"Ascetic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... His hopes at this time are many;—and among them, I perceive, there is not wanting secretly, in spite of his experiences, some hope that he himself may be a good deal "happier" than formerly. Nor is there any ascetic humor, on his part, to forbid trial. He is much determined to try. Probably enough, as we guess and gather, his agreeablest anticipations, at this time, were of Reinsberg: How, in the intervals of work well done, he would live there wholly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... better, instead of making the commonplace assertion that there was nothing of the ascetic about Jesus Christ, for us to recall to mind His teaching at another time, that every disciple shall be perfected as his Master (Luke vi. 40), and to inquire whether we might not do well to love and covet retirement, even of an external character, ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... the majority of artists', for now and then we meet an artist who seems to have strayed from the path of beauty, and who is devoting his energies to an ascetic determination to keep alive one particular interpretation of a composer's work, or works; who dictates these interpretations to his pupils, and who talks of other artists who feel the bounden duty of self-expression through the said ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... His favourite place of residence was Rome, to which city he repeatedly returned with increasing affection. In 1848 he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, for Gogol never departed from the pious Christian faith taught him by his mother; in fact, toward the end of his life, he became an ascetic and a mystic. The last years were shadowed by illness and—a common thing among Russian writers—by intense nervous depression. He died at Moscow, 21 February 1852. His last words were the old saying, "And I shall laugh with a bitter laugh." These words ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... a flagged room like a cellar—cold, ascetic and bare. There was a big open fire-place, with a chimney hooded by massive masonry and blackened by the fires of immemorial winters. This was where Joan's parents had lived. She had probably been born here. The ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... digestion, that he might seem to have been born middle-aged. Few men have so amicably combined the love of a good dinner and of the higher morality. He seems to have comfortably solved the problem of having your cake and eating it, at which the ascetic interpreters of Christianity teach us to despair. He serves us up his worldly wisdom in a sauce of Plato, and gives a kind of sensuous relish to the disembodied satisfactions of immortality. He is a better Christian than many an ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... of the Convent' of Saint Francis of Cheylas a tall, lean man with an ascetic face, prominent cheekbones, and a nose not unlike Garnache's own—the nose of a man of action rather than of prayer—bowed gravely to this stalwart stranger, and in courteous accents begged to be informed in what he ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... itself was very dear to him, and she might let fall some gracious word testifying that, in her opinion at least, his life had not been wholly vain. For very surely that which survives when all other passions are uprooted and cast forth—survives even in the case of the true ascetic and saint—is the unquenchable yearning for the spoken approval of those whom we love and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... fact. A lecture of an hour and a quarter quite exhausts my nervous energy. Moreover, it gives me a vigorous appetite, and my two overpowering desires, after speaking, are, first to eat, and then to sleep. But it frequently happens that I am carried, perforce, to the house of some good but ascetic gentleman, who gives me a glass of cold water, talks until midnight, and then delivers me, more dead than alive, to my bed. I am so sensitive in regard to the relation of guest and host that I can do naught but submit. Astraea, I am told, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... toward mitigating the general load of human misery and ignorance,—a consciousness which Allie's words had only quickened into more active life. "But, girls, I assure you that I am not at all moved by the ascetic notion of taking up the most disagreeable work I can find, as a penance for former shortcomings. I wish from my heart that Matty Blair was pretty and straight and sweet, a typical little story-book pauper, whom it would be a pleasure to befriend, and who would ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... Leila so vividly that she could hardly see the girl for the tortured shape of it. Then the hedonist in her revolted against that ascetic vision. Her worldly judgment condemned and deplored this calamity, her instinct could not help applauding that hour of life and love, snatched out of the jaws of death. "Need he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Mrs. Fantail in the morning, having taken in all sail: the chestnut curls have disappeared, and two limp bands of brown hair border her lean, sallow face; you see before you an ascetic, a nun, a woman worn by mortifications, of a sad yellow aspect, drinking salts at the well: a vision quite different from that rapturous one of the previous night's ball-room. No wonder Fantail does not come out of a morning; he had ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... them: I had already reduced the boy to little better than an automaton; I had broken his fine spirit with my rigid severity; and I should freeze all the sunshine out of his heart, and make him as gloomy an ascetic as myself, if I had the handling of him much longer. And poor Rachel, too, came in for her share of abuse, as usual; he cannot endure Rachel, because he knows she has a ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... a single glance, and then I turned—to find myself face to face with a tallish, thin, active man, with a pale, shaven, ascetic face, dark hair, and astonishingly quick glittering black eyes. He stood just within the office door, to which he must have come without a sound, looking at me with a mechanical smile of inquiry, while his eyes searched me with ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... acquire anything beyond a subsistence, of the plainest and most ascetic description, for herself, and a simple abundance for her child. Her own dress was of the coarsest materials and the most sombre hue; with only that one ornament,—the scarlet letter,—which it was her doom to wear. The child's attire, on the other hand, was distinguished ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rather brilliant science man; he was also an apostle, a vegetarian, a fine football player, an ex-Fabian, and a few other things. He was a large, emaciated-looking person, with extraordinarily bright grey eyes, inspiring a lean, pale, dark-browed face—the face of an ascetic, lit by a flame of energising life. He looked as if he would spend and be spent by it to the last charred fragment, in pursuit of the idea. There was nothing in his vivid aspect of Peter Margerison's gentle philosophy of acquiescence; he looked as if he would to the end dictate terms to life ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... for instruction as to the nature of the Guru. He it is who defines the Guru's work, He it is who inspires the Guru's teaching. Every Guru on earth is a reflection of Mahadeva, and it is His life which he is commissioned to give out to the world. Yogi, immersed in contemplation, taking the ascetic form always—that marks out His functions. For the symbols by which the mighty Ones are shown in the teachings are not meaningless, but are replete with the deepest meaning. And when you see Him represented as the eternal Yogi, with the cord in His ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... limbs that cannot move!' 'What! lips that melt away!' 'Keep thou thy Maid of air!' 'Shroud up thy Grace of clay!' 'Twas thus, contending hot, they went before the Sage, And knelt at the wise wells of cold ascetic age. 'The fairest of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... produce great results, and he speaks of the profession of arms as an honorable one. (l. iv. c. 218.)— G. ——On these points Christian opinion, it should seem, was much divided Tertullian, when he wrote the De Cor. Mil., was evidently inclining to more ascetic opinions, and Origen was of the same class. See Neander, vol. l part ii. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... but the misfortune to be borne was a broken world falling about her own ears. She had thought of a nunnery, of Ophelia among the water-lilies, and of an early death-bed. Then she had pictured to herself the somewhat ascetic and very laborious life of an old maiden lady whose only recreation fifty years hence should consist in looking at the portrait of him who had once been her lover. And now she was told that he was coming to Matching as though nothing had been ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... form of asceticism is brought forth from one of its strong citadels, Mt. Athos, the holy mountain of Greece, and a contrast is made between the "gleaming beauties of the world" and the utter absorption of the ascetic by the intangible world beyond. The vision of "Queen Hellas," the classic age of Greece, is followed by the conquering spirit of Hellenism spreading triumphantly from the democracies of Athens and Sparta to the ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... these ideas from anyone, he learned them from one Banus—an Ascetic, of the sect of the Essenes, who lived in the desert with no other clothing than the bark and leaves of trees, and no other food save that which grew wild. Josephus lived with him, in like fashion, for three years and, doubtless, learned all that was in his heart. Banus was ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... lips moved softly, musically, twitching with a strange ascetic passion that trembled in his voice as ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... was enchanted, and, deliciously tickled at the idea that he was like someone in print, he chuckled under his breath. Soon they came to the part that had struck Kate as being so particularly appropriate to her husband. It concerned a scene between this ascetic courtier and a handsome, middle-aged widow who frequently gave him to understand that her feelings regarding him were of the tenderest kind; but on every occasion he pretended to misunderstand her. The ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... obvious reasons our details will be less perfect. It is a portion of the duke's life which cannot be entirely passed over in silence, since it must be conceded, that much of his unpopularity may be traced to this source. Neither the court nor the people of England are so ascetic as not to extenuate the indiscretions of royalty; but this charitable estimate of misgivings does not extend to approbation of any culpable dereliction of social and moral duties. The fact of his royal highness having a large family, by a lady now no more, is too ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 291 - Supplement to Vol 10 • Various
... them that - This good but wearisome ascetic; He jumped and thumped upon his hat, ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... master at concentration, a master strategist-a great general. With passionate beliefs on all important social questions, she resolutely set herself against being seduced into other paths. Far from being naturally an ascetic, she has disciplined herself into denials and deprivations, cultural and recreational, to pursue her objective with the least possible waste of energy. Not that she did not want above all else to do this thing. She did. But doing it she had to abandon the easy life ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... glance embraced all the details; the dark hair of the younger, greying at the temples, the dreamy grey eyes, the gentle curves of a mouth that was, nevertheless, capable of great sternness, and the spare, almost lean frame; then the self-important, overbearing manner of the older man. "High Anglican, ascetic, out-of-doors," was Malcolm Sage's mental classification of the one, thus unconsciously reversing the William Johnson's verdict. The other he ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... the political stage was practically occupied by these two ministers only; they had no competitors of equal rank. In 577, the King of Kudara made a second attempt to introduce Buddhism into Japan. He sent to the Yamato Court two hundred volumes of sacred books; an ascetic; a yogi (meditative monk); a nun; a reciter of mantras (magic spells); a maker of images, and a temple architect. If any excitement was caused by this event, the annals say nothing of the fact. It is briefly related that ultimately a temple was built for the new-comers in Naniwa ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... in himself which had caused him to act as he had acted. He saw himself as one of those puny creatures whose so-called kind hearts lead them into follies, into crimes. Like many young men of virtuous life and ascetic habit, Uniacke was disposed to worship that which was uncompromising in human nature, the slight hardness which sometimes lurks, like a kernel, in the saint. But he was emotional. He was full of pity. He desired to ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... intellectual faculties, but not at the expense of his spiritual; and romantic frivolity and mental dissipation on the one hand, and a too severe repression—dangerous in its after reaction—on the other, were the Scylla and Charybdis between which she had to steer. The ascetic Puritanism of her training and surroundings would naturally have led her to the narrower and more restrictive view, in which her husband, austerer yet, would have heartily concurred; but her broad sense, quickened by the marvelous ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... An elderly, well preserved gentleman, slenderly built, showing all the signs of a man who has lived clean and has been almost an ascetic. One to whom the joys of the flesh have had little meaning. A cold, controlled man whose one passion is for power. Distinctively a man of power. An eagle-like man, who, by keenness of brain and force of character, has carved out a fortune of hundreds of ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... the other hand, if these be lacking no amount of symbolism or attribute will supply their place. "Cucullus non facit monachum," as the old proverb says—"It is not the hood that makes the monk," but the ascetic face you depict within it. Indeed, rather beware of trusting even to the ordinary, well-recognised symbols in common use, and being misled by them to think you have done something you have not done; and rather withhold these until the other ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... first greetings, and Joan had conducted her to her room, which she had spent infinite time and thought in arranging, the old woman remained there to rest until supper-time. Then she reappeared, and, by the signs of her worn, ascetic face, the cruel hollows about those adamant eyes, the drawn cheeks and furrowed brow, the girl realized that rest with her was not easy to achieve. She saw every sign in her now that in the old days she had learned to ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... distinguished man of science, a brilliant mathematician; yet he shrank from a consideration of the theory of Copernicus: it was more important, he declared, to think of the immortal soul. In the last years of his short life he sank into a torpor of superstition—ascetic, self-mortified, and rapt in a strange exaltation, like a medieval monk. Thus there is a tragic antithesis in his character—an unresolved discord which shows itself again and again in his Pensees. 'Condition de l'homme,' ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... cheerful, even sanguine disposition, and his countenance faithfully reflected the ordinary bent of his humour. Seeing him at a distance, the casual observer would at once have judged him to be either an athlete or an ascetic. There was no superfluous flesh about him; he was tall and muscular, with well- knit limbs, broad shoulders, and a head altogether lacking in the humble or conciliatory 'droop' which all worldly-wise parsons cultivate for the benefit of their rich patrons. It was a distinctively ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... life wore no ascetic form, He loved all beauty, without fear of harm, And in his veins ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... ascetics, and this is not an ascetic age," he said at length, with a half-laugh at ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... which had preserved and multiplied so many precious books in classic times among the Romans. The monks, indeed, were not seldom creators as well as copyists, though the works which they composed were mainly theological (as became their sacred profession and ascetic life). The Latin, however, being the almost universal language for so many centuries, the love of learning conspired to widen the field of monastic study. Many zealous ecclesiastics were found who revived the classic authors, and copies of the ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... difference between Essenism and primitive Christianity, for one sought to attain perfection apart from life and the other in closest contact with the currents of human thought and activity. While according to Josephus the party of the Essenes at one time numbered four thousand, like all ascetic movements it soon disappeared or else was deflected into that greater stream of monasticism which rose in the early ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... religious meditations, unmoved except by that pious fervor which in other ages taught men to brave the tortures of the rack and to smile amid the flames. But a blonde girl, with great eyes and a voice like the soft notes of a vesper hymn, had come in between them and their ascetic dreams of heaven. The ties that had bound the young men together snapped silently one by one. At last each read in the pale face of the other the story of his ...
— Pere Antoine's Date-Palm • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... India or Canada, or even Jamaica or Barbadoes, is only an expatriated Lord Mayor. I will not willingly consent to accept it as qualification for a high trust that a man has a good cook and an admirable cellar, and an ostentatious tendency to display the merits of both. Mind, I am no ascetic who say this: I like good dinners; I like occasionally—only occasionally though—very good dinners. I feel with a clever countryman who said he liked being asked out to dine, "it was flattering, and it was nourishing;" but with all this ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... little milk-white princesses as a nest is of young sparrows. All love me dearly at once.—Charming idea of life, but too high-colored for the reality. I have outgrown all this; my tastes have become exceedingly primitive,—almost, perhaps, ascetic. We carry happiness into our condition, but must not hope to find it there. I think you will be willing to hear some lines which embody the subdued and limited desires ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the Confessor, holy, weak, and sad, lay in his new choir of Westminster—where the wicked ceased from troubling, and the weary were at rest. The crowned ascetic had left no heir behind. England seemed as a corpse, to which all the eagles might gather together; and the South-English, in their utter need, had chosen for their king the ablest, and it may be the justest, man in Britain—Earl Harold Godwinsson: himself, like half ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... rise with the rediscovery of Greek culture, extended the intellectual horizon and intensified the enthusiasm for beauty. Men's interest in life was no longer narrowly religious, but human; their art became the expression of the new spirit. Early Christianity had been ascetic, enjoining negation of life and the mortification of the flesh. The men of the Renaissance, with something of the feeling of the elder Greeks, glorified the body and delighted in the pride of life. Pagan ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... and take more exercise. He had already had a fit of apoplexy, and it was the apprehension of another, with which he was threatened, that brought him to the Spa. The next was Parson Topertoe, whose great enemy was the gout, brought on, of course, by an ascetic and apostolic life. The third was Captain Culverin, whose constitution had suffered severely in the wars, but which he attempted to reinvigorate by a course of hard drinking, in which he found, to his cost, that ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... public in general know of what the singer often suffers in the way of nervousness or stage fright before appearing in front of the footlights, nor that his life, outwardly so feted and brilliant, is in private more or less of a retired, ascetic one and that his social pleasures must ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... a pace, like one pricked in conscience, and the paleness of his ascetic features took a deadly hue. His lips moved as if he would have spoken, but the sounds were smothered by an oppression that denied him utterance. The gentle Florinda saw his distress, and she endeavored to interpose between the impetuous youth ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... luxurious life of the capital itself, he found proof for the belief suggested to him by the art and the literature of the period. He visited the pleasure-resorts, the theatres, the opera; he saw with the eyes of an ascetic and a soldier, and wondered why the Western conception of the worth of life differed so little from the Far-Eastern conception of folly and of effeminacy. He saw fashionable balls, and exposures de rigueur intolerable to the Far-Eastern sense of modesty, —artistically calculated to ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... town because he called himself a "Socialist," but Samuel did not know that. His wife was a little mite of a woman, completely swamped by child-bearing. Most interesting to Samuel was Friedrich, who played the violin; a pale ascetic-looking boy of fifteen, with wavy hair and ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... difficult to tell. Religion was the groundwork of his character,—faith in God and devotion to duty. His piety was also more enlightened than the piety of his age, since it was practical and not ascetic. His temper was open, frank, and genial. He loved books and strangers and travellers. There was nothing cynical about him, in spite of his perplexities and discouragements. He had a beautifully balanced character and a many-sided ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... the full tide of remorseful passion had for the time abated. It was, however, fierce and agitating, the more so, perhaps, that indulgence in strong mental feeling of any kind was foreign to the severe and ascetic character of the man, and was therefore the more overpowering when it had at once surmounted all restraints. Large tears flowed down the trembling features of his thin, and usually stern, or at least austere countenance; he eagerly returned the compression of Everard's hand, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... occasions, when the parson's curiosity had tempted him to peep in also; but my grandfather looked grave and much in earnest. As for Mr. Worden himself, he met the imputation like a man. To do him justice, if he were not an ascetic, neither was he a whining hypocrite, as is the case with too many of those who aspire to be disciples and ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... entertainments were celebrated, and justly so. At her receptions one always heard the best singers and players of the season, and Epicurus' soul could rest in peace, for her chef had an international reputation. Oh, remember, you music-fed ascetic, many, aye, very many, regard the transition from Tschaikowsky to terrapin, from Beethoven to burgundy with hearts aflame with anticipatory joy—and Mrs. ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... powerless; she requires at every stage the divine grace, that is, enlightenment.[800] Thus a union of grace and freedom takes place within the sphere of the latter, till the "contemplative life" is reached, that joyous ascetic contemplativeness, in which the Logos is the friend, associate, and bridegroom of the soul, which now, having become a pure spirit, and being herself deified, clings in love to the Deity.[801] In this view the thought ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... own faith, lest he should falsify it by over-expression, lest it should seem to be more accomplished than it is. He will not even try to take delight in it; he is almost fanatically an intellectual ascetic; and yet again and again he affirms a faith which he will hardly consent to specify by uttering the name of God. He is shy about it, as if it might be refuted if it were expressed in any dogmatic terms. So many victories ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... than a strict attention to proportion would justify. It has often been assumed that a nation of athletes, who made heroes of Heracles and Theseus, Achilles and Hector, could have had nothing but contempt for the ascetic ideal. But in truth asceticism has a continuous history within Hellenism. Even Homer knows of the priests of chilly Dodona, the Selli, whose bare feet are unwashed, and who sleep on the ground. This is probably not, as Wilamowitz-Moellendorff thinks, a description of savage life, but of an ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... 'implicitly to the rule of her tastes. So absolute was her empire, that, when she became a devotee, he became a mystic: he followed her, as the satellite accompanies the planet, from the worldly gayeties of her youth, even to the foot of the altar, and the ascetic self-denial of Port-Royal. He survived her, as though he had survived himself, and lived to the extraordinary age of one hundred and four years, animated to unusual life by his gentle and amiable feelings. Such was Madame de Sevigne's principal friend. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... exceedingly, and pleasant in all his conversation." He gave good advice about earthly matters, was a faithful steward of moneys deposited with him, a guardian of widows and orphans, a righteous and loving man. In his practical life, the ascetic and gnostic element comes out strongly enough. The body, with him, was not evil, neither was it good; it was simply nothing—why care about it? He would have no portrait taken of his person: "It was humiliating enough to be obliged to carry a shadow about with him, without having a shadow ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... and fasting, was marked by refraining from marriage. But these ascetics lived in close relations with those who were non-ascetics. Monasticism is an advance upon this earlier asceticism in that it attempts to create, apart from non-ascetics, a social order composed only of ascetics in which the ascetic ideals may be more successfully realized. The transition was made by the hermit life in which the ascetic lived alone in deserts and other solitudes. This became monasticism by the union of ascetics for mutual spiritual aid. This advance is associated with St. Anthony. See ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... youthful pain at the glance of your eyes, the ascetic lays the fruit of his austerities at your feet, the songs of poets hum and swarm round the perfume of your presence. Your feet, as in careless joy they flit on, wound even the heart of the hollow wind with the ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... exemplary of the axiom that "all art aspires to the condition of music." I could almost hear Davies saying that, as if Pater had never so much as thought of it. They literally soothe with a rare poetry painted for the eye. They are illuminations for the manuscripts of the ascetic soul. They are windows for houses in which men and women may withdraw, and be reconciled to ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... prowess, deprived of affluence and suddenly overwhelmed with misery, pass their days in the forest? Who followed the steps of those princes plunged in excess of affliction? And how did those high souled ones bear themselves and derive their sustenance, and where did they put up? And, O illustrious ascetic and foremost of Brahmanas, how did those twelve years (of exile) of those warriors who were slayers of foes, pass away in the forest? And undeserving of pain, how did that princess, the best of her sex, devoted to her husbands, eminently ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... for, though utterly unlike in expression, some of the family traits were strongly marked in both. The elder wore the dress of a priest, had a pale, ascetic face, with melancholy eyes, stern mouth, and the absent air of one who leads an inward life. The younger had a more attractive face, for, though bearing marks of dissipation, it betrayed a generous, ardent nature, proud and wilful, yet lovable in spite of all ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... a hall very Arab in its character, furnished only with divans, that the great master welcomes us, with the simplicity of an ascetic and the elegant manners of a prelate. His look, and indeed his whole face, tell how onerous is the sacred office which he exercises: to preside, namely, at the instruction of these thousands of young priests, who afterwards are to carry faith and peace and immobility ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... are often witnessed within the life of one individual. For instance, Leo Tolstoy, a great and good man, at one time a sensualist, has now turned ascetic; a common evolution in the lives of the saints. But excellent as this man is, there is yet a grave imperfection in his cosmos which to a degree vitiates the truth he desires to teach: he leaves the element of beauty ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... erection of buildings on a novel plan. This plan, which was first adopted by St Bruno and his twelve companions at the original institution at Chartreux, near Grenoble, was maintained in all the Carthusian establishments throughout Europe, even after the ascetic severity of the order had been to some extent relaxed, and the primitive simplicity of their buildings had been exchanged for the magnificence of decoration which characterizes such foundations as the Certosas of Pavia and Florence. According ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was a very painful one. St. Thomas a Kempis, Drelincourt's Defence against Death, and Law's devotional works had all their part in kindling his piety into a flame. He was haunted with gloomy and superstitious fancies, and his religion assumed the darkest and most ascetic character. He always chose the worst food, fasted twice a week, wore woollen gloves, a patched gown, and dirty shoes, and was subject to paroxysms of a morbid devotion. He remained for hours prostrate on the ground in Christ Church Walk in the midst of the night, and continued his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... deemed holy and spiritual men. Unquestionably there were men among them who were both spiritual and holy, but they were considerably fewer than the general populace believed. The majority belonged to one of four types—the dry-as-dust scholar, the austere ascetic, the proud tyrant, or the jovial ton vivant. The first-class, which was the best, was not a large one; the other three were much more numerous. The present Abbot of Darley was a mixture of the two last-named, and could put on either at will, ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... a tribute from so great a saint, it seems almost a profanity—certainly a bathos—to add any more secular touches. Yet, if the portrait is even to approach completeness, it must be remembered that we are not describing an ascetic or a recluse, but the most polished gentleman, the most fascinating companion, the most graceful and attractive figure, in the Vanity Fair of social life. He is full of ardour, zeal, and emotion, endowed with a physical activity which corresponds to his mental alertness, and young with ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... He was ascetic through habit, contented himself with very little, and, like all those used to work from childhood and whose muscles have been developed, he could work much and easily, and was quick at any manual labour; but what he valued most was the leisure ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... Frugality, in fact, softens character, in animals as in men; gross feeding brutalizes it. The gormandizer gorged with meat and strong drink, a fruitful source of savage outbursts, could not possess the gentleness of the ascetic who dips his bread into a cup of milk. The Mantis is that gormandizer, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... recollection that, during college life, his friend (though very far from vicious) had certainly never seemed to take any deficient interest in the affairs of this world, nor to exhibit any predilection for an ascetic life. Indeed, he acknowledged that, after all, he could not sympathize with Mr. Newman's extreme sensitiveness in relation to this matter. ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... the same characteristics of simplicity and sincerity, of affability and social familiarity, which had ever distinguished him in every position, public or private. He assumed none of that mock dignity or ascetic reserve in his intercourse with the Bar and the people, so characteristic of little minds in elevated positions: conscious of rectitude in all things, he never feared this familiarity would give cause for the charge of improper bias in his decisions from the bench or his influence ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... face graced with fine teeth and with fine black and large eyes, in her brightness and glory entered that asylum. And saluting those ascetics grown old in practising austerities, she stood in an attitude of humility. And the ascetics living in that forest, said, Welcome! And those men of ascetic wealth, paying her due homage, said, "Sit ye down, and tell us what we may do for thee." That best of women replied unto them, saying, "Ye sinless and eminently blessed ascetics, is it well with your austerities, and sacrificial fire, and religious observances, ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... boy abode in the place, * Moon of breakfast-fte he lit by his face,[FN381] Lo! there came a Shaykh with leisurely pace * A reverend trusting to Allah's grace, And ascetic signals his gait display'd. He had studied Love both by day and night * And had special knowledge of Wrong and Right; Both for lad and lass had repined his sprite, * And his form like toothpick was lean and slight, And old bones with faded skin were o'erlaid. In such arts our Shaykh ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... you would like to have me sweeten it," said he, offering it to her; "but I will not humor such ascetic tendencies. I never ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... skill and details of literary composition. Samuel Johnson produced his principal works before the close of this period. Among the novelists, Richardson alone had anything in common with him. Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne are equally distant from the dignified pomp of his manner and the ascetic elevation of his morality. In contrast to the looseness of the novels and the skepticism of Hume, the reasoning of Butler was employed in defense of sacred truth, and the stern dissent of Whitefield and Wesley was entered against religious deadness. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... periodical attacks of ague, that many exorcisms and spells were performed to effect a cure, but all in vain. At length he was told by a friend that in a certain temple on the northern mountain (Mount Kurama) there dwelt a famous ascetic, and that when the epidemic had prevailed during the previous summer, many people had recovered through his exorcisms. "If," added the friend, "the disease is neglected it becomes serious; try therefore, this method of procuring relief at once, and ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... would you like to be a cat? In Timbuctoo each stern ascetic, Though blind to folly as a bat, Revels in love peripatetic Which makes him nimble as a cat But though I'm fond of such agility, I better like the busy bees, For they display so much ability They 'mind one ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... gravity which is the essence of Quixotic humour; it seemed to him a crime to bring Cervantes forward smirking and grinning at his own good things, and to this may be attributed in a great measure the ascetic abstinence from everything savouring of liveliness which is the characteristic of his translation. In most modern editions, it should be observed, his style has been smoothed and smartened, but without any reference to the original Spanish, so that if he has ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... interested in physical development of the young, have not given the subject the important place in their program that it deserves. This is not wholly due to indifference, but largely to their ideals that were derived from classical-ascetic standards. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... bishop only gave expression to the popular conviction that marriage is honorable in all, even the highest and holiest, nurturing some of the loveliest graces of the Christian character. The event for a time caused some stir among the enemies of the truth; but it soon died away, and the old ascetic views of piety are passing away with the social degradation in ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... upon her resolution, which she considers the accomplishment of an imperious duty; but she suffers continually, for she is not formed for those mystical contemplations, in the midst of which certain people, forgetting all affection, all earthly remembrances, are lost in ascetic delights. No; Fleur-de-Marie believes, prays, submits herself to the rigorous and harsh observance of her order; she pours out the most evangelical consolations, the most humble cares upon the poor sick women ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... than of the individual. I will not, however, take upon me to say that the slumbers of this monarch were disturbed in consequence of the extraordinary and frightful passages, which, accompanied with bizarre cuts,[287] were now introduced into almost every work, both of ascetic divinity and also of plain practical morality. His predecessor, Richard, had in all probability been alarmed by the images which the reading of these books had created; and I guess that it was from such frightful objects, rather than from the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... gleam under black, mobile brows that seemed to denote a considerable sense of humour. The whole of his face held an astonishing amount of vitality, but the lips were straight and rather hard, so clean-cut as to be almost ascetic. He looked to her like a man who would suffer to the utmost, but never lose his self-control. And she thought she read a pride more than ordinary in the cast of his features—a man capable of practically anything save the asking ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... myself who had just left school, was quite inexperienced in all worldly matters, and particularly in the chapter of women, but in whom he detected good abilities and a very strained idealism, he affected ascetic habits. With other companions he showed himself the intensely reckless and dissipated rich man's son he was; indeed, he amused himself by introducing some of the most inoffensive and foolish of them into the wretched dens of vice and letting them ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... Prince Ito as the two best Japanese administrators sent to Korea. He was followed, in September, 1895, by Viscount General Miura, an old soldier, a Buddhist of the Zen school and an extreme ascetic. ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... his life, he had but one answer,—that he had six generations of long-lived farmers behind him, and had their strength to draw upon. All his physical habits, except in this respect, were unexceptionable: he was abstemious in diet, but not ascetic, kept no unwholesome hours, tried no dangerous experiments, committed no excesses. But there is no man who can habitually study from twelve to seventeen hours a day (his friend Mr. Clarke contracts it to "from six to twelve," but I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the honor of his disinterested virtue, as virtue always receives its meed of honor when it stands erect on its own prerogative, and is not moved by the contradictions of unreasonable and wicked men. Yet he was no ascetic. He liked companionship, was not fastidious or exacting, never petulant or vindictive, but gentle and forbearing. He had especial tenderness for those 'good-hearted' young men who can never refuse to do wrong when they are invited. A distinguished officer of one of our professional institutions ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... returned Rastignac without laughing. 'Possibly in your place I might plunge into the unspeakable delights of that ascetic course; it possesses the merits of novelty and originality, and it is not very expensive. Your Monna Lisa is sweet, but inane as music for the ballet; I ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... and is manifest in life that continues and is increased in fuller measures of joy, heightened to fairer beauty, instinct with love in the heart of man. Wiser were the ascetics whom I used to scorn; they made themselves ascetics of the body, but I have been an ascetic of the soul." ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... a favorite doctrine of the Christian Fathers that concupiscence, or the sensual passion, was the "original sin" of human nature; and it must be owned that the progress of knowledge, which is usually extremely opposed to the ascetic theory of life, concurs with the theological view, in showing the natural force of this appetite to be far greater than the well-being of man requires. The writings of Malthus have proved, what the Greek moralists ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... vicious, while Honoria, who had inherited much of the romantic temperament of her mother, was both unscrupulous and irresponsible. Sent to Constantinople on account of an intrigue with her chamberlain, Honoria, bored by the ascetic life in which she found herself and furious at her virtual imprisonment, sent her ring to Attila and besought him to deliver her and make her his wife as Ataulfus had done Placidia her mother. Though, it seems, the Hun disdained ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... of the bishopric of Seez. Maternal uncle, guardian, guest, and boarder of Madame du Bousquier—nee Cormon—of Alencon; he died in 1819, almost blind, and strangely depressed by his niece's recent marriage. Entirely removed from worldly interests, he led an ascetic life, and an uneventful one, entirely consumed in thoughts of salvation, mortifications of the flesh, and secret works of charity. [Jealousies of ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... hurt her like the sudden stab of a knife. His face was worn and lined; there was something ascetic-looking in the hollowed line from cheek-bone to chin and in the stern, austere closing of the lips, while the eyes—the mocking blue eyes with the laughter always lurking at the back of them—held an ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... to wisely cherish it. Unfortunately, they also show exaggeration of compliment and praise which detract from his words of sincere and honest admiration. Too often, also, he gives undue value to works of mercy, and exalts acts of ascetic self-denial. ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... scale of natur', Mr. Eld?" said Gold, turning his ascetic face and mournful eyes ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... sense of God at all, or if he was capable of knowing God through the emotions. But I understood that as a child he had had a religious up-bringing with a strong moral side to it. His private life was, in the usual limited sense, blameless. He was almost ascetic in his habits, except as to smoking. I lived with him five years without ever knowing him to tell a direct verbal falsehood, constantly as he used to practise deceit in other forms. Can you understand the soul of a man who never hesitated to take steps that would have the effect of hoodwinking ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... some antiseptic book, something frigid, intellectual, ascetic. At last she thought she had it. On her shelf she found an uncut volume, a present from some one who had never read it, but had bought it because it cost several dollars and would ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... the lovely Mohammedan city of Bhopal. To the south and east ran a strip of country as barren and heartacheish as if the very rocks and earth had turned Buddhist, beyond which a range of low rounded hills, not unlike topes, completed the ascetic suggestion. But, turning from this, we saw Mohammedanism at its very loveliest. Minarets, domes, palaces, gardens, the towers of the citadel, waters of lovely lakes, all mingled themselves together in the voluptuous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... great book upon his knees, a slight and thoughtful smile playing around the corners of his finely-cut mouth. His whole face was intensely spiritual in expression. The features were delicately cut, and bore the impress of an ascetic life, as well as of gentle birth and noble blood. He was, in fact, a scion of an ancient and powerful house; but it was one of those houses that had suffered sorely in the recent strife, and whose members had ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Church (Rs. 55, 56). It thus happened that the monasteries unintentionally began to preserve and use the ancient Roman books, and from using them at first as models for style, an interest in their contents was later awakened. While many of the monasteries remained as farming, charitable, and ascetic institutions almost exclusively, and were never noted for their educational work, a small but increasing number gradually accumulated libraries and became celebrated for their literary activity and for the character ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... a thin, ascetic-looking man of many bones and little linen, who spoke with the concentrated fury of a fanatic against alcohol in all its varieties. Dick, who had so far taken more interest in Rachel's gloves, which she had dropped, and with which he was kindly ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... desert. After practising the most severe austerities for the space of three years, Siva, mounted on his bull, with his spouse Parvati by his side, appears before the hermit, who is overjoyed at the sight of the deity. Siva bids him ask any boon and it should be granted. The royal ascetic desires to have a son. Then says Siva: "For thy long penance we grant thy request. Choose then—a son who shall always be with thee till death, but shall be the greatest fool in the whole world, or four daughters who shall live with thee for ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... upon this immortal carelessness and delight. Whether his figures are tranquil or rapturous, there is in his colour an expression of something far from their felicity. Indeed, however voluptuous the forms may be, the colour is always ascetic. It is not that he seems to disapprove of those glorified pleasures of the senses, but that he cannot satisfy himself with his own conception of them, as Titian could. Titian represents a world in which all the mind consents to delight. His figures are not foolish, ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... such as these they endeavoured to controvert the PARROCO who, being a fighter to the death, a resourceful ascetic of unbending will, never admitted defeat. He bethought him of other shifts. On one celebrated occasion he actually induced the bishop—tired as the old prelate was, after his morning's ride on the white donkey—to attend the performance, hoping to obtain from him some confirmation of his ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... of Naaman, the Syrian, and the restoration to life of the son of the Shunamite woman, in reward for her hospitality, and the interview with Hazael before he became king. All his predictions came to pass. He seems to have lived an isolated and ascetic life, though he had great influence with the people and the king, like other prophets of ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... deadening monotony of "plain" food. Chicken or mutton, beef or venison, finnan haddie or brook trout, eggs or oysters thus "sauced," taste all alike—sauce! To use such ready-made sauces with dishes cooked a l'anglaise is logical, excusable, almost advisable. Even the most ascetic of men cannot resist the insidiousness of spicy delights, nor can he for any length of time endure the insipidity of plain food sans sauce. Hence the popularity of such sauces amongst people who do not observe the correct culinary principle of seasoning food judiciously, ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... field of Austerlitz. My father took a different view. He declined to take advantage of this opening into the upper world, because, as he said, I don't know from what experience, the conversation turned chiefly upon petty personal gossip. The feasts of the great were not to his taste. He was ascetic by temperament. He was, he said, one of the few people to whom it was the same thing to eat a dinner and to perform an act of self-denial. In fact, for many years he never ate a dinner, contenting himself with a biscuit and a glass of sherry ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... He had a good idea of the fellow in the one glance he gave him: a pale, thin face, black eyes with a strange spark in them, a burning glance like the inventor's or the fanatic's, and black hair. It was an ascetic face, and yet there was passion of an unnamed sort ready to flash out and do strange things, overthrow the fabric of an ordered life perhaps, or contradict the restraint of years. He stood motionless until ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... British Association for the Advancement of Science, a thoughtful paper by Dr. Graham of Ireland showed that there was less insanity among Roman Catholics than Protestants in Ireland, due to difference in type of religion, Protestants of Ireland being intensely morbid and ascetic in their Calvinism. (Congregationalist, Nov. 29, 1902, p. 781.) I should not be surprised, if investigation was made, that similar results would be seen in America not only between Protestants and Roman Catholics, but among Protestants themselves. I should not be surprised ...
— The Defects of the Negro Church - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 10 • Orishatukeh Faduma
... this young man, as in most of the men who live in that way, of amazing profundity,—passions too vast to be drawn into petty incidents. His want of means compelled him to lead an ascetic life, and he conquered his fancies by hard work. After paling all day over figures, he found his recreation in striving obstinately to acquire that wide general knowledge so necessary in these days to every man who wants to ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... he was obliged to get up and take it from where she sat. She perceived then that though extremely thin he was lithe and well-shaped. And in spite of her unconquered prejudice, she was obliged to own she liked his steely gray hawk-like eyes and his fine, rather ascetic, clean-shaven face. He did not look at her specially. He may have taken in a small, pale visage and masses of mouse-colored hair and slender legs—but nothing struck him particularly except her feet. As his eyes dropped to the ground ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... rejoicing for his restoration. This had from the first given offence as well to those members of the Presbyterian Church who saw in his Majesty's return no particular cause for joy, as to those more ascetic spirits who objected on principle to all holidays. May 29th was therefore hailed as the day divinely marked, as it were, for the purpose on hand, a crowning challenge ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... tittered audibly as they tumbled into the sleigh: they had regained their former spirits. "Where shall I take you?" said the stranger quietly. There was a hurried whispering; and then Kate said boldly, "To the Institute." They drove silently up the hill, until the long, ascetic building loomed up before them. The stranger reined up suddenly. "You know the way better than I," he said. "Where do you go in?"—"Through the back-window," said Kate with sudden and appalling frankness. "I see!" responded their ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... sweet, proud lips. I knew that I should be thinking of my papers, my future; but a quick perversity made me dwell for a long trotting time in a dream of feminine excellence, in a dream of feminine beauty which was both ascetic and deeply sensuous. I know hardly how to say that two eyes, a vision of lips, a conception of a figure, should properly move me as I bounced along the road with Jem Bottles. But it is certain that it came upon me. The eyes of the daughter of the great ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... grand figure of Jesus as it lies in the primary strata of Christian literature. Is he the kindly, peaceful Christ depicted in the Catacombs? Or is he the stern Judge who frowns upon the altar of SS. Cosmas and Damianus? Or can he be rightly represented by the bleeding ascetic, broken down by physical pain, of too many mediaeval pictures? Are we to accept the Jesus of the second, or the Jesus of the fourth Gospel, as the true Jesus? What did he really say and do; and how much that is attributed to him, in speech and action, is the embroidery of the various parties ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the opinion of my See that it would hardly do to send a missionary into a country like this who is not well versed in English—a country where, they think, so far from understanding any language besides his own, scarcely one individual in ten speaks his own intelligibly; or an ascetic person where, as they say, high and low, male and female, are, at some period of their lives, fond of a renovating glass, as it is styled—in ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... him steal up-stairs, while the shadows from three banisters passed over her face like the beat of wings. On the landing he paused strong in his renunciation, and gave her a look of memorable beauty. For all his culture, Cecil was an ascetic at heart, and nothing in his love became him like the ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... Colonel; "do you mean Hotchkiss the President of the Ditch Company?" He had recognized the name of a prominent citizen—a rigid ascetic, taciturn, middle-aged man—a deacon—and more than that, the head of the company he had just defended. It ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... dear Dean?" said Ashe, enclosing the frail, ascetic hand in both his own. "I trust I have not kept you waiting. My mother was with me. Sit there, please; you will ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and women denying themselves necessaries to acquire mere trifles, to obtain some particular gratification, or some intellectual or material enjoyment. A Christian or an ascetic may disapprove of these desires for luxury; but it is precisely these trifles that break the monotony of existence and make it agreeable. Would life, with all its inevitable drudge and sorrows, be worth living, if, besides daily ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... invaluable scrolls may have perished in the Puritan bonfire! Persons, the librarian of Balliol, sold old books to buy Protestant ones. Two noble libraries were sold for forty shillings, for waste paper. Thus the reign of Edward VI. gave free play to that ascetic and intolerable hatred of letters which had now and again made its voice heard under Henry VIII. Oxford was almost empty. The schools were used by laundresses, as a place wherein clothes might conveniently be dried. The citizens encroached on academic property. Some schools were quite destroyed, ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... with the papal brief dragged on till January or February 1591.[254] To all who saw Luis de Leon at this time it must have occurred that his career was drawing to a close. He had never been robust; his sedentary habits, his ascetic practices, and his prolonged imprisonment combined to wear him down. His last years were packed with troubles. The Inquisition watched him with suspicious eyes; he had always regarded the Dominicans and Jeromites as ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... others keeping guard before the convent gate. This convent is also very large, but not so immense as that of San Francisco. The padre prior is a good little old man, but has not the impressive, ascetic visage of the guardian of the other convent. His room is as simple, though not in such perfect order; and his bed is also furnished with a comfortable mattress. An air half military, half monkish, pervades the convent—aides-de-camp of the president ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... outbreak of the last French war in America, he returned to New France, a changed and reformed man; an ascetic in his living, and, although a soldier, a monk in the rigor of his penitential observances. His professional skill and daring were conspicuous among the number of gallant officers upon whom Montcalm chiefly relied ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... was an ant, a spinster ant, Whose virtues were so many That she became intolerant Of those who hadn't any: She had a small and frugal mind And lived a life ascetic, Nor was her temperament the kind ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... like a call to battle. He loved courage, enterprise, brave natures, a brave word, an ugly virtue; everything that lifts us above the table where we eat or the bed we sleep upon. This with no touch of the motive-monger or the ascetic. He loved his virtues to be practical, his heroes to be great eaters of beef; he loved the jovial Heracles, loved the astute Odysseus; not the Robespierres and Wesleys. A fine buoyant sense of life and of man's unequal character ran through all his thoughts. He could not tolerate the spirit ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that species of superstition of which I am treating: the gloomy idea of spirits revisiting the earth to gaze on those who they loved, was congenial to his mind, and an overheated fancy indulged beyond its due limits, converted the morbid visionary into the superstitious ascetic. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... of the agonies of the poor soul before him, and for whom he had a hearty pity and liking too. But each was looking at the matter with his or her peculiar eyes and views of morals, and the Major's morals, as the reader knows, were not those of an ascetic. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... himself as he sat on the oak bench that ran around the room, polished by serge gowns and the rough broadcloth of cassocks. Notwithstanding the early hour, several persons beside himself were waiting. A Dominican striding back and forth, ascetic and serene of face, two nuns buried in their hoods, telling their beads on long rosaries which measured their time of waiting, priests from the diocese of Lyon, recognizable from the shape of their hats, and other ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the service of James V. of Scotland, and had his share of shipwrecks, battles, and amorous adventures. An illness which produced total deafness made him a scholar and poet, as in another age and country it might have made him a saint and an ascetic. With all his industry, and almost religious zeal for art, he is one of the poets who make themselves, rather than are born singers. His epic, the Franciade, is as tedious as other artificial epics, and his odes are almost unreadable. We are never allowed to forget that he is the poet who ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... soul offers an analogy. The feeling that a conflict between sensuous and ascetic feelings, or selfish and moral impulses, or practical and intellectual ambitions, within us not merely lowers the claims of one or both parties and permits neither to come to quite free self-realization but also threatens the unity, the equilibrium, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... I'm sure I'm no ascetic; I'm as pleasant as can be; You'll always find me ready with a crushing repartee; I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer, I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer; To everybody's prejudice I know ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... unreasoned and unreasonable, in which there seemed hope of some such atonement, or expiation, as the same ascetic nature would once have found in fasting or the scourge, prevailed with her. She rose. "Mr. Libby," she panted, "if you will let me, I should like to go with you in your boat. Do you think it will ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... virtues, the only cushion on deck, and was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought out already a box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzen-mast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol. The director, satisfied the anchor had good hold, made his way aft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily. Afterwards there was silence on board the ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Buddhas; called also Nidana Buddhas, and Pratyeka Jinas, and explained by "individually intelligent," "completely intelligent," "intelligent as regards the nidanas." This, says Eitel (pp. 96, 97), is "a degree of saintship unknown to primitive Buddhism, denoting automats in ascetic life who attain to Buddhaship 'individually,' that is, without a teacher, and without being able to save others. As the ideal hermit, the Pratyeka Buddha is compared with the rhinoceros khadga that lives lonely in the wilderness. He is also called Nidana Buddha, as having mastered ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... shadowed by the broad hat. It was not a handsome face, but it was one not likely to be readily forgotten. It was worn and haggard, the features strongly aquiline, the eyes somewhat sunken; it was the face of a man who had lived the life of an ascetic and who, with a capacity for sharp suffering, had suffered and was ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... friends who followed the case. Whereas for the curate it was possible to simulate immense ardour, without needing either to humble your pride or call invention to your aid: the worship took place from afar. The curate was, moreover, no unworthy object; indeed he was quite attractive, in a lean, ascetic fashion, with his spiritual blue eyes, and the plain gold cross that dangled from his black watch-ribbon—though, it must be admitted, when he preached, and grew greatly in earnest, his mouth had a way of opening as if it meant to swallow the church—and Laura was by no means his sole admirer. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... ought to be worshipped as the omnipotent deity. [240] He also conceived an intense aversion to marriage, and fled from home in order to avoid the match which had been arranged for him. He was attracted by the practice of Yoga, or ascetic philosophy, and studied it with great ardour, claiming to have been initiated into the highest secrets of Yoga Vidya. He tells in one of his books of his many and extensive travels, his profound researches in Sanskritic lore, his constant meditations ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... of ascetic productions arrived in 1825 by a Dalmatian Confessor, Father Stefano Paulowich, afterwards Bishop of Cattaro, who was purposely sent from Vienna. We were indebted to him for performing mass, which had been before refused us, on ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... her, or is she its victim? Such knowledge as we possess of the general psychology of the bee warrants the belief that the swarming always takes place against the old sovereign's will. For indeed the ascetic workers, her daughters, regard the queen above all as the organ of love, indispensable, certainly, and sacred, but in herself somewhat unconscious, and often of feeble mind. They treat her like a mother in her dotage. Their respect for her, their tenderness, is heroic and boundless. The purest ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Egypt was also dominant. From some source—perhaps the Buddhist mission {93} of Asoka—the ascetic life of recluses was established in the Ptolemaic times, and monks of the Serapeum illustrated an ideal to man which had been as yet unknown in the West. This system of monasticism continued, until Pachomios, a monk of Serapis ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... seemingly almost ascetic man sets before us of to-day an almost impossible standard of living. One idea mastered him—to give Africa to the world. His life was a success, as all lives must be which have a single aim. Life was clear, elemental almost ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... at the face and appearance of the man who came upon their boat. They had never thought of encountering such a figure in the wilderness. He was of middle age, tall, well-built, and remarkably straight, but his shaven face was thin and ascetic, and the look in his eyes was one of extraordinary benevolence. Moreover, it had the peculiar quality of seeming to gaze far into the future, as it were, at something glorious and beautiful. His dress was a strange mixture. He wore deerskin ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... music is good for man and elevates him, other melodies are equally bad and enervating. An experience far wider than any we yet possess is necessary to enable us to say how far this influence is capable of extension. How far, that is, the mind may be directed on the one hand to ascetic abnegation by the systematic use of certain music, or on the other to illicit and dangerous pleasures by melodies of an opposite tendency. But this much is, I think, certain, that after a comparatively ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner |
