"Monkish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... San Vincente convent; and the Junta, knowing a little about monkish tastes and the wants of the Church, prudently thought it would be quite as well at Lisbon. I was accordingly ordered, with a sufficient force, to provide for its safe conduct and secure arrival, and set out upon my march one lovely morning in ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... to a monkish aide at a desk, who scribbled furiously in a drab notebook. Cam walked to the aides' side ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... their interested lies, and consider how far they were qualified in other respects to transmit faithful memoirs to posterity. In the ages I speak of, the barbarous monkish ages, the shadow of learning that existed was confined to the clergy: they generally wrote in Latin, or in verse, and their compositions in both were truly barbarous. The difficulties of rhime, and the want of correspondent terms in Latin, were no small impediments to the severe nvarch of truth. ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... abnormal, an "emotionless monster," a strange bookish creature, capable of pleasuring in sensations only of the mind. And though I had been surrounded by women all my days, my appreciation of them had been aesthetic and nothing more. I had actually, at times, considered myself outside the pale, a monkish fellow denied the eternal or the passing passions I saw and understood so well in others. And now it had come! Undreamed of and unheralded, it had come. In what could have been no less than an ecstasy, I left my post at ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... one of the principal causes of the defeat of the Arabs; who, according to one writer, after finding that their leader was slain, dispersed in the night, to the agreeable surprise of the Christians, who expected the next morning to see them issue from their tents and renew the combat. One monkish chronicler puts the loss of the Arabs at three hundred and seventy-five thousand men, while he says that only one thousand and seven Christians fell; a disparity of loss which he feels bound to account for by a special interposition of Providence. I have translated above ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... at the Coronado, and he spoke of (though he did nothing more radical than speak of) buying evening-clothes. Carol was touched by his efforts to enjoy picture galleries, and the dogged way in which he accumulated dates and dimensions when they followed monkish guides ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... in the great monkish chairs, and Sally brought them in two plates of beef, Yorkshire pudding, baked potatoes, and cabbage. Athelny took sixpence out of his pocket and sent her ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... work on the Alhambra, has been enabled, by the curious process of chromo-lithography, originally discovered by the Bavarian, Alois Sennefelder, to popularize and multiply almost indefinitely the delicate and highly-finished illuminations executed by the pious monkish ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... that period of its development as a newspaper. The report was flashy and vulgar and unscrupulous, but it was not brutal, except by accident, and not unkind except through the necessities of the case. But it was helplessly and thoroughly personal, and it was no more philosophized than a monkish chronicle of ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... voluntary agency of man. These the author finds worthy of all abhorrence; and Nature in its purely physical aspect he considers to be full of blemishes, which are patent to the eye of modern science, and which "all but monkish quietists think it a religious duty to amend." A competent master-workman with good materials would not have turned out a world so "bunglingly" made, with great patches of poisonous morass and arid desert unfit for human habitation, with coal and other requisites ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... it had a severe, almost a monkish aspect. A small iron bedstead, a table, some articles for the toilet; the whole lighted by a skylight. No ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... conversations, Mr. West happened to remark, that he had been much disgusted in Italy at seeing the base use to which the talents of the painters in that country had been too often employed; many of their noblest efforts being devoted to illustrate monkish legends, in which no one took any interest, while the great events in the history of their country were but seldom touched. This led to some further reflections; and the King, recollecting that Windsor-Castle had, in its present form, been erected by Edward the Third, ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... His book, indeed, surpasses all his previous German writings in volume, as well as all his Latin and German ones in clearness, richness and the fundamental importance of its content. In comparison with the prevalent urging of self-elected works of monkish holiness, which had arisen from a complete misunderstanding of the so-called evangelical counsels (comp. esp. Matthew 19:16-22) and which were at that time accepted as self-evident and zealously urged by the whole church, Luther's argument must have appeared to all thoughtful and earnest souls ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... was the picture of tranquillity. Then Lord Frederick suddenly appeared at the door as she alighted from her coach, and seizing her hand, entreated her "not to desert him in compliance with the injunctions of monkish hypocrisy." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Black Friar may, it is believed at Newstead (et vide post, "Song," stanza ii. line 5, p. 583), be traced to the alarm and suspicion of the country-folk, who, on visiting the Abbey, would now and then catch sight of an aged lay-brother, or monkish domestic, who had been retained in the service of the Byrons long after the Canons had been "turned adrift." He would naturally keep out of sight of a generation who knew not monks, and, when surprised ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... at other times, into such depths of despondency was I plunged that I could seriously consider abandoning self entirely and devoting the remainder of my wrecked life to doing good, though just what trend my saintliness would take I never determined. In monkish days, I suppose, I should have gone into a cloister. But Hanks aroused me. Of course he did not know my thoughts. With his clear eyes he did not see that my life was a ruin. He regarded me rather as a fortunate man to whom opportunities were opening wonderfully well, and I accepted his view; though ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... at their own game. He set loose Count Mansfeld, who revived the Thirty Years' War by raising a rebellion in Bohemia; and when one great man, Wallenstein, stood between Austria and ruin, Richelieu sent his monkish diplomatist, Father Joseph, to the German Assembly of Electors, and persuaded them to dismiss Wallenstein and to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... we find in Wolfius[90] the description of a picture of this kind, in a MS. of AEsop's Fables found in the Abbey of Fulda, among other emblems of the corrupt lives of the churchmen. The present was a wolf, large as life, wearing a monkish cowl, with a shaven crown, preaching to a flock of sheep, with these words of the apostle in a label from his mouth—"God is my witness how I long for you all in my bowels!" And underneath was inscribed—"This hooded wolf is the hypocrite of whom is said in the Gospel, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the soul of youth engage Ere Fancy has been quelled; Old legends of the monkish page, Traditions of the saint and sage, Tales that have the rime of age, And chronicles ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... was, in spirit and in its providential destiny, a long protest of the human personality against the monkish communism with which Europe, in the middle ages, was overrun. After the orgies of Pagan selfishness, society—carried to the opposite extreme by the Christian religion—risked its life by unlimited self-denial ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... not least able of our English historians, however, would place these events in a different light. He insists, somewhat in the spirit of the monkish writers, on this amour being highly disgraceful to the king; and while he represents it as "the scandal of the age" (whose sources, in the king's disputes with the ecclesiastics, Mr. Lingard in any other instance would have ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... a salary for an astronomer and assistant, for nightly observations and periodical publications; annual courses of lectures upon the natural, moral, and political sciences. Above all, no jobbing, no sinecure, no monkish stalls for lazy idlers. I urged the deep responsibility of the nation to the world and to all posterity worthily to fulfil the great object of the testator. I only lamented my inability to communicate half the solicitude with which my heart is on ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... composed by one of the monks of the Middle Ages. I suppose that it would have been no relief from the difficulties of his hypothesis to say that it was a gradual, unconsciously formed deposit of the monkish mind! But besides all this, I said, the theory was loaded with other absurdities specially its own: for we must then believe all the indications of historic plausibility to which I had adverted in speaking of the previous theory to be the work of accident; a supposition, if possible, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... in all his domain. Or so, at least, it seemed in that hour of mystery and glamour. For behind them the evening sky had dulled to a deep and solemn wash of blood red, across which lay one lonely bar of black cloud, solid as spilled ink on a monkish page. But under the trees themselves, blazing with lamps and breathing odours of all grace and daintiness, stood a lighted pavilion of rose-coloured silk, anchored to the ground with ropes of sendal of the richest ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... First of Scotland, in whose reign were formed, in the same county, the no less splendid establishments of Melrose, Jedburgh, and Kelso. The donations of land with which the King endowed these wealthy fraternities procured him from the Monkish historians the epithet of Saint, and from one of his impoverished descendants the splenetic censure, "that he had been a ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... interspersed with choral songs, for which the liturgy of the Church provided material. If we choose to look upon them as incipient operas or precursors of that art-form we must yet observe that their monkish authors, willing enough to trick out the story of the Nativity with legendary matter drawn from the Apocryphal New Testament, which discloses anything but a reverential attitude toward the sublime tragedy, nevertheless stood in ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... he was, while in the act of commanding the shrine to be opened, seized with heat and sickness, accompanied with such a panic terror, that, notwithstanding there was a sumptuous dinner prepared for him, he fled without eating a morsel (which the monkish historian seems to have thought no small part both of the miracle and the penance,) and never drew his bridle till he got to ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... lay in bed till one. "The afternoon was passed in various diversions, fencing, single-stick ... riding, cricket, sailing on the lake." They dined at eight, and after the cloth was removed handed round "a human skull filled with Burgundy." After dinner they "buffooned about the house" in a set of monkish dresses. They went to bed some time between one and three in the morning. Moore thinks that the picture of these festivities is "pregnant in character," and argues that there were limits to the misbehaviour of the "wassailers." The story, as told in Childe Harold (c. I. s. v.-ix.), need ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... better than that. We know who blots out the handwriting 'that is against us, nailing it to His Cross.' We know that of God's great mercy our future may 'copy fair our past,' and the past may be all obliterated and removed. And as sometimes you will find in an old monkish library the fair vellum that once bore lascivious stories of ancient heathens and pagan deities turned into the manuscript in which a saint has penned his Contemplations, an Augustine his Confessions, or a Jerome his Translations, so our souls may become ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... with all others, enjoyment. But when this enjoyment is sought in any way, not in accordance with the laws prescribed by reason and revelation, we diminish (whatever giddy youth may suppose,) the sum total of our own happiness. Now this is not the cold speculation of age, or monkish austerity. It ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... these old parchments which cannot now tell me anything worth knowing? I used to study them, these old texts, with the most ardent enjoyment. What was it which I was then so anxious to find in them? The date of a pious foundation—the name of some monkish imagier or copyist— the price of a loaf, of an ox, or of a field—some judicial or administrative enactment—all that, and yet something more, a Something vaguely mysterious and sublime which excited my enthusiasm. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... drawings and designs, For Fountain statues, and for Curio coins, Rare monkish manuscripts for Hearne alone, And books for Mead, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... child, too long abandoned, calls thee to Gouda manse—since thy sovereign, whom holy writ again bids thee honour, sends thee to Gouda manse—since the Pope, whom the Church teaches thee to revere hath absolved thee of thy monkish vows, and orders ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Senator Hanway might have flashed his ready point between his ribs. But the other's very crudities defended him. He was primitive to the verge of despair. Even his strength was primitive, inasmuch as it dwelt among the people rather than with the machinists of party. Senator Hanway's monkish brow went often puckered of a most uncanonical frown as he thought upon that sardonic Destiny which had thrust this Governor Obstinate forward to become a stumbling block in his way. In his angry contempt he could compare him to nothing save ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... is supposed to have risen at no distant period of time after the destruction of Neomagus. In the writings of the monkish historians, it is indifferently called Lexovium, Lexobium, Luxovium, Lixovium, and Lizovium, names obviously borrowed from the classical appellation of the tribe, as the French word Lisieux ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... Devil. Such a monkish notion I should not have expected from one who has so long toyed with philosophy; but in this ye are all alike, fools and wise men. If any thing goes wrong, pride and self-love will never permit you to lay the blame on yourselves. Observe now those two words, Good and Evil, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... beasts, snakes, and lizards—thought to represent demons, like the gargoyles of Gothic architecture—in every conceivable attitude of contortion and agony. There are also doves and fishes, but the latter, being sacred emblems together with the lamb, are seldom made grotesque. It was a monkish legend that the devil could take the shape of any bird or beast, except those of ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... partitions, the Holy Cross, say the monkish writers, thus remained undiminished at Jerusalem, receiving the homage of innumerable pilgrims, until the year 614, when that city was besieged and taken by the Persians. Their barbarous fanaticism reduced to ruins or burnt to the ground nearly all the sacred ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... into Soroe, and found Emil there. You may believe he was very glad to see us, and we were very glad to see him—he was so good and so attentive. We went with him to see the church, with Absolon's grave and Holberg's coffin. We saw the old monkish inscriptions, and we sailed over the lake to Parnasset—the sweetest evening I remember. I recollect well that I thought, if one could write poetry anywhere in the world, it would be at Soroe, amidst those charming, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... picturesque and curious old town, full of remains of ancient monastic buildings. The railroad terminus is situated in a property formerly part of a Carthusian convent, and the wheelwrights' and blacksmiths' and carpenters' cottages are built partly in the old monkish cells, of which two low ranges remain round a space now covered with sleepers, and huge chains, and iron rails, and all the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... 'Out upon such monkish deeds!' cried Sir Gawaine, and his scornful eyes surveyed the weeping knights and dames. 'Know thee, once for all, that never shalt thou wipe away the treacherous murder of my brothers but by thy blood. Ye are safe now for a season, ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... upon a long staff and a woman. He was a very old man, for his eyes were horny, his snow-white hair and beard hung upon the bent breast and shoulders, and his sardonic, wrinkled features were yellow as wax. They might have been those of a death mask cut in marble. There, clad in an ample, monkish robe, and leaning upon the staff, he stood still as a statue and watched us. I noted it all, every detail, although at the time I did not know that I was doing so, as we broke our way through the ice towards them and afterwards the picture ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... he cannot treat them, according to his usual method in such cases, as fabrications of Spanish priests and lying chroniclers. How, then, does he account for them? He unfolds a theory on the subject, which he has stolen from the "monkish chroniclers" whom he treats with so much contempt, and which has long ago been exploded and set aside. He tells us, that these relics have no connection with the history of the American Aborigines,—that they have a different origin and a far greater antiquity,—that they are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... "I sometimes feel the way the monkish fraternity did at Oxford when they claimed 'they banished God and admitted women.' I want a man-made world, womanless, without a single trace of romance or a good time. Not right, is it? Sometimes I think I'll crack under the pretense, go raving mad and scream out the whole miserable sham under ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... in hand in few words. So, though I offend some, I shall yet convince all, the which lieth closer to my purpose. Thus, it was in the year 1560, or 1650, or mayhap 1710—for my memory is not what it hath been and I ever cared little for monkish calendars or such dry-as-dust matter, being active as becometh one who hath to make his way in the world—yet I wot well it was after the Great Plague, which I have great cause to remember, lying at my cozen's in Wardour Street, London, in that lamentable year, eating ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... had a separate entrance. The door was open and she peeped in. At first, after the brilliant sunlight without, she saw nothing except the great emptiness of the place with its splendid oak roof on the repair of which the late incumbent had spent so much, since as is common in monkish buildings, the windows were high and narrow. Presently, however, she perceived a little figure seated in the shadow at the end of the long oaken refectory table, that at which the monks had eaten, which still remained where it had ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... Oh yes, the sailor who stole the mummy thirty years ago from your father in Lima. Pooh! pooh! pooh! You tell me that this manuscript is written in Latin, and evidently in monkish Latin at that, which is of the worst. Your sailor could not read it, and would not know the value of the manuscript. If he had, he would ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... its crowd, leaving nothing but the dust to tell of what had been, and the bells once more went pealing forth over the city. Mr. Pye crossed the nave, and quitted the cathedral by the cloister door, followed by the choristers. The schoolroom, once the large refectory of the monks in monkish days, was on the opposite side of the cloisters; a large room, which you gained by steps, and whose high windows were many feet from the ground. Could you have climbed to those windows, and looked from them, you would have beheld a fair scene. A clear river wound under the cathedral walls; beyond ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... emblems. High above, on a rude gallery, fifty monks were gathered with their musical instruments. As soon as the Kan-po or abbot, Punt-sog-sogman (the most perfect Merit), received us at the gate, the monkish orchestra broke forth in a tornado of sound of a most tremendous and thrilling quality, which was all but overwhelming, as the mountain echoes took up and prolonged the sound of fearful blasts on six-foot silver horns, the bellowing thunder of ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... from his pretended designs, was trying with all his power to frighten me, in the hope that I should be brought to make considerable sacrifices of money. In his eyes it was clear that this old man, faithful to the monkish spirit, wished to put into the hands of a clerical Mauprat the fruit of the labours and ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... manuscripts, did I begin clearly to associate the name d'Ortez with the name used by the madman in his story at the old Norman ruin. With this new light, link by link did the whole knotted chain untangle. Curiously enough, the tale I had heard at the ruined castle tallied in the main with the monkish documents here preserved. Indeed it supplied me with knowledge of much which otherwise I would not have comprehended so completely. The horrible reality of that weird recital was still fresh and distinct before me, undimmed by time and ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... herself when she recalled the part she had recently played in Mercia, where she had not disdained to practise all her fascinating arts on many persons she despised in order to bind them to her cause, and had thereby given cause to her monkish enemy to charge her with immodesty. It was with something like hatred too that she regarded her own child when he would come crying to her, begging her to take him to his beloved brother; carried away with sudden rage, she would strike and thrust him violently from her, ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... the rabble, a ragged fellow of mechanical aspect, in a tattered black doublet and an old straw hat, ascended the pulpit. Opening a sacred volume which he found there, he began to deliver an extemporaneous and coarse caricature of a monkish sermon. Some of the bystanders applauded, some cried shame, some shouted "long live the beggars!" some threw sticks and rubbish at the mountebank, some caught him by the legs and strove to pull him from the place. He, on the other hand, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and day, employing scores of scholars, men of supreme devotion and of mighty brain, whose work it was to ascertain the right reading of sentences, to accentuate, to punctuate, to commit to the press, and to place, beyond the reach of monkish hatred or of envious time, that everlasting solace of humanity which exists in the classics. All subsequent achievements in the field of scholarship sink into insignificance beside the labors of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... A well-known monkish line about it ran to this effect: Cur moriatur homo cui Salvia crescit in horto? "Why should a man die whilst Sage grows in his garden?" And even at this time, in many parts of England, the following piece of advice is ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... above its arch a grandiose carved shield, with surrounding palm-branches and half-obliterated bearings. Vine-leaves and bunches of grapes decorate some of the more ancient columns inside the church, and grotesque medival monsters, such as monkish architects habitually delighted in, entwine themselves around the capitals of others. The stalls of the choir are elaborately carved with cherubs' heads, medallions and figures of saints, cupids supporting shields, and free and graceful ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... the church, amidst marble pillars, flying buttresses, and pointed arches. Forty-seven additional marble steps, descending in a broad flight nineteen feet wide, lead down a further depth of thirty-five feet, and here you are surrounded by monkish sites and sacred spots. The whole place is, in fact, two distinct natural caves, enlarged and turned to their present uses with infinite care. Far below the ground you find a church thirty-one yards long and nearly seven wide, lighted by many lamps, and are shown the tomb of the father and mother ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... preaching had stirred the souls of the townsfolk, the priests and professors had done their best to prevent 'this pernicious poison from spreading.' Five Newcastle priests had written a book, entitled 'the Perfect Pharisee under Monkish Holiness,' in which they blamed Friends for many things, but above all for their custom of preaching in the streets and open places. 'It is a pestilent heresy at best,' they said (though they used not these very words), 'yet did they ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... violence, and Bruno, either from religious enthusiasm, or in order to be able to devote himself to study, became a friar at the age of fifteen. There, in the quiet cloister of the convent of St. Dominic at Naples, his mind was nourished and his intellect developed; the cloistral and monkish education failed to enslave his thought, and he emerged from this tutelage the boldest and least fettered of philosophers. Everything about this church and this convent, famous as having been the abode of Thomas Aquinas, ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... a monkish priest, who paints apostles. He is not to be found. Any person or persons who can give information concerning this ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... were about to leave the church he made Domini pause in front of a painting of Saint Bruno dressed in a white monkish robe, beneath which was written ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... neighbourhood, where, as she knew, a 'Puseyite' curate in charge officiated, and where a good many disturbances which had excited the populace had taken place. She went in. The curate, a long, gaunt figure, of a familiar monkish type, was conducting 'vespers' for the benefit of some twenty hearers, mostly women in black. The little church was half decorated for Easter, though the altar had still its Lenten bareness. Something in the ordering ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it should be so, but I have seen many parents who were miserable because their children were sportive and joyful. Oh, when will the days of monkish sadness and austerity be over; and the public sentiment in the christian world ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... old men, and the holy rites and doctrine that they preserved; but before there was time for these things to find their way into the wounds of his spirit, his expulsion from home had sent him forth to see another side of monkish and clerkly life. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... should the new age begin more fitly than in this city of beginnings? As of old the Greek torch first gleamed here, here first on Sicilian soil was the Cross planted. The gods of Olympus had many temples about the hill slopes, shrines of venerable antiquity even in those days; but if the monkish chronicles be credited, the new faith signalized its victory rather over three strange idolatries,—the worship of Falcone, of Lissone, and of Scamandro, a goddess. I refuse to believe that the citizens were accustomed to sacrifice three youths annually to Falcone; ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... several years ago immured and built up within the old ecclesiastic walls.[25] Nor is this eastern Iona, as patronised and protected by St. Columba,—and, at one period of his mission to the Picts and Scots, his own alleged dwelling-place,[26]—devoid in its history of the usual amount of old monkish miracles and legends. The Scotichronicon contains long and elaborate details of several of them. When, in 1412, the Earl of Douglas thrice essayed to sail out to sea, and was thrice driven back by adverse gales, he at last made a pilgrimage to ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... formed a multiplicity of projects; but most of them proved abortive. A number of small tracts issued from his pen with wonderful rapidity; such as Marmor Norfolciense; or an essay on an ancient prophetical inscription, in monkish rhyme, discovered at Lynn, in Norfolk. By Probus Britannicus. This was a pamphlet against sir Robert Walpole. According to sir John Hawkins, a warrant was issued to apprehend the author, who retired, with his wife, to an obscure lodging near ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... which he saw himself and his monastery threatened from the city of St. Gall, his own subjects and the Preformed Confederacy. Every day the doctrine of the unscripturalness of clerical dominion gained ground, and penetrated even among the brethren of the convent, a part of whom threw off their monkish garments. The majority, however, remained firm to their vows. The abbot, already far gone in dropsy, had himself conveyed to Roschach, where, in a fortified castle, he was more secure than in a cloister standing ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... flat facade of the building legend had chosen as the palace of Wamba the Benefactor—the Farmer King. I saw the old man waking to life in the dungeon where the treachery of one loved and trusted had thrown him, dressed in the monkish garb which never again could be changed for robes of state. I saw a haggard company of Jews marching into "Tarshish," scarred and bleeding from the persecutions of Nebuchadnezzar who had flung them from Jerusalem. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... dancing or sitting out with him when there was Francis, and a hundred others like him, so pleased to take his place? Nor, so he told himself, was his mind one whit more apt than his body. It did not move lightly and agreeably with unconscious smiles and easy laughter. By nature he was monkish, he was celibate. He could but cease to burn incense at such ineffectual altars, and help, as he had helped this afternoon, to replenish the censers ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... public of those days was horrified, and gave expression to its horror. Abelard, overwhelmed with shame, despair, and remorse, could now think of nothing better than to abandon the world. Without any vocation, as he well knew, he assumed the monkish habit and retired to the monastery of St. Denis, while Heloise, by his order, took the veil at Argenteuil. Her devotion and heroism on this occasion Abelard has described in touching terms. Thus supernaturalism had done its ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... thou seen two runaways by thy gate this morning, master priest—one a stalwart, dangerous fellow, the other a measly, monkish lad? And, prithee, see thou ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... before all the Romaine Empire. Finally, the Emperour Charles the fifth, esteemed by our age the most happy that hath liued these many ages: he will curse his conquestes, his victories, his triumphes: and not be ashamed to confesse that farre more good in comparison he hath felt in one day of his Monkish solitarines, then in all his triumphant life. Now shall we thinke those happie in this imaginate greatnes, who themselues thinke themselues vnhappie? seeking their happines in lessening themselues, and not finding in the world one place to rest this greatnes, or one ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... historical law, and the voter whose politics are formed by his newspaper, than there was between the legislator who passed laws against witches, and the burgher who defended his guild from some feudal aggression? between the enlightened scholar and the dunce of to-day, than there was between the monkish alchemist and the blockhead of yesterday? Peasant, voter, and dunce of this century are no doubt wiser than the churl, burgher, and blockhead of the twelfth. But the gentleman, statesman, and scholar of the present age ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... without these foundations we should speedily fall into a very superficial knowledge, indeed, of the classical languages of antiquity. This would be to exclude ourselves from an acquaintance with all past time, except in monkish fiction and the feudal barbarism of the ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... figure sit up in the casket, which he says was the form and figure of the assassinated President McKinley, who then pointed to a corner of the room, and said, "Avenge my death." He then looked where the finger pointed and saw a form clad in a Monkish garb, and recognized the form and face of this individual as the form and ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... certainly impossible for any one else to understand them; while he managed to shroud his private life, especially his relations to women, in almost complete mystery. For some years after his death the monkish habit in which he attired himself was considered symbolic of his mental attitude; and even now, though the veil is partially lifted, and we realise the great part women played in his life, there remain many points which are ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... situation, inserted an exceptional clause to the total relinquishment of my rights. * * * No sooner was this business concluded, than the master commanded me to write to my parents, to inform them that I had signed the deed of renunciation, and was willing, for the benefit of my soul, to assume the monkish habit. He was present when I wrote this letter; I was, therefore, obliged to adopt the phrases suggested by him,—phrases, breathing zeal and devotion; full of indifference to the world, and tranquil satisfaction at the choice I ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... to the monkish ideal of a contemplative life which had hitherto obtained, a new ideal, the ideal of the courtier's life, was upheld; ecclesiastical saintliness was contrasted with knightly honour. Beauty, which at the dawn of the Christian era ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... of the Iconoclasts, says,—"The Olympian Jove, created by the muse of Homer and the chisel of Phidias, might inspire a philosophic mind with momentary devotion; but these Catholic images were faintly and flatly delineated by monkish artists in the last degeneracy of taste and genius." Such comparisons mistake the point. These are not parallel attempts, but opposed from the outset. The "Catholic image" was a declaration that the problem cannot be solved in that way. An early legend relates, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... burial," says the Monkish Annalist, "a column of light, brighter than the sun, arose towards heaven"; and three nights afterwards the figure (or ghost) of King AEthelberht appeared to Brithfrid, a nobleman, and commanded him to convey the body to a place called "Stratus Waye," and to inter it near the monastery ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... University Library. You walk through one hall after another, filled with books of all kinds, from the monkish manuscript of the middle ages, to the most elegant print of the present day. There is something to me more impressive in a library like this than a solemn Cathedral. I think involuntarily of the hundreds of mighty spirits who ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... modern spirit as well as the modern forms. So far from that, in every case where the old spelling or form seemed essential to metre, to rhyme, or meaning, no change has been attempted. But, wherever its preservation was not essential, the spelling of the monkish transcribers — for the most ardent purist must now despair of getting at the spelling of Chaucer himself — has been discarded for that of the reader's own day. It is a poor compliment to the Father of English Poetry, to say that by such treatment ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... taking a side, he must become a political and scientific eunuch; and history is not the business of eunuchs. They would at most be of use in compiling those great tomes of not useless erudition, elumbis atque fracta, which are called, not without reason, monkish. ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... all the changes which reason demanded. As a friend, therefore, to that religion which preserves the public morals, I hope to live to see many of those articles qualified which treat of mysteries conceived in the dark ages of monkish superstition, and countenanced by scholastic logic; considering that such qualification would probably lead to greater concord in matters of the highest importance to society, and serve to establish the Anglican ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... said truly, of the monkish morbidity, of the hysteria which as often gone with the visions of hermits or nuns. But let us never forget that this visionary religion is, in one sense, necessarily more wholesome than our modern ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... rather unsatisfactory. Anglo-Saxonism is a very good thing; simplicity and common sense are very good things too. May not {421} berefellarius, the dirty raggamuffin with tattered clothes, be good monkish Latin for bare-fell (i.e. bare-skin), or rather bare-fellow? the most natural metamorphosis imaginable. Bere is the old orthoepy of bare; and every one knows that in London (east) a ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... fighting men of East Anglia; the thanes of the West were there with their tenants; the Bishop of Winchester, Harold's uncle, not only brought the tenants of the church lands, but he himself with twelve of his monks had put on armour under their monkish robes. The Abbot of Peterborough headed a contingent from the Fen Country; the men of London under the sheriff of the Mid Saxons were there, and prepared to die in defence of the royal standard, which it was the ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... Aquinas summed up, in a quaint tetrastic, twelve causes which might found sentences of nullity, of repudiation, or of the two kinds of divorce; to which some other, as monkish as himself, added two more lines, increasing the causes to fourteen, and to these were afterwards added two more. The former are [here transcribed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... respect was particularly insisted upon by the ancients: hence Plato and Aristotle recommended the custom of going barefoot as a means of checking the stimulus to carnal desire, a suggestion which appears to have been acted upon by some of the monkish orders. The cold bath was considered equally efficacious, while some, among whom may be reckoned Pliny and Galen, advised thin sheets of lead to be worn on the calves of the ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... considerably by those pagan tombs; and as an antidote, the unexplained catacombs were not sufficiently elevating. I did not read the signs of the subterranean churches aright, any more than the uncultivated Yankee reads aright an Egyptian portraiture. Monkish skulls and other unburied bones, seen by the light of moccoletti, were to me nothing but forms of folly. The abounding life of Catholicity was hardly understood by our party, which for some reason seemed inclined to impute the most death to the faith which has the most form. We ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... of the twelfth century. With his advent, we feel that we are emerging from that long period which used to be known as the dark ages. Most of our knowledge of European history from the sixth to the twelfth century is derived from meager and unreliable monkish chronicles, whose authors were often ignorant and careless, and usually far away from the scenes of the events they recorded. In the latter half of the twelfth century, however, information grows much more abundant and varied. We ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... wife a large Easter egg of lacquered work, exquisitely illuminated. I have examined, in various parts of Europe, beautiful specimens of the best periods of mediaeval art; but in no one of them have I found anything in the way of illumination more perfect than this which he brought from his monkish brethren. In nothing did he seem to unbend more than in his unfeigned love for religious art as it exists in Russia. He discussed with me one evening sundry photographs of the new religious paintings in the cathedral of Kieff in a spirit which revealed this feeling for religious ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... be called a big man: he was broad-shouldered and well-muscled, but, hidden as his body was beneath the folds of his blue, monkish robe, only his shortness of stature was noticeable. He was only fifty-four, but the pale face, the full, flowing beard, and the long white hair topped by a small blue skullcap gave him an ageless look, as though centuries of time had ...
— Fifty Per Cent Prophet • Gordon Randall Garrett
... dialogue between St. Serf and the enemy of mankind, in which the Devil, plying the Saint with many knotty theological questions, wholly fails to overcome him, and suddenly departs. Another of these monkish miracles makes St. Serf discover the theft of a sheep by ordering it to bleat forth the story of its wrongs from the guilty stomach of the thief, and to redden his face with shame for having denied his crime! St. Serf's memory survives here in ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... library of his friend. In the peaceful evening hours he listens to weird stories of the lonely land of the Far West—early discovery, zealous monkish exploration, daring voyages in trackless unknown seas, and the descent of curious strangers. Bold Sir Francis Drake, Cabrillo, Viscaino, Portala, the good Junipero Serra of sainted memory, live again in ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... teacher, that Ariosto was a better poet than Homer. In later life he declared that he had forgotten even the letters of the Greek alphabet. Latin would have fared as badly, had not his interest in Matthew Paris and other monkish chroniclers "kept up a kind of familiarity with the language even in its rudest state." "To my Gothic ear, the 'Stabat Mater,' the 'Dies Irae,'[4] and some of the other hymns of the Catholic Church are more solemn and affecting than the fine ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... when they should arrive at the hunting-grounds of the Great Spirit. A little digging, a few years ago,[11] has furnished the evidence on which I base this assertion. This digging has destroyed the old monkish fiction to reinstate the truly Indian idea of the dead, and of the necessity of ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... onely for their own private eas and conveniencie in outward things; that beeing accommodated with all necessarie helps of the Bodie, they may pleas themselvs onely in the cours of their Studies, with that Reservation and Retiredness, which is proper to a Monkish life in Popish Cloisters; wherein the Spirit of Mutual envie, of detraction and division is more irreconcilably entertained, then in anie other Societies of the World. For their Cloister-constitutions, obliging them onely to the observation of som formal works ...
— The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650) • John Dury
... is a keen and powerful satire; but the effort takes from the effect, and oppresses attention by perpetual and violent demands upon it. His tragedy of the Revenge is monkish and scholastic. Zanga is a vulgar caricature of Iago. The finest lines in it are the burst of triumph at the end, when ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... is not new in outline. One can find the essence of this story in monkish manuals. There the menace of Cytherea was not evaded. There the weaknesses of man's sex were categoried with less psychology but more force. What is new in Hergesheimer's book is merely the environment in which his characters so disastrously move and an insight into the mechanism ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... examining and comparing old conditions, that several kings reigned over Britain before Julius Caesar landed in the country. Lud Hurdebras is supposed to have been the eighth king from Brute, whom the Bards, and after them, the monkish historians, report to have been the first monarch of Britain. I am going to tell you a story of Prince Bladud, the son of this Lud Hurdebras, which, there is reason to ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... malediction ("Margherita! maledetta") upon his sister. The scene changes to the church, and in wonderful combination we hear the appeals of Marguerite for mercy, the taunting voice of the tempter, and the monkish chanting of the "Dies Irae" mingled with the ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... natural, unprejudiced reason, without the delusive glosses of superstition and false religion. Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they serve to no manner of purpose; neither advance a man's fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society; neither qualify him for the entertainment of company, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... desyre of syr Gyles Alyngton, knyght: by Alexander Bercley prest: and monke of Ely. This title is over a cut, the same as at the head of Barclay's preface to his translation of Sallust, a representation of the author in a monkish habit on his knees, presenting a book to a nobleman. The text begins on back of title. The original is printed in Roman letter in the margins.——Colophon in a square woodcut border: Thus endeth the ryght frutefull matter of the foure vertues cardynall: ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... represented to the full the licentious temper of the South, she scornfully rejected a husband indifferent to love, and ineffective in war as in politics. She had "married a monk and not a king," she said, wearied with a superstition that showed itself in long fasts of more than monkish austerity, and in the humiliating reverence with which the king would wait for the meanest clerk to pass before him. In the square-shouldered ruddy youth who came to receive his fiefs, with his "countenance of fire," his vivacious talk ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... chroniclers, Gomara handles his various topics with the shrewd and piquant criticism of a man of the world; while his descriptions are managed with a comprehensive brevity that forms the opposite to the long-winded and rambling paragraphs of the monkish annalist. These literary merits, combined with the knowledge of the writer's opportunities for information, secured his productions from the oblivion which too often awaits the unpublished manuscript; ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... stimulates to real injustice; that which leads a man to refuse to himself lawful pleasures, than that which snatches from others the scanty subsistence of their self-denial. Such, I think, is very nearly the state of the question between the ancient founders of monkish superstition, and the superstition of the pretended philosophers ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... illumines. From the grove Where Wisdom talk'd with her Athenian sons, Could my ambitious hand entwine a wreath Of Plato's olive with the Mantuan bay, Then should my powerful verse at once dispel Those monkish horrors: then in light divine Disclose the Elysian prospect, where the steps Of those whom Nature charms, through blooming walks, Through fragrant mountains and poetic streams, 410 Amid the train of sages, heroes, bards, Led by their winged Genius, and the choir Of laurell'd science and ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... protest. The preachers of several churches rivalled the rector in audacity, by publicly inveighing against the dangers of the ecclesiastical innovations introduced by the king. It is not surprising that a prince impatient even of wholesome rebuke was enraged at this monkish tirade. Parliament was ordered to bring the culprits to justice; but, strange to say, none could be discovered—a circumstance certainly attributable rather to the supineness of the judges than to any lack of witnesses. To the university Francis ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... translation of Sterne's Sentimental Journey. He died at Turnham Green in 1827, but his remains, many years after, were moved to Santa Croce in Florence. Others are Carlo Zeno, the soldier; Goldoni, the dramatist; Paolo Sarpi, the monkish diplomatist; Galileo Galilei, the astronomer and mathematician; the two Cabots, the explorers, and Marco Polo, their predecessor; Niccolo Tommaseo, the patriot and associate of Daniele Manin, looking very like a blend of Walt Whitman and Tennyson; Dante; a ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Taunton road, and take first turning to R. It is only recently that these interesting remains have been rescued from the farmer and made accessible to the public. The abbey was founded in 1188. With the proverbial monkish eye for a fine situation and a trout stream, its builders set it in a fertile valley, to which old chroniclers gave the name of the Flowery Vale. Contrary to the usual fate of such ruins, the domestic portions of the monastery have survived; the church has gone. Entrance is ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... design of the earlier poet is disregarded; the love-story becomes a mere frame for setting forth the views of Jean de Meun, his criticism of the chivalric ideal, his satire upon the monkish vices, his revolutionary notions respecting property and government, his advanced opinions in science, his frank realism as to the relations of man and woman. He possesses all the learning of his time, and an accomplished judgment in the literature which he had studied. He is a powerful satirist, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... despite its great magnitude, would be unnavigable, for vessels would be impeded by the enormous multitude of the tortoises." Gumilla, Orinoco Illustrata volume 1 pages 331 to 336.) "Son cuentos de frailes," "they are monkish legends," said the pulpero of Angostura, in a low voice; for the only travellers in this country being the missionaries, they here call monks' stories, what we call travellers' ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... oak. The PRIOR'S own stall is in the middle to the right and rather higher than the rest. In the middle of the chapter house an enormous crucifix. The sun is shining on the statue of the Virgin in the courtyard. The STRANGER enters from the back. He is wearing a coarse monkish cowl, with a rope round his waist and sandals on his feet. He halts in the doorway and looks at the chapter house, then goes over to the crucifix and stops in front of it. The last strophe of the choral service can be heard from across the courtyard. ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... types, first ascribed to a German, of Mentz, by the name of Gutenberg, in 1441, and to Peter Schoeffer, in 1444, changed the whole system of book-making, and vastly increased the circulation of the Scriptures, the Greek and Latin classics, and all other valuable works, which, by the industry of the monkish copyist, had been preserved from the ravages of time and barbarism. Gunpowder, whose explosive power had been perceived by Roger Bacon as early as 1280, though it was not used on the field of battle until 1346, had completely changed the art of war and had greatly contributed to undermine ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... haste, then, and provide clothing for them, lest they perish with cold. But if the care of so many trouble thee, be thou careful to serve our Lord alone.' Bonaventura, who tells the story, goes on, with the true spirit of a monkish historian, to state how, 'the tempter being vanquished, departed, and the holy man returned victorious to his cell.' The piteous human yearning that is underneath this wild tale, the sudden access of self-pity and anger, mixed with a strange attempt, not ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... reader stands by, with folded arms, resolved at all events to secure peace within his own bosom. But no sluggard's peace; his arms are folded, not for idleness, only to repress certain vain tremors and vainer sighs. He feels the calm of self-renunciation, but united with no monkish indolence. Here is a fragment of it. How it rebukes the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... moreover, hardly ever had any existence, and never was more than the outline of a quarter, had nearly the monkish aspect of a Spanish town. The roads were not much paved; the streets were not much built up. With the exception of the two or three streets, of which we shall presently speak, all was wall and solitude there. Not a shop, not a vehicle, hardly a candle ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo |
