"Penitential" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expression in her countenance. After some preliminary spiritual instructions, she intimated to the Saint that God was waiting to have mercy, and that His wrath had to be softened by assiduous prayers and good works. She named certain religious exercises, certain penitential practices; which were to be observed on the principal feasts of the ensuing year; and recommending to the faithful in general, and more particularly to the Oblates, a great purity of heart, a sincere contrition for past sin, and a spirit of earnest charity, she charged ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... discovering what was before him. In the narrow gut of the way a great black banner, borne on two poles, was lurching towards him. It was moving in the van of a dark procession of priests, who, with their attendants and a crowd of devout, filled the street from wall to wall. They were chanting one of the penitential psalms, but not so loudly as to drown the uproar in the Place ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... Creed, the distinctive symbol of the Roman Church, was preserved by oral tradition only down to the fourth century, and was not imparted to any catechumen until the time of his baptism. The minute rules of penitential discipline were first committed to writing by Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, towards the close of the seventh century; and this innovation was sharply criticised by some ecclesiastical synods. Most remarkable ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... dear father!" She kissed his hand; and having lighted the chamber lamp, read one of the penitential psalms of the King of Israel, when sin, and the wretchedness that follows sin, became too ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... appeared to him with a sad countenance, and sharply rebuked him for his unfaithfulness to his engagement. Henry excused himself by saying that he had often prayed for him with great fervor, and had even offered up for him many penitential works. "Oh, brother!" exclaimed the soul, "blood, blood is necessary to give me some relief and refreshment in my excruciating torments. Your penitential works, severe as they are, cannot deliver me. Nothing can do this but the blood of Jesus Christ, which is offered up in the Sacrifice of the Mass. ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... time produce: but this I am credibly informed of, that Paul Lorrain[A] has resolved upon a very sudden reformation in his tragical dramas; and that, at the next monthly performance, he designs, instead of a penitential psalm, to dismiss his audience with an excellent new ballad of his own composing. Pray, Sir, do what you can to put a stop to these growing evils, and you will very ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... moment Jurand remained alone in the darkness and silence. In the snow before him the penitential robe and rope showed black while he stood long, feeling something in his soul dissolving, breaking, agonizing, dying, and that shortly he would be a knight no more, Jurand of Spychow no more, but a beggar, a slave without a name, without fame, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... a year since I saw you, and you bear marks of weariness. You stoop like an old man. Look at me, always the same, firm as a rock. "God smites the wicked with many plagues, but he encompasseth with his help those that hope in him." Second penitential psalm. You are not wicked: what plague consumes you? Ambition? Patience, everything will be changed, since your enemy is vanquished. Is it your conscience which is ill at ease? But conscience should be cheerful; that is its true sign. Is it anything ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... of the island, and the education of the children, devolved on me chiefly; and from that time to the present (with the exception of ten months, during which period I was banished from the island by brute force, and recalled by letters of penitential apology), I have been with them, and have lived to see the labor of my hands prosper; for there is not a person on the island, between the ages of six years and twenty-five, who has not received, or is not receiving, ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... earth view you in the light of tigers or mad dogs, whom the public safety obliges them to destroy. Long have this people been irreconcilable to the idea of spilling human blood, on almost any occasion whatever; but they have lately seen a penitential thief suffer death for pilfering a few pounds from scattering individuals. You boldly avow a resolution to bear a principal part in the robbery of every inhabitant of this country, in the present and future ages, of every thing dear and interesting to them. ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... many prayers; But even as one who, followed unawares, Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand Thrill with its touch his own, and his cheek fanned By odors subtly sweet, and whispers near Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose but hear, So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting low The wail of David's penitential woe, Before him still the old temptation came, And mocked him with the motion and the shame Of such desires that, shuddering, he abhorred Himself; and, crying mightily to the Lord To free his soul and cast the demon out, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... done I recrossed the room with measured steps, with downcast eyes, and approaching the couch without raising them from the carpet I sank down on my knees and leaned my forehead on its edge. That penitential attitude had but little remorse in it. I detected no movement and heard no sound from her. In one place a bit of the fur coat touched my cheek softly, but no forgiving hand came to rest on my bowed head. I only breathed ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Indulgences at variance with the spirit of the Gospel, since they appear to be a mild and feeble substitute for alms-giving, fasts, abstinences and other penitential austerities, which Jesus Christ inculcated and practised, and which ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... a corner and told him he would have to stay there for ten minutes. Then she left the room. At the end of the allotted period, she returned and said, "Time's up, Master Lou: you may come out now." But the little boy stood motionless in his penitential corner. "That's enough: time's up," repeated Cummy. And then the child mystically raised his hand, and with a strange light in his eyes, "Hush...," he said, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... moving away, with a slight consciousness that its zeal about the head-gear had been superabundant enough to afford a dispensation from any further demand for penitential offerings. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... obscuration is to cease; St. Edmund's Convent no more to be a doleful widow, but joyous and once again a bride! Often in our widowed state had we prayed to the Lord and St. Edmund, singing weekly a matter of 'one-and-twenty penitential Psalms, on our knees in the Choir,' that a fit Pastor might be vouchsafed us. And, says Jocelin, had some known what Abbot we were to get, they had not been so devout, I believe!—Bozzy Jocelin opens to mankind ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... know, there lies not now Within the compass of a mortal thought, A deed that I would shrink from;—but to endure, That is my destiny. May it be thine: Thy office, thy ambition, be henceforth To feed remorse, to welcome every sting Of penitential anguish, yea with tears. When seas and continents shall lie between us— The wider space the better—we may find In such a course fit links of sympathy, An incommunicable rivalship Maintained, for peaceful ends beyond ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... which preceded this solemnity, is now sung thrice by the Celebrant, gradually raising his voice to a higher tone. The choir reechoes it each time, singing it in contrapunto, and then chants the verse Confitemini, and the tract, which is ordinarily recited in penitential times. Throughout the mass the joy of the church is incomplete; for though Christ has risen from the dead, He has not yet appeared to His disciples, and the light of faith is still overclouded, as Alcuin remarks: hence lights are not carried at the gospel; the Creed, ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... carpet aisles of moss Unto the chantry stalls, The sumach candelabra are alight; Along the cloister walls, Like chorister and acolyte, The shrubs are vested white; The dutiful monastic oak In his gray-friar cloak Keeps penitential ways And solemn orisons of praise; For beads upon the cincture-vine Red berries warm with color shine, And to their constant rosary The bedesmen firs incline; And fair as frescoes be Among the shrines of Italy, ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... but being informed that he was to be hung in chains, he desired his mother might return them to prevent his being put up in his shirt. He then desired the executioner to tie him up so that he might be as soon out of his pain as possible; then he said the Penitential Psalm, and repeated the words of it to the other criminals. Then they all kissed one another, and after some private devotions the cart drew away and they were turned off. Dickenson died very hard, kicking off one of his shoes, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... After the penitential psalms, a litany, and the office appointed, the bishop stood with his back to the altar, and spoke urbi et orbi from the text, "God, who in divers times and in divers places," etc. I cannot do more ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... should not make their cards of invitation such thorough works of art as his. Now I am going to do even-handed justice all the way round; and I must say that Dr. Lynn's experiment of fastening his attendant to a sort of penitential stool with copper wire, surrounded by scrutineers from the audience, and then making the man's coat come off, and a ring pass over his arm, behind a simple rug held in front of him, is quite as wonderful as anything I have ever witnessed ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... But it must not be supposed that social questions were neglected, even in the darkest days of the war, however meagre the legislative fruits may appear. Session after session, Romilly pressed forward reforms of the criminal law, the institution of penitential houses in the nature of reformatories, and the abolition of state lotteries. Others laboured, and with greater success, to remedy the delays and reduce the arrears in the court of chancery. Constant efforts were made to expose defalcations in the revenue, to curtail exorbitant ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... had bearing on the difference between the King and Monsieur his brother, was the procession of penitents in which Monsieur accompanied the King through the streets, after the hollow reconciliation. I could scarcely convince myself that the sanctimonious-looking person, in coarse penitential robe, heading the procession through the mire and over the stones of Paris, from shrine to shrine, was the dainty King whom I had beheld in sumptuous raiment in the gallery of the Louvre. The Duke of Anjou, who wore ordinary attire, seemed to take to this mummery ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... affairs, and, by my exertions in his favour, made my brother my sworn foe, I returned to London. My husband's conduct was now changed; I had during my absence, received several affectionate, penitential letters from him; and he seemed on my arrival, to wish by his behaviour to prove his sincerity. I could not then conceive why he acted thus; and, when the suspicion darted into my head, that it might arise from observing my increasing influence with my uncle, I almost despised myself ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... along London streets from the Fleet prison to St. Paul's Cathedral. The warden of the Fleet was there, and the knight marshal, and the tipstaffs, and "all the company they could make," "with bills and glaives;" and in the midst of these armed officials, six men marching in penitential dresses, one carrying a lighted taper five pounds' weight, the others with symbolic fagots, signifying to the lookers-on the fate which their crimes had earned for them, but which this time, in mercy, was remitted. One of these was ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... pleasant smile on their lips and an encyclopedia of language beaming from the orbs above, would arrest the attention of the most inveterate old bachelor that ever lived; nay, it might possibly give birth to a deep penitential sigh and a host of good and sensible resolutions. Ordinary Volantes are the same style of thing, only not so gay, and the usual pace is from three to five and a half miles an hour, always allowing five minutes for turning at ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... said the younger man in penitential tones, "don't cut up rough about it. You know what I mean. Perhaps I have been hasty and inconsiderate about it; but of one thing you may be sure, that Sheila will never have to complain of me if she marries me. You say I don't know her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... regarding comets, insists that they may be natural bodies and yet supernatural portents, and ends by saying, "I conceive it very safe to suppose that some very considerable thing, either in the way of judgment or mercy, may ensue, according as the cry of persevering wickedness or of penitential prayer is more or less loud at ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... vain of his Courtship. Mr. Waitfort heard of it, and read me such an insolent Lecture upon the Conduct of Women, I married the Officer that very Day, out of pure Spight to him. Half an Hour after I was married I received a Penitential Letter from the Honourable Mr. Edward Waitfort, in which he begged Pardon for his Passion, as proceeding from the Violence of his Love: I triumphed when I read it, and could not help, out of the Pride of my Heart, shewing it to my new Spouse: and we were very merry together upon ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of the two cousins breathed a penitential sigh, dropped her bare, jewelled arms out of ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... centre his influence spread. There was no element of heresy in his creed, which was mainly distinguished by a rigid formalism and strict obedience to the letter of the Koran and the orthodox tradition or Sunna. 'Abd-Allah imposed a penitential scourging on all converts as a purification, and enforced a regular system of discipline for every breach of the law, even on the chiefs. Under such directions the Murabtis were brought to excellent order. Their first military leader, Yahya ibn Omar, gave them a good military organization. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of myself in my life. I made up my mind to read a penitential passage of Scripture as soon as I closed the bargain with her, but, remembering the Book says to be reconciled to your brother before laying your gift on the altar, I says, quick as I could, for fear that if I thought over it again ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... going on in the house, went to her room and wrote to her friend. Litanies were being said in the chapel. The distant, melancholy sounds mounted to her now and then. Otherwise the house was wrapped in a mourning silence; and outside, trailing clouds hung round the old walls, making a penitential ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... there received five strokes with a monastic rod from each of the bishops and abbots present, and afterwards the eighty monks each administered three strokes. Henry was now quite absolved, but he remained for the whole night with his bare feet still muddy and in the same penitential garb. ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... is in love, and the gentleman she loves is not approved of by Tanty and the upshot of it all is we are to leave dear Bath, delightful Bath, to-morrow—to-day rather—for some unknown penitential region which our stern relative as yet declines to name. I am longing to hear more about it; but Tanty, who, though she talks so much, can keep her own counsel better than any woman I know, will not give me any further information beyond ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... that hour of the spirit's default, may well have made me light-headed; nor was it easy to distinguish the tooth of self-reproach from that of genuine hunger. Stiff, qualmish, vacant of body, heart, and brain, I left my penitential boulder and crawled down to the road. Glancing along it for sight or warning of the runners, I spied, at two gunshots' distance or less, a milestone with a splash of white upon it—a draggled placard. Abhorrent thought! Did it announce the price upon the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and the Christian had been demonised out of that fair form by the drink. Oh, what bitter tears she shed that night as she lay awake, racked with thoughts of the past and despairing of the future. The next day came a penitential letter from Frank; he threw himself on her pity—he had been overcome—he abhorred himself for it—he saw his own weakness now—he would pray for strength as she had urged him to do—surely she would not cast him ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... which was exceedingly difficult to procure in recent years. Mr. Psi-ning told them that the interior, in its chief hall, represented the heavens. It was a circular apartment surrounded by twenty-two pillars, and everything was painted sky-blue. A portion of this temple is the "Penitential Retreat" of the emperor, where he keeps three days of fasting, meditating over his own sins and those of the government, previous to offering up his sacrifice. Connected with the temple was a band of five hundred musicians, who reside there; but the commander was thankful that the party ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... makes merry his dull bars with song, Yet would not penitential psalms accord More fitly with your sin than ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... overpowered the excited Jennings, and long before you have read what I have written—he has leaped out of bed—seized—doubled up—and flung the battered bailiff headlong down the narrow stair-case to the bottom. This done, Roger, looking like Don Quixote de la Mancha in his penitential shirt, mounted into bed again, and quietly lay down; wondering, half-sober, at ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... The schools, always more royalist than the King, professionally bleak, professionally dull, professionally repressive rather than educative, held on to a tradition which, though it had to be on the sly, every intelligent mother and nurse had done her best to evade. The schools made a boy's life penitential on a system. They discovered athletics, as a safety-valve for high spirits they could not cope with, and promptly made that safety-valve compulsory! They went on to make athletics a religion. Now athletics are not properly a religious ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... heavy leathern pouches suspended thereto, give them the most lugubrious expression. A pensive race, they stand for hours together without motion. Their dull, ashy plumage imparts an aspect as if they had been powdered over with cinders. A penitential bird, indeed, fitly haunting the shores of the clinkered Encantadas, whereon tormented Job himself might have well sat down and scraped ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... administer an electuary. (At an earlier period such drugs appear to have met with some opposition from the Church, which seems to have seen in them only an application of magic; thus I note that in Burchard's remarkable Penitential of the fourteenth century, as reproduced by Wasserschleben, 40 days' penance is prescribed for the use of human urine or excrement as a medicine. Wasserschleben Die Bussordnungen der Abendlaendlichen Kirche, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... nuns to pinch and torment 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 nuns, who was much esteemed, declared, believing herself upon her death-bed, that, "as she shortly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... imprisonment was it coincided, much to his own surprise, with the Jewish Penitential period, and the Day of Atonement came in the middle. A wealthy Jewish philanthropist had organized a prison prayer-service, and Elkan eagerly grasped at the break in the monotony. Several of the prisoners who posed as Jews with this same motive were detected and reprimanded; but Elkan felt, with ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... lifetime of Mr. Smith. And could such beings of cloudy fantasy, so near akin to nothingness, give valid evidence against him, at the day of judgment? Be that the case or not, there is reason to believe that one truly penitential tear would have washed away each hateful picture, and left the canvas white as snow. But Mr. Smith, at a prick of Conscience too keen to be endured, bellowed aloud, with impatient agony, and suddenly discovered that his three guests were gone. There he sat alone, a silver-haired ...
— Fancy's Show-Box (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on earth! Peace for you two, Charles and Mary Lamb! What peace is possible under the curse which even now is gathering against your heads? Is there peace on earth for the lunatic—peace for the parenticide—peace for the girl that, without warning, and without time granted for a penitential cry to heaven, sends her mother to the last audit?" And then, without treachery, speaking bare truth, this prophet of woe might have added—"Thou also, thyself, Charles Lamb, thou in thy proper person, shalt enter the skirts of this dreadful hail-storm; even thou shalt taste the secrets ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... shall be satisfied," she answered, roguishly. "Really, that's right. Four girls offered to substitute for me in this penitential pilgrimage and write some long ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... every walk of life, and it is said that in family jars a husband sometimes has the last word of his wife by accusing her of blaspheming the sovereign, and so having her silenced for three months at least behind penitential bars. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of may in time produce: But this I am credibly informed of, that Paul Lorrain [3]—has resolv'd upon a very sudden Reformation in his tragical Dramas; and that at the next monthly Performance, he designs, instead of a Penitential Psalm, to dismiss his Audience with an excellent new Ballad of his own composing. Pray, Sir, do what you can to put a stop to those growing Evils, and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... last starved into surrender. But, taught by the experience of the past, Assur-bani-pal did not treat it severely. The leaders of the revolt, it is true, were punished, but the city and people were spared, and its shrines, like those of Kutha and Sippara, were purified, while penitential psalms were sung to appease the angry deities, and the daily sacrifices which had been interrupted were restored. A certain Kandalanu was made viceroy, perhaps ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... cheerfully. "Don't go and spoil my coffee with salt water! All very well for David, in a penitential psalm, to drink tears, but in the nineteenth ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... they would immediately have devised toilets appropriate to such exigencies. If it were any part of their plan of life to appear statedly in public to confess themselves 'miserable sinners,' we should doubtless have sent over here the design of some graceful penitential habit, which would give our places of worship a much more appropriate air than they now have. As it is, it would form a subject for such a court of inquiry and adaptation as we have supposed, to draw a line between the costume of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... sackcloth, sitting back against the rocks, and Dante takes particular note of two figures supporting each other. He next discovers that one and all of these victims have their eyelids sewn so tightly together with wire that passage is left only for streams of penitential tears. ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... a mortified, semi-penitential air, that, on the first glance, rather mollified her. Still, however, she was not sufficiently clement to give him the least assistance in opening the conversation, by the suggestions of any of those nice little oily nothings ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... unmitigated nuisances, and pondering on them, he often wondered at the hidden purposes of the Creator. Later they might possibly serve some purpose by marrying and adding to the world's supply of boys. In a further progress, a sort of penitential progress, they became more valuable members of society, as maiden aunts who tipped you on the quiet, and grandmothers who mitigated parental severity and knew the exquisite art of ginger ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... mortal, in all subsequent ages, perplexed and abandoned in this ungovernable world, has set sail resolutely for that enchanted island and found there a semblance of happiness, its narrow limits give so much room for the soul and its penitential soil breeds so many consolations. True, the brief time and narrow argument into which Christian imagination squeezes the world must seem to a speculative pantheist childish and poor, involving, as it does, a fatuous perversion of nature and history and a ridiculous ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... links, pretty soon he would tempt treason to show its head, and would even for the present find but an imperfect obedience. Reluctantly therefore the emperor gave way: and perhaps soothed his fretting conscience, by offering to heaven, as a penitential litany, that same petition which Naaman the Syrian offered to the prophet Elijah as a reason for a personal dispensation. Hardly more possible it was that a camel should go through the eye of a needle, than that a Roman senator should forswear ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... merely because it is bad to the taste, and modern medical usage prescribes free air and warm sunshine in large doses in place of the old-time bitter nostrums. Even where the boy spirit needs medication, the means employed need not be sepulchral gloom, solemn warning, other-world songs, and penitential prayers, with great moral applications of the non-understandable. The germs of spiritual disease give way before the sunshine of the spirit, just as fast, if not faster, than the microbes before the sun. The Sunday ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... But Kidd's penitential fit did not last long; for coasting along Malabar, he met with a great number of boats, all of which he plundered. Upon the same coast he also fell in with a Portuguese ship, which he kept possession of a week, and then having taken out of her some chests of India goods, thirty jars of butter, with ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... be thought of, and all at once Miss Nancy turned up a narrow side street toward a high-walled brick church, and presently they walked side by side up the broad aisle so far that it seemed to Nan as if her aunt were aiming for the chancel itself, and had some public ceremony in view, of a penitential nature. They were by no means early, and the girl was disagreeably aware of a little rustle of eagerness and curiosity as she took her seat, and was glad to have fairly gained the shelter of the high-backed pew as she bent her head. But Miss Prince the senior seemed calm; she said her ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... only observe that it ended at last with perfect innocence, and much more to the satisfaction of Jones than of the lady; for the former was greatly transported with the news she had brought him; but the latter was not altogether so pleased with the penitential behaviour of a man whom she had, at her first interview, conceived a very different opinion of from what she ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... foot he now proceeded, brushing away the shining dew, disturbing the lazy lizard and the serenading grasshopper, and hearing below him the harsh croaking of the bullfrog in the pool; whilst, ever and anon, the gust awoke, with a huge sigh, the dreaming maples, poplars, and dark, penitential pines. From the remote, secluded farms came the faint bark of dogs; and amidst such sights and sounds he at length emerged upon the winding road, that, if followed, would lead him past Stillyside. Slowly ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... particular. I myself, it suddenly strikes me, must have been the chief offender against this reasonable law: but my offences were committed in pure ignorance and inattention, faults which henceforth I shall guard against with a penitential earnestness. Reformation meanwhile must begin, I fear, simultaneously with this confession of guilt. It would not be possible (would it?) that, beginning the penitence this month of November, I should postpone the amendment till the next? No, that ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... But Kid's penitential fit did not last long, for, coasting along Malabar, he met with a great number of boats, all which he plundered. Upon the same coast he also lighted upon a Portuguese ship, which he kept possession of a week, and then, having taken out of her some chests of ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... tortures. Each bed consists of a wooden plank raised in the middle, and on days of penitence crossed by wooden bars. The pillow is wooden, with a cross lying on it, which they hold in their hands when they lie down. The nun lies on this penitential couch, embracing the cross, and her feet hanging out, as the bed is made too short for her upon principle. Round her waist she occasionally wears a band with iron points turning inwards; on her breast a cross with nails, of which the points enter the flesh, of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... often pensive, and forming itself; for it was in the height of these irregularities that Steele composed his "Christian Hero," a moral and religious treatise, which the contritions of every morning dictated, and to which the disorders of every evening added another penitential page. Perhaps the genius of Steele was never so ardent and so pure as at this period; and in his elegant letter to his commander, the celebrated Lord Cutts, he gives an interesting account of the origin of this production, which none but one deeply imbued with its feelings ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... that erudition which could form a pretended language and its grammar, and fertile the genius which could invent the history of an unknown people: it is said that the deception was only satisfactorily ascertained by his own penitential confession; he had defied and baffled the most learned.[45] The literary impostor Lauder had much more audacity than ingenuity, and he died contemned by all the world.[46] Ireland's "Shakspeare" served to show that commentators ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to be in Mr. Walsh's time. Ernest himself never even suspected this unobtrusive diplomatist and peacemaker; but as a matter of fact it was mainly owing to Lady Hilda's constant interposition that he contrived to stop in Wilton Place through all that dreary and penitential London season. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... had been brought in already, and placed on the penitential stool before the altar, after which the organ ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... have the pleasure of thanking you in person for your brotherly regard, I beg you will endeavour to meet me in the Kingdom of our Father, where distance of time and place is lost in the fulness of Him who is all in all. The way ye know—the penitential way of a heart-felt ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... authority the writer defends by precedents unnecessary to enumerate here. On the first Sunday in Lent, 1819, its proceedings were commenced at Avignon, by a solemn procession, which made the circuit of the principal streets of the town, singing penitential psalms, and halted on the hill of Notre Dame; where an inaugural sermon was delivered on a spot called Calvary, and supposed to represent that sacred place. The multitude, assembled by curiosity or a better feeling, was ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... year. Up till twilight there was yet time, but then what was written was finally sealed, and he who had not truly repented had missed his last chance of forgiveness. What wonder if early in the ten penitential days, the population of the Ghetto flocked towards the canal bridge to pray that its sins might be cast into the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... tradition as to Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton is almost equally continuous. A course of what Lowell calls "penitential reading," in Restoration criticism, will convince anyone that these four names already stood out distinctly, as those of the four greatest English poets. See especially Winstanley, "Lives of the English Poets," ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... much question of 'letting' Magda do things, is there?" retorted Lady Arabella. "If she's made up her mind to be penitential—penitential she'll be! I dare say it ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... my cup of coffee as if this day were just like all others, my pipe tasted as sweet, the fresh air from the Berg blew as fragrantly on my brow. I went over to the store in reasonably good spirits, leaving Wardlaw busy on the penitential Psalms. ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... and trophies? where The glorious dint a martyr's shield should bear? How chance no cheek among them wears The deep-worn trace of penitential tears, But all is bright and smiling love, As if, fresh-borne from Eden's happy grove, They had flown here, their King to see, Nor ever had been ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... off dull sloth, and, lashing his sides in a penitential manner with his tail, glided through the opening in the mimosa-bush, bounded into the branches of a neighbouring tree, ran nimbly out to the end of one of them, and leaping with a magnificent spring over a gully, alighted softly on the turf at the other side. Trotting ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... penitent for being audacious," laughed Christy; and he was laughing very earnestly, as though the extra cachinnation was assumed for a purpose. "I suppose I ought to dress myself in ash cloth and sashes, shut myself up in my state room always when off duty, and shed penitential tears from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, and during the lone watches of the night, and in fortifying my soul against the monstrous sin of audacity. I will think ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... his death his influence was widely felt throughout Europe, especially in France and Italy. His zeal for the interests of God was unbounded, and this was the secret of his immense power. Some of his writings have come down to us, and comprise his Rule for Monks, his Penitential, sixteen short sermons, six letters, and several poems, all in Latin. His letters are of much value as evidence of Ireland's ancient ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... penitential jurisprudence was continually improved by the canons of the councils. But as many cases were still left to the discretion of the bishops, they occasionally published, after the example of the Roman Praetor, the rules of discipline which they ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... from a station made to any peculiar spot remarkable for local sanctity. There, a station means the performance of a pilgrimage to a certain place, under peculiar circumstances, and the going through a stated number of prayers and other penitential ceremonies, for the purpose of wiping out sin in this life, or of relieving the soul of some relation from the pains of purgatory in the other; here, it simply means the coming of the parish priest and his curate to some house in the town-land, on a day publicly announced from the ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... pun or a vulgar pronunciation in English; but in Irish gave rise to the antiquarian theory of Dr. Smith, who, in his History of Cork, concludes that the Round Towers were penitential prisons, because the Irish word for a penitential ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... rebels come to-day In penitential form, And hypocritically say The country needs "reform!" Out on reformers such as these! By Freedom's sacred pow'rs We'll run the country as we please— We saved ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... harmoniously conjoined Moves the great spirit of human knowledge, spare 450 These courts of mystery, where a step advanced Between the portals of the shadowy rocks Leaves far behind life's treacherous vanities, For penitential tears and trembling hopes Exchanged—to equalise in God's pure sight 455 Monarch and peasant: be the house redeemed With its unworldly votaries, for the sake Of conquest over sense, hourly achieved Through faith and meditative reason, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... of the cornice, whence no rim Engarlands its steep fall, did Virgil come; On the' other side me were the spirits, their cheeks Bathing devout with penitential tears, That through the dread impalement forc'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close, and stale. Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brick-and-mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look at them out of windows, in dire despondency. In every thoroughfare, up almost every alley, and down almost every turning, some ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... a penitential menu for some time, they finally decided to live upon mush and milk for the present, and, if Allison should die, forever. "We can warm it in the winter," said Romeo, "and ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... Nelly Powers now, who had come back and stood facing her in one of those superb poses of hers, her yellow braids heavy as gold. It was Brunhilda talking to Leonardo da Vinci's Ste. Anne. No, heavens no! Not a saint, a musty, penitential negation like a saint! Only of course, the Ste. Anne wasn't a saint either, but da Vinci's glorious Renaissance stunt at showing what an endlessly desirable woman he could make if he ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... naked foot and hand, Thoughtful devices in the sand; And when at last thou didst relate The sad affliction of the mate, When to the well-known spot she came, He hung his head for very shame; His penitential tears to hide, His face averted while he cried; "Here, take them all, I've no more pride In climbing up to rob a nest— I've ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... Seven Penitential Psalms, written 1517, Luther says: "If God's mercy is to be praised, then all [human] merits and worthiness must come to naught." (Weimar 1, 161.) "Not such are blessed as have no sins or extricate themselves by their own ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... the rules which his Church enjoined. It was no proof of magnanimity in Burns to use his talent in reviling the minister, who had done nothing more than his duty. One can hardly doubt but that in his inmost heart he must have been visited with other and more penitential feelings than those unseemly verses express. But, as Lockhart has well observed, "his false pride recoiled from letting his jovial associates know (p. 017) how little he was able to drown the whispers of ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... suspected it from his answers to Rachel's questions, or from any portion of their animated conversation. Certainly the aquiline lady whom Langholm had taken in, and to whom he was only attentive by remorseful fits and penitential starts, had not that satisfaction; for her right-hand neighbor did not speak to her at all. There was thus one close and critical follower of a conversation which without warning took the one dramatic turn for which Rachel was forever on her ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... every cross, kneel down and expiate Your crime with burning penitential tears— And if you 'scape the perils of the pass, And are not whelm'd beneath the drifted snows, That from the frozen peaks come sweeping down, You'll reach the bridge that's drench'd with drizzling spray. Then if it give not way beneath your guilt, When you have ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... (by Crawford H. Toy) Theogony Adapa and the Southwind Revolt of Tiamat Penitential Psalms Descent to the Underworld Inscription of Sennacherib The Flood Invocation to the Goddess Beltis The Eagle and the Snake Oracles of Ishtar of Arbela The Flight of Etana An Erechite's Lament ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... first impressions of the whole affair grew dull and blunt by the lapse of time, this humble penitential mood of Vandover's passed away and was succeeded by a feeling of gloomy revolt, a sullen rage at the world that had cast him off only because he had been found out. He thought it a matter of self-respect to resent the insult they had put upon him. ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... can we rejoice in Christ, as having been redeemed by Him, if we are in this sort of gloomy penitential state? How much is said in St. Paul about peace, thanksgiving, assurance, comfort, and the like! Old things are passed away; the Jewish law is destroyed; pardon and peace are ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... welcome. Nevertheless he did not yet abandon his former superior. Placing a heavy wooden collar on his neck, clad in sackcloth and sprinkled with ashes, he again returned to his spiritual leader, and in this penitential guise implored pardon. He was ignominiously ejected. Nor did he venture to revisit the unforgiving Sheikh. But it happened that in a few weeks Sherif had occasion to journey to the island of Abba. His former disciple ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... Theodore and the Penitential System.—In 668, four years after Oswiu's decision was taken, Theodore of Tarsus was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury at Rome by the Pope himself. When he arrived in England the time had come for the purely missionary stage of the English Church to come to ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... to be recalled that it was in that spirit of that glimpse of herself back a child again in the blue frock and in the pinafore with a hole in it that she came back to the children, came back home to them. Shocked by the thing that had come to pass, penitential by influence of the old childhood influences that had stirred within her, most strangely and most strongly transported back into that childhood vision of herself, it was in the guise of that child ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... character of the night's adventure. He was no longer uplifted by any sense of sanction and of satisfaction. Of the pride of life there remained in him only sufficient to prevent him from regarding his behavior as in any sense a shame and a disaster to his own youth. Otherwise his mood was entirely penitential. He could not look at the thing as it affected himself. However it might be for him, he had wronged Violet, and that was calamity enough for any man to face. According to all his instincts and traditions, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... duties of this office in Bohemia and Hungary. The next provincial (Father Ferdinand Alber) evinced dislike of me immediately on his taking up office, the reason of which was, I believe, merely that we do not share the same opinions. He, like Fathers Bader, Reinel, and Scherer, is for public penitential exercises in the refectory daily; I, on the contrary, am for a milder proceeding, such as I have learned of Fathers Maggio, Everard (Mercurian) Goudan, Canisius, and Lanoy. Therefore, I am called a courtier, even when I am not at court. ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... He was not addressing a woman worn out with admiration, but a girl just beginning a woman's life; and it did him no harm, at any rate, to speak in the character of master of Thorpe Ambrose. The penitential expression on Miss Milroy's face gently melted away; she looked down, demure and smiling, at ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... our appetite had forsaken us, and that we had lost the power of enjoying the delicacies which we had most anticipated. And over-indulgence often brought sad results and was followed by a period of penitential fasting. And the appetites for sense gratification must always lead to this result. They not only crave things which "perish with the using;" temporarily at least, often permanently, the appetite itself perishes ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... could never, in the nature of things, have been finally satisfied by the dozen or by the score; so it came to pass that the garden is once more herbaceous, and far-famed as such. The father—a perennial gardener in more senses than one, long may he flourish!—has told me, chuckling, of many a penitential pilgrimage to the rubbish-heaps, if haply fragments could be found of the herbaceous treasures which had ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... affectation than conviction. When he came upon his death-bed, he expressed remorse for his past life, and discovered at that period, sentiments which he had never before suffered to enter his mind. This penitential behaviour, in the opinion of some, was the occasion why all his brethren neglected him, and did not bestow on his memory one elegiac song, nor any of the rites of verse. We find no encomiums upon him, but what appeared in a Grubstreet ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... to the bruised heart, a fresh aim for drooping energies, a needed outlet for devouring emotions, and a comfortable sense of security, not only for this world, but for the next. It was the next world which was beginning to trouble Mme. de Sable. She had great fear of death, and after many penitential retreats to Port Royal, she finally obtained permission to build a suite of apartments within its precincts, and retired there about 1655 to prepare for that unpleasant event which she put off as long as possible by the most assiduous care of her health. ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... the heathen times. The happy souls of departed Christians were invoked; it was believed that they were wandering about the world, or haunting their graves. There was a multiplication of temples, altars, and penitential garments. The festival of the purification of the Virgin was invented to remove the uneasiness of heathen converts on account of the loss of their Lupercalia, or feasts of Pan. The worship of images, of fragments of the cross, or bones, nails, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... the religious pharmacy infallible receipts for calming the conscience; the priests in every country possess sovereign secrets for disarming the wrath of Heaven. However true it may be that the anger of Deity is appeased by prayers, by offerings, by sacrifices, by penitential tears, we have no right to say that religion holds in check the irregularities of men; they will first sin, and afterward seek the means to reconcile God. Every religion which expiates, and which promises the remission of crimes, if it restrains any, it encourages the great ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... there I hesitate. The Christian church may be right in its estimate of sudden death; and it is a natural feeling, though after all it may also be an infirm one, to wish for a quiet dismissal from life—as that which seems most reconcilable with meditation, with penitential retrospects, and with the humilities of farewell prayer. There does not, however, occur to me any direct scriptural warrant for this earnest petition of the English Litany. It seems rather a petition indulged to human infirmity, than exacted from human piety. And, however ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... of apologetic way at having been discovered, as it were, feasting in the house of mourning. "At the present sad juncture, to drink sherry-wine with all its untamed richness might, I feel, smack of callousness. Therefore I tell the man to dash it with bitters, which, whilst it has a penitential sound, adds a not untoothsome flavour ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... either bank huge water-wheels, Belted with jars and dripping weeds, Send forth their melancholy moans, As if, in their gray mantles hid, Dead anchorites of the Thebaid Knelt on the shore and told their beads, Beating their breasts with loud appeals And penitential ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... fitfully a moment, little sad remorseful penitential sobs, and died away softly across the prairie as a ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... for tenacious and vindictive hatred. The Limousins had the superstitious doctrines of other semi-barbarous populations, and they had their vices. They passed abruptly and without remorse from a penitential procession to the tavern and the brothel. Their Christianity was as superficial as that of the peasant of the Eifel in our own day, or of the Finnish converts of whom we are told that they are even now not beyond sacrificing a foal in honour of the Virgin Mary. Saint ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... impede the business visitor to the ranch, and to cause some of the more practical neighbors seriously to doubt the young girl's commercial wisdom. But she was firm. Whether she thought her parents a necessity of respectable domesticity, or whether she regarded their presence in the light of a penitential atonement for some previous disregard of them, no one knew. Public opinion inclined to ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... thumped and bellowed in an ecstasy of piety. As to me, I own I stood there looking with impatience at a passing canopy that seemed all gold, with three priests in gorgeous capes walking slowly under it, and I absolutely forgot to take off my hat. The bearded ruffian looked up from the midst of his penitential exercises, and before I realized I was outraging his or anybody else's feelings, leaped up with a yell, "Thou sacrilegious infidel," and sent my hat ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... sin; reclaim; repent in sackcloth and ashes &c, (do penance) 952; learn by experience. Adj. penitent; repenting &c.v.; repentant, contrite; conscience- smitten, conscience-stricken; self-accusing, self-convicted. penitential, penitentiary; reclaimed, reborn; not hardened; unhardened[obs3]. Adv. mea culpa. Phr. peccavi; erubuit[Lat]; salva res est [Lat][Terence]; Tu l'as voulu[Fr], Georges Dandin; "and wet his grave with my ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... propaganda, the penitential court, and the court of archives shall be established in the place of residence ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... in terror and repentance till the blood flowed. When the wild enthusiasm of this movement subsided it left enduring traces in the foundation of lay communities throughout the land, continuing in a more sober way the penitential practices of the Flagellants. One of their aids to devotion was the singing or reciting of vernacular poetry, less formal than the Latin hymns of the liturgy, and known as laude.[78] These laude ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... 'tis only sinners see the depth of beauty there; Angels never have bowed o'er them with a penitential tear. Angels may regard the nail-print, with a holy, reverent calm; Ye who read the love it tells of, must break forth with ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... And go no farther in your cruelty: Send her a penitential garment to put on Next to her delicate skin, and furnish her With ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster |
