"Austerity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to her, she started and shrank away; but there was an austerity in the lonely white road and in the country silence which must have chilled a woman like her; and her bags ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... moreover, had become one of the focal points of his New York life. He liked the cheery, informal atmosphere of the house whose old-fashioned austerity was tempered with a dash of modern frivolity; he liked the people he met there, people too assured of their own social position to be touchy upon slight points of social precedence. Most of all, he liked Beatrix Dane, herself. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... than ever in his dear books, which he quitted only to run for an hour to the fief of Moulin, this mixture of learning and austerity, so rare at his age, had promptly acquired for him the respect and admiration of the monastery. From the cloister, his reputation as a learned man had passed to the people, among whom it had changed a little, a frequent occurrence at that time, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... once seen in the gallery of the Louvre. Ombos told me that the life of Albert Magnus had been written by Dr. Sighart. This Dominican, magnus in magia, major in philosophia, maximus in theologia, was distinguished alike for his knowledge of the black art and his great virtue, for austerity of regimen, and dislike of any form of society. For other details of this philosopher I must refer you to Sighart's excellent monograph and Mr. James Mew's work on The Black Art from which we learn that Albert of ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... brought into the room, all that could be distinguished of his face was his prominent nose, and firm mouth covered with beard. It was a firm, energetic and sad profile. The face was strangely composed, for it began by being proud and ended with humility, it commenced in stern austerity and ended in kindness. One moment the eyes beneath the shaggy eyebrows gleamed with fires of hate, next they were softened in love as the glance fell on the sleeping, supperless child. The hand was hardened by grasping the sword-hilt, and the heart, which had so often defied the bullets of the enemy, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... outspoken directness. M. Pougeot prided himself on reading men's thoughts, but he used to say that he could not even imagine what Coquenil was thinking or fathom the depths of a nature that blended the eagerness of a child with the austerity of a prophet. ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... ethereal blue of the distance, winged their way slowly homeward to the long avenue of dark trees leading to a farm in the valley. The charm of the place was clear and sane, its beauty simple almost to austerity. This the young girl welcomed. It washed her imagination free of the curious questionings, involuntary doubts and suspicions, which the house and garden at The Hard, steeped in tradition, thick with past happenings, past passions, were prone to breed in her. No ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... and in the mood in which I had reached it, I might have devoted the rest of my life to following the lectures of Mirza Abdul Cossim, and acquired worldly consideration by my taciturnity, by my austerity, and strict adherence to Mahomedan discipline. But fate had woven another destiny for me. The maidan (the race-course) of life was still open to me, and the courser of my existence had not yet exhausted half of the bounds ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... though all are exceedingly unpalatable. These Gropoppsu (as the members of this sect call themselves) pass most of their waking hours sitting in the sunshine with folded hands, contemplating their navels; by the practice of which austerity they hope to obtain as reward an eternity ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... gone to see in her castle, ten years before, on her return to Scotland after her visit to Mary. During this ten years the unhappy mourner had made no change in respect to her symbols of grief. The apartments of her palace were still hung with black. Her countenance wore the same expression of austerity and woe. Her attendants were trained to pay to her every mark of the most profound deference in all their approaches to her. No sounds of gayety or pleasure were to be heard, but a profound stillness and solemnity reigned ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... form and subject from the Greeks, at a comparatively late date in Rome's political history. That this borrowing assisted greatly in Latin cultural advancement, none may deny; but it is also true that the new Hellenised literature exerted a malign influence on the nation's ancient austerity, introducing lax Grecian notions which contributed to moral and material decadence. The counter-currents, however, were strong; and the virile Roman spirit shone nobly through the Athenian dress in almost every instance, imparting to the literature a distinctively ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... discussed religion freely; he was associated with no religious denomination, and he professed no creed beyond the brotherhood of mankind and the infinitude of God's love and mercy. In childhood he had been reared in much of the austerity of the Puritan doctrine of the relation of this life to the hereafter, and much of the hardness and severity of Christianity, as still interpreted in many parts of New England, was forced upon him. As is not unusual in such cases, he rebelled against this conception ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... of the unseen was one, for whom, as was said of a very different French writer, "the visible world really existed." Austere as he seems, and on well- considered principle really is, his temperance or austerity, aesthetically so winning, is attained only by the chastisement, the control, of a variously interested, a richly sensuous nature. Yes, the visible world, so pre-eminently worth eye-sight at Athens just then, really existed for him: exists still—there's ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... haply find her seated in the sumptuous state chamber proper to her rank; and should she be standing, observe if she poises herself now on one foot, now on the other; if she repeats two or three times the reply she gives thee; if she passes from gentleness to austerity, from asperity to tenderness; if she raises her hand to smooth her hair though it be not disarranged. In short, my son, observe all her actions and motions, for if thou wilt report them to me as they were, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... knowledge before I went on my way. What more natural than that Vanna or any other woman should minister to my thirst for information? Men are like that. I pretend to be no better than the rest. She pleased my fastidiousness—that fastidiousness which is the only austerity in ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... doubt misplaced in view of the solemnity of the moment. A duel, whether regarded as a ceremony in the cult of honour, or even when reduced in its moral essence to a form of manly sport, demands a perfect singleness of intention, a homicidal austerity of mood. On the other hand, this vivid concern for his future had not a bad effect inasmuch as it began to rouse the anger of Lieut. D'Hubert. Some seventy seconds had elapsed since they had crossed blades, and Lieut. ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... bed, and he could not hang about the house. He did not know how to demean himself to either of the young men when he met them. He could not be cordial as he ought to be with Urmand; nor could he be austere to George with that austerity which he felt would have been proper on his part. He was becoming very tired of his dignity and authority. Hitherto the exercise of power in his household had generally been easy enough, his wife and Marie had always been loving and pleasant in their obedience. Till within ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... and the light from the dash lay palely upon her face, softening its austerity. "I don't get this at all," Philip said. "From your letter I assumed you had two or three places you wanted me to sell, but not a whole town. There must have been at least a thousand people living here, and a thousand people just don't pack up and move out all at once." When she volunteered ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... he would see her soon, and when he found himself in New York he called at the big house on Fifth Avenue, which had for so long been identified as the home of Simon Harley. It bore his impress stamped on it. Its austerity suggested the Puritan rather than the classic conception of simplicity. The immense rooms were as chill as dungeons, and the forlorn little figure in black, lost in the loneliness of their bleakness, wandered to and fro among her retinue ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... terrors of his shaggy eyebrows. A little gentleness of manner goes a long way with such young folk as we were all then, when it is seen naturally and easily worn for our sakes, and in sympathy with our accustomed glee, by one who in his ordinary deportment may have added the austerity of religion to the venerableness of old age. Smiles from old Laurence Logan, the Seceder, were like rare sun-glimpses in the gloom—and made the hush of his house pleasant as a more cheerful place; for through the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... from a mining ditch at great expense, and was of insufficient quantity. In this emergency Mulrady thought of sinking an artesian well on the sunny slope beside his house; not, however, without serious consultation and much objection from his Spanish patron. With great austerity Don Ramon pointed out that this trifling with the entrails of the earth was not only an indignity to Nature almost equal to shaft-sinking and tunneling, but was a disturbance of vested interests. "I and my fathers, San Diego rest them!" said Don Ramon, crossing ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... struck as I went along by the sudden comfortable quality of life the gushing of the black smoke out of the chimney put into the ship, and how, indeed, it seemed to soften as if by magic the savage wildness and haggard austerity and gale-swept loneliness of the white rocks and peaks. It was extremely disagreeable and disconcerting to me to have to pass the ghastly occupants of the cabin every time I went in and out; and I made up my mind to get them ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... economy, and the country is also benefiting from rising investment from abroad. Prime Minister BANHAN's government - Thailand's sixth government in five years - undoubtedly will continue Bangkok's probusiness policies despite some concerns that it is relaxing Bangkok's traditional fiscal austerity. BANHAN is beginning to address Thailand's serious infrastructure bottlenecks, especially in the transport and telecommunications sectors. Over the longer term, Bangkok must produce more college graduates with technical training and ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... soul, austerity of manners, afraid to go into wine shops, bachelor of arts, candid as a transparency, plays on the bass-viol, is disposed to change a five franc ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... utterly dissipated the force of the cavil by simply stating the actual bearings of the two classes of poetry. Ancient poetry was darkly austere and practical; the imagination was fettered by a grim austerity; the merely passionate—that which proceeds from the sphere of the sensibilities alone—finds no resting place in its vast domain; but in the poetry of Milton the element of passion is triumphant; hence Bentley, with his icy, critical, matter-of-fact temperament, could ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... distracted for the loss of his queen, abandons his throne, and, with his harp, retires into a wilderness, where he subjects himself to every kind of austerity, and attracts the wild beasts by the pathetic melody of his harp. His state of ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... determined hostility. But my endeavours on this head were by no means uniformly successful, even when my plans were the most wittily concocted; for my namesake had much about him, in character, of that unassuming and quiet austerity which, while enjoying the poignancy of its own jokes, has no heel of Achilles in itself, and absolutely refuses to be laughed at. I could find, indeed, but one vulnerable point, and that, lying in a personal peculiarity, arising, perhaps, from constitutional disease, would have been ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and then it widens again. There is very little growth of any kind below the Narrows. The rocks are polished smooth and bare as they rise from the water's edge, and it is as desolate and barren a land as one's imagination could picture, but withal possesses a rugged grand beauty in its grim austerity that is impressive. ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... not so much color about as I had expected: and austerity rather than richness is the note ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... old hero of the Roman republic, distinguished for the simplicity and austerity of his manners; was consul in 460 B.C., and on the defeat of a Roman army by the AEqui, called to the dictatorship from the plough, to which he returned on the defeat of the AEqui; he was summoned to fill the same post a second time, when he was 80, on the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... persons the effect of sinking it. There is interposed, at frequent regular intervals throughout the series of their days, a richer vein, as it were, of time. The improvement of this, in a manner by no means strained to the austerity of exercise prescribed in the Puritan rules, might diffuse a worth and a grace over all the time between, and assist them against the tendency there may be in its necessary habits and employments, to depress the intelligent nature into meanness or debasement. The space which they are passing ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... repugnance nor in scorn Our spirit holds you, Nor would our pen abase you More than it must—to call you feminine! Exemption I am sure you would not claim, Being subject to the common influence; Shining on earth as do the stars in heaven. Your sov'reign beauty, ladies, our austerity Cannot depreciate, nor would do so, For we have not in view a superhuman kind, Such poison,[H] therefore, far from you be set, For here we see the one, the great Diana, Who is to you as sun amongst the stars. Wit, words, learning ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... power and merit is Yoga. It is inculcated in the Yoga philosophy and is supposed to stand for a high mental discipline which speedily qualifies one for absorption into the Deity. It is manifested in the form of abstract meditation and austerity—an austerity embodied in asceticism and self-mortification. From early times this method has been held high in honour, and today is universally esteemed as the most powerful and speedy boat wherewith to cross the sullen stream ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... only disturbed by the fall of an apple, a long- checked sigh from Dick, and a sob from Fancy, he said with real austerity— ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... think of Calvinism I see, not Dr. Pound, who preached it, but my father, who practised and embodied it. I loved him, but he made of righteousness a stern and terrible thing implying not joy, but punishment, the, suppression rather than the expansion of aspirations. His religion seemed woven all of austerity, contained no shining threads to catch my eye. Dreams, to him, were matters ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... companion of Mohammed who succeeded Abu Bakr in the Caliphate (A.H. 13-23634-644). The Sunnis know him as Al-Adil the Just, and the Shiahs detest him for his usurpation, his austerity and harshness. It is said that he laughed once and wept once. The laugh was caused by recollecting how he ate his dough-gods (the idols of the Hanifah tribe) in The Ignorance. The tears were drawn by remembering ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the old vaulted chambers of the Dominican monastery at Perth echoed with sounds that would seem incongruous in such a home of austerity, but that the disturbed state of Scotland rendered it the habit of her kings to attach their palaces to convents, that they themselves might benefit by the "peace of the Church," which was in general ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... had lost his equilibrium. From washing the town's soiled linen to loaning it money was a change so sudden and radical that the rise made him dizzy; he was apt, therefore, to be a little erratic, his manner varying during a single conversation from the cold austerity of a bloodless capitalist to the free and easy democracy of the days when he had stood in the doorway of his laundry in his ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... circumstance and be denied the soft uses of illusion; but if that note of sympathy had been offered to Hilda she would doubtless have retorted that it was precisely because she saw him that she loved him. His figure, in its poverty and austerity, was always with her; she made with the fabric of her nature a kind of shrine for it, enclosing, encompassing, and her possession of him, by her knowledge, was deep and warm and protecting. I think ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... man with strongly-marked features, long, fair hair and a short, tawny beard, divided into two points. His dress suggested the dark clothes of an English clergyman; and his whole person, for that matter, wore an air of austerity and ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... Austerity allied, Or clad in cynic garb of sordid hue: See him with Tyranny's fell tools supplied, The rack, the fagot, or the torturing screw, Or girt with Bigotry's besotted crew: What wonder, thus beheld, his looks should move Our scorn ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... hardly recognizable as a young woman. And for Rickman to go shopping with the Beaver in Tottenham Court Road, to follow her undeviating course through the furniture galleries, to note the infallible instinct by which she made for and seized upon the objects of her choice, to see the austerity with which she resisted the seductions of the salesman who sought to entangle her with a more expensive article, the calmness of her mind in dealing with the most intricate problems of measurement and price, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... speak again, and gravely and sorrowfully, but without a touch of austerity in her tone or manner, censured me for making use of such irrational language, and for allowing bitter, resentful thoughts to enter my heart. But the despondence and sullen rage into which I had been thrown made ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... were received under the protection of the gods? In that case the supposed butcher-shop must have been a sort of office, and the triclinium a dormitory. However that may be, the table and the altar, the kitchen and religion, elbow each other in this strange palace. Our austerity revolts and our frivolity is amused at the circumstance; but Catholics of the south are not at all surprised at it. Their mode of worship has retained something of the antique gaiety. For the common people of Naples, Christmas is a festival of eels, Easter a revel of casatelli; they ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... that this tribute is only fair to Her Majesty. She is tall, perhaps five feet eight inches, with deep-blue eyes and beautiful colouring. She has a rather wide, humorous mouth. There is not a trace of austerity in her face or in any single feature. The whole impression was of sincerity and kindliness, with more ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... morality has nothing to do with art, or even that everything moral should be destitute of art. These people are completely deceived and unwittingly promote pornography, by repelling humanity with their austerity and driving it to the opposite extreme. The aesthetic and moral sentiments should be harmoniously combined with intelligence and will, each of these departments of the mind participating by its special energies in the elevation ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... fine spectacle, apart from all its indissoluble associations of awe and beauty. The mitigating hour softens the austerity of a mountain landscape magnificent in outline, however harsh and severe in detail; and, while it retains all its sublimity, removes much of the savage sternness of the strange and unrivaled scene. A fortified city, almost surrounded ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... or nothing for you now, my dear fellow," Felix was saying, among other things, to his youngest brother, as he looked through his spectacles at the distant fields with sad austerity. "And, therefore, we must make the best of it. But I do entreat you to endeavour to keep as much as possible in touch with moral ideals. Farming, of course, means roughing it externally; but high thinking may go with ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... until a man came to know it, then this impression waned and left a critic puzzled. The square cut of his face and abrupt angle of his jaw did not indeed belie Will Blanchard, but the man's smile magically dissipated this austerity of aspect, and no sudden sunshine ever brightened a dark day quicker than pleasure made bright his features. It was a sulky, sleepy, sweet, changeable face—very fascinating in the eyes of women. His musical laugh once fluttered sundry young bosoms, brightened many pretty eyes ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the papers respecting the business, only now and then throwing in a skilful catchword as prompter, when he saw the principal, and apparently most active magistrate, stand in need of a hint. As for Sir Robert Hazlewood, he assumed on his part a happy mixture of the austerity of the justice, combined with the display of personal dignity appertaining to the baronet of ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... triumphs. The laws were remodeled in the same severe and abrupt spirit. Usury was abolished. Whatever Savonarola ordained, Florence executed. By the magic of his influence the city for a moment assumed a new aspect. It seemed as though the old austerity which Dante and Villani praised were about to return without the factious hate and pride that ruined medaeival Tuscany. In everything done by Savonarola at this epoch there was a strange combination of political ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... all, what a beauty! a beauty at once so sensuous and so spiritual—the beauty of flowering laurel, the beauty of austerity aflower. Here the very senses prayed. Surely this was the most beautiful prose book ever written! It had been compared, he saw, with Gautier's "Mademoiselle de Maupin;" but was not the beauty of that masterpiece, in comparison ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... of life as it would in future be spent at the Manor. To begin with, the house itself was greatly improved in appearance by the addition of extra furniture and draperies sent down from the lavishly equipped house in town. The cold austerity of the entrance-hall was turned into something positively approaching cheerfulness by the presence of crimson portieres, a huge tapestry screen shutting off the staircase, and, best of all, by a brass brazier which, piled high with ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of a recluse student, and to have looked for sympathy and response for his speculations from an uneducated and frivolous girl. Love has blinded, and will continue to blind, the wisest men to calculations as easy and as certain as these. And Milton, in whose soul Puritan austerity was as yet only contending with the more genial currents of humanity, had a far greater than average susceptibility to the charm of woman. Even at the later date of Paradise Lost, voluptuous thoughts, as Mr. Hallam has observed, are not uncongenial to him. And at an earlier ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... turned treachery into a science and violence into an instrument; and sometimes let themselves be intoxicated into mad lust and ferocity, as their subjects were occasionally intoxicated with mad austerity and mysticism; but the excesses of mad vice, like the excesses of mad virtue, lasted only a short time, or lasted only in individual saints or blood-maniacs; and the men of the Renaissance speedily regained their ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... sure of this," returned Lousteau, "if you have anything in you, the war will know no truce, the best chance of success lies in an empty head. The austerity of your conscience, clear as yet, will relax when you see that a man holds your future in his two hands, when a word from such a man means life to you, and he will not say that word. For, believe me, the most brutal bookseller in the trade ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... heard of him, and was in dismay when she found that he was to stay with them at Drumbarrow parsonage for three days. If Mr. Carter did not like clerical characters of her stamp, neither did she like them of the stamp of Mr. Carter. She had heard of him, of his austerity, of his look, of his habits, and in her heart she believed him to be a Jesuit. Had she possessed full sway herself in the parish of Drumbarrow, no bodies should have been saved at such terrible peril to the ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... hint of their inevitable adjuncts,—the licentiousness in which he indulged at the very time that he made a most brilliant marriage, and the delight that he took in boys past their prime (a practice which he also taught Nero to follow). Nevertheless, his austerity of life had earlier been so severe that he had asked his pupil neither to kiss him nor to eat at the same table with him. [For the latter request he had a good reason, namely, that Nero's absence would enable ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... There is no austerity. A monk may not over-eat, but he must eat enough; he must not wear fine clothes, but he must be decent and comfortable; he must not have proud dwellings, but he should be sheltered ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... tablecloth struck a pleasant harmony with the subdued bluish green of the worn carpet; the Windsor chairs and the legs of the table had been carefully denuded of their glaring varnish and stained a sober brown; and the austerity of the whole was relieved by a ginger-jar filled with fresh-cut flowers and set in the ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... Anglican Church: "Every sermon was an experience;" made memorable by that "still figure, and clear, low, penetrating voice, and the mental hush that fell upon his audience while he meditated, alone with the Alone, in words of awful austerity. His discourses were poems, but transcripts too from the soul, reasonings in a ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... totally unfit, to a degree of which the parson himself was a witness, and by further hints had served fully to identify, in the mind of the old gentleman, poor Madame Arles with the mother of Adele. A knowledge of this fact had grievously wounded the Doctor; he could not cease to recall the austerity with which he had debarred the poor woman all intercourse with Adele upon her sick-bed. And it seemed to him a grave thing, wherever sin might lie, thus to alienate the mother and daughter. His unwitting agency in the matter had made him of late specially mindful of all the wishes and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... are ably laid down. The author confesses that he feels a difficulty in generalizing the characteristics of the Florentine school. He adopts the somewhat exaggerated (as he allows) account of M. Levesque. His characteristics are—fine movement, a certain sombre austerity, an expression of vigour, which excludes perhaps that of grace, a character of design, the grandeur of which is in some sort gigantic. They may be reproached with a kind of exaggeration; but it cannot be denied that there is in this exaggeration ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... beauties, as you can prove by comparing it with other late Gothic spires, including those of Viollet-le-Duc. Its chief fault is to be where it is. As a companion to the crusades and to Saint Bernard, it lacks austerity. As a companion to the Virgin of Chartres, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... bring a strength-giving peace to her father's troubled mind. Even Mrs. Porter, implacably bitter against racing, must condone what was so evidently Allis's study, if it tended to their happiness; the mother had softened somewhat in the austerity of ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... appear in person before Mrs Deborah, which she immediately did. When Mrs Deborah, putting on the gravity of a judge, with somewhat more than his austerity, began an oration with the words, "You audacious strumpet!" in which she proceeded rather to pass sentence on the prisoner ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... wants she was sure to discover and supply. Under the skilful and fervent training of Father Omehr, she had learned to repress a spirit, perhaps naturally quick and imperious, and to practise on every occasion a humility very difficult to haughty natures. There was even some austerity in her devotion; for she would subject herself to rigorous fasts and to weary vigils, and deny herself the luxuries that her father delighted in procuring for her, little dreaming that they were secretly dispensed to the ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... away to the west, a place of far graver aspect, the name of Jean Cousin denotes a more chastened temper, even in these sumptuous decorations. Here all is cool and composed, with an almost English austerity. The first growth of the Pointed style in England—the hard "early English" of Canterbury—is indeed the creation of William, a master reared in the architectural school of Sens; and the severity of his taste might seem to have ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... build temples in their honour. The laws concerning personal and ceremonial purity, which form the principal feature of this religion, are exceedingly strict, not unlike those imposed on the ancient Jews. There are several orders of priests, monks, and nuns, whose austerity, like that of Europe, is maintained in theory more ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... know that it is so. Some have counted sex a mistake on the part of God; but the safer view is for us to conclude that whatever is, is good; some things are better than others, but all are good. That is what they thought during the Renaissance. So convent life lost its austerity, and as the Council of Trent had not yet issued its stern orders commanding asceticism, prayers were occasionally offered ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... man of the apparent age of sixty, of rather slight proportions of body, but with a large head, and coarse features, that seemed to be kept almost constantly in play by a lively, flashing countenance, in which meekness and fire, kindness and austerity, were curiously blended. As he seated himself, he turned round and faced the court with a fearless and even scornful air, but promptly rose, at the bidding of the chief judge, to listen to the information, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... the air of one whose heart is bruised or torn. That she had gained in queenliness within the past year was not evidence of austerity or the callousness that ensues upon the healing of a wound. The Ayletts were a stately race, and the few who, while she was in her teens, had carped at her lack of pride because of her disposition to choose friends from the walks of life lower than her own, and criticised as unbecoming ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... strictness, harshness &c adj.; rigor, stringency, austerity; inclemency &c (pitilessness) 914.1; arrogance &c 885; precisianism^. arbitrary power; absolutism, despotism; dictatorship, autocracy, tyranny, domineering, oppression; assumption, usurpation; inquisition, reign of terror, martial law; iron heel, iron rule, iron hand, iron sway; tight ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... before falling as a percentage of GDP in 2005. Brazil has improved its debt profile over the past year by shifting its debt burden toward real denominated and domestically held instruments. LULA DA SILVA restated his commitment to fiscal austerity by maintaining the country's primary surplus during the 2006 election and plans to pass a package of further economic reforms upon entering office for his second term. Another challenge is maintaining economic growth over a period ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... condition to be already established and obligatory, and the same reasoning then holds good with regard to the other conditions mentioned. Nor must it be said that the special duties mentioned at the beginning of the section—sacrifice, study, charity, austerity, Brahmakarya—all of them belong to the state of the householder (in which case the text would contain no reference to the other conditions of life); for on that supposition the definite reference to a threefold division of duties, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... graceful, youthful ways; he was clever, he took prizes, he shone in the Speculative Society. It should seem he must become the centre of a crowd of friends; but something that was in part the delicacy of his mother, in part the austerity of his father, held him aloof from all. It is a fact, and a strange one, that among his contemporaries Hermiston's son was thought to be a chip of the old block. "You're a friend of Archie Weir's?" said one to Frank Innes; and Innes replied, with his usual flippancy ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Eyes shot the haughty Austerity upon me of a right Courtier, your valued minutes had never been disturbed with dilatory Trifles of this nature; but my heart, on dull Consideration of your Merit, had supinely wish'd you Prosperity at a distance. ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... great difference between Rampolla and Bonpre," said Gherardi, with twinkling eyes, "Bonpre is scarcely ever in Rome. He lives a life apart—and has for a long while been considered as a kind of saint from the privacy and austerity of his life. But he has heralded his arrival in the Eternal City triumphantly—by the performance of a miracle! What do you say to this?—you who would do away with ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... doge. Soon after he was suddenly struck with blindness, and the material darkness in which he found himself involved opened his mental sight to the light of religious truth. He turned with his whole heart to God, and irrevocably devoted himself to His service and to a life of austerity and meditation. The Blessed Virgin miraculously restored his sight, and his purpose stood firm. Dividing his fortune into two equal parts, he bestowed one half on the poor, and the other to the foundation of pious institutions. ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... taken any coffee. She had seated herself apart, with a somewhat wearied expression on her face. Her black velvet gown, unrelieved by any trimming, gave her an air of austerity. In this small drawing-room smoking was allowed, and several boxes of cigars were placed beside her on the pier-table. The doctor drew near; as he selected a cigar he ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... wont to be filled with a ponderous amiability. It was not often that this took a practical form, though it is on record that in an exuberant moment he once gave a small boy a halfpenny. More frequently it merely led him to soften the porcine austerity of his demeanour. Today, business having been uncommonly good, he felt pleased with the world. He had left his cash-desk and was assailing a bowl of soup at one of the side-tables. Except for a belated luncher at the end of the room the ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... moral aspects must necessarily be far more severe. The Greek comedy which formed its basis was morally so far a matter of indifference, as it was simply on the same level of corruption with its audience; but the Roman drama was, at this epoch when men were wavering between the old austerity and the new corruption, the academy at once of Hellenism and of vice. This Attico-Roman comedy, with its prostitution of body and soul usurping the name of love—equally immoral in shamelessness and in sentimentality—with its offensive and unnatural ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... truth, the French missionaries in general have invariably distinguished themselves every where by an exemplary life, befitting their profession. Their religious sincerity, their apostolic charity, their insinuating kindness, their heroic patience, their remoteness from austerity and fanaticism, fix in these countries memorable epochs in the annals of Christianity; and while the memory of a Del Vilde, a Vodilla, &c., will be held in everlasting execration by all truly Christian ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... heroic fibre. My edge is much easier turned than was that, say, of Thoreau. Austerity would ill become me. You would see through the disguise. Yes, there is much soft rock in my make-up. Is that why I shrink from the wear and tear of ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... what the future had in store for them. Frequently a warrior left her abode with a consuming fire kindled in his breast which would rob him of sleep for many a long night, yet none dared to declare his love to her, for, lovely though she was, there was an air of austerity, an atmosphere of mysticism about her which commanded awe and reverence, and forbade even ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... himself, Monsieur Habert, a priest who was thought to belong to the Congregation, very zealous for the interests of the Church, and much feared in Provins,—a man who hid a vast ambition beneath the austerity of stern principles. The sister of this priest, an unmarried woman about thirty years of age, kept a school for young ladies. Brother and sister looked alike; both were thin, yellow, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... alone is taught with a view to attaining heaven thereby. The vanity of such trust in works is illustrated in the case of the noted hermit mentioned in Vitae Patrum (Lives of the Fathers). For over seventy years this hermit had led a life of utmost austerity, and had many followers. When the hour of death came he began to tremble, and for three days was in a state of agony. His disciples came to comfort him, exhorting him to die in peace since he had led so holy a life. But he replied: "Alas, I truly have all my life served ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... that man I had seen on the platform come my way. While he was looking around, the breath stood still on my lips, and I gave my satchel a grip which would have hurt it if such things have any feeling. I have no doubt that the austerity of my countenance scared all the rest of them off, for most of 'em passed on, after giving me a regretful glance; but when he come in swinging his new satchel, so independent, I moved a little; for I knew he was a gentleman by the way he wore his hat—clear back on his head—by ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... from every direction to consult the oracles, to worship in the temples of the sun and moon, and to place sacrificial offerings on the altars of their deities. The sacred city was ruled by the long-haired priests of the sun, famous for their austerity and their wisdom. Through the hands of these priests, as the Spanish writers tell us, yearly offerings were made of the first fruits of the fields; and each year at harvest-time, a solemn festival was celebrated, ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... themselves from all society and gave themselves up to the care of the poor and the young. In the more strict and enclosed of those retreats the inmates never came out of doors at all, but wholly sequestered themselves up to a secret life of austerity and prayer. This was the ideal life led in those Houses for religious women. But Teresa soon found out the tremendous mistake she had made in leaving her father's family-fireside for a so-called Religious House. No sooner had she ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... coming, at their devotions. Clear of the city walls, one sees nothing on every side but huge storks. They are held sacred by the natives, being supposed to migrate to Mecca every year. I heard at Ispahan that, notwithstanding the outward austerity and piety of the people of Koom, there is no town in Persia where so much secret depravity and licentiousness are carried on ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... Bishop in the way she thought he should go, and hitherto she had been wonderfully successful. All through his married life she had resided at the palace and been the ruling power, and when his wife had died twenty years before, snuffed out by the cold austerity of the Bishop's sister and the ecclesiastical monotony of Blanford, Miss Matilda had assumed the reins of power, and ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... the man was more manifest with men than with women, yet he was always admired by women, but more on account of his austerity than his effort to please. He was not given to flattery; yet he was quick to commend. He had in him something of the dash that existed when knighthood was in flower. To the great of the earth, H. H. Rogers never bowed the knee. He never shunned an encounter, save ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... too soon that Jerome introduced the monastic system at Rome—there was need of a change to austerity; none too soon that legacy-hunting on the part of the clergy was prohibited by law—it had become a public scandal; none too soon that Jerome struggled for the patronage of the rich Roman women; none too soon that this stern fanatic denounced ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... stiffened under the attack. Drawn on by Ferrier's interrogative glance, she quietly repeated, with more detail, and even greater austerity, the arguments and considerations she had made use of in her wrestle with Sir James. Chide clearly perceived that her opposition was hardening with every successive explanation of it. What had been at first, no doubt, an instinctive recoil ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sun was high when she opened her tired old eyes. She lay still for a moment, wondering where she was. This room was different from any of the other guest chambers she had occupied. There was a kind of austerity in the quaint old furniture that was lacking in the bedrooms where modern taste held sway. Nothing had been taken from or added to the Bucks' guest chamber since Grandmother Knight had reverently placed there her best highboy and her finest mahogany bed and candle ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... Austerity doth not become us, neither in doctrine nor in conversation. We ourselves live by grace; let us give as we receive, and labour to persuade our fellow-sinners which God has left behind us, to follow after, that they may partake with us of grace. We are saved ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... roses, as though in emulation of its rival entertainment, seemed on its way to complete success. Jocelyn Thew, from whose manner there seemed to have departed much of the austerity of the previous evening, had never been a more brilliant companion. He, who spoke so seldom of his own doings, told story after story of his wanderings in distant countries, until even Katharine lost ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... clinging hands Rosa began to repeat the Salve Regina. "Hail, Queen, Mother of mercy. Thou our life, our sweetness, our hope, hail!" Her voice gradually rose and lost more and more of its cool austerity, as though she were intoxicating herself with the sweet beauty of the words, until it became warm and soft and melting as she said, "To Thee we call, to Thee we sigh, as we grieve and weep in this vale of tears." And then passing from ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... doubt, I learned that this acrimonious bitterness against their suffering sisters was nearly always instigated by a desire to conceal their own defects, to raise themselves, as they thought, by depreciating others, and to lay hypocritical claim to a superior austerity and goodness which was not theirs. The really pure—and for the honour of the past age of Montalluyah, I must say there were some few who were truly good—were those only from whom the sinner received sympathy and encouragement ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... the Spartan austerity, and especially on their gimnastic training for both sexes, and to take the milder methods of exercise in use among the Grecians, we find that the chace, that foot-races, and especially dancing, principally composed the amusement of the ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... aristocratic, boasting an aristocracy of morals, and eminently persuasive of public opinion, if not commanding it. Previous to the relaxation, by amendment, of a certain legal process, this class was held to represent the austerity of the country. At present a relaxed austerity is represented; and still the bulk of the members are of fair repute, though not quite on the level of their pretensions. They were then, while more sharply divided from the titular superiors they are socially absorbing, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... uncanny wood, filled with noxious animals and adhesive vegetation—well, Dunshie was heartily sorry that he had ever volunteered for service as a scout. He had only done so, of course, because the post seemed to offer certain relaxations from the austerity of company routine—a little more freedom of movement, a little less trench-digging, and a minimum of supervision. He would have been thankful ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... themselves speechless at the bars of Strand taverns—ere they reeled again into their chambers. The same habits of uproarious self-indulgence were in vogue with the benchers of the inns, and the Doctors of Doctors' Commons. Hale's austerity was the exceptional demeanor of a pious man protesting against the wickedness of an impious age. Had it not been for the shortness of time that had elapsed since Algernon Sidney's trial and sentence, John Evelyn would have seen no reason for censuring the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... purely inland scenes and objects, he had contrived to reduce the green in his complexion to a mere tinge. But it would be paltering with the truth to say that he felt debonair. He received Sam with a wan austerity. ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... had to contend with an unpolished nature, concentrated and insensible by force of austerity. Religion and its observances had made Felton a man inaccessible to ordinary seductions. There fermented in that sublimated brain plans so vast, projects so tumultuous, that there remained no room for any capricious ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in the barn door, poised for instant return along the path of duty to the front walk, only waiting to be sure his summons would be obeyed. Stonie was sturdy, freckled, and in possession of Uncle Tucker's big gray eyes, Rose Mary's curled mouth and more than a tinge of Aunt Viney's austerity of manner. ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and wise ruler of so many Sisters in the religious profession; she, so slow to judge and condemn others, was unsparing in austerity towards herself. She had always recognised her greatest weakness in her love for this adopted daughter that might have been her own if Richard Mildare had not played traitor. She had never once yielded to the clinging of those slight hands about her heart, but she had exacted ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... enhanced dignity. I never in the whole course of my acquaintance saw him kithe so unfavourably as he did on that occasion. In the course of the evening, however, he condescended to thaw, and before the party broke up, his austerity began to leaf, and hide its thorns under the influence of a relenting temperament. It was, however, too evident—at least it was so to me—that without intending wrong, or any offence, the unchecked humour of his temper was, by its caprices, calculated to prevent him from ever gaining ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... will take his name out of thy mouth (Jer 44:26). He will have fruit. And I say further, if thou wilt do neither, yet God in justice and righteousness will still come for fruit. And it will be in vain for thee to count this austerity. He will reap where he hath not sowed, and gather where he hath not strewed (Matt 25:24-26). Barren fig-tree, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... M. Bonzig; and sat beside him, and talked to him with grim austerity for ten minutes or more, and the boy ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... and she thought it ridiculous: was it not more natural between lovers to set no store by riches or poverty, and was it not rather shabby to refuse to be indebted to her when it would give her such great joy?... However, she threw herself in with Olivier's plans: their austerity and discomfort were the very things that brought her round, for she found in them an opportunity of gratifying her desire for moral heroism. In her condition of proud revolt against her surroundings which ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... fortunes are not equal to their birth, was thinking to remove him from his studies, after having allowed him a competent maintenance for a year or two. He communicated these his thoughts to Magdalen. Jasso, his daughter, abbess of the convent of St Clare de Gandia, famous for the austerity of its rules, and established by some holy Frenchwomen of that order, whom the calamities of war had forced to forsake their native country, and to seek a sanctuary in the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... how deeply stirred she was. She had blazed up in answer to him, but that very fire lit up something in her which was not new, but which now stood out full armed—a clear-eyed austerity. ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... a line between luxury and austerity," Richard explained, as Hugh looked about him with pleased observation. "We shall not be equipped for real roughing it—not this time, though sometimes we may like to come here dressed as hunters and try living on bare boards. I just wanted it to seem like a bit of home, when she ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond |
