"Nunnery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dreaming of!" she said one day, when she had sat for some time looking at Dolly, who was drawing. "He seems to think it quite natural that you should live down here at this cottage, year in and year out, like a toad in a hole; with no more life or society. We might as well be shut up in a nunnery, only then there would be more of us. I never heard of a ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... curt enough to please the superioress of a nunnery. Elsie was awed instantly by the glimpse she obtained of the flying scud within the narrow area of the saloon lights, but she obeyed directions, and presently found herself clinging desperately to the brass hand-rail which ran, breast high, along the outer wall ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... account of a venerable abbess, who threw the light of Christian goodness over that benighted land about a century ago, and must have impressed the heathens in the neighbourhood with an exalted notion of the virtues of a nunnery:— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... A nunnery of the same rite, and rules of St Basil, with forty persons under vows, is a good building at half-a-mile distance, between which and the male institution a very excellent road has been made, notwithstanding the hilly nature of the ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... Prince of Homburg, he is made judge in his own case, and when he perceives at the cost of what personal sacrifice his father has done his duty. The State prevails over Albrecht as it prevails over Agnes, whose only fault was that she did not immure her beauty in a nunnery. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... years since a set of these ladies who were of quality, and gave out, that virginity was to be their state of life during this mortal condition, and therefore resolved to join their fortunes, and erect a nunnery. The place of residence was pitched upon; and a pretty situation, full of natural falls and risings of waters, with shady coverts, and flowery arbours, was approved by seven of the founders. There were as many of our sex who took the liberty to visit those mansions of intended severity; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... House, where my father kept up such state as befitted an Irish gentleman of his day. I believe I was born there. If I thought of any place in the world as home I suppose it would be Curraghbeg; but I have no feeling for the place except a mild dislike. The House is now a nunnery, in better repair, but almost certainly more gauntly hideous than when I owned it. The village, I expect, is still as sordid as when I saw it last. I remembered Gorman's shop, a dirty little public house, where sacks of flour, tea and sugar candy were sold, ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... with a class of persons devoted to the service of a god, as vestals or hierodules. The vestals were vowed to chastity, lived together in a great nunnery, were forbidden to open or enter a tavern, and together with other ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... Saint John the Baptist, with his soft flesh and waving hair, and Bacchus, with his ambiguous smile. Seen through his eyes, the seashore in the Saint Anne had the airless lethargy of some damasked chapel in a Spanish nunnery, and over the landscapes brooded a wan spirit of evil that was very troubling. He loved the mysterious pictures in which the painter had sought to express something beyond the limits of painting, something of unsatisfied desire and of longing for unhuman passions. Oliver Haddo found ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... make a tragic history; there is no fault to be found with the general scheme or principle in this case. It is in the details that the barbarous simplicity of the author comes out. For example, in the invasion of the lands on which he has a claim, Raoul attacks and burns a nunnery, and in it the mother of his best friend and former squire, Bernier. The injured man, his friend, is represented as taking it all in a helpless dull expostulatory way. The author has no language to express any imaginative passion; he can only repeat, in a muffled professional ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... flirt of her pudgy hand. "Soul of me! that's where the difference lies. Had it been the Cracksman, there would have been no 'if'. It were done as surely as he attempted it. Name of misfortune! I had gone into a nunnery had I lost such a ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... the eldest Antipholus and Dromio away from her, she entered a nunnery, and by her wise and virtuous conduct, she was at length made lady abbess of this convent, and in discharging the rites of hospitality to an unhappy stranger she had unknowingly protected ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of about three miles brings us to Town Malling, which stands on the Kentish rag. The approach to Town Malling is by a waterfall, and there are the ruins of the old Nunnery, founded by Bishop Gundulph in 1090, in the place. East Malling is a smaller town, and lies nearer to Maidstone. Our object in visiting this pretty, old-fashioned Kentish country town, is to verify its identity with that of Muggleton of the Pickwick Papers. Great weight must be attached to the ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... one vigil of the great feast, a lady came to Arthur's court at Camelot and asked Sir Launcelot to ride with her into the forest hard by, for a purpose not then to be revealed. Launcelot consenting, they rode together until they came to a nunnery hidden deep in the forest; and there the lady bade Launcelot dismount, and led him into a great and stately room. Presently there entered twelve nuns, and with them a youth, the fairest that Launcelot had ever seen. "Sir," said the nuns, "we have brought up this child ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... all? And have I seen the whole Cathedral, chapel, nunnery, and graves? 'Tis scantly worth the ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... be supposed to attend to any thing else, when the lovely Harriet Byron continued in suspence, when the fate of Lady Clementina was undetermined, when it was not yet settled, whether she was to marry Grandison, retire to a Nunnery, or continue crack-brain'd all her lifetime. After all, I am well-pleased to see Grandison and Harriet fairly buckled. And I hope soon to hear, that the ceremony is performed between the Count de Belvedere and Lady Clementina. I am afraid there could have been no compleat happiness in ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... with Susan!" she had exclaimed, making a little face when Honora had told her. "They say that Silverdale is as slow as a nunnery—and you're on your knees all the time. You ought to have come to Newport ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... same queen, who succeeded Rodoaldo, husband of Gundiberta, in the government; the church of S. Ambruogio at Pavia, built by Grimoald, King of the Lombards, who drove from the kingdom Aribert's son Perterit. This Perterit being restored to his throne after Grimoald's death built a nunnery at Pavia called the Monasterio Nuovo, in honour of Our Lady and of St Agatha, and the queen built another dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Pertica outside the walls. Cunibert, Perterit's son, likewise ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... had dawned, Morgan le Fay arose and, taking her horse, departed unattended from Camelot. All that day and most of the night she rode fast, and ere noon the next day, she was come to a nunnery where, as she knew, King Arthur lay. Entering into the house, she made herself known to the nuns, who received her courteously and gave her of their best to eat and to drink. When she was refreshed, she asked if any other had sought shelter with them that day; and they told ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... had to land, while the boatman and some other persons drew our skiff round some rapids, which we could not otherwise have passed; another time, the boat went through a lock. We, meanwhile, stepped ashore to examine the ruins of the old nunnery of Godstowe, where Fair Rosamond secluded herself, after being separated from her royal lover. There is a long line of ruinous wall, and a shattered tower at one of the angles; the whole much ivy-grown,—brimming over, indeed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... in a fainting condition, was placed in the cart of a vine-dresser, the only conveyance to be found, and carried to a neighboring nunnery, where she lay ill for several weeks, tenderly nursed by her sorrowful mother and ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Virgin, the Latin Chapel of the Agony, the Greek Church of St. Mary Magdalen. On top of the ridge are the Russian Buildings, with the Chapel of the Ascension, and the Latin Buildings, with the Church of the Creed, the Church of the Paternoster, and a Carmelite Nunnery. Among the walls of these inclosures we wound our way, and at last tied our horses outside of the Russian garden. We climbed the two hundred and fourteen steps of the lofty Belvidere Tower, and found ourselves in possession of one of the great views of the world. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... the role of association of ideas in the same matter. One Sunday night I left Noumea in the carriage of Dr. F...... who was going to visit a nunnery five leagues from there. At the moment of our arrival the doctor asked what time it was. 'Half-past two,' I said, looking at my watch. As we stopped in the convent court in front of the chapel I heard the lusty conclusion of a psalm. 'They are singing vespers,' I remarked to the ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... regarded as a modern foundation ranking with Downing or Selwyn by the hurried visitor who had failed to consult his guide-book and had not previous information to aid him. It was actually founded as long ago as 1497, and the buildings include the church and other parts of the Benedictine nunnery of ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... stirrup iron as I might have been a Nubian slave. Long since he had ceased loving me; that lasted such a little while. He called me Madonna, as though it were a term of shame, and cursed me for coldness and my nunnery ways. He was only happy when he read in my face the fear I held him in. And I ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... war or an unjust one, in either case it will need the same discipline. There must be order amongst thieves, as well as amongst honest men. There can be an orderly brothel as well as an orderly nunnery, and all order rests on co-operation. We presume co-operation. We require an end for which ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... Helen taketh to a Nunnery] What time he sat thus there came that way three nuns who dwelt in an abbey of nuns which was not a great distance away from that place. These made great pity over that sorrowful sight, and they took away from there the dead King and the woeful Queen, and ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... ancient Dance of Death with which his own after-creations were so often to be confused, Holbein must many a time have studied the famous old copy. For though the Dominican painting was then nearly a century old, it was a copy of a still older original in the Klein-Basel nunnery of Klingenthal, ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... nunnery, then—no more nor less than that. The "Sacred Heart" at Namur, or the Sisters of Mercy here at home in Bagot Street, I ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... baldacchino[obs3]; apse, belfry; chapter house; presbytery; anxious-bench, anxious-seat; diaconicum[Lat], jube[obs3]; mourner's bench, mourner's seat. [exterior adjacent to a church] cloisters, churchyard. monastery, priory, abbey, friary, convent, nunnery, cloister. Adj. claustral, cloistered; monastic, monasterial; conventual. Phr. ne vile fano[It]; "there's nothing ill can dwell in such ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... it on any child's face fresh out of the convent; it does not last a month!' was the still displeased, rather jealous answer. 'That little thing—I believe they call her Nid-de-Merle—she has only just been brought from her nunnery to wait on the young Queen. Ah! your gaze was perilous, it is bringing on you one of the jests of ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... glimpse of blue sky, and a perspective of sunny red tiles, where brown birds fluttered and cats lounged and little episodes arose to temper the tedium of endless invocation: and farther off there was a back view of a nunnery, with visions of placid black-hooded faces at windows; and from the distance came a pleasant drone of monosyllabic spelling from fresh young voices, to relieve the ear from the monotony of long stretches ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... told that Monsieur Cournal had engaged them. To the question what was to be done with Madame Cournal, another answered that she was to be waylaid as she was coming from the Intendance, kidnapped, and hurried to a nunnery to be ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sign the declaration of independence, and enjoy their freedom with republican zest, but the young matrons usually abdicate with the first heir to the throne and go into a seclusion almost as close as a French nunnery, though by no means as quiet. Whether they like it or not, they are virtually put upon the shelf as soon as the wedding excitement is over, and most of them might exclaim, as did a very pretty woman the other day, "I'm as handsome as ever, but no one takes any notice ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... in similar circumstances, and felt her heart beat fast at the possibility. Rage, storm, despair; drown herself in the nearest stream; lie down beneath the express train; bid farewell to the world, and retire into a nunnery. All these alternatives seemed natural and easy; she could imagine taking refuge in any one of them. But to go on with ordinary, everyday work, to take up the "next duty" and perform it in quiet, conscientious fashion—that was impossible!—the last thing in ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... was not unlike that of the Shakers, for near every monastery was a nunnery. The association of men and women, although quite limited, was better for both than their absolute separation, as with the Trappists, who regard it as a sin even to look upon the face ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... plague, and with difficulty dragged himself in to Ravensburg. For three months he lay ill, and death came very close. As its unearthly glow irradiated the world around him, reversing its light and shade, the visions of the nunnery recurred. He vowed that if his life were still his to give, it should be given to God's service; and on recovering he ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... Rosenau?" asked another. "Is she rich? Is she noble? Has she a husband, who will stab you both? or only a mother, who will send her to a nunnery, and let you go free? You might gratify our curiosity a little. It would do you no harm, and it would give us something ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... say that without qualification. So he concluded his essay in the pooh-pooh tone of voice. He first gives a sketch of abnormalities in mortal experience, as in the case of mental epidemics, of witchcraft, of the so-called prophets in the Cevennes, of the Jansenist marvels. He mentions a nunnery where, 'in the sixteenth century,' there occurred, among other phenomena, movements of inanimate objects, pottery specially distinguishing itself, as in the famous 'Stockwell mystery'. Unluckily he supplies no references for these ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... natural and rational method of coeducation of the sexes, now universal (with very few exceptions), it was a common thing for boys and girls, young men and young women, to be educated,—monastery and nunnery fashion,—entirely apart! ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne
... period for mourning was over, the relations of the marquise and Sainte-Croix were as open and public as before: the two brothers d'Aubray expostulated with her by the medium of an older sister who was in a Carmelite nunnery, and the marquise perceived that her father had on his death bequeathed the care and supervision of her to her brothers. Thus her first crime had been all but in vain: she had wanted to get rid of her father's rebukes and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... such a report would be in substantial agreement with the report that is here offered; but, if one's virtue will not endure the love-making of Arcadia, let him banish the myth from his imagination and hie to a convent or a nunnery. ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... nothing which might lead to his aggrandizement. Therefore she seldom moved beyond the outer wall of the hold, except to go down to visit the sick in the village. She herself had been a Seaton, and had been educated at the nunnery of Dunfermline, and she now taught Archie to read and write, accomplishments by no means common even among the better class in those days. Archie loved not books; but as it pleased his mother, and time often hung heavy on his hands, he did not mind devoting ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... Colonel and his sweet unselfish wife, with affection; and Sylvia, John's betrothed, with a strange passion, defend the old faith, Sylvia to the point of breaking with her lover and getting her to a nunnery—a business which will in the end, I should guess, lay a heavier burden upon the nuns than upon John. The indecisive battle sways hither and thither. It is the Doctor who sums up in a compromise which would shock the metaphysical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... father had introduced. His marriage gave a significance to these promises which the meanest English peasant could understand. Edith, or Matilda, was the daughter of King Malcolm of Scotland and of Margaret, the sister of Eadgar AEtheling. She had been brought up in the nunnery of Romsey where her aunt Christina was a nun; and the veil which she had taken there formed an obstacle to her union with the King, which was only removed by the wisdom of Anselm. While Flambard, the embodiment of the Red King's despotism, was thrown into the Tower, the Archbishop's ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... sake—but I know what I am about, and you can't provoke me. Our reverend friend and I understand each other. He will make allowances for a sensitive woman, who has had sad experience of conversions in her own household. My eldest daughter, Father Benwell—a poor foolish creature—was converted into a nunnery. The last time I saw her (she used to be sweetly pretty; my dear husband quite adored her)—the last time I saw her she had a red nose, and, what is even more revolting at her age, a double chin. She received me with her lips pursed up, and her eyes on the ground, ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... pretty Character! a Woman of my Beauty, and five Thousand Pound, marry a Merchant—a little, petty, dirty-heel'd Merchant; faugh, I'd rather live a Maid all the days of my life, or be sent to a Nunnery, and that's Plague ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... for his own brothers," Henri said; "but I am not supposing that even Charles would lay hands on me, after inviting me to his court to marry his sister. He would not venture upon that, before the eyes of all Europe. It is the strain and the pressure that I fear. A girl who is sent to a nunnery, however much she may hate becoming a nun, can no more escape than a fly from the meshes of a spider. I doubt not that it seems, to all the Huguenots of France, that for me to marry Marguerite of Valois would be more than a great victory won for ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... meal, while the faded Cristine sat like a sphinx staring into vacancy. I spoke of England and of her friends, of Paris and Versailles, of Avignon where she had spent some years, and of the amenities of Florence, which she considered her home. But it was like talking to a nunnery door. I got nothing but "It is indeed true, sir," or "Do you say so, sir!" till my energy began to sink. Madame perceived my discomfort, and, as she rose, murmured an apology. "Pray forgive my distraction, but I am poor company ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... (otherwise known as "the Nunnery," or Abbots Salford), not far from Evesham, is another mansion remarkable for its picturesqueness as well as for its capacity for hiding. It not only has its Roman Catholic chapel, but a resident priest ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... be pleased that one of so great a house as yours should sue to her. I will give you a letter to her, praying her to remember you at the next vacancy; and mayhap, if the Lady Montagu could take you to visit her, you could prevail with her! But, surely, some nunnery ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... announces in the prologue, it is based upon Machiavel's theory of life—pure selfishness. The Jew makes war upon all the world, for the gratification of his passion for revenge; he poisons his daughter "and the entire nunnery in which she had taken refuge"; he kills, he betrays, he prepares a burning caldron for a whole garrison,—"tragedy such as this is simply revolting. The characters of Barabas and of his servant, and the motives by which they are stimulated, are the mere coinage of extravagance; and ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... getting out, pray," returned Diana. "We shall never get out except by marrying, or really going into a nunnery." ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... which followed these deliberations gave surprise to the public; it was the seizure of the queen dowager the forfeiture of all her lands and revenue, and the close confinement of her person in the nunnery of Bermondsey. The act of authority was covered with a very thin pretence. It was alleged that, notwithstanding the secret agreement to marry her daughter to Henry, she had yet yielded to the solicitations ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... thinking more highly" (the Professor's italics again) "of the Parisian than of the Anglo-French.... Warton's note on the line is quite sane. He shows that Queen Philippa wrote business letters in French (doubtless Anglo-French) with 'great propriety'" ... and so on. You see, there was a Benedictine nunnery at Stratford-le-Bow; and as "Mr. Cutts says, very justly, 'She spoke French correctly, though with an accent which savored of the Benedictine Convent at Stratford-le-Bow, where she had been educated, rather than of Paris.'" So there ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ring the lady-bells Of the nunnery by the Fosse:— Say the hinds their silver music swells 'Like the blessed angels' syllables, At His ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... for her? Could he not take her to some nunnery midway, and let her write to her uncle to ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from convenire, to come together), a term applied to an association of persons secluded from the world and devoted to a religious life, and hence to the building in which they live, a monastery or (more particularly) nunnery. The diminution "conventicle" (conventiculum), generally used in a contemptuous sense as implying sectarianism, secrecy or illegality, is applied to the meetings or meeting-places of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... he hurried to explain. "I never loved but once, and then would die for it." The jasmine trembled in its chaste white nunnery, and her lips were temptingly apart. He bent forward boldly, searching her ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... take the veil rather than marry the man her father has chosen for her, that will cause additional delay. It will be supposed that she is concealed in the house of some friend, or that she has sought a refuge in a nunnery, and at any rate there is not likely to be any search over the country for some days, especially as her father will naturally be anxious that what he will consider an act of rebellion on the part of his daughter ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... is certain. Its ruins are situated on a high rocky point; and, doubtless, many a vow was made to the shrine by the distressed mariners, who drove towards the iron-bound coast of Northumberland in stormy weather. It was anciently a nunnery; for Virca, abbess of Tynemouth, presented St. Cuthbert (yet alive) with a rare winding- sheet, in emulation of a holy lady called Tuda, who had sent him a coffin: but, as in the case of Whitby, and of Holy Island, the introduction ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... of ivory and pearl, words of silver and alabaster, words white as hawthorn and daisy, words white as morning milk, words 'whiter than Venus' doves, and softer than the down beneath their wings'—virginal, saintlike, nunnery words. ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... middle of a flat country, and as we approached it the great wall of the cathedral rose above dirty and broken cottages, and great masses of masonry extended from the cathedral into the town; and these were the nunnery, its schools and laundry; altogether they ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... situated against London Wall, a little to the eastward of Cripplegate, where anciently stood a nunnery, and afterwards a hospital founded for a hundred blind men, anno 1320, by W. Elsing, mercer, and called Elsing's Spittal: he afterwards founded here a priory for canons regular, which being surrendered ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... character; the author was a stout Huguenot, fond of denouncing the Pope; oftentimes alarmed at plots against himself on account of his religion, and now publishing a letter of remonstrance to his three daughters who, in opposition to his will, had entered a nunnery in Paris. Other works relate to architecture and fortifications, the languages, arts, and noble exercises taught in his Academy, or contain advice to travellers, or deal with political affairs. Mr. Pepys records in his diary, under date the ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... observing their daughter's inclination to be frivolous, or seeing the instinct of sex begin to manifest itself in her interest in young men, send her away to a girl's school—a sort of intellectual nunnery. ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... dearest dear Papa, We one and all seem quite to be upset, 'Tis hotter than last summer was by far, At least so everybody says, but yet Much hotter than last June it could not be, And that's what I think, what do you think, pet? To sit indoors 'tis like a nunnery, With nought to do but tamely sit and knit, In fact I never liked such ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... immediately (in her Mourning for her dead Mother) into the Nunnery, and was receiv'd as a very diverting Companion by all the young Ladies, and, above all, by her Reverend Aunt, for she was come just to the Age of delighting her Parents; she was the prettiest forward Pratler ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... the south-west, near the Thames, there was the monastery of the Carmelites, or White Friars, with the church and houses of the Knights Templars beyond it. Within the City, to the east, were the great establishments of the Austin Friars and St. Helen's nunnery, while east and west the churches spread—many of monastic origin—culminating in two of the most important buildings in Europe, the Tower of London and the palace of Westminster, each with its ecclesiastical dependencies, the whole dominated by the mediaeval spirit about to be dispelled, for ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... to win admiration in a sensual, splendor-loving court, where all acknowledged the sway of Clotilda. Her father lavished the whole of his affection upon his elder daughter: the latter seldom noticed her, and thought her more fit for a nunnery or for a peasant's cottage, than for the station of a princess. And so Edith grew to womanhood, unspoiled by flattery—that incense was reserved for Clotilda's shrine. Not in that crowd of selfish courtiers ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... Near and parallel to Offa's is the shorter and mysterious Watt's dike. Chirk is the only Denbighshire castle comparatively untouched by time and still occupied. Ruthin has cloisters; Wrexham, the Brynffynnon "nunnery"; and at both are collegiate churches. Llanrwst, Gresford and Derwen boast rood lofts and screens; Whitchurch and Llanrwst, portrait brasses and monuments; Derwen, a churchyard cross; Gresford and Llanrhaiadr (Dyffryn Clwyd), stained glass. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... reared in a manner as near to that of the nunnery as tribal conditions would permit, it was with a great and maidenly anxiety that she peeped out at the man who had surely come for her, at the husband who was to teach her all that was yet unlearned of life, at the masterful being whose word was to be her law, and who was to mete and ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... the Father sent her afterwards are yet extant in the Nunnery where she resided; and are often read to the young Religious, in order to inspire them with good Resolutions and Sentiments of Virtue. It so happened, that after Constantia had lived about ten Years in the Cloyster, a violent Feaver broke out in the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... in the nunnery now became insupportable, and I determined to escape. I pleaded ill health and kept my bed. The physician of a neighbouring convent, who had a great reputation, was sent for against my wishes. When I heard of his arrival, I dressed to receive him, for I was fearful of some scrutiny. He ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... if I don't think it's a nunnery," he said. By and by he let his gaze wander back to the town, in which he detected an appearance of liveliness and bustle not usual in New England villages, large or small. The main street was dotted with groups ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Sir Launcelot, keep you still here, for I will forth on my journey, and no man nor child shall go with me. So it was no boot to strive, but he departed and rode westerly, and there he sought a seven or eight days; and at the last he came to a nunnery, and then was Queen Guenever ware of Sir Launcelot as he walked in the cloister. And when she saw him there she swooned thrice, that all the ladies and gentlewomen had work enough to hold the queen up. So when she might speak, she called ladies and gentlewomen to her, and said: Ye marvel, fair ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... very affecting. Better nothing follow after; if anything, she must step forward and resolve to take the veil. In this case, the whole story of the former nunnery must be omitted. But, I think, better leave the final conclusion to the imagination of the spectator. Probably the violence of confining her in a convent is not necessary; Antonio's own castle ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... it—of a besotted fish-wife; so! very well, and just as it is the case with that particular old Hock you youngsters would disapprove of, and we cunning oldsters know to contain more virtues in maturity than a nunnery of May-blooming virgins, just so the very faults of a royal lady-royal by birth and in temper a termagant—impart a perfume! a flavour! You must age; you must live in Courts, you must sound the human bosom, rightly to appreciate it. She is a woman of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... have felt no grief at the death of his father, and he made no show of any. Geoffrey had gone for the burial to the nunnery of Fontevrault, a favourite convent of Henry's, and there Richard appeared as soon as he heard the news, and knelt beside the body of his father, which was said to have bled on his approach, as long as it would take to say the Lord's prayer. Then we are told he turned ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... sweet, I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind, To war and ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... descriptions of life in the cloister, we find additional details: for instance, in the memoirs of the Countess Kaunitz, mother of the well-known statesman Kaunitz, we find an account of the severe whippings which were administered to her during her childhood spent in a nunnery. ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... die unpitied: But such is the inequality of Fortune's Favours, that Merit must stoop and Ideots be advanc'd to the highest Pomp and Magnificence. It is entirely out of your Power to give the pitied Leander the least Relief; your Father's House is a Nunnery, he has his Locks and Keys to secure you, and his Spies for Intelligence; but I advise you to send the unfortunate Youth an Answer to his mournful Epistle." Upon this, Theodora immediately call'd for Pen, Ink and Paper, and wrote the ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... historical, and as the latter really did commission a body of moss- troopers to divert an instalment of King James's ransom into his own private coffers, I do not think I can have done him much injustice. As the nunnery of St. Abbs has gone bodily into the sea, I have been the less constrained by the inconvenient action of fact upon fiction. And for the Hospital of St. Katharine's-by-the-Tower, its history is to be found in Stowe's 'Survey of London,' and likewise in the evidence ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pedigree, (His Sire was of Castile, his Dam from Aragon) Then, for accomplishments of chivalry, In case our Lord the King should go to war again, He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery, And how to scale a fortress—or a nunnery. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... one Episcopalian, one Roman Catholic, one Methodist mission, one Congregational mission, one nunnery school, Sisters of St. Ann's, one private educational institute (by the author) for both sexes, and ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... women, of ages varying in the main from nineteen to one-and-twenty, though several were older, who at this date filled the species of nunnery known as the Training-School at Melchester, formed a very mixed community, which included the daughters of mechanics, curates, surgeons, shopkeepers, farmers, dairy-men, soldiers, sailors, and villagers. They sat in the ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... say to the Muse of fiction, as the Earl of Pembroke said to the ejected nuns of Wilton, "Go spin, you jades, go spin!" Perhaps she has no tow on her rock.[160] When I was at Kilkenny last year we went to see a nunnery, but could not converse with the sisters because they were in strict retreat. I was delighted with the red-nosed Padre, who showed us the place with a sort of proud, unctuous humiliation, and apparent ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... let you go; we will provide for her. Better still if you were to persuade her for the public benefit to go into a nunnery; that would make it possible for you to become a monk, too, and join the expedition as a priest. I can arrange it ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... above all things in that you preserve so great a treasure in its precincts,' said he. 'What treasure is that?' asked the Mother Superior. 'The Mother Lizaveta, the Blessed.' This Lizaveta the Blessed was enshrined in the nunnery wall, in a cage seven feet long and five feet high, and she had been sitting there for seventeen years in nothing but a hempen shift, summer and winter, and she always kept pecking at the hempen cloth with a straw or a twig of some ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... sleeping and her waking dreams. Now, if a noble, generous girl of eighteen marries, and is unfortunate, because the cruelty of her husband compels separation, in her dreary isolation, would you drive her to a nunnery; and shall she be a nun indeed? Her solitude is nothing less, as, in the present undeveloped condition of woman, it is only through our fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, that we feel the pulsations of the great ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... belonging to the class of fabliaux, short humorous tales or satirical pieces in verse. It describes a lubber-land, or fool's paradise, where the geese fly down all roasted on the spit, bringing garlic in the bills for their dressing, and where there is a nunnery upon a river of sweet milk, and an abbey of white monks and gray, whose walls, like the hall of little King Pepin, are "of pie-crust and pastry crust," with flouren cakes for the shingles and ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... work, O'Connor, fooling with a nunnery either here or in Spain. The Portuguese are not so bigoted as the Spaniards across the frontier, but there is not much difference, and if anyone is caught meddling with a nunnery they would tear him to pieces, especially in Oporto, where men who are even suspected of ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... fellow as ever lived—is a hero or a genius a romantic exaggeration? Is not the lover's purity of imagination, though real as a feeling, a romantic illusion, since he craves ultimate possession of her and would be the unhappiest of mortals if she went to a nunnery, though she promised to love him always? What could be more marvellous, more chimerical, than this temporary suppression of a strong appetite at the time when it would be supposed to manifest itself most irresistibly—this distilling of the finer emotions, leaving all the gross, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Marcella cared nothing for men's admiration, and yet, instead of retiring to one of those nunneries which are founded for her kind, she chose to rove the mountains, causing despair to all the shepherds. Zuleika, with her peculiar temperament, would have gone mad in a nunnery. "But," you may argue, "ought not she to have taken the veil, even at the cost of her reason, rather than cause so much despair in the world? If Marcella was a basilisk, as you seem to think, how about Miss Dobson?" ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... friends and Christ. That, she said, she could not do. 'I could tread on the piece of wood,' she said, 'and that would be nothing: but my mother means it for a sign of abjuring Christ.' And she earnestly implored me to get her into some nunnery, where she might be safe. Perhaps I ought to have done that. But I offered her another choice of safety. And the next morning, as soon as the canonical hours had dawned, Anegay ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... nunnery: Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things, that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... looked at her for a moment, switched its horrid tail, and shot out fire from its nostrils. Then, dashing the burden from the startled maiden's shoulder, it vanished. Full of fear, Kwan-yin hurried up the hill to the nunnery. As she drew near the inner court, she was amazed to see in the centre of the open space a new building of solid stone. It had sprung up by magic since her last journey down the hill. On going forward, she saw that there were four arched doorways to the fairy ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... you're going to that back-creek nunnery? That Blackhaw University? Are you going to play checkers all ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... like-fitted in leisure, courteously consider that we may not travel well together: at this station let us stop, freely forgiving each other for mutual misliking; to your books, to your business, to your fowling, to your feasting, to your mummery, to your nunnery—go: my track lays away from the highroad, in and out between yonder hills, among thickets, mossy rocks, green hollows, high fern, and the tangled hair of hiding river-gods; I meet not pedlers and bagsmen, but stumble upon fawns just dropped, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... her as a thoughtful, serious-minded woman, with a leaning to melancholy; and this unexpected and evidently enjoyable flight—or plunge—into pure nonsense, caused him a distinct uneasiness. The girl was brightening up, even becoming merry; a state of mind that never leads to a nunnery. ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... and died in picturesque contortions on the sofa; or Lionel might have defied all counsels of prudence and gone off with her in spite of her past; or she might have placed Lionel's hand in Janet's, saying: "The game is up. Bless you, my children. I am going into the nearest nunnery." As a matter of fact, Mr. Jones brought his action to its natural close in a quiet, sufficiently adroit, last act; and I do not see that criticism has any ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... a hermit, and a verse-writer. He lived a secluded life near the nunnery of Hampole in Yorkshire, and wrote a number of devotional pieces, most of them very dull. In 1350, Lawrence Minot produced some short narrative ballads on the victories of Edward III., beginning with Halidon Hill, and ending with the siege of Guisnes Castle. His works lay till the end of the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... now, in running down the coast of Spain and Portingall, you may see a nunnery stuck out on every headland, with more steeples and outriggers. such as dog-vanes and weathercocks, than youll find aboard of a three-masted schooner. If so be that a well-built church is wanting, old England, after ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... men, and soon nunneries sprang up here and there. In fact, the nunnery has a little more excuse for being than the monastery. In a barbaric society an unattached woman needs protection, and this she gets in the nunnery. Even so radical a thinker as Max Muller regarded the nunnery as a valuable agent in giving ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... own interests—hoping that there would be a chance of repudiating it as a forgery. Also he instructed his agents at Rome to persuade the Pope to give him a dispensation for re-marriage, without a divorce, if Katharine retired into a nunnery; [Footnote: L. & P., iv., 2157, 2161. Brewer, ii., 312, 313, and note. Such a marriage was admissible according to some of the Lutherans.] or even for an openly bigamous union. Moreover about the same time, Henry openly separated himself from his wife, and began to treat Anne Boleyn publicly ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... children and others both of man kind and woman kind, be brought up in virtue, learning and in the English tongue and behaviour, to the great charge of the said houses; that is to say, the woman kind of the whole Englishry of this land, for the more part, in the said nunnery, and the man kind in the other said houses."[35] This petition received but scant consideration, and no wonder; because, although the Archbishop of Dublin had agreed to it, he wrote on the same day to Cromwell asking him for the lands ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... dear. A woman cannot be at the same time the wife of a man and the spouse of Christ. That would be bigamy; she must choose between a husband and a nunnery. For the sake of future advantage you have stripped your soul of all the love, all the devotion, which God commands that you should have for me, you have cherished no feeling ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... mercy on my poor Lazarists! The good souls are given to prayer and meditation; and your locomotives do make such a hideous din!" So Mr. Engineer is fain to try the neighbouring convent. New difficulties there. The next attack is made upon a little nunnery founded by the Princess de Bauffremont. But I have neither time nor space for episodical details. It suffices for our purpose to state that the construction of railways will be a terribly long-winded affair, and that in the meantime trade languishes ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... taken trouble to go where he could see her, he at last made her come whithersoever it pleased himself. Her mother discovered this, and being a very virtuous woman, she forbade her daughter ever to speak to the merchant on pain of being sent to a nunnery. But the girl, whose love for the merchant was greater than her fear of her mother, went after ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... of Quebec, in 1608, the expansion of the French enterprise was swift and vast. By the end of fifty years Quebec had been equipped with hospital, nunnery, seminary for the education of priests, all affluently endowed from the wealth of zealous courtiers, and served in a noble spirit of self-devotion by the choicest men and women that the French church could furnish; ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... brought from Carlisle he will assuredly slay us. Let us go at once, leaving my dear wife and my two youngest sons in a convent here; but I would fain take my eldest boy with me. If all goes well he can bring good news to Alice in her nunnery, and if all goes ill he shall bring her my last wishes. But I am sure I am not meant to die by the law." His brethren approved the plan, and they took fair Alice and her two youngest children to the nunnery, and then the three famous archers with the little boy ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... my dear little girl! if you had to deal with an unmerciful, austere old fellow, a veritable old tiger, in fact, as I have no doubt you fancy I am, he would make no bones about it but pack you straight off to a nunnery and so cut you off from ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... the spot where shone the bright image of the Peruvian deity, and the cloisters of the Indian temple were trodden by the friars of St. Dominic.6 To make the metamorphosis more complete, the House of the Virgins of the Sun was replaced by a Roman Catholic nunnery.7 Christian churches and monasteries gradually supplanted the ancient edifices, and such of the latter as were suffered to remain, despoiled of their heathen insignia, were placed under ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... and beauty. To-night—gazing at her face, reflected, intent and mournful, in the mirror—she saw that position more clearly, in all its aridity, than she had ever seen it. What was the use of being pretty? No longer use to anyone! Not yet twenty-six, and in a nunnery! With a shiver, but not of cold, she drew her wrapper close. This time last year she had at least been in the main current of life, not a mere derelict. And yet—better far be like this than go back to him whom memory painted always standing over ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... teaching.[55] Very early in its history Japanese Buddhism welcomed womanhood to its fraternity and order,[56] yet the Japanese ama, bikuni, or nun, never became a sister of mercy, or reached, even within a measurable distance, the dignity of the Christian lady in the nunnery. In European history the abbess is a notable figure. She is hardly heard of beyond the Japanese nunnery, even by ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... river Waveney, the boundary with Norfolk. Of the two parish churches that of St Mary has a fine Perpendicular tower, and that of Holy Trinity a round tower of which the lower part is Norman. St Mary's was attached to a Benedictine nunnery founded in 1160. The ruins of the castle date from 1281. They are fragmentary though massive; and there are traces of earth-works of much earlier date. The castle was a stronghold of the powerful family of Bigod, being granted to Roger Bigod, a Norman follower of the Conqueror, in 1075. A grammar ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... a boon so easy to accord me, I renounce a service in which even fame has lost its charm. And hark you, Calderon, I tell you that I will not forego this pursuit. So fair, so innocent a victim shall not be condemned to that living tomb. Through the walls of the nunnery, through the spies of the Inquisition, love will find out its way; and in some distant land I will yet unite happiness and honour. I fear not exile; I fear not reverse; I no longer fear poverty itself. All lands, where the sound of the trumpet ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... without wasting time on pros and cons. Consequently, I'm just as likely to end in prison as anywhere else, and take it without much concern as all in the day's work. You are more likely to end in a nunnery, as the most devout of ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... went on with his arguments, that she had become to him an Ophelia, weakly led. Women in his lexicon of romance might be weak but never mercenary. I think he finally overthrew her in his mind with "Get thee to a nunnery!" I know that he burned her picture; he showed me the ashes ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... we take Mary and the weans to the nunnery in St. Mary's Wynd, where none will dare to molest them, and I shall go on to St. Andrews or Stirling, as may seem fittest; while we leave old Seneschal Peter to keep the castle gates shut. If the ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Nunnery. MARIA discovered asleep on a straw pallet. She starts suddenly from her sleep with a little cry, half rises and ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... deep, hollow cup, lined with turf as green and short as the sod of this common. The very oldest of the trees, gnarled mighty oaks, crowd about the brink of this dell. In the bottom lie the ruins of a nunnery." ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... great quantity of riches of gold, pearl, jewels and other most precious goods, of all of the best and richest merchants of Panama. On board of this galleon were also the religious women, belonging to the nunnery of the said city, who had embarked with them all the ornaments of their church, consisting in great quantity of gold, plate, and other ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... protects them a little. It is not as in the old days of heathen against Christian. There is this to be said for Cnut, that he will have no monastery or nunnery harried if his orders are ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... strong yearning for the "glorious privilege of being independent." All honor to them! Whatever may have closed against them the gates of matrimony, whether their own obduracy or the faithlessness or indifference of others, instead of shutting themselves up in a nunnery or taxing the good nature of their friends by perpetual demands for sympathy and support, like weak vines, putting out their feelers in every direction for something to twine upon, is it not better and wiser for them to go quietly at work, to show that ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... had a pamphlet printed and distributed "not by hundreds, but by thousands, and given into the hands of the parliament men as they went daily to the House of Commons." The title was, "The Arminian Nunnery; a description of the newly erected Monastical Place, or the Arminian Nunnery at Little Gidding." The books were also given to the Puritan soldiers when near Gidding to excite them to offer violence ...
— Little Gidding and its inmates in the Time of King Charles I. - with an account of the Harmonies • J. E. Acland
... prison, and tales of the maze, the silken clue, the dagger, and the bowl, were the growth of later centuries. But "fair Rosamond" did not long hold her place at court. She died early and was carried to Godstowe nunnery, to which rich gifts were sent by her friends and by the king himself. A few years later Hugh of Lincoln found her shrine before the high altar decked with gold and silken hangings, and the saintly bishop had the last finery of ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... in a nunnery in France. She had observed that when a certain bell was rung, all the inmates assembled for their meals, when ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... 81: Complete Angler, p. 335. Bagster's edit. 1808. In a similar style of description are "the faire grove and swete walkes, letticed and gardened on both sides," of Mr. Warde's letter—describing the nunnery of Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire. See Hearne's edit. of Peter Langtoft's Chronicle, vol. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... minutes when a surreptitious dressing took place, and four figures in dark coats stole down the stairs. Though the building of the College might be absolutely modern, the garden was a relic of mediaeval days. It had formerly belonged to the nunnery of St. Mary's, and had adjoined the Abbey. Parts of the crumbling old wall were still left, and a flagged path led from a sun-dial to some ruins. In the day-time it was a cheerful place, and a blaze of color. ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... place where such an ornament was made? Ickleton, in Cambridgeshire, appears to have been of some note in former days, as, according to Lewis's Topog. Hist., a nunnery was founded there by Henry II., and a market together with a fair granted by Henry III. As it is only five miles from Linton, it may have formerly borne ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... royalty. Afar beyond them, in the hoary magnificence of nature, rise the mountains of Argyllshire; the cairns, as my brother says, of a former world. On the other side of the road, we saw the cloistered ruins of the religious house of Southenan, a nunnery in those days of romantic adventure, when to live was to enjoy a poetical element. In such a sweet sequestered retreat, how much more pleasing to the soul it would have been, for you and I, like two captive birds in one cage, to have sung away ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... mind—an inward action which might become disagreeable outward. Husbands in the old time are known to have suffered from a threatening devoutness in their wives, presenting itself first indistinctly as oddity, and ending in that mild form of lunatic asylum, a nunnery: Grandcourt had a vague perception of threatening moods in Gwendolen which the unity between them in his views of marriage required him peremptorily to check. Among the means he chose, one was peculiar, and was less ably calculated than the speeches ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... appearance of the building as this scraping away of the plaster. Besides the general view from Holywell Hill, there are two other distant points of view which should not be missed: one from Verulam woods, to the south-west; and one from the fields in which the ruins of Sopwell Nunnery stand. From this latter point it looks best after sunset on a cloudless evening, when the tower stands up in majestic grandeur against the saffron sky, and looking at it one can well imagine how ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... sick, and worn out, she dragged herself along the roads, and at last arrived, with the Sisters accompanying her, at Oirschot, where she organized the Convent as best she might in a house which had never been intended to serve as a nunnery. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... in no wise," answered Agatha, laughing again, though in a more subdued manner than before. "I never loved to dwell in a nunnery, and this house is little better. 'Satisfied!'" she said again, as though the word perplexed her. "I never thought of no such a thing. Doth Master Norman look satisfied? What ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... religion! And that such substitutes should have replaced the African savages, tigers, hyaenas, &c. and Roman gladiators, not less ferocious than their four-legged antagonists, I am quite as willing to rejoice at as the hermit: They must be better antiquarians too than I am, who regret that a nunnery now covers the spot where ambitious Tullia drove over the bleeding ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... have any wish to meet, I am sure. We have never liked one another. But I have something on my conscience, and I may not have another opportunity of speaking to you. I don't suppose you have heard that very shortly I intend to enter a nunnery ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the result of this idea, and this Buddhistic practice was adopted by the first Christian church, since which time the real purpose and intention of the monastery and the nunnery have become lost in the concept of sacrifice or punishment. The Christian monk almost invariably retires to a monastery, not for the purpose of consciously attaining to that enlarged area of consciousness which insures liberation, mukti, but as an "outward and visible sign" ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... javelin, When such affairs as SORTIES and surprises I'm more wary at, And when I know precisely what is meant by Commissariat, When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery, When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery, In short, when I've a smattering of elementary strategy, You'll say a better Major-GenerAL has never SAT a gee - For my military knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury, Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century. But still in learning vegetable, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert |
