"Meditation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of course, has called up anxious thought and prayerful meditation. I have also considered the peculiar condition of my church—the large outlay of money in the erection of the building, and the heavy debt hanging upon it, which is increased every year by the interest. I have also considered how long I have been supported in this field of labor ...
— A Narrative of The Life of Rev. Noah Davis, A Colored Man. - Written by Himself, At The Age of Fifty-Four • Noah Davis
... respect to those youths who were most beloved by her brother; and the same hour that brought these twins to the world seemed to have breathed through them a sweetness and an affection of heart and mind which nothing could divide. If, like the virgin queen of the immortal poet, she walked 'in maiden meditation fancy free,' her brother Elphin seemed alike untouched with the charms of the fairest virgins in Corrie. He ploughed his field, he reaped his grain, he leaped, he ran, and wrestled, and danced, and sang, with more skill and life and grace than all other ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... technical studies. To the latter I had indeed devoted many years of my life, but the time had arrived when the other side seemed to demand attention. This address, though the result of much preliminary meditation, was dictated in all the hurry and worry of a Cornell commencement week and given in the Yale chapel the week following. Probably nothing which I have ever done, save perhaps the tractate on "Paper Money Inflation ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... on his visitors, he remained for some moments motionless, and in deep meditation; then he unclosed the door, and stole forth. The night was already far advanced, the heavens were luminous with all the host of stars. "I think," said the student, referring, in later life, to that crisis in his destiny—"I think it was then, as I stood alone, yet surrounded ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... back as Rob followed his companion into the dark triangular-shaped space, where, after a short time devoted to meditation, he threw himself upon his bed of leaves to lie and think ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... after my walk. He told me much of the pleasures he found in retirement, and wondered what had kept him so long out of the country. After dinner company came in, and Mr. Drugget again repeated the praises of the country, recommended the pleasures of meditation, and told them that he had been all the morning at the window, counting the carriages as they passed ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... with the garden hose. These or other symbolic rites we should perform, before we planted it in a place chosen by Chance. Then leaving a saucer of new milk for it lest it should thirst in the night we would go away, and spend the rest of the week in meditation." ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... Barbarossa; I don't know who invented it.) Certainly the discovery was not new. The charms of melancholy had been recognised by Jaques in the forest of Arden and sung by various later poets; but sentimentalism at the earlier period naturally took the form of religious meditation upon death and judgment. Young and Hervey are religious sentimentalists, who have also an eye to literary elegance. Wesley was far too masculine and sensible to be a sentimentalist; his emotions impel him to vigorous action; and are much too serious to be cultivated ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... makes it difficult for me to adhere inflexibly to my first purpose and resolution. This natural infirmity I may very much regret, and I may endeavour, by all possible means, to free my self from it. I may have recourse to study and reflection within myself; to the advice of friends; to frequent meditation, and repeated resolution: And having experienced how ineffectual all these are, I may embrace with pleasure any other expedient, by which I may impose a restraint upon myself, and guard ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... into a deserted corner of a drawing-room at his club, and there Seated himself for half an hour's meditation. How should he extricate himself from this dilemma? In what language should he address a young and beautiful woman devoted to him, but whose devotion he was bound to repudiate? He was not voluble in conversation, and he was himself aware of his own slowness. It was essential ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... when she did sleep, her dreams were disturbed and painful. The next morning, when they met at breakfast (for Vaudemont did not return to London), her eyes were red and heavy, and her cheek pale. And, still buried in meditation, Vaudemont's eye, usually so kind and watchful, did not detect those signs of a grief that Fanny could not have explained. After breakfast, however, he asked her to walk out; and her face brightened as she hastened to put on ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... roses and hyacinths with the evening breeze waving the cypress-heads, a fair youth of twenty sitting by thy side and the assurance of perfect privacy. What, prithee, would be the result?" The holy man bowed the chin of doubt upon the collar of meditation; and, too honest to lie, presently whispered, "Allah defend me from such temptation of Satan!" Yet even in Persia men have not been wanting who have done their utmost to uproot the Vice: in the same Shiraz they ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... meditation. So did Captain von Poppenheim. He kicked a pebble. So did Captain von Poppenheim—only a smaller pebble. Discipline is very ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... with my calling him comrade, he lighted me cordially to my chamber, and there left me to the sleepless meditation of ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Strether, should like it too much, what on earth, with such a bond, would become of either of them? It all depended of course—which was a gleam of light—on how the "too much" was measured; though indeed our friend fairly felt, while he prolonged the meditation I describe, that for himself even already a certain measure had been reached. It will have been sufficiently seen that he was not a man to neglect any good chance for reflexion. Was it at all possible for instance to like Paris enough without liking it too much? ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... many times, and that the last time he came in the form of an Indian prince who, instead of living in careless luxury, left his home and wandered forth among the people to discover the meaning of life. When he found it, after deep meditation, he left certain precepts and rules to his followers. Some of them are very good, resembling our own Commandments: "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not lie," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not drink intoxicating liquor." But, unlike the Mohammedans, ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... Friedrich; or what precise reception they got. Friedrich himself writes long afterwards of the event; but, as usual, without precision, except in general effect. Now, or some time after, Friedrich says he found Belleisle, one morning, with brow clouded, knit into intense meditation: "Have you had bad news, M. le Marechal?" asks Friedrich. "No, oh no! I am considering what we shall make of that Moravia?"—"Moravia; Hm!" Friedrich suppresses the glance that is rising to his eyes: "Can't you give it to Saxony, then? Buy Saxony into the Plan with it!" "Excellent," answers ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... stood on the green fields of Erin, In joyous meditation that victory was won. Surrounded by comrades, no enemy fearing. “Stand,” was the cry, “every man to his gun.” On came the Saxons then, Fighting our Fenian men, Soon they’ll reel back from our piked volunteers. Loud was the fight and shrill, Wexford and Vinegar ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... conceived. All the surprise and suspense, and every other painful part of the morning dissipated by this conversation, she re-entered the house so happy as to be obliged to find an alloy in some momentary apprehensions of its being impossible to last. An interval of meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of everything dangerous in such high-wrought felicity; and she went to her room, and grew steadfast and fearless in the thankfulness ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... hours are subdivided into so many portions, and given over to so many objects? But the unvarying testimony is that no nurses accomplish more than the German deaconesses. No matter how busy they may be, the effort is made for each to have a quiet half hour for meditation and private devotion. Every afternoon the chapel is opened for this purpose, and all the sisters who can be spared meet here. A hymn is sung, and afterward each spends the time as she will in meditation, reading the Bible or silent prayer, ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... critics have accused him of vulgar self-advertisement; in his relation to his followers he seems to me rather marked with a sort of mad modesty. He seems to wish to fly from agreement, to have as few followers as possible. All this reaches back, I think, to the three roots from which this meditation grew. It is partly the mere impatience and irony of the Irishman. It is partly the thought of the Calvinist that the host of God should be thinned rather than thronged; that Gideon must reject soldiers rather than recruit them. And ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... meaning, that irony was always considered a falsehood in spite of explanation; and that they could not see the propriety of uttering what was not strictly true, for any purpose whatever. The Sabbath is wholly devoted to the church service, to prayer, reading, and serious meditation; no work of any kind is done on that day, not even cooking, which is prepared on the ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... resort of distinct philosophic sects, the locality of separate schools; but Athens itself, the whole city, was the scene of the studies, the conversations, and the labors of Socrates. He wandered through the streets absorbed in thought. Sometimes he stood still for hours lost in profoundest meditation; at other times he might be seen in the market-place, surrounded by a crowd of Athenians, eagerly discussing the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... in profound grief. She had covered her face with her hands and, standing there in meditation, rigid as a statue, given up to her grief, telling the sad rosary of her remembrances within the shadow of her concealed and closed eyes, she herself seemed like a dead person mourning another who was dead. All at once a little motion of her back, like a flutter of wind through a willow, led ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... accentuation by Lady MONCKTON) reduced to the smallest possible algebraic expression. Mr. BANCROFT was the same Count Orloff as he was years ago on the little stage of the old Prince of Wales's Theatre; his action more deliberate than when he was younger and more impetuous; his pauses for meditation longer by a thought or so than of yore; while in his tone and manner there was just a delicately-deepened colouring of the genuine original Bancroftian "Old Master." To Mr. BANCROFT, resuscitating ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various
... the dog." Ward shook his head at her in mock meditation. "It wouldn't last overnight, if it was just the dog." He looked at her with the hidden smile. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... is itself a fact more important because less disputable than the others. Now this spirit in which a subject is regarded, important in all kinds of literary work, becomes all-important in works of fiction, meditation, or rhapsody; for there it not only colours but itself chooses the facts; not only modifies but shapes the work. And hence, over the far larger proportion of the field of literature, the health or disease of the writer's mind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was grateful for her love. God also knows how unworthy he felt. This love is such a terrible thing. A maiden goes through the ways of life, in maiden meditation fancy free, pausing beside the brook to pluck the flowers which grow on its bank, and thinking of nothing but the simple girlish things which pertain to maidenhood. Then suddenly a shadow falls across her path. It is the shadow of the Man, and the love which shall raise her to heaven ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... not her own; is not easily provoked, thinking no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth.' Methinks," said the Bishop, in a tone of gentle meditation, as he entered the Prioress's cell, "the apostle was speaking of a most human love; yet he rated it higher than faith ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... eyes. Many thoughts coming thick upon one another presently filled her mind, and half-an-hour had passed before she again recollected what she had meant to say. She opened her eyes; Ellen was sitting at a little distance, staring into the fire, evidently as deep in meditation as her ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... Desvarennes, after a few moments of meditation, "the conduct of the business of which you spoke to us a little while ago depends solely on ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... first chapter of the Gospel of Luke, we have the record of the divine announcement of the incarnation as it was made to the virgin, who had found favor in the sight of God. As she sat in the house, perhaps engaged in holy meditation, the angel Gabriel appeared unto her with the message from the throne of God. Was there ever such a message given to Gabriel before? Great as the revelation was which he was commissioned to carry to praying Daniel, ...
— The Work Of Christ - Past, Present and Future • A. C. Gaebelein
... Christ the Son of Mary; renouncing entirely blood sacrifices and heathen idols; should keep every seventh day holy, abstain from labor that day, and even from food, devoting the day to fasting and sacred meditation. Whereupon, by way of universal answer, arose a confused universal murmur of entire dissent. "Take away from us our old belief, and also our time for labor!" murmured they in angry astonishment; "how can even the land ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... inspect a lamp-post on the opposite side of the way, and then went off at a tangent to another lamp-post on the other side. Having satisfied himself that they were of the same pattern and materials, he came to a stop apparently absorbed in meditation. 'Will you go on, sir,' said the old gentleman, gravely, 'or are we to wait here for you till it's ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the engravings by Giovan Battista de' Cavalieri of the Crucifixion of S. Peter and the Conversion of S. Paul painted in the Pauline Chapel at Rome. This Giovan Battista has also executed copper-plate engravings, besides other designs, of the Meditation of S. John the Baptist, of the Deposition from the Cross that Daniello Ricciarelli of Volterra painted in a chapel in the Trinita at Rome, of a Madonna with many Angels, and of a vast number of other works. Moreover, many things taken from Michelagnolo have been ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... furniture that distracted him, set his bed in another corner, and hung up his beads in the same position that they used to occupy at Lewes. Each morning he served the Prior's mass in the tiny chapel attached to the house, and did his best both then and at his meditation to draw in the torn fibres of his spirit. At moments of worship the supernatural world began to appear again, like points of living rock emerging through sand, detached and half stifled by external details, but real and abiding. Little by little his serenity ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... in meditation through a quiet street, a hand was laid on my shoulder. I knew only one man who would stop me in that way. Was he here again, risen again, in Forstadt again, for work, or mirth, or mischief? He came in fitting with the visit I had paid. I turned and found his ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... who had not prepared herself to endure suspense. She spent nearly a week at Twickenham in this anxious state, and Belinda observed that she every day became more and more thoughtful and reserved. She seemed as if she had some secret subject of meditation, from which she could not bear to be distracted. When Helena was present, she exerted herself to converse in her usual sprightly strain; but as soon as she could escape, as she thought, unobserved, she would shut herself up in her own apartment, and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... brooms and yellow soap. Call me Sempronia from this time forward, and you confer a favour on me. And now I must write a little, so take a book and a seat on the sofa, for, at the opening of this chapter my heroine is exactly in that position, 'in maiden meditation, ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... rest, activity and receptivity succeeding one another, the rhythm of life. The steady strain, the continuous uniformity of life, is what kills. Work unrelieved by play, and play unrefreshed by work, grow equally stale and dull. Activity without reflection loses its grasp; meditation {19} without action sinks into a dream. Jesus in this passage had been absorbed in the most active and outward-going ministry; and then, as the evening comes, he turns away and goes up into the mountain and is there alone ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... more, inwardly." Of such is the counsel of St. Luis de Granada, "Imitate the sportsman who hoods the falcon that it be made subservient to his rule;" and of another Spanish mystic, Pedro de Alcantara: "In meditation, let the person rouse himself from things temporal, and let him collect himself within himself ....Here let him hearken to the voice of God...as though there were no other in the world save God and himself." St. Teresa found happiness only in "shutting herself up within herself." Vocal prayer ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... this may seem, it was in the day in which it appeared a more purely natural voice than had been heard at all, and as the poem proceeds it gains both in force and beauty. As usual she reverts to the past for illustrations and falls into a meditation aroused by the sights and sounds about her. The path has led to the meadows not far from the ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... of affairs, in not making myself a king, and separating my country from France, as France herself is compelling her to separate at last. It is true, I might now have been reigning there, instead of dying here; and, what is more worthy of meditation, my people might now have been laying aside their arms, and beginning a long career of peace. It might possibly have been so; but at what cost! Their career of freedom (if freedom it could then have been called) ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... Tis most true That musing meditation most affects The pensive secrecy of desert cell, Far from the cheerfull haunt of men, and herds, And sits as safe as in a Senat house, For who would rob a Hermit of his Weeds, 390 His few Books, or his Beads, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... should you in future become weary of it, and regret that you have not sufficient time to devote to God, and to cherish the thought of him in your heart, recollect that wherever he places you, you are as sure of his favour and acceptance, as if you passed every hour of your life in meditation and prayer. God is served, not merely with the words of the mouth or the bending of the knee; it is the pure and upright heart which he requires, and with which alone he will be satisfied; with this upright frame of mind we may live ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... daylie cares did sleepe, My spirit, shaking off her earthly prison, Began to enter into meditation deepe Of things exceeding reach of common reason; Such as this age, in which all good is geason*, And all that humble is and meane** debaced, Hath brought forth in her last declining season, Griefe of good mindes, to see goodnesse disgraced! On which when as my thought was throghly@ ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... to go home on Thursday in Passion week, and to spend the first days of the vacation there, that the pleasure of visiting the Warrens and the delight of seeing Gemma might not unfit him for the solemn religious meditation demanded by the Church from all her children at this season. He wrote to Gemma, promising to come on Easter Monday; and went up to his bedroom on Wednesday night with a soul ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... teaching in the Deer-park; the miracle that stunned the fire-worshippers; here was the Bodhisat in royal state as a prince; the miraculous birth; the death at Kusinagara, where the weak disciple fainted; while there were almost countless repetitions of the meditation under the Bodhi tree; and the adoration of the alms-bowl was everywhere. In a few minutes the Curator saw that his guest was no mere bead-telling mendicant, but a scholar of parts. And they went at it all over again, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... sudden, and went to her room earlier than usual. When her maid left her for the night, she still sat by the fire in the yellow velvet depths of a great chair, an old-world piece of furniture as well suited for sorrow as for happy people. Tears flowed, followed by sighs and meditation. After a while she drew a little table to her, sought writing materials, and began to write. The hours went by swiftly. Julie's confidences made to the sheet of paper seemed to cost her dear; every sentence ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... children in her heart) The harvest-thoughts of reapers on the hill, When the cool rose and honeysuckle fill The air, and fruit is laden on the cart. Thou breathest the delight Of summer evening at the deep-roofed farm, And meditation of the summer night, When the enravished earth is lying warm From recent kisses of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... abstraction, just awaking from dreams: well-arranged was her simple attire, smooth her dark hair, orderly her tranquil room; but what—with her thoughtful look, her serious self-reliance, her bent to meditation and haply inspiration—what had she to do with love? "Nothing," was the answer of her own sad, though gentle countenance; it seemed to say, "I must cultivate fortitude and cling to poetry; one is to be my support and the other my solace through life. Human affections ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... "I don't think anyone can hear, but I will gag you both, so that no risks may be run." When this was done, he said: "I have set the clockwork at sixty minutes; seven of those are already spent. There is still time enough left for meditation and repentance. I place the candle here so that its rays will shine upon the dial. When you have made your own peace, pray for the souls of any you have sent into ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... safe from intrusion as if she had taken refuge behind gates of triple brass. Nothing in all his life had moved him so deeply as her solicitude, her sweet trust in his honor, and he sat long in profound meditation. Any man would be rich in the ownership of her love, he admitted. That he possessed her pity and her friendship he knew, and he began to wonder if he had made a deeper appeal to her ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... only from experience, and not from the Book. It means psychologically calculated childhood opportunity, in which the now stifled instincts of leadership, workmanship, hero-worship, hunting, migration, meditation, sex, could grow and take their foundation place in the psychic equipment of a biologically promising human being. To illustrate in trivialities, no father, with knowledge of the meaning of the universal bent towards workmanship, would give his son a puzzle if he knew of the ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... regard to clean and unclean beasts was familiar to the schoolmen. St. Augustine expounds the cloven hoof as symbolic of right conduct, because it does not easily slip, and the chewing of the cud as signifying the meditation of wisdom. Dante seems here to mean that the Pope has the true doctrine, but makes not the true use of it for his own guidance and the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... called forth the true mystic's ecstasy of communion. Mystics of all times and all religions have found inspiration and strength of spirit on the hilltops; they have forsaken the haunts of men for the silence of the heights, preparing themselves by meditation and self-purification to receive the Beatific Vision. They have gone up alone in anguish and uncertainty, they have come down inspired bearers of transcendental tidings to men. These messengers of the spirit have known ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... I have nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found, And walked with inward glory crowned— Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. Others I see whom these surround— Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;— To me that cup has been dealt ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... few minutes as he sat with downcast eyes, absorbed in meditation. Then he looked up suddenly, and said, "Joe, I'll give you a definite answer to that question to-morrow morning. To-night I will think over it and make arrangements. Meanwhile, let it suffice that I have made up my mind to go to the diggings, and if you remain in the ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... re-read the letter of Mademoiselle de Chartres, trying to discover, by the expression of her desire to remain at Chelles, the secret causes which had given rise to it. Then, after an instant of meditation, as deep as if the fate of empires ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... deprived of various little attentions which for eighteen months had made life sweet to him. Now, as the nature of narrow minds induces them to study trifles, Birotteau plunged suddenly into deep meditation on these four circumstances, imperceptible in their meaning to others, but to him indicative of four catastrophes. The total loss of his happiness was evidently foreshadowed in the neglect to place his slippers, in Marianne's falsehood about the fire, in the unusual removal of his candlestick ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... inflate the cavernous nerve whose office is to ejaculate the moisture for the propagation of human progeny. Lest you should think it is not so, be pleased but to contemplate a little the form, fashion, and carriage of a man exceeding earnestly set upon some learned meditation, and deeply plunged therein, and you shall see how all the arteries of his brains are stretched forth and bent like the string of a crossbow, the more promptly, dexterously, and copiously to suppeditate, furnish, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... warn Mark against the machinations of so fearful an enemy. Her step was heard but for a moment in the vacant chambers, and then the Indian boy, whose steadiness and authority had just been so signally exerted in favor of the children, resumed his attitude of meditation, as quietly as if he took no further interest in the frightful ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... coast, as we sailed along it, afforded me a continual subject for meditation. I anticipated the future improvement of the world, and observed how much man has still to do to obtain of the earth all it could yield. I even carried my speculations so far as to advance a million ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... for me to tell you that I have learned Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dyhana and Samadhi! Yes, I was something of an adept once. I learned calm, meditation, contemplation, introspection, super-conscious reasoning—how to cast my own mind to a distance, how to bring other minds close up to me. But,"—he smiled with all his old mockery—"mostly I failed on Pratyahara, which says the senses must be quelled, subdued and set aside! All religions ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... Clare thinking; and it was well; for if he had not done as those thinkings taught him, he would have given a very different turn to his history. Meditation and resolve, on the top of honourable habit, brought him to this, that, when he saw what was right, he just did it—did it without hesitation, question, or struggle. Every man must, who would be a free man, who would not be the slave of the universe ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... Charteris's place, just outside of Fairhaven. And I am delighted to meet you, Miss Montmorenci. So now, you see, we have been quite properly introduced, haven't we? And, by the way," I suggested, after a moment's meditation, "there is a very interesting old college here— old pictures, records, historical association and such like. I would like to inspect it, vastly. Can't I call for you in the morning. We can do it together, if you don't mind, and if you haven't already ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... grammatical connection, this succession of adoring exclamations of rapture, wonder, and praise, is very striking. It suggests the manner in which we should vivify all our thoughts of God, by turning them into material for devout reverence; awe-struck, considering meditation. There is nothing told us in the Bible about God simply in order that we may know it. It is all meant to be fuel to the fire of our divine affection; to kindle in us the sentiments of faith and love and rapturous adoration. It is easy to know the theology of the Old and the New Testaments, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Chair falls into meditation upon "the sphere" of the sexes, and asks itself, as it loiters about the site of the Broadway Cottage, admiring the pretty shops, whether, if it be womanly for woman to keep shop and to acquire property by her faithful industry, it can be manly ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... modelled all round like a Rembrandt—while your starveling monks have made of your Christ a mere decorative figure with a gold halo. O Moshe Rabbenu, Moses our teacher indeed! No, Christ was not the first nor the last of our race to wear a crown of thorns. What was Spinoza but Christ in the key of meditation?" ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... man turned and left the room, and Bucholz seated himself apart from the rest of the company, apparently lost in profound meditation. Shortly after, he roused himself, as with an effort, and bidding his comrades good-night he went up stairs ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... the night till I had seen Harry Oaklands, and given him an account of 468 our adventures. Wilford's fate affected him strongly, and, shading his brow with his hand, he sat for some moments wrapped in meditation. At length he said, in a deep low tone, "These things force thought upon one, Frank. How nearly was this man's fate my own! How nearly was I being hurried into eternity with a weight of passions unrestrained, of sins unrepented of, clinging to my guilty soul! God has been very ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... upon,—insoluble mysteries both. Why should a man scrape himself to that extent, before he could consider himself full dressed? Why should he suppose it necessary to be purified by suffering for his holiday clothes? Then he fell into such unaccountable fits of meditation, with his fork midway between his plate and his mouth; had his eyes attracted in such strange directions; was afflicted with such remarkable coughs; sat so far from the table, and dropped so much more than he ate, and ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Southberry Heath on the very night, and about the very time, when the man had been shot; so, with all these materials, Mr Cargrim hoped sooner or later to build up a very pretty case against the bishop. If Miss Whichello was mixed up with the matter, so much the better. At this moment Mr Cargrim's meditation was broken in upon by ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... fortune, I have betaken me to this corner of the earth, where I wear the smock-frock and dig for sixpence a day, with solitude and my spade to assist meditation. So much gain I reckon upon here—to be exempt from contemplating unmerited prosperity; no sight that so offends the eye as that. And now, Son of Cronus and Rhea, may I ask you to shake off that deep sound ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the monks melancholy because they denied themselves the pleasures of liberty and marriage. They might as well call the trippers on a Bank Holiday melancholy because they deny themselves, as a rule, the pleasures of silence and meditation. A simpler and stronger example is, however, to hand. If ever it should happen that the system of English athletics should vanish from the public schools and the universities, if science should supply ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... fingers came the last cards, one for Longstreet and one for Chavez. Longstreet drew a queen and went into the silence of deep meditation; to Chavez came a lowly seven. Longstreet needed no prompting that it was time to bet; further he understood that this was the last round, the final opportunity. He did not wait for the customary raise of Chavez, but slipped five dollars into the ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... fulness and ease as in other departments of literature, this defect is perhaps to be accounted for by the peculiar character of the nation. The Germans are a speculative people; in other words, they wish to discover by reflection and meditation, the principle of whatever they engage in. On that very account they are not sufficiently practical; for if we wish to act with skill and determination, we must make up our minds that we have somehow or other become ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... spoliation of their nest by a boy, who removed all four of the children, or "squabs" as he called them. Mr. Knox, who used to come every day to examine them through his glass, was in despair, until after much meditation he thought of an expedient. Seeking out the boy he persuaded him to give up the one "squab" whose wings had not yet been clipped, and this the ornithologist carried to the clump and deposited in the ruined nest. The next morning the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... devotion, accompanied with a natural freedom of thought and easy elocution, a quick invention, a solid judgment, and a tenacious memory, laid the foundation of a good preacher; to which his acquired literature, his great reading, hard studies, deep meditation, and close walk with God, rendered him an able and faithful minister of the New Testament." The records of the First Church, in noticing his death, thus speak of him: "He was highly esteemed in his life, and very deservedly lamented at his death; having been very eminent for his early improvement ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... exclaimed Dennis as the exasperating phrase in italics met his glance, "an' it's here you are again. Shure, a man would tear his shirt to tatters for a tale like that," and with appreciative meditation over the vexatious quandary presented by the cunning of the bosom-maker in thus adding another ruinous possibility to the inevitable ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... sulky meditation, sent a harsh laugh out of his hot throat, and said, "Oh, you can make your mind easy about him, if your other man fights for you like that you'll do. Thought you'd have three of them, did you? Or perhaps you only wanted me for your decoy? Why don't ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... mouse. Sellers—oh, what men daily do, not knowing what they do!—is shut up in the scullery, I suppose, torturing his poor defenceless fiddle. That 's what it is to be a musical boot-and-knife boy. And Wickersmith will be at his devotions. He tells me he never gets leisure for his morning meditation till luncheon 's cleared away. And that's what it is to be a pious butler. I 'm doubting whether there was anyone to disembarrass that flyman of yours of your luggage. So he 's probably driven off with it all to his humble, happy home. I see none of it about. Never mind. There 'll be some of your ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... else?" — she thought; and with the thought, as instantly, Elizabeth gathered herself up from off the floor, wiped her cheeks from the tears, and stepped out into the moonlight. "I can't say anything, but I suppose he will," was her meditation. "Nobody knows when I shall have ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... said Poussin, roused from his meditation by Gillette's voice, "see this sword. I will plunge it into your heart at the first cry of that young girl. I will set fire to your house, and no one shall escape from it. Do ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... moments in deep meditation. He wanted to go into Annapolis, and he didn't care about going on a lonesome expedition. The more he thought the better Joyce realized how hard it was to frame a request that would ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... And so we stood, spellbound, while the night brought out the blue—and the young moon changed from red to silver—and the stars came down to take their places. Then slowly we passed on and sat by the fort, leaning our backs against it; in meditation looking across the prairie that had become so changed ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... divided between prayer and work, or, to speak more correctly, his work was a continuous prayer. The life of his Divine Master, with its miracles and sufferings, supplied him with inexhaustible material for meditation. At the close of the day's work and in the company of his mother and sister Catherine, he read the Holy Scriptures and the ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... to be religious, more inclined to take life seriously, more inclined to look forward and upward to the spiritual and the supernatural, and are also more studious, more capable of deep research and profound meditation, they do not, as a rule, have the social qualities, the aggressiveness, the cheerfulness, and the adaptability of ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... quite blameless—he has been the kindest, the best of friends to me—" his voice trembled more and more, and he could not go on. There was a silence of some minutes, during which Britta appeared absorbed in meditation, and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... that, hung on high, Roof'd the world with doubt and fear, [9] Floating thro' an evening atmosphere, Grow golden all about the sky; In thee all passion becomes passionless, Touch'd by thy spirit's mellowness, Losing his fire and active might In a silent meditation, Falling into a still delight, And luxury of contemplation: As waves that up a quiet cove Rolling slide, and lying still Shadow forth the banks at will: [10] Or sometimes they swell and move, Pressing up against the land, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... altogether foreign to him. Each picture was a new event in the lives of these men, and had to be pondered over devoutly, and for long periods often, as in the case of Ryder. Work was for him nine-tenths reflection and meditation and poetic brooding, and he put down his sensations on canvas with great difficulty in the manner of a labourer. It seems obvious that his first drafts were always vivid with the life intended for them, but no one could possibly have ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... but many of its principles we can all appreciate. Thus, men are taught truthfulness, purity, obedience, and kindness, which forbids the giving of pain to any living creature. Charity, patience, humility, and the habit of meditation are early instilled into the minds of the boys, who, without exception, spend at least a portion of their lives as inmates of a monastery, and with the priests and novices are not ashamed to collect the daily offering ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... this Lamb, signed upon the threshold, wards off the destroying angel. [Ex. 12:7, 13] By Him is the Bride praised, because "the hair of her head is as the king's purple"; [Song of Sol. 7:5] that is, her meditation glows red with the remembrance of the Passion of Christ. This is that tree which Moses was commanded to cast into the waters of Marah (that is, the bitterness of suffering), and they were made sweet. [Ex. 15:23 ff.] There is nothing that this Passion cannot sweeten, not even death itself; ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... Brunelli gone to his own private cabinet, where, having shut himself up, he had devoted several hours to serious meditation upon the deep plans presenting themselves to his mind. But Signor Brunelli had, in fact, a very experienced and inventive head, and the cardinal acted wisely in confiding in his major-domo and leaving to him the ordering ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... yes," pursued Mrs. Adding, "and his ideals." She began to laugh again. "He may have gone off for a season of meditation and prayer over the misbehavior of these bicyclers. His mind is turning that way a good deal lately. It's only fair to tell you, Mr. March, that he seems to be giving up his notion of being an editor. You mustn't ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... marriage record of Alfred Kennard and Sylvia Flagg were rude penstrokes. On the page of births was the name of Lida Kennard, and he slowly ran his finger under it. When he gazed down at the floor again in meditation he met the stare of the cat that Rickety Dick ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... have no less admiration, gentlemen, for the judgment of our press than for the enterprise which is born of competition, and, although that judgment has often to be framed under conditions which demand almost breathless rapidity, it does not always bear unfavorable comparison with the protracted meditation of the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Riasantzeff had not come. On the contrary, she wished to be alone, so that, undisturbed by his presence, she might give herself up to delicious meditation. To her, the sentiment that filled her youthful being was strange and sweet and tender. It was the consciousness of a climax, desired, inevitable, and yet disturbing, which should close the page of her past life and commence that of her new one. So new, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... gallantly. Not I, I must confess. It is all very well to talk of renunciation, and of course it has to be done. But, for my part, give me a roaring toothache! I do like to be deceived and to dream, but I have very little use for either watching or meditation. I was not born for age. And, curiously enough, I seem to see a contrary drift in my work from that which is so remarkable in yours. You are going on sedately travelling through your ages, decently changing with the years to the proper tune. And here am I, quite ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have been accepted amongst us, from very early times to this moment, with a continued and general approbation, and which indeed are so worked into my mind, that I am unable to distinguish what I have learned from others from the results of my own meditation. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... founded on the Elixir of Life, for which "Septimius Felton" was the preliminary study. Having abandoned this study, and apparently forsaken the whole scheme in 1862, Hawthorne was moved to renew his meditation upon it in the following year; and as the plan of the romance had now seemingly developed to his satisfaction, he listened to the publisher's proposal that it should begin its course as a serial story in the "Atlantic Monthly" for January, ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rabidly hungry," said Eleanore with a sudden change. She went quickly in to see the cook and left me to grim meditation. ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... come would have controlled, the free spontaneous movements of a contemplative dreamer like myself. Consequently, this separation, which proved an eternal one, and contributed to deepen my constitutional propensity to gloomy meditation, had for me (partly on that account, but much more through the sudden birth of perfect independence which so unexpectedly it opened) the value of a revolutionary experience. A new date, a new starting point, a redemption ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... and is equally happy, in language and conception. "The Lament" is a dark, and all but tragic page, from the poet's own life. "Man was made to Mourn'" takes the part of the humble and the homeless, against the coldness and selfishness of the wealthy and the powerful, a favourite topic of meditation with Burns. He refrained, for awhile, from making "Death and Doctor Hernbook" public; a poem which deviates from the offensiveness of personal satire, into a strain of humour, at ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... quiet and central; William of Saint- Pair, had he been still alive, might have written his "Roman" there; monks might have illuminated missals there. A few steps upward brought them to the cloisters for meditation; a few more brought them to the church for prayer. A few steps downward brought them to the great hall, for business, a few steps more led them into the refectory, for dinner. To contemplate the goodness of God ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... business part of the town and turned down Main Street, considering with himself what turn to make next. His head bent in meditation, he passed along lamely, his hands in the pockets of his torn trousers, where there was nothing, not even the thickness of a dime, to cramp his finger-room. Pausing in the aimless way of one who has no unfinished business ahead of him, ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... water on one side of it and the brushwood upon the other. Along this lower path I wandered, my eyes fixed upon the ground, thinking deeply as I went, now of the joy of Lily's love, and now of the sorrow of our parting and of her father's wrath. As I went, thus wrapped in meditation, I saw something white lying upon the grass, and pushed it aside with the point of the Spaniard's sword, not heeding it. Still, its shape and fashioning remained in my mind, and when I had left it some three hundred paces behind me, and was drawing near to the house, the sight of it came ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... doth that differ from the old monks?" saith Father, as in meditation. "Be we setting ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... smoldering fire in the grate. They were about to go up stairs when the Doctor, who had been looking absent-mindedly into the embers, began meditating aloud about local politics while his wife sewed. His meditation concerned a certain trade between the city and Daniel Sands wherein the city parted with its stock in Sands's public utilities with a face value of something like a million dollars. The stocks were to go to Mr. Sands, while the city received therefor a ten-acre tract east of town on the Wahoo, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... arrived at his own house was in a thoughtful mood, and disposed for quiet and domestic meditation. Had Miss Biggs not been there he could have found it in his heart to tell everything about Lady Mason to his wife, asking her counsel as to what he should do with reference to that marriage. Could he ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... body, which is especially the case when he is in company with others; but when he is in affection for understanding, and through that comes into perception of truth, he is then in the thought of his spirit, which is meditation. This passes, indeed, into the thought of the body, but into silent thought; for it is above bodily thought, and looks upon what belongs to thought from the memory as below itself, drawing therefrom either conclusions or confirmations. But real affection for truth is perceived only as a pressure ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... food, remained in that state for a long time without dying. And the Rishi by his ascetic power not only preserved his life but summoned other Rishi to the scene. And they came there in the night in the forms of birds, and beholding him engaged in ascetic meditation though fixed on that stake, became plunged into grief. And telling that best of Brahmanas who they were, they asked him saying, 'O Brahmana, we desire to know what hath been thy sin for which thou hast thus been made to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... use of an Astronomical Observatory is connected with the science of geography. The first page of the history of our Continent declares this truth. Profound meditation on the sphericity of the earth was one of the main reasons which led Columbus to undertake his momentous voyage; and his thorough acquaintance with the astronomical science of that day was, in his own judgment, what enabled him to overcome the almost innumerable obstacles which attended its prosecution.[A] ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... in the devil's name will you not begone? There are none left now but the good souls who love to laugh; not the snivelers who burst into tears in prose or verse, whatever their subject be, who make people sick with their odes, their sonnets, their meditation; none of these dreamers, but certain old-fashioned pantagruellists who don't think twice about it when they are invited to join a banquet or provoked to make a repartee, who can take pleasure in a book like Pease and the Lard with commentary of Rabelais, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... too, as I believe, to the ever-wakeful, intense, and ardent action of the mind, as well as the collateral meditation and study with which he had read, that his memory appeared to have possessed a faculty of discriminating among the subjects offered to its retention, and rejecting the incumbrance of what was worthless, to have seized and holden with indissoluble tenacity everything that was useful, together ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... of nature and of grace, Thy heavenly gifts impart; Then shall my meditation trace ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... in the thoughts, however, of Mrs. Balche, the next-door neighbour to the south. Happening to glance from a bay-window, she negligently marked how the child walked to the front gate, opened it, paused for a moment's meditation, then hurled the gate to a vigorous closure, herself remaining within its protection. "Odd!" ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... My brown bread will soon be gone. I will go with you gladly soon, but I am just concluding a serious meditation. I think that I am near the end of it. Leave me alone, then, for a while. But that we may not be delayed, you shall be digging the bait meanwhile. Angleworms are rarely to be met with in these parts, where the soil was never fattened with manure; the race is nearly extinct. ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... why Horse-coursing I think. Consume no time in this: I have no Estate to be mended by meditation: he that busies himself about my fortunes may properly be said ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... he bowed his head as if deep in hopeless meditation. Seeing that he did not speak, his wife approached the window and pointing to the horizon, said, "Look at that? Is ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... choirs Breathe, and with fleeter motion Wheel in their orbits through the surgeless ocean. So hearken thou like these, Intent on her, mounting by slow degrees, Until thy song's elation Echoes her multitudinous meditation. ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell
... Enterprise, to which we have such title and vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say more. Let the British reader study and enjoy, in simplicity of heart, what is here presented him, and with whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for meditation he is possessed of. Let him strive to keep a free, open sense; cleared from the mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant; and directed rather to the Book itself than to the Editor of the Book. ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... is impracticable must be unuseful. Whoever shall design to regulate his conduct by these visionary characters will be in the condition of superstitious people, who choose rather to act by intimations they receive in the dreams of the night, than by the sober counsels of morning meditation. Yet I confess it has been the practice of many nations to incite men to virtue by relating the deeds of fabulous heroes: but surely it is the custom only of yours to incite them to vice by the history of fabulous scoundrels. Men of fine imagination have ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... day of deep and tranquil happiness throughout the United States. It was Good Friday, observed by a portion of the people as an occasion of fasting and religious meditation; though even among the most devout the great tidings of the preceding week exerted their joyous influence, and changed this period of traditional mourning into an occasion of general thanksgiving. But though the Misereres turned of themselves to Te Deums, the date was not to lose its ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... indifferently . . . and at once became absorbed. It was the list of the cabal which had cost the lives of four strong men. He remained seated, lost in meditation. From time to time he opened the paper and refolded it. The movement was purely ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... things in her mind, Hildegarde was sauntering toward the Ladies' Garden, on the day after the new arrival. This was a favourite haunt of hers, and she was very apt to go there for a season of meditation, or when she wanted to find Hugh. It was a curious place,—an old, neglected, forgotten garden, with high, unclipped box hedges, overhung by whispering larches. Hildegarde had dreamed many a dream under those larches, sitting beside the little stream that plashed and fell in a tiny rocky hollow, ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... and mother earth; and, letting the stream bear him away at its own sweet will to the shallows below, struck up again through the rush and the roar to his plunging place. Then, slowly and luxuriously dressing, he lit his short pipe—companion of meditation—and began to ruminate on the escape of the king fish. What could have cut his collar? The more he thought, the less he could make it out. When suddenly he was aware of the keeper on his way back to the house for ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... insulated mortal among them; and one who, discharging himself from the obligation of what is commonly called etiquette, made it impossible to maintain with him the reciprocities of intercourse. It is true, indeed, that the attention of the possessor of Eartham was considerably engrossed by meditation and study; but this increased rather than lessened his adaptation to society, and made the effect of his seclusion the more to be lamented." Hayley's ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... After long meditation on the probable effects of the descending columns of water which he had seen, he concluded that they might have added more rapidly than he first supposed to the increase of the general level. Besides, he reflected that there was no proof that the general downpour might not ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... my Lady Jean," said Claverhouse, recovering himself after an instant's discomposure, "for this intrusion upon your chosen place and your meditation. My excuse is the peace of the garden after the wildness of the moors, but I did not hope to find so good company. My success in Paisley Castle has been ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... whom he speaks: what that country is to which he aspires: how he may best please Him who dwells there: and what he is to do so that his character and disposition may suit with God's disposition and character. Mental prayer, as I am wont to call it, is the constant meditation of such things as these. And mental prayer ought to be endeavoured after by all, though they have no virtues, because it is the beginning of them, and therefore the one interest of all men is at once to begin such prayer. But it will be exercised with no little difficulty unless ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... otherwise baffle the unskilful. Occupied with this task he could peep over his shoulder, through the unlighted front drawing-room, and see his adored one standing on the hearthrug, his hands clasped behind him, and his head bent, in an attitude of meditation. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... once conquered by her love. A latent misgiving as to his action is intimated in the closing line of the poem. Remarking upon the fact that Browning removed the original title, "Madhouse Cells," which headed this poem, and "Johannes Agricola in Meditation," Mrs. Orr says: "Such a crime might be committed in a momentary aberration, or even intense excitement of feeling. It is characterized here by a matter-of-fact simplicity, which is its sign of madness. ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... into the poem, you must suppose a lover waiting in an arbour for his lady-love. First come two recited lines of expectation; then two more, in quite a different measure, of disappointment; and then a long-lined song of meditation; until expectation is again aroused, to be again disappointed—and ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... at the regular evening singing meeting, of giving the people a short address on some Scriptural text or some verse from a hymn. As soon as the singing meeting was over he read out to the company the chosen passage, recommended it as a suitable subject for meditation the following day, and next morning had the text passed round by the Elders to every house in Herrnhut. Next year (1728) the practice was better organized. Instead of waiting for the Count to choose, the Elders selected in advance a number of texts and verses, and put them ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... time, had much to do with his attitude in Church questions after the year 1860. If history cannot confer faith or virtue, it can clear away the misconceptions and misunderstandings that turn men against one another. With the progress of incessant study and meditation his judgment on many points underwent revision; but with regard to the Reformation the change was less than he supposed. He learnt to think more favourably of the religious influence of Protestantism, and of its efficacy in the defence of Christianity; ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the ocean or in the vast plains of Venezuela and Tucuman. Infinity of space, as poets in every language say, is reflected within ourselves; it is associated with ideas of a superior order; it elevates the mind which delights in the calm of solitary meditation. It is true, also, that every view of unbounded space bears a peculiar character. The prospect surveyed from a solitary peak varies according as the clouds reposing on the plain extend in layers, are conglomerated in groups, or present to ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the early Christians; but no less important was the living example to be seen in the monasteries. The part played by the great religious orders in the propagation of this dignified conception cannot be exaggerated. St. Anthony had advised his imitators to busy themselves with meditation, prayer, and the labour of their hands, and had promised that the fear of God would reside in those who laboured at corporal works; and similar exhortations were to be found in the rules of Saints Macarius, Pachomius, and Basil.[2] St. Augustine and St. Jerome recommended that ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... palfrey, Rowena turned to depart; but pausing a moment, while Cedric, who was to attend her, was also taking his leave, she found herself unexpectedly close by the prisoner De Bracy. He stood under a tree in deep meditation, his arms crossed upon his breast, and Rowena was in hopes she might pass him unobserved. He looked up, however, and, when aware of her presence, a deep flush of shame suffused his handsome countenance. He stood a moment most irresolute; then, stepping forward, took her palfrey by the rein, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the result of long meditation or were the inspiration of some clever strategist. The fact is that everything leads one to believe that it was a plan which had been formed with great care, for the rapidity with which all the approaches to the fortress were lined with a double row of militiamen all wearing the ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... DAY' through the Christian Year; being a Text of Scripture, with an Original Meditation and a Short Selection in Verse for Every ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... professor of divinity, breakfasted with us. I took out my Ogden On Prayer, and read some of it to the company. Dr Johnson praised him. 'Abernethy,' said he, 'allows only of a physical effect of prayer upon the mind, which may be produced many ways, as well as by prayer; for instance, by meditation. Ogden goes farther. In truth, we have the consent of all nations for the efficacy of prayer, whether offered up by individuals, or by assemblies; and Revelation has told us, it will be effectual.' I said, 'Leechman seemed to incline to Abernethy's ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... open square lying between the great Cathedral of Ste. Marie and the College of the Jesuits. The latter, a vast edifice, occupied one side of the square. Through its wide portal a glimpse was had of the gardens and broad avenues of ancient trees, sacred to the meditation and quiet exercises of the reverend fathers, who walked about in pairs, according to the rule of their order, which rarely permitted them to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... point moved away from the circle to get a light for his pipe at the stove. He stood behind us listening to a conversation between Colin Lothian and Jack Paterson; and as Peter Brown lapsed into silent meditation I diverted my own attention to what Colin and Jack ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... most terrible thing to them that use it not aright? But for them that do trust them unto God's guidance, and search His Word to see what He would have them do, and seek alway and above all things but to do His will,—it may be life is matter for meditation, yea, and watchfulness; but methinks none for care. God will see to the chain: 'tis He, not we, that is weaver thereof. We need but to be careful, each of his ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... From the first she had been a smouldering spectator of the trials of her uncle's married life, and if Mr. Pett had ever asked her advice and bound himself to act on it he would have solved his domestic troubles in explosive fashion. For Ann in her moments of maiden meditation had frequently devised schemes to that end which would have made his grey hair stand ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... florins, when, it would be clear, his benefactor's fate had not been certified. It was at least provisionally wise to act as if nothing had happened, and for the present he would suspend decisive thought; there was all the night for meditation, and no one would know the precise moment at which he had ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... shame the devil. Father, when first I heard ye name a husband, At that same very time my spirits quickened. Despair before had kill'd them, they were dead: Because it was my hap so long to tarry, I was persuaded I should never marry; And sitting sewing thus upon the ground, I fell in trance of meditation; But coming to myself, "O Lord," said I, "Shall it be so I must I unmarried die?" And, being angry, father, farther, said— "Now, by Saint Anne, I will not die a maid!" Good faith, before I came to this ripe growth, I did accuse the labouring time of sloth; Methought the year did run ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... themselves up together. Bouvard would sweep the table, lay down paper in front of him, dip his pen, and remain with his eyes on the ceiling; whilst Pecuchet, in the armchair, would be plunged in meditation, with his legs stretched ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... like one lost in meditation: and these amateur policemen's hearts beat louder and louder, as he drew nearer ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... of the letter. The reader may choose among these theories. We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of our own brain; where long meditation has fixed it in very ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... boys endure the wounds they have received in defence of their beloved country! Only now and then can be heard a subdued sob, or a dying groan; while those who are fully conscious, though suffering excruciating pain, are either engaged in silent prayer or meditation, or reading a Testament or a last letter from loved ones, and patiently awaiting their turn with ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... air of cheerful meditation changed. He sat upright, and leaned slightly forward. He seemed to listen for something. Then suddenly, softly, he rose, and with silent step crossed the room and stood a moment beside the wall. It was a very different face that he turned ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... subject of meditation on the various turns of fate did this night afford! But two years before I danced at Berlin with the daughters and sisters of kings: and here was I, in a Polish hut, a ragged, almost naked musician, playing for the sport of ignorant rustics, whom ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck |
