"Austerity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to trip over his partner's feet, and it was with marked austerity that he turned. As he recognized Bertram, however, coldness melted, to be replaced ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... point: "illam ipsam quam jactant sanitatem non firmitate sed jejunio consequuntur." That is why they so unanimously hate every firmitas, because it bears testimony to a kind of health quite different from theirs; hence their one wish to throw suspicion upon all austerity and terseness, upon all fiery and energetic movement, and upon every full and delicate play of muscles. They have conspired to twist nature and the names of things completely round, and for the future to speak of health only there ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... thoughts had heaped upon myself, I heard the clear chime of a slow, sweet bell. I knew it—whence it came and what it sang. From the gray convent nigh the wood it pealed, And called the monks to prayer. Vigil and prayer, Clean lives, white days of strict austerity: Such were the offerings of these holy saints. How far might such not tend to expiate A riotous world's indulgence? Here my life, Doubly austere and doubly sanctified, Might even for that other one atone, So bound to mine, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... of. He is a type as different from the real Puritan as the slum dweller from the primitive barbarian. "Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour" to flay such ignorant traducers of those who knew at least the beauty of austerity ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... loose—the lips of an ascetic turned voluptuary. There was also a sag at the corners. His flesh hinted of grossness, especially so in the eagle-like aquiline nose that must once have been like the other's, but that had lost the austerity the ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... the house after a terrible quarrel with her people, but herself perished by some miscalculation. There were no more girls born for another while after that. Not until my father's time. He had a sister who resembled the two Desires of the past. My grandfather brought her up in harshness and austerity, holding always before her the wickedness to which she was born. Yet it was no use. She fled from his house with a man no one knew, and died in Paris after a life of great splendor and heartlessness. Everyone who loved the Desires suffered. That is ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... which even his smiles could never soften, or his utmost gaiety render placid and serene; but when that sternness of visage was increased by rage, it is scarce possible to imagine looks or features that carried in them more terror and austerity."—ORRERY. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... all men fear,—he lies Deep in the dark Medhya wood, We fled from thence in wild surprise, And left him in that solitude. We dared not touch him, for there sits, Beside him, lighting all the place, A woman fair, whose brow permits In its austerity of grace And purity,—no creatures foul As we seemed, by her loveliness, Or soul of evil, ghost or ghoul, To venture close, and ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... enough, and they went upstairs together. But even the sight of her old bedroom, where the last year of her maidenhood had been spent, even the sight of the new curtains chastening its exuberance with their dim austerity, did not dissolve Ellen's terrible, cold sparkle—her ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... his means, he succeeded to his wish in his object, which was the establishing himself in public opinion. Elevated by a secret cabal to the direction of the finances, he began by refusing the salaries of his office. He affected a spirit of economy and austerity, which imposed even on foreign nations, and showed the possibility of making war without laying new taxes. Such at least was his boast; but, in reality, they have been increased under his administration, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... rather than an intimate study of a figure that in life was already almost legendary. If any man of our time was fittingly named great this was he—alike in his single-minded patriotism, his success and that touch of austerity which no anecdotes of exceptions can wholly disprove. In surveying his career of merited triumphs one remarks how often it was given to him—as at Omdurman and Pretoria—to redeem early disaster, and one feels again the pity of it that he might not live to see his noblest task accomplished ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... all in her power to continue the conflict that Conde had undertaken, but, exhausted by continual excitement and ill success, she was compelled to retire. After this, her life, spent in Normandy, at the Carmelites' convent and at Port Royal, became a long penance, which increased in austerity until she died in 1679. Thus, her career was at first one of unblemished brilliancy, then a period of elegant and intellectual debauch, and finally ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... but if to-morrow you enter the convent, riot only I lose you forever, but you quit me for a life of tears and austerity. Oh! to lose you! to lose you! Let me at least know that you are happy, and married to the man you love and who ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... repair of broken necklaces—rivers of light poured out upon the table—but whose true end seemed to be to raise money for angry Maharanees or young Rajahs. There were Babus to whom Lurgan Sahib talked with austerity and authority, but at the end of each interview he gave them money in coined silver and currency notes. There were occasional gatherings of long-coated theatrical natives who discussed metaphysics in English and Bengali, to Mr Lurgan's great edification. He was ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... not so much color about as I had expected: and austerity rather than richness is the note of ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... his studies, after having allowed him a competent maintenance for a year or two. He communicated these his thoughts to Magdalen. Jasso, his daughter, abbess of the convent of St Clare de Gandia, famous for the austerity of its rules, and established by some holy Frenchwomen of that order, whom the calamities of war had forced to forsake their native country, and to seek a sanctuary in the kingdom ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... middle of the war, and with very little' assistance from the Press. Yet Mr. Sheppard did it, and he filled an "over-flow meeting" as well. The chair was taken by the Rev. William Temple, who tempered what might have been the too fervid spirit of the gathering with the austerity which belongs to a writer on philosophy, an ex-Head Master, and a prospective Bishop. The hall was densely crowded with clergy, old and young—old ones who had more or less missed their mark, and young ones keen to take warning by these examples. There were plenty of laymen, too, quite proud ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... having inadvertently sucked down a fly which in an adventurous mood has strolled into one of those little holes in the instrument, coughs himself half out of his evening clothes, does the conductor forsake his air of austerity and use language unbefitting a solemn occasion? Does he pick up his music-stand and hurl it at the offender? He does not. It would be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... Whatever it was,—for it was not generally known for a few months later,—it seemed to draw them closer together, imparted a protecting dignity to Joshua Rylands, which took the place of his former selfish austerity, gave them a future to talk of confidentially, hopefully, and sometimes foolishly, which took the place of their more foolish past, and when the roll of calico came from the cross roads, it contained also a quantity of fine linen, laces, small caps, and other trifles, somewhat in contrast ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... towards the eaves. Inside, there were a few low panelled rooms opening on a large central hall; there was little furniture, and that of a sturdy and solid kind—but the house needed nothing else, and had all the beauty that came of a simple austerity. ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... him every token of extreme distress, except that there was an air of solemn and sad composure that crowned the whole. For the present, all appearance of gloom, stateliness, and austerity was gone. As I entered he looked up, and, seeing who it was, ordered me to bolt the door. I obeyed. He went round the room, and examined its other avenues. He then returned to where I stood. I trembled in every joint of my frame. I exclaimed within myself, "What ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... Even now, what with her fresh complexion, her white teeth, and plump figure, she made no slight pretensions to comeliness. She possessed the same good sense and integrity of character as her brother, together with his strong religious feeling, but entirely unaccompanied by austerity. ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... direction in which the vine is to be bent. The trunk is then laid on the earth and sufficient soil placed on it to keep it in place on the ground. If the danger of winter-killing is great because of the tenderness of the variety or the austerity of the climate, it often becomes necessary to cover the whole plant lightly with earth. Small growers often make use of coarse manure, straw, corn-stalks or similar covering, in which case the vines are held on the ground by fence-rails or other timbers; but protecting with material ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... included the austerity of the Indian monks, of John the Baptist and the Nazarenes on the one hand; and on the other the Confucian moderate feasting, in the houses of friends, at the marriage feast and on ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... Stonie stood in the barn door, poised for instant return along the path of duty to the front walk, only waiting to be sure his summons would be obeyed. Stonie was sturdy, freckled, and in possession of Uncle Tucker's big gray eyes, Rose Mary's curled mouth and more than a tinge of Aunt Viney's austerity ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... demanded news of her lord, would have dismissed her attendants to watch over him, and at last enjoined Matilda to leave her, and visit and comfort her father. Matilda, who wanted no affectionate duty to Manfred, though she trembled at his austerity, obeyed the orders of Hippolita, whom she tenderly recommended to Isabella; and inquiring of the domestics for her father, was informed that he was retired to his chamber, and had commanded that nobody should have ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... gathered, of which the country produces a great abundance though all are exceedingly unpalatable. These Gropoppsu (as the members of this sect call themselves) pass most of their waking hours sitting in the sunshine with folded hands, contemplating their navels; by the practice of which austerity they hope to obtain as reward an eternity of hard ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... with equal austerity and resolution, yet in a voice persuasive and conciliatory rather than arbitrary or dictatorial, the mere form and manner of this quixotic undertaking thrilled all my fibres in defiance of its sense. It was like the blare of bugles ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... things" I can really say nothing—except that I feel their truth, and am grateful for them. But may I not applaud (even the Pope is "applauded," you know) such a perfect touch as—for instance—in Chapter XVI—"the final softening of that sweet austerity which hid Lucy's heart of gold"; and again "Italy without the forestieri" "like surprising a bird on its nest"; and the scene beheld of Eleanor—Lucy pressing the terra-cotta to her lips;—and Italy "having not enough faith to make a heresy"—(true, too, of France, is it not?) and Chapter ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the crowd back of him. The women were hooded and it was not possible to see what they looked like. There were many stalwart, clean-cut, young Mormons of Joe Lake's type, and these men appeared troubled, even distressed and at a loss. There was little about them resembling the stern, quiet, somber austerity of the more matured men, and nothing at all of the strange, aloof, serene impassiveness of the gray-bearded old patriarchs. These venerable men were the Mormons of the old school, the sons of the pioneers, the ruthless fanatics. Instinctively ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... became possessed of the papal chair in the person of Gregory the Great. Of noble descent and of great wealth, which he devoted to religious uses as soon as he became master of it, he had also the characteristics which were held to denote the highest holiness. In austerity, devotion, and imaginative superstition, he, whose known virtue and capacity caused him to be forced into the papal chair, remained a monk to the end of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... clinging hands Rosa began to repeat the Salve Regina. "Hail, Queen, Mother of mercy. Thou our life, our sweetness, our hope, hail!" Her voice gradually rose and lost more and more of its cool austerity, as though she were intoxicating herself with the sweet beauty of the words, until it became warm and soft and melting as she said, "To Thee we call, to Thee we sigh, as we grieve and weep in this vale of tears." And then passing from the Salve to another prayer, she raised her ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... this audience, which took place at the hotel of Prince Eugene, where the King of Prussia resided in Paris. We waited for some minutes in the salon, and when Frederick William entered from his cabinet I remarked on his countenance an air of embarrassment and austerity which convinced me that he had been studying his part, as great personages are in the habit of doing on similar occasions. The King on entering the salon first noticed Berthier, whom he addressed with much kindness, bestowing praises on the French troops, and complimenting the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... equilibrium. From washing the town's soiled linen to loaning it money was a change so sudden and radical that the rise made him dizzy; he was apt, therefore, to be a little erratic, his manner varying during a single conversation from the cold austerity of a bloodless capitalist to the free and easy democracy of the days when he had stood in the doorway of his laundry in his undershirt and "joshed" ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... any, the height and the air are not only fine, but even fair and pleasant. So do the shadows and the sunshine wander, elbowing into one another on the moor, and so does the glance of smiling foliage soothe the austerity of crag and scaur. At such time, also, the restless torrent (whose fury has driven content away through many a short day and long night) is not in such desperate hurry to bury its troubles in the breast ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... upon returning to Switzerland, after our sojourn in Italy, was of a certain chill and austerity in the atmosphere, a lack of heartiness, in sharp contrast to the rich feast of beauty, the warm color and compelling charm of Italian towns. This impression was accentuated by the fact that it rained yesterday at Lausanne and that we ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... their Master and Patron," runs a certain passage in their Rule, "the Sisters of Charity shall have in everything they do a definite intention to please Him, and shall try to conform their life to His, especially in His poverty, His humility, His gentleness, His simplicity and austerity." Therein was to lie their strength and the secret of their courage; before them stood their crucified Lord, bidding them ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... opposite character—that of a preservative against emotions which I no longer wished to know. One duty more in my life, already so full of and so overburdened with work, appeared to me one chance more to attain the austerity towards which I felt myself attracted with a kind of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... with Chopin was that she considered this in the light of a duty and as a safeguard. "One duty more," she writes, "in a life already so full, a life in which I was overwhelmed with fatigue, seemed to me one chance more of arriving at that austerity towards which I felt myself being drawn with a kind of ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... action, living pictures of men and manners, for the suppression of vice, and the circulation of virtue and morality. Even the Gymnosophists, severe as they were, encouraged dramatic representation. The Bramins, whose austerity in religious and moral concerns almost surpasses belief, were in the constant habit of enforcing religious truths by dramatic fictions represented in public. The great and good PILPAY the fabulist, is said to have used that kind of exhibition as a medium for conveying ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... particulars, in discussing this part of the subject. My mind recoils from them. With a Roman austerity, I show my empty purse and Percival's to the shrinking public gaze. Let us allow the deplorable fact to assert itself, once for all, in that ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... diligently!" The words were spoken to comfort and strengthen the bereaved disciples, but to me they sounded as an imprecation, so different is the training of our society from theirs. The loneliness and austerity of the command appalled me; I would not take the first step, and turned back to seek the beautiful ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... here that social life is very much gayer than at that mad town of Wilhelmshaven. At the High Seas Fleet bases there was the strictness and austerity that some people seem to consider necessary to show that we are at war, though Heaven knows there was precious little war in the High Seas Fleet; perhaps that was why the "blood and iron" regime was in full order ashore. Here, in Bruges, ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... the building was less attractive, passages and class-rooms alike having the air of bleak austerity which seems inseparable from such buildings; but when nine o'clock struck, and the flood of young life went trooping up the stairways and flowed into the separate rooms, the sense of bareness was replaced by one ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... care; not that he is not more or less mortified. But he blames nobody except himself; and he's laying plans quite cheerfully for a career on a small income that really does not require the austerity and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... burst from the bystanders—"A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!" It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown culprit what he came there for, and whom he was seeking? The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neighbours, who used ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Canons held for her—either that glorious fulfillment of life, or the simple austerity of death—he would have a part in it, would have served her to the last, true to the love he bore ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... light-hearted austerity. And then to Evan: "Don't you know that we are keeping country hours here at Wartrace now? The professor will be up and calling for the car at six o'clock, and it's past midnight. Shame on you! Run away and get your ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... heavenly reward of the future. His eloquence and zeal soon melted the haughty resolve of the rebellious but still noble-minded women. Roused to a new sense of power and responsibility, they embraced his rigid rule, and with the enthusiasm of their sex, that never halts midway in reform, became models of austerity. The better to signify to the world the spiritual change wrought in their temper, they migrated from the abode which they had sworn to make the symbol and palladium of their independence, and went to San Sisto, Saint Dominic ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... of course, sometimes ran into extremes. It was easy to trace to the inexorable demand on all for exact truth that austerity which made this willing hermit more solitary even than he wished. Himself of a perfect probity, he required not less of others. He had a disgust at crime, and no worldly success could cover it. He detected paltering as readily in dignified and prosperous persons as in beggars, and with equal scorn. ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... practice commended (in some cases and degrees) by philosophers as virtuous, not disallowed by reason, commonly affected by men, often used by wise and good persons; from which consequently, if our religion did wholly debar us, it would seem chargeable with somewhat too uncouth austerity and sourness: from imputations of which kind as in its temper and frame it is really most free (it never quenching natural light or cancelling the dictates of sound reason, but confirming and improving them); so it carefully declineth them, enjoining ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... disappointed in a man whom all Paris deemed incorruptibly honest, de Gourville suspected nothing else from Mademoiselle de l'Enclos. It was absurd to hope for probity in a woman of reprehensible habits when that virtue was absent in a man who lived a life of such austerity as the Grand Penitencier, hence he determined to abstain from visiting her altogether, lest he might hate the woman he had ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... regretted by the dean with such excess of sorrow as only the keenest sensibility could feel, and the most excellent character excite. After the death of Stella his life became very retired, and the austerity of his temper increased; his public days for receiving company were discontinued, and he even shunned the society of his most ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... never suggested the vulgarity of conceit, shone in her large eyes and dwelt upon the beautiful curve of her lips. No face could be of purer outline, of less sensual suggestiveness; it wore at times an air of cold abstraction which was all but austerity. Rolfe imagined her the most selfish of women, thought her incapable of sentiment; yet how was her marriage to be accounted for, save by supposing that she fell in love with Hugh Carnaby? Such a woman might surely have sold herself to great advantage; and yet—odd incongruity—she ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... "smugged in" to play for a village to which he had no pretensions to belong. In process of time the youth became a man, and by virtue of his cricket reputation he obtained a post in the Court of Queen's Bench. The gentleman whom I have referred to as looking with such austerity at Mr. Bumpkin is that very Don O'Rapley; the requirements of a large family necessitated his abandonment of a profession which, although more to his taste, was not sufficiently remunerative to admit of his indulging it after the birth of ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... temperance of the hero proceeds from the same wish to do no dishonor to the worthiness he has. But he loves it for its elegancy, not for its austerity. It seems not worth his while to be solemn, and denounce with bitterness flesh-eating or wine-drinking, the use of tobacco, or opium, or tea, or silk, or gold. A great man scarcely knows how he dines, how he dresses; but without railing or precision, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... constitution of Alcibiades, who so easily could transform himself to so various fashions without any prejudice to his health; one while outdoing the Persian pomp and luxury, and another, the Lacedaemonian austerity and frugality; as reformed in ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... certain frank female admiration; but then it was of the coulisse, and not of the cloister, with which he always persisted in associating Mrs. Decker. To be addressed in this way by an invalid Puritan, a sick saint with the austerity of suffering still clothing her, a woman who had a Bible on the dressing-table, who went to church three times a day, and was devoted to her husband, completely bowled him over. He still held her ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... recognized my wife. She looked, I must confess, remarkably pretty, with her fair hair blond comme les bles, and her mocking cornflower blue eyes, and her mutinous mouth, which has never yet (after all these years) assumed a responsible parent's austerity. She wore a fresh white dress with coquettish bits of blue about the bodice. In her hand she grasped a dilapidated newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, which looked as if she had been to ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... parting with Esther, sought his father. But the expression of his apprehensions was so vague, he was so incapable of giving his fears any definite shape, that he made no more impression than the woman. The calm austerity of the Solitary's face almost melted into a smile at the idea that any event could occur except in the determined course of things. It was the pride of the human heart; it was the presumption of the human intellect that dreamed of freedom of choice or of action. If ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... its side, it becomes proud, and parades reason in all its splendour. When austerity or stern choice has not arrived at the true good, and must needs return to follow nature, it becomes proud by reason ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... conscientious girl, and her age being twenty-five her soul was at its prime, full, bursting with beautiful impulses towards perfection. Yes, she would accuse herself of being too happy, too content, and would wonder whether she ought not to seek heaven by some austerity of scowling. Janet had everything: a kind disposition, some brains, some beauty, considerable elegance and luxury for her station, fine shoulders at a ball, universal love ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... being moreover sincere in his own religious views, no man could call him in question for them; besides which, he was very hospitable to his friends, very bountiful to the poor, a good landlord, and a humane man. His very austerity of manner, tempered by stately courtesy, added to the respect he inspired, especially as he could now and then relax into gaiety, and, when he did so, his smile was accounted singularly sweet. But in general he was grave and formal; stiff in ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... would our pen abase you More than it must—to call you feminine! Exemption I am sure you would not claim, Being subject to the common influence; Shining on earth as do the stars in heaven. Your sov'reign beauty, ladies, our austerity Cannot depreciate, nor would do so, For we have not in view a superhuman kind, Such poison,[H] therefore, far from you be set, For here we see the one, the great Diana, Who is to you as sun amongst the stars. Wit, words, learning and art, And whatsoe'er is mine of scribbling ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... or condemning such tastes. They had neither the charm of early association nor the attraction of forbidden fruit. To outsiders the household must have been pervaded by an air of gravity, if not of austerity. But we did not feel it, for it became the law of our natures, not a law imposed by external sanctions. We certainly had a full allowance of sermons and Church services; but we never, I think, felt them to be forced upon us. They were a part, and not an unwelcome part, of the ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... softening emotion came over Razumov—made his knees shake a little. He repressed it with a new-born austerity. All that sentiment was pernicious nonsense. He couldn't be quick enough; and when he got into a sledge he shouted to the driver—"to the K—- Palace. Get on—you! Fly!" The startled moujik, bearded up to the very whites of his eyes, ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... enshrined, thy rites, Tho dark Thibet, that dread ascetic, falls In strange austerity, whose trance appals, Before thee, and a suppliant on thee calls. Continue still thy silence high and sure, That something beyond fleeting may endure— Something that shall forevermore allure Imagination on to mystic flights Wherein alone ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... hostility to the impurity and strengthlessness of multitudes of creatures who arrogantly boast that they are civilised—he was too angry for that. He was only conscious that a vain and impertinent echo of the town had, by his instrumentality, found its way into and vilified the secret refuge of God's austerity. Tearing back the bolts from the storehouse door and lifting the latch, he rushed out ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... from this Martyr, Peter Martyr Vermilius and all his associates must count for worse than adulterers and men guilty of sacrilege. And, not to dwell longer on individuals, the Fathers of this age are all condemned "for wonderful corruption of the doctrine of repentance." How so? Because the austerity of the Canons in vogue at that time is particularly obnoxious to this plausible sect which, better fitted for dining-rooms than for churches, is wont to tickle voluptuous ears and to sew cushions on every arm (Ezech. xiii. 18). Take ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... which the Marchioness of Montespan had lately been dominant. But there was an obvious impropriety in sending him on an embassy rather of a spiritual than of a secular nature to a pontiff of primitive austerity. The Protestants all over Europe sneered; and Innocent, already unfavourably disposed to the English government, considered the compliment which had been paid him, at so much risk and at so heavy a cost, as little better than an affront. The ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... their conduct and language to the circumstances of the moment—who, in order to be taken for republicans, put on a studied austerity of manners, and exclaim with vehemence against the most trifling error in a patriot, but mollify when the crimes of an Aristocrate or a Moderee are the subject of complaint. [These trifling events were, being concerned in the massacres of September, 1792—public peculations—occasional, and even ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... is gracious, to carry it towards them so, that we may give them convincing ground to believe that we have found that mercy which also sets open the door for them to come and partake with us. Ministers, I say, should do thus, both by their doctrine, and in all other respects. Austerity doth not become us, neither in doctrine nor in conversation.37 We ourselves live by grace; let us give as we receive, and labour to persuade our fellow-sinners, which God has left behind us, to follow after, that they may partake with us of grace. We are saved by grace; let us live like ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... indeed been made, in all ages of the Church, to soften the austerity of this doctrine. From the days of Origen, these merciful doctors(50) have always been trying to soften this austere dogma, but ineffectually; for the dread of an eternal hell has been one of the chief motives which the Church has used in converting men from sin ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... away quickly, his attempt at ease deserting him with ludicrous suddenness. At sight of his blushing face Birdie relaxed her austerity. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... Bucks', and the sun was high when she opened her tired old eyes. She lay still for a moment, wondering where she was. This room was different from any of the other guest chambers she had occupied. There was a kind of austerity in the quaint old furniture that was lacking in the bedrooms where modern taste held sway. Nothing had been taken from or added to the Bucks' guest chamber since Grandmother Knight had reverently placed there her ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... with entire sincerity they gave the glory; while they found a satisfying warrant in the Scriptures for spoiling the Egyptians and smiting the Amalekites, symbolising specifically the Spaniards and the Irish. The particular aspect of Puritanism which belongs to rigid Calvinism, in all its grim austerity, was confined so far to a very limited section: for the majority an extensive biblical vocabulary was consistent with a thorough appreciation of virile carnal enjoyments: the dourness of John Knox hardly infected the neighbouring country. For the most part, even the intolerance ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... discipline, and harsh as seems now her rule, we have yet to see whether women will be born of modern systems of tolerance and indulgence equal to those grand ones of the olden times whose places now know them no more. The inconceivable austerity and solemnity with which Puritanism invested this mortal life, the awful grandeur of the themes which it made household words, the sublimity of the issues which it hung upon the commonest acts of our earthly existence, created characters of more than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... asserted that the sovereign good consisted in pleasure, opposing the unfeeling austerity of the Stoics by the softness of pleasurable emotions, his principle was soon disregarded; while his word, perhaps chosen in the spirit of paradox, was warmly adopted by the sensualist. Epicurus, of whom ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... a recluse student, and to have looked for sympathy and response for his speculations from an uneducated and frivolous girl. Love has blinded, and will continue to blind, the wisest men to calculations as easy and as certain as these. And Milton, in whose soul Puritan austerity was as yet only contending with the more genial currents of humanity, had a far greater than average susceptibility to the charm of woman. Even at the later date of Paradise Lost, voluptuous thoughts, as ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... Tintern or York could have compared with it." Add to this picture the movable hangings and decorations of its many altars, and we cannot honestly attribute the coldness of the present effect to any fault in the original design. Elsewhere this austerity of monochrome is modified to a great extent by the variety (anachronisms though they be) of later architectural insertions. Salisbury, through the very purity of its design, especially suffers from ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... is as if a mischievous boy looked out of an undertaker's window; but the smile, so full of wit, mischief, and even gaiety, is gone in an instant, quicker than I have ever seen a smile flash out of sight, and immediately the fine scholarly face sinks back into somnolent austerity which for all its aloofness and immemorial calm suggests, in some fashion for which I cannot account, a ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... latter left alone in Bolt Court, ere she saw the justice of her long apprehensions; for while she planned speaking upon some topic that might have a chance to catch the attention of the Doctor, a sudden change from kind tranquillity to strong austerity took place in his altered countenance; and, startled and affrighted, she held ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of the proverb, she was the coward who died a thousand deaths in the agonies of apprehension. She was one of those not uncommon misers, who hoard, not for love of money, but through fear. She had managed, with penurious thrift and a self-denial almost sublime in its austerity, to set aside eight thousand dollars. Eight thousand dollars from an income that began at sixty and rose to a little under three times that amount! Eight thousand dollars, wrung from their lives at the price of every joy, every alleviation, everything that ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... of the silent and austere young man in the doorway, Baby let go his fascinating toes. He chuckled with delight. He jerked himself more than ever up and down. He struggled to be free, to be lifted up and embraced by the young man. Silence and austerity were no deterrent to Baby, so assured was he of his position, of his welcome, of the safe, warm, tingling place that would presently be his in the hollow of the young man's arm. The desire of it made Baby's arms and his body writhe, with a heartrending agitation, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... the austerity of his master and in Kara's absence was in the habit of having little orgies of his own. He would bring up dancing girls from Durazzo for his amusement and invite prominent men in the neighbourhood to his feasts and entertainments, for he was absolutely ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... of its immediate subject, but of the light which it throws upon the characteristics and conditions of the life of Puritans of good family. Originally intended for her family only, it was printed by a descendant in 1806, and did much to clear away the false impressions as to the narrowness and austerity of the educated Puritans which had prevailed. Colonel H. and his wife were ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... a conqueror, without much trouble, but on account of his parsimony and austerity he soon became unpopular, and was murdered by his mutinous soldiers fifteen days after he reached Rome. He belonged to an old patrician family, and his overthrow was sincerely regretted by the better element in ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... austerity and republican enthusiasm of her illustrious ancestor, Pierre Corneille, seemed to have come down to his young descendant. Even Rousseau and Raynal, the apostles of democracy, had no pages that could absorb her so deeply ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over other fields than these.—But how to come out of this condition and actually migrate thither? All that he could think of was to practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself with ever ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... was among their first converts. Tho principal of his nobility, as usual, followed that example, moved, as it is related, by many signal miracles, but undoubtedly by the extraordinary zeal of the missionaries, and the pious austerity of their lives. The new religion, by the protection of so respected a prince, who held under his dominion or influence all the countries to the southward of the Humber, spread itself with great rapidity. Paganism, after a faint resistance, everywhere gave way. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... expenses amounted to only eighteen cents, which left me two cents over for emergencies." Balzac somewhat exaggerates his poverty and reduces his expenses to suit the pleasure of his poetic fantasy, but undoubtedly it was a brusque transition from the bourgeois comfort of family life to the austerity of ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... little snappy. Theodora tried to modify the severe expression by saying pleasant things while helping seat her in a good position, but only half succeeded; and the picture which we have of her does not do her entire justice, since it gives an impression of austerity not in keeping with her usual ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... and vehemence. He has evidently seen Bellini's rendering, and attempts, if only with partial success, to contrast in the same way the indifference of death with the contemplation and anguish of the bereaved. Hard and angular as Montagna's saints often are, they show power and austerity. His colour is brilliant and enamel-like; he does not arrive at the Venetian depth, yet his altarpieces are very grand, and once more we are struck by the greatness of even the secondary painters who drew their ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... and meritorious on your part, and indeed I always expected it of you, sooner or later; but the die is cast, and you may go home again and bewail at your leisure this too tardy repentance of yours. For me, I am vowed and dedicated, and my relations henceforth are austerity and holy works. Once a month, should you wish it, it shall be your privilege to come and gaze at me through this very solid ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... to its windows. All three sat down in the inner room where the money-lender lived, before a hearth full of ashes, in the midst of which the wood was successfully defending itself against the fire. Popinot's courage froze at sight of the usurer's green boxes and the monastic austerity of the room, whose atmosphere was like that of a cellar. He looked with a wondering eye at the miserable blueish paper sprinkled with tricolor flowers, which had been on the walls for twenty-five years; and then his anxious glance fell upon the chimney-piece, ornamented with ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... government during the twenty years which had preceded the Restoration, this unsteadiness is in a great measure to be attributed. Other causes had also been at work. Even if the country had been governed by the house of Cromwell or by the remains of the Long Parliament, the extreme austerity of the Puritans would necessarily have produced a revulsion. Towards the close of the Protectorate many signs indicated that a time of licence was at hand. But the restoration of Charles the Second rendered ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... but my father, who practised and embodied it. I loved him, but he made of righteousness a stern and terrible thing implying not joy, but punishment, the, suppression rather than the expansion of aspirations. His religion seemed woven all of austerity, contained no shining threads to catch my eye. Dreams, to him, were matters ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Kofirans is called Bigotry, or misplaced Devotion. The Customs and religious Notions of this Nation, which were more free and rational than in the Country of this Princess, had been a Constraint upon her Inclination, without lessening her mistaken Austerity. It was on this Side, that Jeflur spread his Snares. He placed near the Queen a Dervise, one of those sly finished Villains, who, being Masters of the execrable Art of giving Sin an Appearance of Sanctity, instruct the great ones, whose Favour ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... by simple facts averred, How with Geneura stood his suit, avows; And how, engaged by writing and by word, She swore she would not be another's spouse. How, if to him the Scottish king demurred, Virgin austerity she ever vows; And other bridal bond for aye eschewed, To pass her days in ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... pulled Frank away from his books. Again he took complete charge of the little group. He was a natural disciplinarian, as they had learned at the time of the wreck. Now his sense of responsibility developed a severity that was almost austerity. He kept them constantly at work. In private the others chafed at his tone of authority. But in his presence they never failed of respect. Besides, his remarkable unselfishness compelled their esteem, a shy vein of innocent, ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... The rigid austerity of the ecclesiastics, who could admit of no freedoms, contributed to spread this opinion among the people; and as Rizzio was universally believed to be a pensionary of the pope's, and to be deeply engaged in all schemes against the Protestants, any story to his and Mary's disadvantage ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... Voss went off by himself. He could not stay in bed, and he could not hang about the house. He did not know how to demean himself to either of the young men when he met them. He could not be cordial as he ought to be with Urmand; nor could he be austere to George with that austerity which he felt would have been proper on his part. He was becoming very tired of his dignity and authority. Hitherto the exercise of power in his household had generally been easy enough, his wife and Marie had always been loving and pleasant in their obedience. Till within these last ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... thought has the cast of a strictly pessimist quietism—that the style aims, if it aims at any single thing, at the reproduction of the simpler side of classicalism, at an almost prim and quakerish elegance, a sort of childlike grace. There is, however, by no means any great austerity in the tone: on the contrary, the ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... truthfully say, nowhere have I ever met so truthful, so generous, and so hospitable a people as the planters and gentlemen of the river counties of Mississippi, fifty years ago—nowhere women more refined, yet affable; so modest, yet frank and open in their social intercourse; so dignified, without austerity; so chaste and pure in sentiment and action, without prudery or affectation, as the mothers, wives, and daughters ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... real existence of its own in community with its companions of the same nature, can be discerned by mortal men in forms which best explain to human intelligence the passions which they excite in human breasts. This is how I explain the fact, for instance, that the austerity of a lonely rock at sea will take the form and semblance, and much more than that, assume the prerogatives of a brooding man, or that the swift freedom of a river will pass by, as in a flash, in the coursing limbs of a youth, or that at ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... consisted of broth, potatoes, and artichokes, which also comprised my breakfast, as well as dinner, during my sojourn of three days in this monastery, where they esteem even fish and eggs to be too carnal. Such is the austerity of their lives, that this monk, who was their physician, informed me that it required three entire years to become inured to it, but that those who stood the ordeal mostly attained a very great age. Their ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... and the light from the dash lay palely upon her face, softening its austerity. "I don't get this at all," Philip said. "From your letter I assumed you had two or three places you wanted me to sell, but not a whole town. There must have been at least a thousand people living ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... they would secure them from many temptations to falsehood. They should be encouraged to talk freely of all their amusements to their parents, and to ask them for whatever they want to complete their little inventions. Instead of banishing all the freedom of wit and humour, by the austerity of his presence, a preceptor, with superior talents, and all the resources of property in his favour, might easily become the arbiter deliciarum of ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... words were interchanged between those high-born ladies and the trustworthy follower of young Arvina. For those were days, when no cold etiquette fettered the freedom of the tongue, and when no rank, how stately or how proud soever, induced austerity of bearing or haughtiness toward inferiors; and these concluded, greetings, briefer but far more warm, followed between the master ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... appearance, he was by no means deficient in intelligence. The courage displayed in his taming exercises (which he gravely attributed to his recent conversion), a solemn and mystical style of speech, and a hypocritical affectation of austerity, had given him a species of influence over the people he visited in his travels. Long before his conversion, as may well be supposed, Morok had been familiar with the habits of wild beasts. In fact born in the north of Siberia, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... and romantic, a fresh and vivid imagination, and a thorough literary equipment. His life, as he planned it, held but one purpose for him, outside the warmth and tenacity of its affections—the triumph of the efficient purpose in the adequate expression of his mind in literature. The austerity of his long years of preparation had left him relatively indifferent to the common prizes of life, though they had done nothing to lessen his intense joy in life. His whole mind was concentrated on his art. His adventures would be the adventures of the mind in search of ampler modes ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... her knowledge before I went on my way. What more natural than that Vanna or any other woman should minister to my thirst for information? Men are like that. I pretend to be no better than the rest. She pleased my fastidiousness—that fastidiousness which is the only austerity ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... Aram's turn to feel resentment, and this was indeed an insinuation not only unwarrantable in itself, but one which a man of so peaceable and guileless a life, affecting even an extreme and rigid austerity of morals, might well be tempted to repel with scorn and indignation; and Aram, however meek and forbearing in general, testified in this instance that his wonted gentleness arose from no lack of man's natural spirit. He laid his hand commandingly on young Lester's shoulder, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... disentangle the different trains of thought, I had leisure to examine behind my spectacles the entire hall. I can truly say that not the faintest smile could be seen on any lips. On the contrary, even the freshest faces wore an expression of austerity. I seemed to have ripened all their intellects as if by magic. Here and there while I read some young people whispered to their neighbours. They were probably debating some special point treated ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... readily to yield to their pleasures and to comply with the desires of the multitude, as a steersman shifts with the winds. Quitting that loose, remiss, and, in some cases, licentious court of the popular will, he turned those soft and flowery modulations to the austerity of aristocratical and regal rule; but, employing this uprightly and undeviatingly for the country's best interests, he was able generally to lead the people along, with their own will and consent, by persuading and showing them what ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... illustrious monks, St. Bernard and St. Norbert, not only went preaching everywhere reformation of morals, but labored at and succeeded in establishing for monastic life a system of strict discipline and severe austerity. Lastly, it was the period when, in the laic world, was created and developed the most splendid fact of the middle ages, knighthood, that noble soaring of imaginations and souls towards the ideal of Christian virtue and soldierly honor. It is impossible to trace in detail ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... dullness of their sensations. Milton had no such obtuseness: he had every opportunity for knowing the "world of eye and ear";[12] you cannot open his works without seeing how much he did know of it. The austerity of his nature was not caused by the deficiency of his senses, but by an excess of the warning instinct. Even when he professed to delineate the world of sensuous delight, this instinct shows itself. Dr. Johnson thought he could discern melancholy in "L'Allegro";[13] if he had said "solitariness," ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... a man than Cato the Censor, who moved it in the Senate to dismiss them speedily, and to banish all such Attic babblers out of Italy. But Scipio and others of the noblest senators withstood him and his old Sabine austerity; honored and admired the men; and the censor himself at last, in his old age, fell to the study of that whereof before he was so scrupulous. And yet at the same time, Naevius and Plautus, the first ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... elected, ordained, and buried. Hither flocked pilgrims from every direction to consult the oracles, to worship in the temples of the sun and moon, and to place sacrificial offerings on the altars of their deities. The sacred city was ruled by the long-haired priests of the sun, famous for their austerity and their wisdom. Through the hands of these priests, as the Spanish writers tell us, yearly offerings were made of the first fruits of the fields; and each year at harvest-time, a solemn festival was celebrated, ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... choleric, like Paul, nor melancholy, like John, nor phlegmatic, as James is sometimes, though incorrectly, represented to have been; but he combined the vivacity without the levity of the sanguine, the vigor without the violence of the choleric, the seriousness without the austerity of the melancholic, the calmness without the apathy of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and where it ought to be—in her very soul. It is never a stumbling-block in other people's way, or interfering with other people's affairs. Her object is to be, not to seem, religious; and there is neither hypocrisy nor austerity necessary for that. She is forbearing, without meanness—gentle, without insipidity—sincere, without rudeness. She practises all the virtues herself, and seems quite unconscious that others don't do ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... had taken, not a town with a resounding name, but the ruins of a village, a treeless forest, a dismantled fort, a hill thirty metres high, the survivors still had a task before them which had lost none of its roughness or austerity. They had to organize the new position in haste, dig other shelters, undergo bombardments and reject counter-attacks, all the more violent because the enemy, supported in the rear by positions prepared in advance, ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... and massive belfry of Bruges, and the almost feminine aspect of the Louvain Town Hall with the forbidding masculinity of the destroyed Ypres Cloth Hall. Again, the profusion of ornament and statuettes, the delicate flanking towers, especially in Bruges and Louvain, contrast with the austerity of the old "halles." These luxurious mansions were built neither for military nor for economic purposes. They are far too small to be of any use as covered markets. In fact, the new municipal buildings of the fifteenth century only preserved one characteristic of their predecessors. They were ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... side, wondered a little impatiently why she remained so faithful to the old brougham which he could remember, or so it seemed to him, all his life. But he did not utter his thoughts aloud; he still went in awe of his mother, and he was proud, in a whimsical way, of her old-fashioned austerity of life, of her narrowness of vision, of her dislike of ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... spent in the Casa Medici were probably the blithest and most joyous of his lifetime. The men of wit and learning who surrounded the Magnificent were not remarkable for piety or moral austerity. Lorenzo himself found it politically useful "to occupy the Florentines with shows and festivals, in order that they might think of their own pastimes and not of his designs, and, growing unused to the conduct ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... just mistress and wise ruler of so many Sisters in the religious profession; she, so slow to judge and condemn others, was unsparing in austerity towards herself. She had always recognised her greatest weakness in her love for this adopted daughter that might have been her own if Richard Mildare had not played traitor. She had never once yielded to the clinging of those slight hands about her heart, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... called upon to lead the charge of the forlorn hope. He had not the same thrill of zealous loyalty as before. He was a little hurt because the Governor had made the affairs of his heart of so small importance. An old man's austerity could not understand, perhaps, but nevertheless Harlan felt that he was entitled to some consideration. He had not acquired an old man's calm poise—he was not entirely willing to put politics ahead of everything ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... of the "Son of man" differed in many respects from that of his forerunner. He was familiar, affable, and ready to associate with others; he assumed no austerity of manners, and no reserve of behaviour. The cast of his public preaching, too, was of a milder and more winning strain, suited to his character as the image of the God who is love, and adapted to the merciful nature of that dispensation which ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... this kind can be found with 'Ghosts,' that drastic tragedy of a house built on the quicksands of falsehood, that appalling modern play with the overwhelming austerity of an ancient tragic drama, that extraordinarily compact and moving piece, in which the Norwegian playwright accomplished his avowed purpose of evoking "the sensation of having lived thru a passage ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... Queen Mary, Thou gentleness that dost enmoss and drape The Cross's rigorous austerity, Wipe thou the blood from wounds that ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... surprise she found Pasmore unusually communicative. Despite his seeming austerity, he possessed a keen vein of humour of a dry, pungent order that was eminently entertaining. To-day he gave vent to it, and she found herself laughing and talking to him in a way that, twenty-four hours before she would not have ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... Dodge's spirit—in reality she knew so blindingly much more than the most penetrating critical intellect—caused her to leave the reviews unread. No one else living had understood Pleydon; and when descriptions of his life spoke of the austerity in his later years, his fanatical aversion to women, Linda thought of the brittle glove in the ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and indignation at the sight of the two men holding a woman in their arms. The superior also hurried to the scene of action, but far more a creature of the world than any of the female members of the court, notwithstanding her austerity of manners, she recognized the king at the first glance, by the respect which those present exhibited for him, as well as by the imperious and authoritative way in which he had thrown the whole establishment ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... great cynicism in clothes, a Spartan austerity in its food, the profound contempt of a barbarous people for arts and enjoyments. The Thermidorian reaction was, on the contrary, elegant, opulent, adorned; it exhausted all luxuries, all voluptuous pleasures, as in the days of Louis XV.; with one addition, the luxury of vengeance, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... human kind who has thrown around us the gloom of superstition, and taught that austerity and voluntary ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... their devotions. Clear of the city walls, one sees nothing on every side but huge storks. They are held sacred by the natives, being supposed to migrate to Mecca every year. I heard at Ispahan that, notwithstanding the outward austerity and piety of the people of Koom, there is no town in Persia where so much secret depravity and licentiousness are carried on as in ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... antiquity. In addition to this, literary and theological studies were pursued, and the mysticism of pseudo-Dionysius was cultivated. The life, though simple and self-denying and hard, was not of extreme austerity. There was a division of the monks into two classes, similar to the division in vogue in later time in the West into choir-monks and lay-brothers. The life of the choir-monks was predominantly contemplative, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... jealousy of her young friends. A generous mind, perhaps, would rather itself suffer jealousy than be quick in suspecting, or complacent in causing, or precise in setting it down. But Mrs. Hutchinson doubtless offered up the envy of her companions in homage to her Puritan lover's splendour. His austerity did not hinder him from wearing his "fine, thick-set head of hair" in long locks that were an offence to many of his own sect, but, she says, "a great ornament to him." But for herself she has some ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... resolved to set forth on a visit to the Saint of the Rock, who lived on the other side of the mountains. Travellers had brought the Hermit report of this solitary, how he lived in great holiness and austerity in a desert place among the hills, where snow lay all winter, and in summer the sun beat down cruelly. The Saint, it appeared, had vowed that he would withdraw from the world to a spot where there was neither shade nor water, lest he should be tempted ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... disappointed in him. She had expected to see a man, reserved almost to the point of austerity. And she found his first look even more awe-compelling than her imagination had pictured; so much so indeed, that her resolution faltered, and she took a quick step backward; which seeing, he smiled and her heart and hopes grew warm again. That ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... character, stand ready in a sensible way to play the fool. To come in plain clothes, with a long face, as a wiseacre, only makes one a discomfort to himself, and a blot upon the scene. Like your jug of cold water among the wine-flasks, it leaves you unelated among the elated ones. No, no. This austerity won't do. Let me tell you too—en confiance—that while revelry may not always merge into ebriety, soberness, in too deep potations, may become a sort of sottishness. Which sober sottishness, in my way of thinking, is only to be cured ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... very much tempered the austerity of her retreat, and lent an added luster to its intellectual attractions. But the Marquise had many conflicts between her luxurious tastes and her desire to be devout. Her dainty and epicurean habits, her extraordinary ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... towards his officers became more courteous; and although, as heretofore, he kept himself entirely aloof, except when occasions of duty brought them together, still, when they did meet, there was more of conciliation in his manner, and less of austerity in his speech. There was, moreover, a dejection in his eye, strongly in contrast with his former imperious glance; and more than one officer remarked, that, if his days were devoted to the customary practical arrangements ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... had been faithful to her husband; her whole widowhood had hitherto passed without attack.... Well, the long and the short of it was: if he wished to make her his wife she would be very glad, but she would reject any bolder proposal with the same austerity as ... as ... twelve years before, when he had showed her his ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... great snarled pile of bayonets, belts, cartridge-boxes, gas-mask satchels, greasy tin boxes of anti-lice ointment, and dented helmets. A bright winter sunlight fell on walls dank from the river mists, and heightened the austerity of the landscape. Beyond a bend in the river lay the smoke of the battle of Douaumont; shells broke, pin-points of light, in the ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... to choose," answered the young monk, with a touch of austerity in his tone; "thou must await that leading and that guiding which never fail those who truly wait upon the blessed Son of God, and strive to do not their will but the will of Him who pleased not Himself. At the foot of ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Constantly fearful of death and danger, he did not trust fully to his vigilant body-guard, but nightly slept in a different room, so that his sleeping apartment should not be known. In this he resembled the famous Louis XI., whom he also imitated in his austerity and simplicity of manners, and the fact that his principal confidant was his barber,—a mulatto inclined to drink. His other associate was Patinos, his secretary, who made the public suffer for any ill-treatment ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... an austere face, yet there was a gleam in his eye that belied the austerity. His cheeks were fat and red, his nose prominent, and he was clean shaven, save for a thick white mustache, that drooped slightly on either side of a full-lipped mouth. His hair was white, his eyes dark and deep-set, and he could easily be called a handsome man. He was surely fifty, ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... is a Countess, whose carriage passes yours every day in the Bois. And the thin one yonder, whose eyes glitter like those of a she-wolf, is the particular friend of a high official, who is well known for his reputation of austerity." ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... austere virtue, but he took care to hide the austerity under a veil of a real and universal kindness. Undoubtedly he thought little of the ignorant, who talk about everything right or wrong, instead of remaining silent, and have at bottom only contempt for the learned; but he only shewed ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Kin-rey—and build temples in their honour. The laws concerning personal and ceremonial purity, which form the principal feature of this religion, are exceedingly strict, not unlike those imposed on the ancient Jews. There are several orders of priests, monks, and nuns, whose austerity, like that of Europe, is maintained in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... preached with success in the regions of Pontus [10] and Cappadocia, which had long since imbibed the religion of Zoroaster. The Paulician teachers were distinguished only by their Scriptural names, by the modest title of Fellow-pilgrims, by the austerity of their lives, their zeal or knowledge, and the credit of some extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit. But they were incapable of desiring, or at least of obtaining, the wealth and honors of the Catholic prelacy; such anti-Christian ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... made its footing insecure—it may be that it was this note of contrast which invested this vast structure bestriding the hill, with such astonishing grandeur. I have known few, if any, other churches produce so instantaneous an effect of a beauty that was one with austerity. This great Norman is more Puritan than French: it is Norman Gothic ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... quitted France, angrily vowing her to the deluge of maladies from which it would have been in his power to save her. In a letter written to Marie Antoinette, the Thaumaturgus declared that he had refused the government offers through austerity. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... none too soon that Jerome introduced the monastic system at Rome—there was need of a change to austerity; none too soon that legacy-hunting on the part of the clergy was prohibited by law—it had become a public scandal; none too soon that Jerome struggled for the patronage of the rich Roman women; none too soon that this stern fanatic denounced ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... sect called Hill-men, or Cameronians, was at that time much noted for austerity and devotion, in imitation of Cameron, their founder, of whose tenets Old Mortality became a most strenuous supporter. He made frequent journeys into Galloway to attend their conventicles, and occasionally carried with him gravestones from ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... in the consolations of a religion in which he believed, surrounded with loving friends; and even his enemies felt that a great man in Israel had fallen. Nothing then was said of his defects, for great defects he had,—a towering intellectual pride like Chatham, an austerity like Gladstone, passions like those of Mirabeau, extravagance like that of Cicero, indifference to pecuniary obligations, like Pitt and Fox and Sheridan; but these were overbalanced by the warmth of his affections for his faithful friends, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... purchase of liberty. (Spelm. Concil. Page 329.) In their transactions with the great the same point was always strenuously laboured. When they imposed penance, they were remarkably indulgent to persons of that rank. But they always made them purchase the remission of corporal austerity by acts of beneficence. They urged their powerful penitents to the enfranchisement of their own slaves, and to the redemption of those which belonged to others; they directed them to the repair of highways, and to the construction of churches, bridges, and other works of general utility. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... death, will be able to dissolve the ties that bind us. Wherever you are, the heart of your St. Julian is with you. Wherever you go, his best wishes accompany you. If in this letter, I have assumed an unbecoming austerity, your lordship will believe that it is the genuine effusion of anxiety and friendship, and will pardon me. It is not that I am more exempt from youthful folly than others. Born with a heart too susceptible for my peace, I am continually guilty of irregularities, ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... bobbing in the saddle. It was a sunny and beautiful day, a specimen of the perfect English weather, just warm enough for comfort,—indeed, a little too warm, perhaps, in the noontide sun,—yet retaining a mere spice or suspicion of austerity, which made it all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... alteration of religion, with which his principles would not permit him to concur, desired leave to resign the great seal; and he descended from his high station with more joy and alacrity than he had mounted up to it. The austerity of this man's virtue, and the sanctity of his manners, had nowise encroached on the gentleness of his temper, or even diminished that frolic and gayety to which he was naturally inclined. He sported with all the varieties of fortune into which he was thrown; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume |
