"Nun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... escaped destruction, would have, and indeed often had, pursued her with unceasing malignity, thinking that thereby he did God service. His attitude towards such a person was that of an Inquisitor towards a fallen nun. ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... with a timid mood, leading by gradual allurement to cloisters of shadowy lanes and cells which were forest bowers. The new faith gave open sanction to evasion of the banquet, and thus fortified and increased those who loved not the ceremonial day. The spirit of solitude, no more a maenad, but a nun, sheltered earth's children in the folds of her robe, and no man said ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... at the door by a Sister in the black habit of the Order, a sweet-faced, gentle nun, smiling as kindly ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... highly diverted or improved. The Variety of your Subjects surprizes me as much as a Box of Pictures did formerly, in which there was only one Face, that by pulling some Pieces of Isinglass over it, was changed into a grave Senator or a Merry Andrew, a patch'd Lady or a Nun, a Beau or a Black-a-moor, a Prude or a Coquet, a Country 'Squire or a Conjurer, with many other different Representations very entertaining (as you are) tho' still the same at the Bottom. This was a childish Amusement when I was carried away with outward ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and form a mimick Day: Sudden a motley Mixture fills the Place, And Footmen shine as lordly as his Grace; To see the sad Effect and Power of Change, Ladies turn'd Men, in Breeches freely range: Young smooth-chin'd Beaux turn Priests and Fryars, And Nun's chaste Habits hide our Country 'Squires. Belles, Beaux, and Sharpers here together play, And Wives throw their good Spouses Wealth away; And when their Cash runs low, and Fate runs cross, They then Cornute ...
— The Ladies Delight • Anonymous
... compensation of courtesy. In America it is practically possible for any young gentleman to take any young lady for what he calls (I deeply regret to say) a joy ride; but at least the man goes with the woman as much as the woman with the man. In France the young woman is protected like a nun while she is unmarried; but when she is a mother she is really a holy woman; and when she is a grandmother she is a ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... gherbi 'l jewwaniy. The Muslim provinces of North-Western Africa, extending from the north-western boundary of Egypt to Cape Nun on the Mogador Coast, were known under the general name of El Meghreb (modern Barbary) and were divided into three parts, to wit (1) El Meghreb el Jewwaniy, Inner, i.e. Hither or Nearer (to Egypt) Barbary or Ifrikiyeh, comprising Tripoli, Tunis and Constantine (part of Algeria), ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... A short, sturdy nun of about sixty years answered cheerily and appeared in the dark hall. She led us into the sitting-room, where she spryly placed chairs for our little party. She was smiling; her eyes were sparkling with a hospitable and kindly interest in us, ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... she saw my tall black figure in a corner mirror, and made some exclamation, as if startled; an instant later she knew it was I, but as if by magic the laughing woman was no longer there. What I saw as she came toward me was a slight, quiet nun ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... room through which one passes to the Michelangelos may well be lingered in. There is a gravely fine floor-tomb of a nun to the left of the door—No. 20—which one would like to see in its proper position instead of upright against the wall; and a stone font in the middle which is very fine. There is also a beautiful ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... and a son of Thorgils was Ari the "Deep-in-lore." The son of Ari was named Thorgils, and his son was Ari the Strong. Now Gudrun began to grow very old, and lived in such sorrow and grief as has lately been told. She was the first nun and recluse in Iceland, and by all folk it is said that Gudrun was the noblest of women of equal birth with her in this land. It is told how once upon a time Bolli came to Holyfell, for Gudrun was always very pleased when he came to see her, and how he sat by his mother ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... have tried prayer. It is n't what I need. I am no nun like you. My dear sister, don't you ever long for the love of a man—a big, handsome, hearty fellow who could take you up in his arms and squeeze ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... them, to assist her in which she kept a considerable supply of cats. The removal of the keys of the cells counteracted this annoyance; but a still more efficient means was a determined blow on the part of a nun, struck at the aggressor with the penitential scourge one night, on the morning following which Renata was observed to have a black eye and cut face. This event awakened suspicion against Renata. Then, one of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... fal-lals generally, than ever I saw on another woman, before or since. Her face was high, narrow, and very regular; oddly enough, it was in outline, with its thin, pursed-up mouth, straight nose, and full eyelids and brows, very like a face one would expect to see in a nun's hood. Yet so little in the character of the cloister did this countenance keep, that it was plastered thick with chalk and rouge, and sprinkled with ridiculous black patches, and bore, as it rose from the low courtesy before me, an unnatural smile half-way between a leer ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... 4. "The Spanish Nun." [Footnote: Published in "Narrative and Miscellaneous Essays."]—There are some narratives, which, though pure fictions from first to last, counterfeit so vividly the air of grave realities, that, if deliberately offered for such, they would for a time impose upon everybody. In the opposite ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... she turned toward him with a smile and gave nun her hand. Nor did she withdraw it when bending low he pressed it gently to his lips. This was a game that ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... of the stone stairs that led into the quadrangle she met the black-robed, heavily hooded Sister Scholastica on her way to the chapel. The old nun held out her arms. 'Safely returned, my child! God be thanked! Art thou come to join thy thanksgiving with ours ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The nun held out a pie pan, rattled a few coins in it. "Contribute to the Radiation Victims' Relief?" ...
— Death of a Spaceman • Walter M. Miller
... gold, because it was in Venice he had proposed to her. After she had shown it to us, she put it in the centre of her dressing-table, with the white flowers all around it, as if it had been some sort of shrine. There was a look in her eyes that made me think of the picture in Betty's room of a nun laying ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... honeysuckled the window; softly he peeped o'er the sill. The lilies dropped from his fingers; devils were choking his breath; Rigid with horror, he stiffened; ghastly his face was as death. Like a nun whose faith in the Virgin is met with a prurient jibe, He shrank—'twas the wife of his bosom in the arms of Philo, ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... church in the city. It was one of her lifelong principles to do nothing by halves; therefore she once again related her whole past experience to the good Father, who unhesitatingly advised her to remain in her native land, and become a Carmelite nun. Humanly speaking, it was natural he should so advise her. But his suggestions threw her into a dreadful state of perplexity. On leaving him, she entered the Capuchin church, where the Blessed Sacrament was still exposed, and prostrating herself in the presence of God, shed abundant tears ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... Death of young Col. Dr. Johnson slow of belief without strong evidence. La Credulite des incredules. Coast of Mull. Nun's Island. Past scenes pleasing in recollection. Land on Icolmkill. October 20. Sketch of the ruins of Icolmkill. Influence of solemn scenes of piety. Feudal authority in the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... early crowing of the cock was a part of the minstrelsy he loved. Perhaps when lying awake during the dark quiet hours, and listening to just such a note as this, he conceived and composed that wonderful tale of the "Nun's Priest," in which the whole character of Chanticleer, his glory and his foibles, together with the homely virtues of Dame Partlett, are so ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... her goods secreted round about: whether she here performed penance like a nun in her cell; or was moved to this unaccountable freak by the powers of the air; no one ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... of those infant prodigies who could sing 'The Dying Nun,' and recite 'Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight,' ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... he was not the sonne, Of mortal sire or other living wighte, But wondrously begotten and begoune By false illusion of a guileful sprite, On a faire ladye nun." ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... very suspicious," he says, half apologetically, "but you have seen so little of the world, you have led such a nun's life! how can you answer for it that hereafter out in the world you may not meet some one more to your liking? You are a dear little, kindly, tender-hearted sort, and you do not tell me so, but you do not like me much, Nancy! ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Payne was so wrought upon by this great change in Sir Julian's life, for a fortnight she remained within her chamber, trying to feel what 'twould be like to live the life of a nun. But this season of devotion was suddenly interrupted by a visit from St. Mar, of whom she was very fond. He asked her hand in ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... over the ears—the fashionable coiffure—and the blue cape over the white suit, make a splendid contrast. With this outfit, a woman well shod, and with few jewels, may present a truly chic appearance. It is a mixture of nun and great lady ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Humor. In nothing are Chaucer's personality and his poetry more pleasing than in the rich humor which pervades them through and through. Sometimes, as in his treatment of the popular medieval beast-epic material in the Nun's Priest's Tale of the Fox and the Cock, the humor takes the form of boisterous farce; but much more often it is of the finer intellectual sort, the sort which a careless reader may not catch, but which touches with ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... in the Kloster (cloister) Church at Horsens a hole in the wall, across which is an iron cross. Behind this a nun was walled up alive. She had, it was said, been confined of a dog. There is a stone in which a dog is figured, to preserve the recollection of so very extraordinary a circumstance, and a place is shown where her fingers marked the stone ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... hair-brushes in Habakkuk. We feel that it is a disgrace to a man like Thackeray when he proposes that people should be forcibly prevented from being nuns, merely because he has no fixed intention of becoming a nun himself. We feel that it is a disgrace to a man like Tennyson, when he talks of the French revolutions, the huge crusades that had recreated the whole of his civilisation, as being "no graver than a schoolboy's barring out." We ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... Scots, an anonymous gentleman of the Quaker persuasion, and Mr Pitt holding in his hand a correct model of the bill for the imposition of the window duty. The preparations without doors had not been neglected either; a nun of great personal attractions was telling her beads on the little portico over the door; and a brigand with the blackest possible head of hair, and the clearest possible complexion, was at that moment going round the town in a cart, consulting the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... it's not a matter for a priest, but if you knew of some good woman, not a nun, but still in the world—" I paused from sheer inability to go on; I was so unused to this kind of thing that any sign of suspicion on Biddy's part would have meant disaster. But Biddy had a kind heart, ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... their college in Quebec. The very year that Champlain had first come to the St. Lawrence there had been born in Normandy, of noble parentage, a little girl who became a passionate devotee of Canadian missions. To divert her mind from the calling of a nun, her father had thrown her into a whirl of gayety from which she emerged married; but her husband died in a few years, and Madame de la Peltrie, left a widow at twenty-two, turned again heart and soul to the scheme ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... matters. But here, if you,—if you can succeed, you know, I shall always regard the Palliser episode in Lady Glencora's life as a tragical accident. I shall indeed. Poor dear! It was done exactly as they make nuns of girls in Roman Catholic countries; and as I should think no harm of helping a nun out of her convent, so I should think no harm of helping her now. If you are to say anything to her, I think you might have ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... abbess rises in haste and in the dark, with intent to surprise an accused nun abed with her lover: thinking to put on her veil, she puts on instead the breeches of a priest that she has with her: the nun, espying her headgear, and doing her to wit thereof, is acquitted, and thenceforth finds it easier to forgather ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... soul!" said Gorman. "I'm not thinking about it. The circus is a show you might take a nun to. Nobody could possibly object to it. The reason I headed her off was because I wanted to talk business to Ascher, very particular business and rather important. In fact," here he sank his voice to a confidential ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... indispensable boat, should it cost me a hundred sequins. I should have been in no perplexity if I had been able to take one, but the gondoliers would infallibly make proclamation over the whole of Muran that they had taken a nun to such a convent, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... nothing but the excitement that brings the color," she informed Marie. "I have been living almost like a nun; and now—to get out all at once takes ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... the Dominican nun, gazing in rapt contemplation at the scene, are not one whit surprised to find themselves in the presence of eternal mysteries. In the Entombment, which hangs on the opposite wall, St Dominic comes round the corner full of grievous amaze and tenderest sympathy, but with no sense of shock ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... brother's teacher, was sent to take charge of Signora Cromi's class, and to Signora Delcati's was sent the teacher who is called "the little nun," because she always dresses in dark colors, with a black apron, and has a small white face, hair that is always smooth, very bright eyes, and a delicate voice, that seems to be forever murmuring ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... of his having been lord abbot of Bury before he was preferred to the see of Ely; the niches in the sides of the prelate's stall have statuettes—on the left, St. Etheldreda, an abbess crowned, and a nun; on the right, a king, an abbot, and a monk: at the top on each side of the head are angels with censers, and other ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... Arbeiter, desto mehr Verdienst; also setzt man 5:9. Je weniger Tage, desto weniger Verdienst; also 42:35. Je mehr Stunden, desto mehr Verdienst; also 8:10. Nun multipliziert man $210 mit dem Produkt aus den Hintergliedern und dividiert durch das Produkt aus den Vordergliedern, was man dadurch vereinfacht[3], dass man erst die ...
— German Science Reader - An Introduction to Scientific German, for Students of - Physics, Chemistry and Engineering • Charles F. Kroeh
... to sale, but serfs, entangled in a mass of feudal obligations and bound to the house. Practically, most men still hold this threefold conception of woman's place in the social organism. She is to be a combination of housekeeper, nun and lady. It is the kitchen, church and children ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... over her head and sighed again, feeling the smooth part in her black hair. Her head was small—capable of great agitation, like a bird's; or of great resignation, like a nun's. "I can't see why I shouldn't be self-indulgent, when I indulge others. I can't understand your equivocal scheme of ethics. Now I can understand Count Tolstoy's, perfectly. I had a long talk with him once, about his book 'What is Art?' As nearly ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... potentate at present, the husband was banished. And Lady Catheron grew hot and indignant that the heir of Catheron Royals should have to be born in London lodgings, and the mistress of Catheron Royals live shut up like a nun, or a ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... room. He remained absorbed in thought, trifling with the cherry without eating it, which Don Carlos set down as a proof of guilt: The three brothers were at once put in a coach, together with their sister, a nun of the age of twenty, and conveyed to the head-quarters of Fuentes, who lay before Le Catelet, but six ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Fuseli, Wright of Derby, and other artists. Upon her father's death she had resolved to return to the cloister; but her mother brought her on a visit to London, and a friendship she then formed with the popular Angelica Kauffman induced her finally to renounce all idea of a nun's life. Soon she became the wife of Richard Cosway. The marriage took place at St. George's, Hanover Square; Charles Townley, of Townley Marble celebrity, giving away ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... fearful that Plato would give him a bad reputation in Athens—somewhat after the manner and habit of the "escaped nun"—sent a fast-rowing galley after him. Plato was arrested and sold into slavery on ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... Nero Nicephorus Noah Nobility Noblemen Nogaret Normandie, Duc de Notaries, office of Novella Nun, anecdote of a ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... violent. "Truly, I cannot imagine," he wrote to the Elector of Saxony, "quo consilio that wiseacre of an Aldegonde, and whosoever else has been aiding and abetting, have undertaken this affair. Nam si pietatem respicias, it is to be feared that, considering she is a Frenchwoman, a nun, and moreover a fugitive nun, about whose chastity there has been considerable question, the Prince has got out of the frying-pan into the fire. Si formam it is not to be supposed that it was her beauty which charmed him, since, without doubt, he must be rather ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... he put away his music-paper and sat down to his writing-paper, often showed himself a willing victim of catch-phrases; also many sentences of the drama can be construed as paraphrases of this particular catch-phrase—for example, "Nun banne das Bangen, holder Tod, sehnend verlangter Liebestod." Such utterances as these, however, have a specific and different meaning altogether, as will presently be seen. I can by no means believe even Wagner capable of ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... assassin remembers the first time that he shed blood; and the widow of Louis was no ordinary sufferer. If the question had been about some milliner, butchered for hiding in her garret her brother who had let drop a word against the Jacobin Club—if the question had been about some old nun, dragged to death for having mumbled what were called fanatical words over her beads—Barere's memory might well have deceived him. It would be as unreasonable to expect him to remember all the wretches ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... lately seen it said it was an 'Indian twilight,' which might mean anything, as Paul Griggs explained, because there is no twilight to speak of in India. The dress-maker who had made it called the colour 'fawn's stomach,' which was less poetical, and the fabric, 'veil of nun in love,' which showed little respect for monastic institutions. As for the way in which the dress was made, it is folly to rush into competition with tailors and dress-makers, who know what they are talking about, and are able to say things ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... left alone in its magnificence. This neglected apartment had probably excited more envy in the female mind than any at Crompton, although there were drawing-rooms galore there, as well as one or two such exquisite boudoirs as might have tempted a nun from her convent. It was a burning shame, said the matrons of Breakneckshire, that the finest room in the county should not have a lawful mistress to grace it; and it was not their fault (as has been hinted) that that deficiency had not been supplied. It was really a splendid room, not divided in ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... had remained in the obscurity of the passage, and who was laughing heartily, and I began to laugh in my turn, especially when I saw Marchas's face. Then, motioning the nun to the seats, I said: 'Sit down, Sister: we are very proud and very happy that you have accepted our ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... and afterwards both Queen of England, niece to Edgar Atheling, and mother to the Empress of Germany, the daughter, the wife, and the mother of monarchs, was obliged, during her early residence for education in England, to assume the veil of a nun, as the only means of escaping the licentious pursuit of the Norman nobles. This excuse she stated before a great council of the clergy of England, as the sole reason for her having taken the religious habit. The assembled clergy admitted the validity of the plea, and the notoriety ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... then directed by President Woodruff and his two Councillor's, George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith. But President Woodruff was as helpless in the political world as a nun. He was a gentle, earnest old man, patiently ingenuous and simple-minded, with a faith in the guidance of Heaven that was only greater than my father's because it was unmixed with any earthly sagacity. ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... we move on and find ourselves in the stony narrow streets of the city, almost every other person met with being a priest or a nun, the church bells still clanging with utmost discord around. The houses, with their green painted jalousies, are all built of a kind of white limestone, and so reflect the dazzling heat and glare of the sun as to prove exceedingly painful ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... abbess, for whom the room was decorated, bore the device of the crescent moon. This fact may have suggested to Correggio, or his patrons, the subject of the moon goddess. Diana, as a virgin divinity, was an especially appropriate choice for the apartment of a nun. ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... dared not receive a desperate woman alone, fearing lest she might stab me or do herself some mischief. At the door of the chamber Jodd took her from the guards, whom he bade remain within call, and conducted her to where I sat. He told me afterwards that she was dressed as a nun, a white hood half hiding her still beautiful face and a silver crucifix ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... book; if she reads it ill, it is either her own fault or she is blinded by passion. Yet the genuine mother of a family is no woman of the world, she is almost as much of a recluse as the nun in her convent. Those who have marriageable daughters should do what is or ought to be done for those who are entering the cloisters: they should show them the pleasures they forsake before they are allowed to renounce them, lest the deceitful ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... over the Normans, composed by a monk with whom that monarch was on terms of great intimacy. The style is coarse and energetic, and blends the triumphant emotions of the warrior with the pious devotion of the recluse. Towards the close of the tenth century, Roswitha, a nun, composed several dramas in Latin, characterized by true Christian feeling ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... looked like a neat little nun, and limped painfully as she went about the room. Sometimes she used a crutch, but she seemed as lame with it as without it, and she was such a brisk little creature in spirit, and was so little depressed by her misfortune that one felt it would be unwelcome to express ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... hand to kiss. But I was surprised to find here, the only beautiful young woman I have seen at Vienna, and not only beautiful but genteel, witty, and agreeable, of a great family, and who had been the admiration of the town. I could not forbear shewing my surprise at seeing a Nun like her. She made me a thousand obliging compliments, and desired me to come often. It will be an infinite pleasure to me, (said she, sighing) but I avoid, with the greatest care, seeing any of my former acquaintance, and whenever ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... Let us hear Ammianus himself. Haec, ut miles quondam et Graecus, a principatu Cassaris Nervae exorsus, adusque Valentis inter, pro virium explicavi mensura: opus veritatem professum nun quam, ut arbitror, sciens, silentio ausus corrumpere vel mendacio. Scribant reliqua potiores aetate, doctrinisque florentes. Quos id, si libuerit, aggressuros, procudere linguas ad majores moneo ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... told of my arrival," said the duke to an old nun who crossed the room with a bunch of keys in her hand; "I wish to know whether I shall go to her, or whether she is coming ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... crush. The king and queen returned the tickets, but everybody else was there. I remember that the Duke of Cleveland appeared as Henry VIII.; the Duke of Gloucester as a fine old English gentleman; the Duchess of Buccleugh as the Witch of Endor; Lady Edgecombe as a nun; the Duchess of Bolton as the goddess Diana; Lady Stanhope as Melopomene; the Countess of Waldegrave as Jane Shore; Lord Galway's daughter, Mrs. Monckton, as an Indian princess, in a golden robe, embroidered with diamonds, opals, and pearls worth thirty thousand pounds. One of the gentlemen came ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... to urge the subtle arguments furnished by internal evidence of Dante's works, as to the reality of Beatrice Portinari as the beloved of our poet is offered first by Boccaccio who was acquainted with Dante's daughter Beatrice, a nun who lived near enough to the poet to get information from the Portinari family. Certainly Boccaccio did not hesitate when chosen in 1373 by the Florentines to lecture on Dante, to make the very positive statement ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... grasshopper and is found also in many other parts of the world. In New Guinea the praying mantis is three or four inches long and at first sight seems to be nothing but a broken twig. In various parts of the world it is known as "preacher," "nun," "soothsayer," and "saint." It has received its name from the fact that it rests in a sort of kneeling position, holding its ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... (1515-1582), born at Avila; became a Carmelite nun and devoted her life to reforming her Order and founding convents and monasteries. Saint Theresa believed herself inspired of God, and her devotional and mystic writings have a tone of authority. Her chief works in prose are the Castillo interior and the Camino de perfeccion. ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... up to the convents, which were long ugly buildings, several stories high, built of wood, and daubed with red and grey paint. The priests were nowhere to be found, and an old withered nun, whom I disturbed husking millet in a large wooden mortar, fled at my approach. The temple stood close by the convent, and had a broad low architrave: the walls sloped inwards, as did the lintels: ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, so that they shall not find game large enough for them in this or any vegetable wilderness—hunters as well as fishers of men. Thus far I am of the opinion of Chaucer's nun, who ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... architecture and of Catholic ritual. The externalities of the mediaeval church impressed him, whatever was picturesque in its ceremonies or august in its power. He pictured effectively such scenes as the pilgrimage to Melrose in the "Lay"; the immuring of the renegade nun in "Marmion"; the trial of Rebecca for sorcery by the Grand Master of the Temple in "Ivanhoe." Ecclesiastical figures abound in his pages, jolly friars, holy hermits, lordly prelates, grim inquisitors, abbots, priors, and priests of all descriptions, but all somewhat conventional ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... he continues, "extremely unprepossessing in her person and appearance—more like a nun than anything, and never can have had the least pretension to beauty. I thought her shy and sensitive to a fault in her mind ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... wife; Madame de la Motte, was, according to Cecil, "a fair gentlewoman of discreet and modest behaviour, and yet not unwilling sometimes to hear herself speak;" so that in her society, and in that of her sister—"a nun of the order of the Mounts, but who, like the rest of the sisterhood, wore an ordinary dress in the evening, and might leave the convent if asked in marriage"—the supper passed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... bare feet blesse the way, The people doe not mock, but pray, And call thee, as amas'd they run Instead of prostitute, a nun. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... by certain considerations, lent themselves in effect much better to certain others. Adopted in mere shy silence they had really only deepened her accent. It was singular, moreover, that, so constituted, there was nothing in her aspect of the ascetic or the nun. She was a good hard sixteenth-century figure, not withered with innocence, bleached rather by life in the open. She was in short just what we had made of her, a Holbein for a great Museum; and our position, Mrs. Munden's and mine, rapidly ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... stone." The confessional had no secrets for Cromwell. Men's talk with their closest friends found its way to his ear. "Words idly spoken," the murmurs of a petulant abbot, the ravings of a moon-struck nun, were, as the nobles cried passionately at his fall, "tortured into treason." The only chance of safety lay ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... me to talk again of conquests? or must I only enjoy them in silence? I must write to you the impulses of my mind, or I must not write at all. You are not so morose as to wish me to become a nun, would our country and religion allow it. I ventured, yesterday, to throw aside the habiliments of mourning, and to array myself in those more adapted to my taste. We arrived at Colonel Farington's about one o'clock. The colonel handed me out of the carriage, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... and vanished, Dona Concepcion did not call the expected name, and several of the girls glanced up in surprise. Pilar raised her eyes at last and looked steadily at the Lady Superior. The blood rose slowly up the nun's white ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... the long, unlighted corridors of a Flemish convent. Nurses chivvied about with little squeals of laughter as they bumped into each other out of the shadow world, but not losing their heads or their hands, with so much work to do. Framed in one or other of the innumerable doorways stood a Belgian nun, with a white face, staring out upon those flitting shadows. The young doctors had flung their coats off and were handling the heaviest stuff like dock labourers at trade union rates, though with more agility. I made friends with them on ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... The window of the Burton sitting-room was lighted; inside was Mary Burton in her reclining chair, propped up by pillows, and reading. The shaded lamp cast a soft glow upon her; the white face wore an expression of suffering, and with this was a meekness, a submission which made it nun-like. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... Leicester Abbey, among a library of about three hundred and fifty books, we find only the Troy book, Drian and Madok, Beves of Hamtoun, all in French, Gesta Alexandri Magni, and one or two others. Edward III bought a book of romance from a nun of Amesbury in 1331—a work of such interest that he kept it in his room. There are plenty of other instances. But in no case have we found an excessive number of romances in monastic libraries, and the charges—if they can worthily be called charges—so often made ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... even though it be only to bless and love. But there was no work for me here; and so I looked around, Pollykins, for my work and my place. If I had been very, very good, I might have folded my butterfly wings under a veil and habit, and been a nice little nun, like Sister Claudine." ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... nun-like woman, too pale, with a smile of wonderful attractiveness. "A woman to wear lilies," was the way Grant Herman put it afterward; a remark which conveyed well the purity of her face. Her ease of manner showed familiarity with the conventionalities of life, yet in some vague ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... time to have that altered then," she said. "You may be a nun if you choose afterward; but you shall know what the great world is, before you give it up; and it shall know you. You may spend your odd minutes in considering what dress you will wear for your first appearance, Daisy. Don't ask me for a white ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... then ambassador divine, His mission, matrimonial and benign, The heart to counsel, ardor to incite, Convert the nun, rebuke the eremite? As if were this his mandate from the throne: "It is not good for them to be alone; Behold the land! its fruitage and its flowers, Not mine and thine, ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... the painting had a quality of unreality about it, as though it were the delineation of a madonna without child, or of a nun. There was no vigor to her beauty, no touch of the earthiness or of blemish necessary to make the loveliness real and bring it home. She did not offer me her hand, but bowed in a manner only slightly less distant than ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Jataka relate another plot without specifying the year. Some heretics induced a nun called Sundari to pretend she was the Buddha's concubine and hired assassins to murder her. They then accused the Bhikkhus of killing her to conceal their master's sin, but the real assassins got drunk with the money they had received and revealed ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... landlord: "but a Bow-street officer with his staff is like Joshua the son of Nun; he can make the sun and moon stand still. So that's not the thing I wonder at. What surprizes me is—that a man like Nicholas should ever meddle with these politics and politicians, that get nothing for their pains but bloody heads and a trifle of fame that would never pay for ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... swift whisper, "a few days, a week ago—it seems like a year!—I was of some assistance to refugees fleeing from Mexico into the States. They were all women, and one of them was dressed as a nun. Quite by accident I saw her face. It was that of a beautiful girl. I observed she kept aloof from the others. I suspected a disguise, and, when opportunity afforded, spoke to her, offered my services. She replied to my poor efforts at Spanish in fluent English. She had fled in terror from her ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... conducted them to the secretary's room. I was sitting in my study, but no attention was paid to me. The sub-mother advanced to the grating, and, having examined it, appeared satisfied to find that it was securely fastened in the doorway. The nun, as I called her, although Walkirk assured me the term was incorrect, stood with her back toward me, and when her companion had said a few words to her, in a low tone, she took her seat at the table. She wore a large gray bonnet, the ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... only natural that the country whose composers have led the world for more than two centuries should produce many musical women. The list excels not only in point of length, but in merit and priority. It begins with the nun Roswitha, or Helen von Rossow, who flourished at the end of the tenth century, and won renown by her poetry, some of which she set to music. But in modern times many important names are found in Germany at a time when few or none appear ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... An abbess, arising in haste and in the dark to find one of her nuns, who had been denounced to her, in bed with her lover and, thinking to cover her head with her coif, donneth instead thereof the breeches of a priest who is abed with her; the which the accused nun observing and making her aware thereof, she is acquitted and hath leisure to be ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... sturdy blows upon his head and shoulders. He raised a yell that brought me to the spot just in time to see a funny sight. Just as George was about to beat a retreat, his squaw came running up and began to belabor him from the rear, while the nun continued the assault. There he was with part of his body in the house and part of it out, crying out in a manner most unseemly for an Indian brave. When the women desisted, he was both sober ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... manner in which that supernatural personage is permitted to make his appearance. It should seem that our managers reserve all their decorations for the inexplicable dumb show of the Wood Daemon (that diphthong is my delight), the Castle Spectre, &c. &c. The Bleeding Nun in Raymond and Agnes is ushered in with a pre-scent-iment of blue flame and brimstone. Angela's mother advances in a minuet step, to soft music, like Goldsmith's bear, and is absolutely enveloped in flames—none but a salamander, or Messrs. Shadrach and company can enact the part with safety. But ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... help love thee, whose hand, raised to the sun, Glows rosy, and not red with murder's stain? The angels kiss it. Force can forge no chain To drag thee false-ward. Like a holy Nun, Stigmated, how thy faith grows with thy pain— Aye, till thy Cross, like Constantine's ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... your side, monsieur. I am on nobody's side. And Angelique is on nobody's side. Angelique favors no suitor. She is like me: she would live a single life to the end of her days, as holy as a nun, with never a thought of courtship and weddings, but I have set my face against such a life for her. I have seen the folly of it. Here am I, a poor old helpless woman, living without respect or consideration, when I ought to be looked up ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... was brought that he had been leaguing with a half-crazy woman called the Nun of Kent, who had said violent things about the King. He was sent for to be examined by Henry and his Council, and this he well knew was the interview on which his safety would turn, since the accusation was a ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... edifice; so still was every thing about it, that it might have been deemed uninhabited but for the portress, who sat knitting in the shadow of the gateway, and for the occasional apparition of some ancient nun, showing her face, yellow and shrivelled as parchment, at a casement, or flitting with bowed head, and hands lost in the wide sleeves of her robe, across the spacious and solitary court. The red moss mantled the old walls, the bright green creepers dangled from their summits, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... altered since his time. The nave of the church is occupied by a manufactory for making cordage, or twine; and upwards of a hundred lads are now busied in their flaxen occupations, where formerly the nun knelt before the cross, or was occupied in auricular confession. The entrance at the western extremity is entirely stopped up: but the exterior gives manifest proof of an antiquity equal to that of the Abbey of St. Stephen. The upper part of the towers ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of beautiful nun's lace which she bought in Florence. She says it is to trim a morning dress; but it's really too pretty. How dear Polly is! She sends me something almost every day. I seem to be in her thoughts all the time. It is because she loves ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge |
