"Cloister" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arches, my eyes naturally directed themselves to the pavement of white and ruddy marble, polished, and reflecting like a mirror the columns which rise from it. Over this I walked to a door that admitted me into the principal quadrangle of the convent, surrounded by a cloister supported on Ionic pillars, beautifully proportioned. A flight of stairs opens into the court, adorned with balustrades and pedestals, sculptured with elegance truly Grecian. This brought me to the refectory, where the chef-d'oeuvre of Paul Veronese, representing the marriage of Cana in Galilee, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... to the lateral door which opened on the west side of the cloister, through which it was his custom to pass, a stream of persons detached itself from the flood which obstructed the great portals, and poured through the side aisle around the old lord and his party. The mass was too compact to allow him to retrace ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... tradition any foundation in fact? Why not? Through his numberless works we may easily divine the soul of the artist, and can well understand, how the calm and serene atmosphere of the monastic cell, the church perfumed with incense, and the cloister vibrating with psalms, would develop the mystic sentiment in such ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... up the remains of all sorts of fine old furniture and sculpture, but these could only be seen through the chinks, for the cells were carefully locked, and the sacristan would not open them to anyone. The second cloister, although of more recent date, was likewise in a dilapidated state, which, however, gave it character. In stormy weather it was not at all safe to pass through it on account of the falling ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the door, and the one partially open window, set deep in the stone wall. Outside I could hear voices, and the shuffling of feet on the stone slabs, but within all was silence. I had been away from this emotionless cloister life so long, out in the open air, that I felt oppressed; the profound stillness was a weight on my nerves. Would the sister be successful in her mission? Would the Mother Superior, whose stern rule I knew so well, feel slightest sympathy with my need? And if she did, would De Artigny care enough ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... the best of all fields, unworked though it is, for studying the natural history of adolescence. Its modern record is over eight hundred years old and it is marked with the signatures of every age, yet has essential features that do not vary. Cloister and garrison rules have never been enforced even in the hospice, bursa, inn, "house," "hall," or dormitory, and in loco parentis [In place of a parent] practises are impossible, especially with large numbers. The very word "school" means leisure, and in a world ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... seem little heartened by all this brave talk of righteousness. Think you the monk's life of cloister and ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... but think," said Vaura, her eyes suffused with tears, "that she would be happier in the bright world, loved and loving, than in the cloister." ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... known, devils can fly hundreds of miles: so that almost the same beat of the clock which left these two in Champagne, found them hovering over Paris. They dropped into the court of the Lazarist Convent, and winded their way, through passage and cloister, until they reached the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the entrance is a large tower (M), a constant feature in the monasteries of the Levant. There is a small postern gate at L. The enceinte comprises two large open courts, surrounded with buildings connected with cloister galleries of wood or stone. The outer court, which is much the larger, contains the granaries and storehouses (K), and the kitchen (H) and other offices connected with the refectory (G). Immediately adjacent to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... he spoke again, I realised that it was as a lawyer and not as a fighter. He had, indeed, been preparing a cautious impeachment of me. We had reached the entrance to the avenue before he began, and the cloister of its cool shade seemed a sufficiently appropriate setting for his forensic diplomacy. Outside, in the glare of the brilliant August sun, I should have flared out at him. In the solemnity of that Gothic aisle, I found influences which helped me to maintain ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... Anna, as she nestled closer to me, "if I cannot marry you I'll marry none other, and the Church does not now sanction marriage vows given unwillingly. If they drive me to it I can at least seek the cloister or the grave." ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... an architect. He built the delightful church of St. Michael, and its cloister. He also superintended the building of an important wall by the river bank in the ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... in love's elysium. And, truly, I would rather be struck dumb, Than speak against this ardent listlessness: For I have ever thought that it might bless The world with benefits unknowingly; As does the nightingale, upperched high, And cloister'd among cool and bunched leaves— 830 She sings but to her love, nor e'er conceives How tiptoe Night holds back her dark-grey hood. Just so may love, although 'tis understood The mere commingling of passionate breath, Produce more than ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... Fraser blood. My parents at an early age took me to [Rome], where they shortly died, not, however, before they had placed me in the service of a cardinal, with whom I continued some years, and who, when he had no further occasion for me, sent me to the college, in the left-hand cloister of which, as you enter, rest the bones of Sir John D[ereham]; there, in studying logic and humane letters, I lost whatever of humanity I had retained when discarded by the cardinal. Let me not, however, forget two points,—I ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... window, and knelt with her there, staring out toward the park and calling upon God to have mercy. Through the streaming mist, there came presently toward them two dim figures, carrying a third—what need to go on? After that, the house became a cloister. ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... programmes. He had forgotten even that the solemn thirtieth birthday was close upon him. It seemed to him as if his own egoism was lying about in scattered pieces, which he must collect in the calm of this cloister, and reconstruct. He wanted to resume possession of himself, very slowly, without violent effort. He wound up his watch; the hour was not yet half-past ten. The ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... is said they were designed to supply the place of the Greek and Roman theatre, which had been banished from the Church. The plays were written and performed by the clergy. They seem to have first been employed to wile away the dulness of the cloister, but were very soon introduced to the public. Adam and Eve in Paradise, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection were theatrized. The effect could hardly be salutary. The different persons of the Trinity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of the oldest inhabitants. However, even the oldest inhabitants breathed a deep sigh of relief, when finally they were housed in the brand-new church up beside the college campus, a real stone church, with transepts and painted windows and choir-stalls within, and a cloister and a grand tall tower without. The ramshackle old wooden church had been dear to them, had even remained dear to them after the railroad had laid down its tracks under their very eaves; but they were fretted by the crudely caustic comments of strangers ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... shadow of an elderly painter, who was comfortably dozing on the laurels of thirty years before. The change from that sleepy environment to the vivid enthusiasm and dash of Carolus-Duran’s studio was like stepping out of a musty cloister into the warmth and ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... and a msalliance. [ 1 ] But her impressible and ardent nature was absorbed in other objects. Religion and its ministers possessed her wholly, and all her enthusiasm was spent on works of charity and devotion. Her father, passionately fond of her, resisted her inclination for the cloister, and sought to wean her back to the world; but she escaped from the chateau to a neighboring convent, where she resolved to remain. Her father followed, carried her home, and engaged her in a round of ftes and hunting parties, in the midst of which she found herself surprised into ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... remarkable. The nave, which is without aisles, is surmounted by two cupolas; its interior is whitewashed and plain in appearance, while the choir is decorated with medieval paintings. Adjoining the church to the south-east there are remains of a cloister built from 1494 to 1509. St Urcisse, the chief of the other ecclesiastical buildings, stands near the cathedral. Dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, it preserves Romanesque capitals recarved in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... daughter of Don Guzman of Seville, beloved by Don Ferdinand, but destined by her mother for a cloister. She loves Ferdinand, but repulses him from shyness and modesty, quits home and takes refuge in St. Catherine's Convent. Ferdinand discovers her retreat, and after a few necessary blunders they are married.—Sheridan, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... destroys me. Sire, if compassion can influence a king, for mercy's sake revoke a law so severe. As the reward of a victory by which I lose that which I love, I leave him my possessions; let him leave me to myself, that in a sacred cloister I may weep continually, even to my last sigh, for my father ...
— The Cid • Pierre Corneille
... apparent close of my story, I was in St. Andrews, the sacred, solemn-looking old city that is the essence of all the antiquity of Scotland. But it was neither its academic air nor its ecclesiastical forlornness, its famous links nor venerable ruins of cloister and cathedral that attracted me at that time. It was the promise of a sermon by Dean Stanley which detained me on my southward journey. I had heard Dean Stanley once, and naturally I could not but ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... owes Philoctete, the most faithful imitation of a Grecian piece) abounds with those painful impressions which form the rock this species may be said to split upon. The piece may perhaps be well adapted to enlighten the conscience of a father who has determined to force his daughter to enter a cloister; but to other spectators it ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... outwardly secularized: and the minority who could not tolerate the secularization of her ideals took refuge in the hermit's cell or in the cloister. In these retreats was developed the practice of Christianity as an art or science of individual sanctity, but at the cost of a certain aloofness from the rough and tumble of workaday life. The Christianity of ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... of the eleventh century, the Cistercians, and, a few decades later, the Premonstrants sprang up: the former in Burgundy (Citeaux), the latter in a woody country near Laon (Premontre). The order of Carthusians, founded about the year {88} 1084, which commenced with a cloister of anchorites (Carthusia, Chartreuse) in a rugged valley near Grenoble, was the most austere in its practice. A life of solitude and silence in a cell, a spare and meagre diet, a penitential garment of hair, flagellations, and the rigid practices of devotional exercises, were ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... Along the South Cloister lay the magnificent refectory, an upper hall of the time of Edward II., with arcades of the time of the Confessor beneath it. Very strict were the rules of behaviour in this great dining-room. No monk ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Then, he confessing himself to me that, though under arms, he was a young fledgeling priest in Popish orders, I began upon him with such words on his disgracing the noble profession of arms as might have made him choose to return to his cloister; when suddenly he fled, and, being young and light-footed, robbed me, not only of such caduacs and casualties as an experienced cavalier might well take from his prisoner for ransom, but also, as now it appears, of my good name. For I doubt not that this musketeer ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... marry again," he said presently, "and I have told you that I also intend never. But—" he stopped short. The hotel court was there before them, and the scent of some night flowers came on the evening breeze from those beds of riotous color which fill the central space of the old Cloister. ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... convent! You, who are so gay, so full of life and health and exuberant spirits, immure yourself in a cloister! Impossible!" ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... occasions to gratify his people, so he continued to do in the choice of a wife. This was Matilda, daughter of Malcolm the late King of Scots; a lady of great piety and virtue, who, by the power or persuasion of her friends, was prevailed with to leave her cloister for a crown, after she had, as some writers report, already taken the veil. Her mother was sister to Edgar Atheling, the last heir-male of the Saxon race; of whom frequent mention hath been made in the two preceding reigns: and thus the Saxon line, to the great contentment of the English nation, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... of a fellow-student, an accident with which he met on a vacation trip, and a sudden thunderstorm, he gave an ominous interpretation which deepened his despondency. At last he determined, "inconsiderately and precipitately," to enter a cloister. His friends "instinctively felt he was not qualified or fitted for the sublime vocation to which he aspired, and they accordingly used all their powers to dissuade him from the course he had chosen. All their efforts were fruitless, and from the gayety and frolic of the banquet" which ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... all, except the Abbess and the novice Clare. Fair, kind, and noble, the Abbess had early taken the veil. Her hopes, her fears, her joys, were bounded by the cloister walls; her highest ambition being to raise St. Hilda's fame. For this she gave her ample fortune—to build its bowers, to adorn its chapels with rare and quaint carvings, and to deck the relic shrine with ivory and costly gems. The poor and the pilgrim blessed ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... her crystal wand three times and said: "I can see a walled-in garden in a distant land. A bell is ringing for vespers, and all the nuns with downcast eyes hasten across a cloister to the chapel door. The youngest of them all sees a bed of snowdrops lift their white heads and she smiles, because they are an emblem of hope, and a ...
— The Dumpy Books for Children; - No. 7. A Flower Book • Eden Coybee
... rectangular windows, and had stood under that key-stoned doorway, could be divined and measured by homely standards of to-day. It was a house in whose reverberations queer old personal tales were yet audible if properly listened for; and not, as with those of the castle and cloister, silent beyond the possibility ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... liberty and personal responsibility to God, went out from the German cloister like a roaring storm and echoed in thunder tones among the columned aisles ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... window. This fortification Grew from the ruins of an ancient abbey; And to yond side o' th' river lies a wall, Piece of a cloister, which in my opinion Gives the best echo that you ever heard, So hollow and so dismal, and withal So plain in the distinction of our words, That many have suppos'd it is ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... fane Call its sad votaries to the shrine of God, And, with the cloister and the tented sod, ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... school, he learns unerringly to draw, unerringly and enduringly to paint. His tasks are set him without question day by day, by men who are justly satisfied with his work, and who accept it without any harmful praise, or senseless blame. Place, scale, and subject are determined for him on the cloister wall or the church dome; as he is required, and for sufficient daily bread, and little more, he paints what he has been taught to design wisely, and has passion to realize gloriously: every touch he lays ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... learning, although this, true to say, had not been acquired so cheerfully or willingly as the skill at arms. Father Francis had, however, taught him to read and to write—accomplishments which were at that time rare, except in the cloister. In those days if a knight had a firm seat in his saddle, a strong arm, a keen eye, and high courage, it was thought to be of little matter whether he could or could not do more than make his mark on the parchment. The whole life of the young was given to acquiring skill in arms; ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... largest capacity for human happiness, but she guessed that the imagination could be so trained that when far from worldly conditions it could create a world of its own, and would shrink more and more from the practical realities. For Imagination has the instinct of a nun in its depths and loves the cloister of a picturesque solitude. It is a Fool's Paradise, but not inferior to the one which mortals are at liberty to ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... indicating the end of the period. Three or four boys went forward to confer with Mr. Beaver about certain vexing algebraic problems. Needless to say, neither Burton nor Harrington was among these. They drifted out into the cloister with the rest of the class, having certain problems of their own, not algebraic. One or two boys addressed Burton and were rebuffed with a curt word, which was unusual, as Burton was almost painstakingly friendly ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... voice of blasphemy the fane alarms, The cloister startles at the gleam of arms. [14] 60 The [15] thundering tube the aged angler hears, [G] Bent o'er the groaning flood that sweeps away his tears. [16] Cloud-piercing pine-trees nod their troubled heads, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... the age. Intellect has not gone,—the loftiest order of well-trained intellects will never go,—the other way[523]. It is, on the contrary, none but a very shallow wit which errs. Had it confined its speculations to the cloister, or come abroad with sorrow and shame, we should have pitied in silence, and in silence also have lamented. But when it comes insultingly abroad, and sets up a claim to intellectual superiority even while it denies the most sacred truths;—then pity gives way before indignation ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... road, in the middle of which you will find the Pauline fountain. Having passed this monument, and having lingered a moment on the terrace of the church of St. Peter Montorio, which commands the whole of Rome, you will visit the cloister of Bramante, in the middle of which, sunk a few feet below the level, is built, on the identical place where St. Peter was crucified, a little temple, half Greek, half Christian; you will thence ascend by a side door into the church itself. There, the attentive cicerone ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... period or other have been formed out of smaller ones, stood the altar, and near it the sedilia; whilst on the south side are the doorways which led to the dormitories of the monks engaged in the night services of the church. On the side next the river, a long line of building forms the eastern cloister and the crypt; on the same side is a handsome archway leading into the chapter-house, the roof of which is vaulted, groined, and supported by beautiful slender columns. Beyond are the remains of the refectory, and the room of audience—the only place where, according ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... represents the finished and magnificent fabric of the spiritual life. Her words ring with a strange terseness and earnestness as she here pens her spiritual testament. She points out the mischievous foibles, the little meannesses, the spirit of cantankerousness and strife, which long experience of the cloister had shown her were the besetting sins of the conventual life. She places before them the loftier standard of the Cross. Her words, direct and simple, ring out true and clear, producing somewhat the solemn effect of a Commination ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... a brake on a nature's strength; they cannot destroy it. The drunkard in a cloister, reduced to a half-setier of cider at each meal, will no longer get drunk, but he will ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Angelico—by reason of the angelic character which belonged to him and to his paintings; otherwise Fra Giovanni; he was a monk in a Dominican cloister. He entered the convent when he was twenty years old; and from that time, till he was sixty-eight, he served God ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... spiritual fire. Browning's unknown painter is a delicate spirit, who dares not mingle his soul with the gross world; he has failed for lack of a robust faith, a strenuous courage. But his failure is beautiful and pathetic, and for a time at least his Virgin, Babe, and Saint will smile from the cloister wall with their "cold, calm, beautiful regard." And yet to have done otherwise to have been other than this; to have striven like that youth—the Urbinate—men praise so! More remarkable, as the summary of a civilisation, than My Last Duchess, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... ramparts; and meanwhile, within and out of shot, dwelt in her private garden which she watered with grateful tears. It seems strange to say of this colourless and ineffectual woman, but she was a true enthusiast, and might have made the sunshine and the glory of a cloister. Perhaps none but Archie knew she could be eloquent; perhaps none but he had seen her - her colour raised, her hands clasped or quivering - glow with gentle ardour. There is a corner of the policy of Hermiston, where you come suddenly in view of the summit of Black Fell, sometimes ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... still lived, and from the bloody scene of her husband's execution she repaired to Kiew. There would she live in the cloister of the Penitents, preserving the memory of the being she loved, and imploring the vengeance of Heaven ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... ordinary use occupy twenty large chambers. The five elementary school-rooms are each fifty feet square, the kitchen is eighty-three feet square, and the fencing-hall and garden adjoining contain together over sixty-six hundred square feet. The cistern under the cloister is of nearly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... will steal, sir, an egg out of a cloister] I know not that cloister, though it may etymologically signify any thing shut is used by our author, otherwise than for a monastery, and therefore I cannot guess whence this hyperbole could take its original: perhaps it means only this: He will steal any thing, however trifling, ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... but it was not all. The marquise, as we know, had taken refuge in a convent, where Desgrais dared not arrest her by force, for two reasons: first, because she might get information beforehand, and hide herself in one of the cloister retreats whose secret is known only to the superior; secondly, because Liege was so religious a town that the event would produce a great sensation: the act might be looked upon as a sacrilege, and might bring about a popular rising, during which the marquise might ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... that this age is an irreverent age. I say that an irreverent age is one like the age of the Schoolmen; when men defined and explained all heaven and earth by a priori theories, and cosmogonies invented in the cloister; and dared, poor, simple, ignorant mortals, to fancy that they could comprehend and gauge the ways of Him Whom the heaven and the heaven of heavens could not contain. This, this is irreverence: but it is neither irreverence nor want of faith, if a man, awed by the mystery ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... severest of tests. At home men live mostly among colleagues and comrades; on a journey they are placed in continual contrast with men of different pursuits and different habits of life. The shipman away from his ship, the monk away from his cloister, the scholar away from his books, become interesting instead of remaining commonplace, because the contrasts become marked which exist between them. Moreover, men undertake journeys for divers purposes, and a pilgrimage in ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Novgorod. Before his imagination there passed a procession of other suffering women, Russian Tsaritsas, who, at the wish of their husbands, had adopted the dress of the nun and had maintained their intellect and their strength of character in the cloister.... ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... entirely on the supposition that a single aperture is given, which it is the object to fill with glass, diminishing the power of the light as little as possible. But there are many cases, as in triforium and cloister lights, in which glazing is not required; in which, therefore, the bars, if there be any, must have some more important function than that of merely holding glass, and in which their actual use is to ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... at Chester and saw the Cathedral, which is not of the first rank. The Castle. In one of the rooms the Assizes are held, and the refectory of the Old Abbey, of which part is a grammar school. The master seemed glad to see me. The cloister is very solemn; over it are chambers in which the singing ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... applied himself to with extreme facility. So remarkable a change was not in that age to be accounted for but by a miracle. It was asserted and believed that the Holy Virgin, touched with his great desire to become learned and famous, took pity upon his incapacity, and appeared to him in the cloister where he sat almost despairing, and asked him whether he wished to excel in philosophy or divinity. He chose philosophy, to the chagrin of the Virgin, who reproached him in mild and sorrowful accents that he ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... archaeology, geography, natural science, politics, the social life and thought of the day, the physical peculiarities of Ireland and the manners and customs of its people, the picturesque scenery and traditions of his own native land, the scandals of the court and the cloister, the petty struggle for the primacy of Wales, and the great tragedy of the fall of the Angevin Empire - is all alike dealt with in the bold, dashing, offhand style of a modern newspaper or magazine article. His first important work, the 'Topography of Ireland,' is, ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... seem odd to you, but I know hardly anybody here. We attempt no social duties," she singled out this one and that, whom Alicia had asked to meet her, and mentioned them to him with a warm pleasure in implying one of the advantages of belonging to the world rather than to the cloister. Stephen knew their names and their dignities. He received what she said with suitably impressed eyebrow and nods of considerate assent. Hilda carried him along, as it were, in their direction. She was full that night of a triumphant sense of her own vitality, her success and value ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... of the Cid he brought with him the body of the campeador, mounted upon his steed Bavieca, and solemnly and slowly the train wound on until the corpse of the mighty dead was brought to the cloister of the monastery of Cardena. Here the dead hero was seated on a throne, with his sword Tisona in his hand; and, the story goes, a caitiff Jew, perhaps wishing to revenge his brethren who had been given ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... commences Louis was seriously meditating his flight from home and the world to bury himself in some cloister of religion. His studies of philosophy and history had convinced him of the immortality of the soul and the vanity of all human greatness. In his frequent meditations he became more and more attracted towards the only lasting, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... the hut on the edge of the moor. Of course the modern fancy of making nature answer to all human moods, like an Eoelian harp, is morbid and exaggerated, but it has a beauty in it, and a certain truth. Our tenderer souls take refuge in the country now, as they used to do in the cloister. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... these things are symptoms of something unsatisfied, of an unrest impossible to analyze, still less to describe, yet not incomprehensible; a something ready to break out if occasion calls into flying upleaping flame? It is the accidia of the cloister; a trace of sourness, of ferment engendered by the enforced stagnation of youthful ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... prison of condemned persons shall you go at three yron gates, the court paued and vauted round about, and open aboue as it were a cloister. In this cloister be eight roomes with yron doores, and in ech of them a large gallerie, wherein euery night the prisoners do lie at length, their feet in the stocks, their bodies hampered in huge ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... of my heart, agree with those that speak in favor of Messer Simone dei Bardi. It is the native, intimate, and commendable wish of a man to abolish his enemies—I speak here after the fashion of the worldling that I was, for the cell and the cloister have no concern with mortal passions and frailties—and Messer Simone was in this, as in divers other qualities, of a very manly disposition. He thought in all honesty that it would be very good for him to be the ruler of Florence, yet, also, and no less, that it would be very good for Florence ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... therefore, and if the dauphin loved his mistress, he certainly had a friendship for his wife. And, on her part, whenever she felt an inclination to complain of her lot, Catherine bethought herself that if she quitted her position she would probably find no refuge but the cloister, and that—taking it all around—the court of France (in spite of the humiliations and vexations one might experience there) was an abode more desirable than a convent;" this, then, is the secret of her ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... that the squared and carved beams were brought from the San Francisco Mountains, more than a hundred miles away, under the direction of the priests, and that they were carved and finished prior to transportation. They were intended for the chapel and cloister, but the latter building was never finished. The roof timbers were finally distributed among the people of Shumopavi and Shupaulovi. At Shumopavi one of the kivas, known, as the Nuvwatikyuobi (The-high-place-of-snow—San Francisco Mountains) kiva, was ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... pence, went on vigorously. A recognised means of publicly raising funds was employed in February 1455-6, when the Archbishop proclaimed an indulgence of forty days to those who would help the Friars Preachers, whose cloister and buildings including 34 cells together with their books, vestments, jewels, and sacred vessels, had been destroyed ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... years this priceless literary heritage has been waiting, precariously subjected to the vicissitudes of earthly circumstance. Like a lone great manuscript within the cloister of a mediaeval monk, Brann's work might have perished utterly soon after its creation, like a song of magic music held but fleetingly within the heart that ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... hush of evening lay upon the valley. There was even a sense of awe in the silence. It was peace, a wonderful natural peace, when all nature seems at rest, nor could the chastened atmosphere of a cloister have conveyed more ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... semi-heathen fragment of a cosmogonic lay, known as "Wessobrunn Prayer," was discovered, there has also been found, of late, a rudely-sculptured three-headed image. It is looked upon as an ancient effigy of the German Norns. The Cloister of the three Holy Bournes, or Fountains, which stands close by the place of discovery, is supposed to have been set up on ground that had once served for pagan worship. Probably the later monkish establishment of ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... anxious Dorothy and gave an agreeable turn to the thoughts of all. So, at a nod of consent, the girls sped along the cloister, seeking the great kitchen and the salaaming ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... "Price shorter nor ever I remember it since Cloister's year. It's a cert. for the Three J's. What about ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... frees itself from the pipe that shaped it, and floated away on the breath of the wind. Through a breach in the moss-grown wall, the first sunbeam stole in and pointed a bright finger across the cloister garth at the charred spot in the centre, where missals and parchment rolls had made a roaring fire to warm the ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... are virtues—graces we must call them too—just as necessary for the perfect man, which your present training ought to foster as (for most of you) no other training can; virtues which the old monk tried to teach by the stern education of the cloister; which are still taught, thank God, by the stern education of our public schools; which you and your comrades may learn by the best of all methods, ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... 1662, and preserved in the Chapter library, gives a more minute account of this work of destruction. "The windows were generally battered and broken down; the whole roof, with that of the steeples, the chapter-house and cloister, externally impaired and ruined both in timber-work and lead; water-tanks, pipes, and much other lead cut off; the choir stripped and robbed of her fair and goodly hangings; the organ and organ-loft, communion-table, and the best and chiefest ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... of Santa Lucia, in which Caterina, after completing her studies under Lanfranco, painted several large pictures. After the death of the Cardinal, with money which he had given her for the purpose, Caterina founded a cloister, with a seminary for ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... last prince, having made a vow of chastity, notwithstanding his marriage with Keneswitha, a Mercian princess, daughter to Penda, went in pilgrimage to Rome, and shut himself up during the rest of his life in a cloister. Selred, his successor, reigned thirty-eight years, and was the last of the royal line; the failure of which threw the kingdom into great confusion, and reduced it to dependence under Mercia [w]. Switherd first acquired the crown, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... yon bold brow, a lordly tower; In that soft vale, a lady's bower; In yonder meadow, far away, The turrets of a cloister gray;" ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... episode was probably in the summer vacation, and put a stop to his work on the farm rather than to his studies in college. Burgoyne's defeat released the young volunteer, but an education which was divided between the camp and the cloister was pretty sure to be fruitful in something beside scholastic learning. A college, scattered as if by the enemy's bombs into country villages, was likely to think with all the eagerness of youth upon questions of political ethics, and of the broad grounds of human freedom. There are ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... do on all perpendicular spaces, converting them irresistibly into registers and dials; tasted too, as deeply, of the peculiar stillness of this place of priests; saw a rosy English lad come forth and lock the door of the old foundation-school that dovetailed with cloister and choir, and carry his big responsible key into one of the quiet canonical houses: and then stood musing together on the effect on one's mind of having in one's boyhood gone and come through cathedral-shades as a King's scholar, and yet kept ruddy with much cricket in misty river meadows. On ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... less constrained there than elsewhere, a wife is subjected to stricter obligations. The former makes her father's house an abode of freedom and of pleasure; the latter lives in the home of her husband as if it were a cloister. Yet these two different conditions of life are perhaps not so contrary as may be supposed, and it is natural that the American women should pass through the one ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... seventy-eight years of age. Both of them immediately made the acquaintance of Ninon and Madame de la Saliere, and, astonished at the profound merit they discovered, deemed it to their advantage to frequent their society for the purpose of adding to their talents something which the study of the cloister and experience in the king's cabinet itself had never offered them. Abbe Gedoyn became particularly attached to Mademoiselle de l'Enclos, whose good taste and intellectual lights he considered such sure and safe guides. His gratitude soon received the additions of esteem and admiration, and the ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... broke into loose ragged masses swirling in different directions and variously lighted, the sun almost shining through some of the clefts between them. Cleeve Abbey, lying in the trough of a green valley through which runs a stream, the cloister garth and the Abbot's seat at the end of it, are most impressive. Under the turf lie the dead monks. A place like this begets half- unconscious dreaming which issues in nothing and is not wholesome. It would be better employment to learn something about the history ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... quadrangle, a magnificent view is obtained through the fine old Gothic open window, which looks down sheer to the great depth below, and commands the entire country seaward. Descending into the courtyard to the northern cloister we pass two large sarcophagi of white marble. One of these has been elaborately worked in rich garlands of flowers and very grand bulls' heads, together with nude figures, all of which have been much damaged. These sarcophagi have been used as cisterns for containing water, as the tap is ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... beautiful story, "The Cloister and the Hearth," in which Charles Reade has drawn such a vivid picture of human life at the close of the Middle Ages, there is a good description of the siege of a revolted town by the army of the Duke ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... extended, though he hardly could have raised it. Yet he was always a melancholy man; of late years he had become almost a solitary man. Like Charles of Austria, he had disbanded his body-guard, and had retired to the cloister. Perhaps a longer life would not have brought much enjoyment with it. But these are idle speculations, and we have rather to call to our remembrance the fact that one of the brightest and most distinguished of our race, a man whose very existence was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... carried on men's shoulders. It was but a short journey from his bedroom to his grave. But the bell had been tolling sadly all the morning, and the nave and the aisles and the transepts, close up to the door leading from the transept into the cloister, were crowded with those who had known the name and the figure and the voice of Mr Harding as long as they had known anything. Up to this day no one would have said specially that Mr Harding was a favourite in the town. He had never been forward enough in anything to become the acknowledged possessor ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... myself taking the part of those whom he has accused. So good a heart, and so wrong a head, surely no novelist ever before had combined! In storytelling he has occasionally been almost great. Among his novels I would especially recommend The Cloister and the Hearth. I do not know that in this work, or in any, that he has left a character that will remain; but he has written some of his scenes so brightly that to read them ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... the Abbot pacing the gravel path between the cloister and the church, with his chancellor at his side. His cowl was thrown back and the white gown of his Order, which hung full to his feet, was fastened close to the throat. His face was pale, and the well-cut features and the small hands betokened his ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... the Abbey of St. Albans were forced open, and a throng of townsmen crowded in, led by one William Grindcobbe, who compelled the abbot to deliver up the charters which held the town in serfage to the abbey. Then they burst into the cloister, sought the millstones which the courts had declared should alone grind corn at St. Albans, and broke them into small pieces. These were distributed among the peasants as visible ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... life. Here was the way of salvation clearly set forth, and four ways which are not the way of salvation, all of which I had tried and found unavailing. This was the silent but speaking testimony of some unknown denizen of a cloister, who lived in the beginning of the fifteenth century, in the days of ignorance and superstition. But notwithstanding this darkness, he was brought out into the marvellous light of the Gospel, and has left this interesting record ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... of gay striped linen cloth, about which some people, mostly women and children, were moving quietly, looking at the goods exposed there. The ground floor of the building round the quadrangle was occupied by a wide arcade or cloister, whose fanciful but strong architecture I could not enough admire. Here also a few people were sauntering or sitting ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... over Mother Hilda went to the Prioress. "We'll speak on this matter later." And the Prioress went to her room, hurriedly. The nuns hung about the cloister, whispering in little groups, forgetful of the rule; the supporters of the Prioress indignant with the priest, who had dared to call into question the spiritual value of their Order, and to tell them it would be more pleasing to God for them ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... night, by order of the holy Prior, drubbed forth of the sacred precincts. So brother Anselm became Giles o' the Bow—the kind Saints be praised, in especial holy Saint Giles (which is my patron saint!). For, heed me—better the blue sky and the sweet, strong wind than the gloom and silence of a cloister. I had rather hide this sconce of mine in a hood of mail than in the mitre of a lord bishop—nolo episcopare, good brother! Thus am I a fighter, and a good fighter, and a wise fighter, having learned 'tis better to live to fight than ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... great cloister's stillness and seclusion, By guardian angels led, Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Carlists first assembled was not in a house, but on a paved platform, extending along one side of the large church, by which it was masked from the view of persons approaching from the direction of Vittoria. A sort of cloister, with stone benches beneath it, ran along the wall of the church, and in front of the platform was a broad greensward, used as a playground by the village children. Whilst the Carlists grouped themselves in the cloisters, talking eagerly together, and waiting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... the middle of the street, forming an oblong open square, the inside whereof is a hundred and forty-four feet in length from east to west, and a hundred and seventeen in breadth from north to south; the area sixty-one square poles, on every side whereof is a noble piazza or cloister, consisting of twenty-eight columns and arches ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... said the Austrasians, "is the likeliest man for our leader; a son of the wisest and firmest ruler the kingdom has yet acknowledged." It was agreed, therefore, by the people, that he should be invited to come, and a summons was sent from Metz, the then capital of the district, to the cloister at Cologne. Young and brave, pining in uncongenial society, and debarred from the employment of his talents, Charles seized this opportunity of release. Eagerly accepting the invitation, he hastened ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... half a real; and if he had had his wits about him and had known how eager I was for them, he might have safely calculated on making more than six reals by the bargain. I withdrew at once with the Morisco into the cloister of the cathedral, and begged him to turn all these pamphlets that related to Don Quixote into the Castilian tongue, without omitting or adding anything to them, offering him whatever payment he pleased. He was satisfied with two arrobas of raisins and two bushels ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... lines marked out the town, Before me stretched the noble Roadstead's tide: And there I saw the Evening sun go down Casting a parting glory far and wide— As King who for the cowl puts off his crown— So went the sun: and left a wealth of light Ere hidden by the cloister-gates of Night. ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... far worse than even I feared," said Lady Muriel. "I knew Fulk to be unscrupulous and grasping, but I did not think him capable of such foul oppression. For you, my sweet Agnes—would that I could prevail on him to leave you in the safe arms of the cloister—but, alas! I have no right to detain you from ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... so long, till at last he drew me out of the raffling place to the shop-door, and then to a walk in the cloister, still talking of a thousand things cursorily without anything to the purpose. At last he told me that, without compliment, he was charmed with my company, and asked me if I durst trust myself in a coach with him; he told me he was a man of honour, and would ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... the light, show wan and woeful; withal, lovely as ever; piquant in their pale beauty, like those of some rebellious nun hating the hood, discontented with cloister and convent. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... even sincere, as far as her religion would permit her to be so, but her physical organization was defective; weak health stunted her growth and chilled her spirits, and then, destined as she was for the cloister, her whole soul was warped to a conventual bias, and in the tame, trained subjection of her manner, one read that she had already prepared herself for her future course of life, by giving up her independence ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... provincial towns whose aspect inspires melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is, perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a stranger might think them uninhabited, were it not that he encounters suddenly the pale, cold glance of a motionless person, whose half-monastic face peers beyond the window-casing at ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... trembling, but she could do nothing: in October 1600, Jacqueline, then nine years old, took the veil and the vows of poverty and obedience in the midst of a noble company. She was far too excited to think about the religious ceremony which had bound her for life to the cloister, and certainly nobody else—unless her mother was present—thought about it either. Her very name was changed too, and instead of 'Jacqueline' she became 'Angelique,' as ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... Ghibelline fortress— whither Claude Lorraine used to come to paint pictures of which the surrounding landscape is still so artistically, so compositionally, suggestive. We went into the inner court, a cloister almost, with the carven capitals of its loggia columns, and looked at a handsome child swinging shyly against the half- opened door of a room whose impenetrable shadow, behind her, made her, as it ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... "In a French cloister, the hours of meals were announced by the ringing of a bell. A favorite cat belonging to the establishment was accustomed, as soon as she heard the summons, to run quickly to the dining hall, that ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie
... giving her every advantage for securing the highest attainments. The education of young ladies, at that time, in France, was conducted almost exclusively by nuns in convents. The idea of the silence and solitude of the cloister inspired the highly-imaginative girl with a blaze of enthusiasm. Fondly as she loved her home, she was impatient for the hour to arrive when, with heroic self-sacrifice, she could withdraw from the world and its ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... least his illustrious brother, it may truly be said that while the one was a saint in the cloister, the other was a saint in the very thick of life's battle. [Footnote: "Henry Newman... stood for a spiritual Tory; while Francis Newman was a spiritual Radical" (Morning Leader, October, 1897).] ... I would speak of him rather ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... practical. The great object of the mission of Jesus was to "save His people from their sins;" [198:4] and the tendency of all the teachings of the New Testament is to promote sanctification. But the holiness of the gospel is not a shy asceticism which sits in a cloister in moody melancholy, so that its light never shines before men; but a generous consecration of the heart to God, which leads us to confess Christ in the presence of gainsayers, and which prompts us to delight in works of benevolence. The true ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... of the old surveyors.—It consisted of two principal quadrangles besides the dial court, the buttery court and the dove-house court, in which the offices were situated. The fountain court was a square of 86 feet, on the east side of which was a cloister of seven arches. On the ground floor of this quadrangle was a spacious hall; the roof of which was arched with carved timber of curious workmanship. On the same floor were the lord Holland's, the marquis of Hamilton's, and lord Salisbury's apartments, the council chamber and waiting room. On ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... intention to turn "Religieuse;" and that Caussin ought to dispose the king's mind to see the wisdom of the resolution. It happened, however, that Caussin considered that this lady, whose zeal for the happiness of the people was well known, might prove more serviceable at court than in a cloister, so that the good father was very inactive in the business, and the minister began to suspect that he had in hand an instrument not at all fitted to it like ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... contemptuous: therefore, as I think, He pass'd me speechless by; and doing so Hath made me more compassionate his fate." So we discours'd to where the rock first show'd The other valley, had more light been there, E'en to the lowest depth. Soon as we came O'er the last cloister in the dismal rounds Of Malebolge, and the brotherhood Were to our view expos'd, then many a dart Of sore lament assail'd me, headed all With points of thrilling pity, that I clos'd Both ears against the volley with mine hands. As were the torment, if ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... "that you were still at the convent. You are not going to take the veil there, are you? It would be a great pity. No? You wish to lead the life of an intelligent woman who is free and independent? That is well; but it was rather an odd idea to begin by going into a cloister. Oh!—I see, public opinion?" And Madame Strahlberg made a little face, expressive of her contempt ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... doctrines of Eckhart, who is the great original thinker of the German mystical school, and seems in some ways to revert to an earlier type of devotional literature. The "Imitation" may perhaps be described as an idealised picture of monastic piety, drawn at a time when the life of the cloister no longer filled a place of unchallenged usefulness in the social order of Europe. To find German mysticism at its strongest we must go back a full hundred years, and to understand its growth we must retrace our steps as far as the great ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... slept many a warlike Welsh prince, whose bones could scarcely be in worse order than the magnificence which once had sheltered them. She piloted him down long galleries with arcades on one side, like a cloister, and a row of rooms on the other wherein the retainers of ancient princes of the house of Penrhyn had been wont to rest their thews after a hard day's fight. She slid back panels and conducted him up ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... also a remarkable power of indicating a landscape background with the fewest possible touches. His book- illustrations have been .mainly confined to magazines and novels. Those in "Once a Week" to a "Good Fight," the tale subsequently elaborated by Charles Reade into the "Cloister and the Hearth," present some good specimens of his earlier work. One of these, in which the dwarf of the story is seen climbing up a wall with a lantern at his back, will probably ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... 1833, a very holy Brahman, who lived in his cloister near the iron suspension bridge over the Bias river, ten miles from Sagar, sat down with a determination to wrestle with the Deity till he should be compelled to reveal to him the real cause of all these calamities of season under which the people were groaning.[l3] ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman |
