recluse and valetudinarian. When he died, in 1881, at sixty years of age, after much suffering heroically borne, as pathetic entries in the last leaves of his Diary remain to show, there was a feeling that here was ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Arthur. "Perhaps his father, the scientific recluse, had accumulated some money, and the boy came to America to get rid of it. He will be extravagant and wasteful for awhile, and then go back to his island with the idea that ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... no questions were asked about him, because he lived like the rest of the world. But that two men should come into a strange country, and partake of none of the country diversions, seek no acquaintance, and live entirely recluse, is something so inexplicable as to puzzle the wisest heads, even that of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... scattered few; baseness of bearing, grossness of manner, will be the distinctive mark of no section of the community whatever. The coarser reasons for privacy, therefore, will not exist here. And that savage sort of shyness, too, that makes so many half-educated people on earth recluse and defensive, that too the Utopians will have escaped by their more liberal breeding. In the cultivated State we are assuming it will be ever so much easier for people to eat in public, rest and amuse themselves in public, and ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Author's Foreword Biographical Notice The Two Sisters The Siwash Rock The Recluse The Lost Salmon Run The Deep Waters The Sea-Serpent The Lost Island Point Grey The Tulameen Trail The Grey Archway Deadman's Island A Squamish Legend of Napoleon The Lure in Stanley Park Deer Lake A Royal ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... vengeance entertained by the latter, but thought that the honour of the family was sufficiently cleared by what was evidently a flight. Paolo was disappointed and puzzled by the manner of the unfortunate recluse. Instead of bursting out into furious denunciations, he became as pale as ashes, and then hiding his face in his hands, wept aloud. His agony continued for more than an hour; after which he raised his head, and exhibited a serene brow to the astonished ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... inspiration, was a series of sermons in verse, somewhat intolerant of all worldly enjoyments, such as hunting, dancing, and theaters. "God made the country and man made the town," he wrote. He was a moralizing poet, and his morality was sometimes that of the invalid and the recluse. Byron called him a "coddled poet." And, indeed, there is a suspicion of gruel and dressing-gowns about him. He lived much among women, and his sufferings had refined him to a feminine delicacy. But there is no sickliness in his poetry, and he retained a charming playful ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... our fathers, left home when they were quite young,—that is what Papa has told me,—and soon formed ties elsewhere. Uncle John stayed with Grandfather till he died; then he went abroad, and was gone many years; and since he came back, he has lived here alone. I suppose he has grown a recluse, and does not care to see people. I know Papa often and often begged him to come and make us a visit, and once or twice the time was actually set; but each time something happened to prevent his coming, and he never did come. I think ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... ruffians without sharing their mood; that the artist and the moral being are separate, and may not be used to interpret each other. Yet, after giving due weight to such answers, Perugino, being what he was, living at the time he did, not as a recluse, but as a prosperous impresario of painting, and systematically devoting his powers to pietistic art, must be for us a puzzle. That the quietism of his highly artificial style should have been fashionable in Perugia, while the Baglioni were tearing ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds |
