"Recluse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... silent, and seemed lost in revery. The pure, ever-present breeze of Mackinac played in his long silvery hair, and his bright eyes roved along the wall of the old house; he had a broad forehead, noble features, and commanding presence, and as he sat there, recluse as he was,—aged, alone, without a history, with scarcely a name or a place in the world,—he looked, in the power of his native-born dignity, ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... said, "that I'm so busy this week. But we ought to meet at many places, unless you continue to play the recluse. Don't you really go anywhere ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... answered the recluse. "Your young eyes will wax heavy with these midnight vigils. You must sleep, my boy, and to-morrow I will communicate ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... very low, but had real ability. Her constant phrase was 'I shall die o' laughin'—I know I shall!' On account of her extra-ordinary gift of repartee, and her inexhaustible fund of wit and humour, she was generally supposed to be an Irishwoman. But she was not: she was cockney to the marrow. Recluse as Rossetti was in his later years, he had at one time been very different, and could bring himself in touch with the lower orders of London in a way such as was only known to his most intimate friends. With all her impudence, and I may say insolence, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... on the threshold of young womanhood, she goes to stay with her grandfather in Ireland, with the trust from her mother of reconciling him and his son, Bertha's father. Bertha finds her grandfather a recluse and a miser, and in the hands of an underling, who is his evil genius. How she keeps faith with her mother and finds her own fate, through many strange adventures, is ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... descended upon her, the little recluse payed them the tribute of a fascinated stare, and they, in return, did their best to instill into her mind the belief that they were creatures of another and a brighter sphere. Uncle Dan presented her with a peppermint lozenge, Mrs. ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... a graveyard gate, what do you want?" demanded Cap'n Sproul, running eye of great disfavor over Mr. Gammon and his faithful attendant. He had heard various reports concerning this widower recluse of Purgatory, and ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... a light shone out, and a bearded shadow towered and dwindled upon a white blind. Uniacke, a bachelor, and now almost of necessity a recluse, entertained for the present a visitor. Remembering the substance of the shadow he opened the churchyard gate, threaded his way among the gravestones, and was quickly at the Vicarage door. As he passed ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... admirable second leads us through one of the most entertaining of tutti frutti which we have ever met in the form of a biography. It is fortunate that IRVING—so generally imagined by 'those of the second after-generation' as a quiet recluse on the banks of the Hudson—was in reality, in his early time and full prime, a traveler, a man of the world, somewhat of a diplomat, and one who knew the leading minds of Europe and of his own country in the days when there ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the Magyars; and Murtagh, with his wonderful stories of the Pope. These were the friends with whom he spent the real life of his latter days, and it is hardly surprising that under the influence of their companionship he should have become somewhat of a recluse, and lost touch with living ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... child of George's uncle, who was a recluse living at Tunbridge. He was a scholar and a pedant, and concerned himself but little about his only child, whose fortune was inherited from ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... latter, however, was boarded up—nobody could remember a time when it was not. And none knew why it was so closed; certainly not because of the occupant's dislike of light and air, for on those rare occasions when a hunter had passed that lonely spot the recluse had commonly been seen sunning himself on his doorstep if heaven had provided sunshine for his need. I fancy there are few persons living to-day who ever knew the secret of that window, but I am one, as you ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... unjust to dwell. I mention them only to bring out the fact that between these two men, so different in outward fates,—between "the adored, the incomparable Nelson" and the homely poet, "retired as noontide dew,"—there was a moral likeness so profound that the ideal of the recluse was realized in the public life of the hero, and, on the other hand, the hero himself is only seen as completely heroic when his impetuous life stands out for us from the solemn background of the poet's calm. And surely these two natures ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... the celebrated Pope. He had a fondness for poetry, and was not destitute of taste. His manners were expressive of a tenderness and benevolence, the demonstrations of which appeared to have been somewhat too artificially cultivated. His habits were those of a perfect recluse. He seldom went out of his drawing-room, and he showed to a friend of Mary a pair of shoes, which had served him, he said, for fourteen years. Mary frequently spent days and weeks together, at the ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... historical allusions; accessories of the humorous, if the age demands it, might relieve the pathetic; Charlotte's own innocence and piety might be made to soften her hard fate, with the assurance of a better life; Saville might become a wisely-resigned recluse; and while the sins of the fathers are not gently, though justly, visited on the children, the villain of the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... somewhat of a recluse in her habits; she was a nervous, diffident woman, who made weak health an excuse for shutting herself out from society. Fay had lived with her ever since her father's death; but during the last year Miss Mordaunt had been much troubled by qualms of conscience, ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... it for all other human nature, save my father's, not to breathe an indignant anathema on the scheming head of the brother-in-law who had thus violated the most sacred obligations of trust and kindred, and so entangled an unsuspecting recluse. But, to give even Jack Tibbets his due, he had firmly convinced himself that "The Capitalist" would make my father's fortune; and if he did not announce to him the strange and anomalous development into which the original sleeping chrysalis of the "Literary Times" had ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Dickinson has much of the witchcraft and subtlety of William Blake. Many verses of the shy recluse, whom Mr. Higginson so happily has introduced to the world, are not only daring and unconventional, but recklessly defiant of form. But, as her editor has well said, "When a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... translate the term fairly and squarely—in order thereby to strike terror at once into the heart of the assailant who should dare to cast a glance on that invincible maiden, that Pallas Athene:—how much of personal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray! ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... not pause to observe how certainly this deficiency in humor and in the delineation of ordinary human feeling is connected with a recluse, a solitary, and to some extent an unsympathizing life. If we combine a certain natural aloofness from common men with literary habits and an incessantly studious musing, we shall at once see how powerful a force is brought to bear on an instinctively austere character, and how sure it will be ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... fiend,—who resented the attempted possession of others by subjecting them to himself. One had turned from quiet and sober habits to reckless dissipation; another had turned from the usual gayety of life to recluse habits, and both, apparently, by the same influence; at least, so it appeared to Redclyffe, as he insulated their story from all other circumstances, and looked at them by one light. He even thought that he ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that the son return home with his wife. Circumstances prevented, however, and the visit was deferred. Meanwhile, becoming more eccentric as he grew older, the father discharged all his old servants, and lived the life of a recluse. When he died suddenly, and almost alone, he left a will, probably drawn up soon after he learned of his son's wedding, leaving his property to Philip, providing the young man returned, with his wife, to live upon the estate ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... talk was for her meaningless, and she had not the patience to listen to any conversation that rose above the food and business of the day. She was confused and bewildered by everything the strange recluse on the hill said to her,—she could not follow him at all,—and yet, the purely physical attraction he exercised over her nature drew her to him like a magnet and kept her in a state of feverish craving for a love she knew she could never win. She would have gladly been his servant ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... when a boy, made occasional visits to Hamilton, in the West of Scotland, where the descendants of his Covenanting ancestors still lived. One of them was an old bachelor—a recluse sort of man; and yet he had the Nasmyth love of cats. Being of pious pedigree and habits, he always ended the day by a long and audible prayer. My father and his companions used to go to the door of ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... had been practically a recluse these past several years, had, nevertheless, the metropolite's inborn indifference to the passerby. He had scarcely noticed the steadily increasing group before the steps. Now he ignored them all. He was hungry. That invitation to ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... with him I could see in a glance that though he might be a recluse and an antiquary he had a lively and gentle heart; for if his face was yellow and his pupils sere there was a wonderfully shy and sympathetic mobility about his ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... Bronte does indeed write of him with enthusiasm,[262] but she is alone among the great Victorian authors in this particular. Borrow's Lavengro received no commendation from contemporary writers of the first rank. He died in his seventy-eighth year an obscure recluse whose works were all but forgotten. Since that year, 1881, his fame has been continually growing. His greatest work, Lavengro, has been reprinted with introductions by many able critics;[263] notable essayists ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... the man on the grey horse. "And if you will allow me to offer you a cup of coffee, I shall be most pleased. You must excuse me, for I never take anything before midday. I am a recluse, have been for many years and rarely stir abroad. I do not intend to return to the world unless I can bring something with me worth having." A wistful smile twisted a little ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... said slowly. "One would almost say that the life of a recluse agrees with you. You have by no means the white and wasted look which I expected. Is it fame which you have found so ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "A recluse, manifestly," said Philippa to herself; "the child does not understand. But is she an anchoritess or an eremitess?—Does she ever leave her cell?" [See ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... attracted attention, as with his tall, slender, majestic figure he moved through the village, or paced the beach, or impelled his frail boat. But speculation as to who he was or what had induced him to become a recluse had about ceased from the despair of obtaining any light ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... in harmony with his tastes, he soon withdrew, applying himself afterwards to the study of the French and German languages (a ready fluency in both of which he finally acquired), and especially to the art dearer than all other studies. A recluse, owning and soliciting no guidance but that of his text-book, in the quiet of the woods, or, if that were inaccessible, the retirement of his chamber, he devoted himself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... right for a young man to lead the life of a recluse of seventy. Here we are in the height of the London season, and I am sure you haven't been into ten houses, when a hundred of the very best are open to you—" I loathe the term "best houses." The tinsel ineptitude of them! For entertainment ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... His university course, so far as can be gathered from any account of it that has come down to us, was not a notable one, though he had a fair scholastic career and graduated at the age of nineteen in 1743. While popular after a fashion at college, he was a bit of a recluse and a diligent student of literature, with a predilection, it is said, for music, playing well on the violin. After graduating, he wisely spent two years in general reading before entering upon the ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... besides. The sons of Gellir were Thorkell and Thorgils, 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 ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... married, my heart is full of anxieties for her—I know the risk she runs. But I did not feel them much for myself. I grew into the knowledge of my unhappiness as I grew in knowledge of what might have been; but the recluse life of a French girl prevents her from expecting much from marriage but an increase of consequence. With us it is a step from tutelage to liberty—from nonentity to importance. It cannot be quite so much so in England; ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... the fields or in the garden by those who were able for such tasks. Confession and communion were frequent, but no uniform rule was enforced. In this, as in fasting and austerities generally, each recluse was left to his own free will; and, as will be seen in Pascal’s case, there was no need to stimulate the morbid ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... Recluse of that undesirable island, a mass of granite and thin, unkindly soil is far removed from the prosaic. His was the third life sacrificed because of the lust of man to own the unromantic spot. He came to be known as "The Recluse ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... from the hall as if he were mad. After long wandering, he found the outlet of the hateful chateau, and hastened into the open air. He returned to the hermitage of Notre-Dame-du-Sex, and talked so despairingly to the holy recluse, that the latter consented to return with him ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... here on the coast, this side of Katalla, who is said to be a fine surgeon," Jamison explained, after Tommy had finished his statement. "He's a sort of a recluse, people say, and lives alone in a shabby hut, high up above the tide. You might stop and consult him. That would be better, it seems to me, than going away up to Cordova. Still," he went on with a grim smile, "I've been paid to take you to Cordova and back, ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... out of his father's kingdom into a strange country, and he put on the garment of a recluse, and lived as ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... abode; that he never received a letter; and that he never hunted, shot, or fished with the squiredom of the country. He was of large form, loud voice, had a sullen look, and no trust in her Majesty's ministers for the time being. At length, on some occasion of peculiar public excitement, the recluse had gone to Gravesend, where, tempted by the impulse of the moment, he had broken through his reserve, dashed out into a diatribe of singular fierceness, but of remarkable power, accused England of all kinds of oppression to all kinds ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... he did not come, and Eveley felt that perhaps he was reconciled, and had returned to his old pursuit of secluded ballroom corners. But Nolan assured her of the injustice of this. Lem had forsaken all his former haunts, and had become a recluse, brooding ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... arises the City proper—its individuality dependent upon the measure and form in which ideals are expressed and harmonised in social life and polity, ideas synthetised in culture, and beauty carried outwards from the study or chamber of the recluse into ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... first time I had ever played at dice. My education was recluse. I had no companions, and we had no dice in the castle. The idle game pleased me. When I returned to the hotel, I ordered dice, and amused myself all the evening with casting them, actuated by a persuasion that there must ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... was naturally glum, So she married young Grouch, the recluse; For she says when she's sad, she just looks at his face— Then she can't help but laugh like ...
— Why They Married • James Montgomery Flagg
... not studied human nature so superficially as to fail to comprehend the snares and pitfalls which men's egregious vanity sometimes spring prematurely; and rumour quotes me aright, in proclaiming me a recluse when the curtain falls and the lights are extinguished. To-day I deviated from my usual custom in compliment to the representative of my country, who sends you—so his card reads—'charged with an ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... she had assigned herself was done. To acquaint Bruce's father with Sprudell's plot and enlist him on Bruce's side seemed altogether the easiest part of her plan. She had no notion that she was the brilliant lady-journalist to whom the diplomat, the recluse, the stern and rock-bound capitalist, give up the secrets of their souls, but she did have an assured feeling that with the arguments she had to offer she ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... English officer, who is readily recognized as that Lord Howe who met his death at Ticonderoga. As a most natural sequence, even amid the hostile demonstrations of both French and Indians, Lord Howe and the young girl find time to make most deliciously sweet love, and the son of the recluse has already lost his heart to the daughter of a great sachem, a dusky maiden whose warrior-father has surrounded her with all the comforts of ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... Mount" cottage. I was shown, at once, into the sitting-room, where I found him with his wife, who sat sewing beside him. The old man rose and received me graciously. By his appearance I was somewhat startled. Instead of a grave recluse in scholastic black, whom I expected to see, I found an affable and lovable old man dressed in the roughest coat of blue with metal buttons, and checked trousers, more like a New York farmer than an English poet. His nose was very large, his forehead a lofty dome of thought, and his long white ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... Triomphe, had come to seek him. His house was rich in beautiful pictures and rare books, and he sometimes received there his few real friends, his companions in troublous times, like Varhely. He was generally considered a little of a recluse, although he loved society and showed himself, during the winter, at all entertainments where, by virtue of his fame and rank, he would naturally be expected to be present. But he carried with him a certain melancholy and gravity, which contrasted ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... divine may have preached against pleasure, consists not in the contempt of either of these. A man may have as much wisdom in the possession of an affluent fortune, as any beggar in the streets; or may enjoy a handsome wife or a hearty friend, and still remain as wise as any sour popish recluse, who buries all his social faculties, and starves his belly while he ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... and Cecile Shepard Mr. Northrup appeared very well indeed at dinner that night in the Corner House. They learned he could be very entertaining if he wished; that he had not forgotten how to interest women if he had been a recluse for so long; and that even Tess and Dot found something about him to admire. The former said afterward that Mr. Northrup had a voice like a distant drum; Dot said he had a "noble looking forehead," meaning that it was very ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... a letter to Hector, on March 7 of this year, described Congreve as 'very dull, very valetudinary, and very recluse, willing, I am afraid, to forget the world, and content to be forgotten by it, to repose in that sullen sensuality into which men naturally sink who think disease a justification of indulgence, and converse only with those who hope to prosper by indulging ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... behind trees. Her lover's home was unusually illuminated to-night—unusually, because, at other times, when she had passed it, only one or two lights had been visible, Major Perigal living the life of a recluse who disliked intercourse with his species. Half an hour later, Mavis was putting her baby to bed at Mrs Trivett's. His face was flushed, his eyes staring and wide awake; but Mavis put down these manifestations to ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... rakonto. Recitation deklamo—ado. Recite deklami. Reckless senzorga. Reckon kalkuli. Reckoner (book) kalkullibro. Reckoning kalkulo. Reclaim (land) eltiri. Reclaim redemandi. Recline kusxi, apogi. Recluse ermito. Recognition rekono. Recognize rekoni. Recoil (of gun, etc.) repusxo. Recollect memori. Recommend rekomendi. Recommendation rekomendo. Recompense rekompenci. Reconcile pacigi. Reconciled, to be pacigxi. Reconciliation pacigo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... self-defense, stood mute before the old man's charge. She had been scolded too often by this dear recluse to resent it; she had, too, faith in ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... found in the Middle and Eastern States, during the period of song, only in the deepest and most remote forests, usually in damp and swampy localities. On this account the people in the Adirondack region call it the "Swamp Angel." Its being so much of a recluse accounts for the comparative ignorance that prevails ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... right of this was the friar's bed-room; at the farther end of it was situated the alcove, very low, and paved above with flags like a tomb. The room to the left was the workshop, the refectory, the store-room of the recluse. A press at the far end of the room had a wooden compartment with a window opening on the cloister, through which his provisions were passed in. His kitchen consisted of two little stoves placed outside, but not, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... whom, from the remissness of their porters, she obtained admittance, were satisfied at their servants' negligence when they heard the intelligence which Mrs Revel had to communicate. They were so delighted; Isabel was always such a sweet girl; hoped that Mrs Revel would not be such a recluse as she had been, and that they should prevail upon her to come to their parties! An heiress is of no little consequence when there are so many younger brothers to provide for; and, before a short month had flown away, Mrs Revel, to her delight, found that the cards and invitations of no inconsiderable ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... innovation had far-reaching consequences, profoundly altering the status of the Mikado, giving sensualism on the one hand and priestcraft on the other, their coveted opportunity, changing the ruler of the nation from an active statesman into a recluse and the recluse into a pious monk, or a licentious devotee, as the case might be. It paved the way for the usurpation of the government by the unscrupulous soldier, "the man on horseback," who was destined to rule Japan for seven hundred years, while the throne ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... between a Green Goose and a Hero.' But Gray was fastidious, in this case blindly so. The merits of Goldsmith he could when dying perceive, but the rollicking humour of Bozzy in this his first book was sealed to the recluse critic who 'never spoke out,' a thing that never could be safely asserted of the author of the ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... Selvaggia pinched their fingers so that they could not escape. All this time Messer Cino had his eyes rooted in Selvaggia's, reading her as if she were a portent. She endured very well what she took to be the vacancy of confusion in a shy recluse. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the public table, spoke of the gentleman who occupied the private apartments, wondered that no one appeared to be aware who he was, and then in confidence informed the assembled party that the recluse was the celebrated author of the "Pleasures of Memory," now engaged in illustrating "HIS ITALY" with splendid embellishments from the pencils of Stothard ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... movement, against which he set his face steadily, was not to be easily annihilated; it survived in Rome in such illustrious representatives as Canova, Thorwaldsen and Gibson. But Overbeck grew more and more the recluse; he shortly became a proselyte to the Romish Church, shut himself out from other associations, and thus after a time devoted his ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... to pretend that Gissing belongs of right to the 'first series' of English Men of Letters. But if debarred by his limitations from a resounding or popular success, he will remain exceptionally dear to the heart of the recluse, who thinks that the scholar does well to cherish a grievance against the vulgar world beyond the cloister; and dearer still, perhaps, to a certain number of enthusiasts who began reading George Gissing as a college night-course; who closed Thyrza and Demos as dawn was breaking ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... letter to Wordsworth (February 8, 1804), thinking, perhaps, less of the chieftain than the sonnet, exclaims, "'Oh for one hour of Dundee!' How often shall I sigh, 'Oh for one hour of The Recluse!'"—an aspiration which Byron would have ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... in this report—in the manner of the man as well as his words—that caused the strangers to hesitate. The description of "the Student" led them to suspect he was a recluse who might not welcome them cordially, but Mary Louise reflected that there was a daughter and decided that any American girl shut up on this three-acre "estate" for three years would be glad to meet another American ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... helm, that it rove to the coif of steel; and had not the sword swerved Sir Percivale had been slain, and with the stroke he fell out of his saddle. This jousts was done to-fore the hermitage where a recluse dwelled. And when she saw Sir Galahad ride, she said: God be with thee, best knight of the world. Ah certes, said she, all aloud that Launcelot and Percivale might hear it: An yonder two knights had known thee as well as I do they would not have encountered with thee. Then Sir Galahad ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... a minute's time and by a wholly chance happening, the mystery was out at last. Professor Nicolovius, the bland recluse of Mrs. Paynter's, and Henry G. Surface, political arch-traitor, ex-convict, and falsest of false friends, were one and ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... fare paid, and so good-bye. But it is needless to multiply examples; the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When we came to Apemama, of so many white men who have scrambled for a place in that rich market, one remained—a silent, sober, solitary, niggardly recluse, of whom the king remarks, 'I think ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... each of the embayed windows in succession, a flush of morning sun; and Otto looked so gay, and walked so airily, he was so well dressed and brushed and frizzled, so point-device, and of such a sovereign elegance, that the heart of his cousin the recluse was rather ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ignoble had it not been naive. The recluse of Kremenetz, passionately devoted to his people but wanting in political foresight, was calling Russian officialdom to aid in his fight against the bigotry of the Jewish masses, in the childish conviction that the Russian authorities had the welfare of the Jews truly at heart, ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... him less to the molestations of conversation than most other parts of the room. This was a small recess beside the fire-place, not uncommon in old-fashioned houses, and which, from its incapacity to hold more than one, secured to the worthy recluse the privacy he longed for; and here, among superannuated hearth-brushes, an old hand screen, an asthmatic bellows, and a kettle-holder, sat the timid youth, "alone, but in a crowd." Not all the seductions of loo, limited to ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... Ann children shout in glee, Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse; Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose Go honking northward over Tennessee; West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie, And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung, And yonder where, gigantic, ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... midst of this desolation is an old building of the middle ages. Here dwells a singular recluse. In the season of the malaria the native peasant flies the rank vegetation round; but he, a stranger and a foreigner, no associates, no companions, except books and instruments of science. He is often seen wandering ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... intensified by sympathy,—how, at the theatre, the concert, the picture gallery, we lose half our enjoyment if we have no one to enjoy with us; if, in short, we bear in mind that for all happiness beyond what the unfriended recluse can have, we are indebted to this same sympathy;—we shall see that the agencies which communicate it can scarcely ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... your mansion are battened to; Your faded wife is a close recluse; And your "finished" daughters will doubtless do Dutifully all that is willed of you, And marry ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... long enough before the recluse young Blounts would have encountered the gay little belle, had it not been that they were of necessity obliged to pass through the toll-gate, and sometimes forced to stop there. From some of her friends Nelly heard what a secluded life the two brothers ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... besides the heavy odds which his small secret seemed to be against him, stopping him from accepting such valuable friendships as might otherwise have come to him, and besides his slight deafness, he was by nature a recluse, or, at least, a dreamer. Every day that he set foot on Tchoupitoulas, or Carondelet, or Magazine, or Fulton, or Poydras street he came from a realm of thought, seeking service in ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... American social organization, is almost unknown and unfelt among the greater part of mankind, but his remedy for redundancy of population, and his lamentations over "the subjection of women," are those of a recluse or a valetudinarian. ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... hermitage. An unusual sign of life was to be seen at the mill-house itself; smoke was rising from the extemporized chimney; for Bell, as I knew, had installed herself as nurse and was doing her best to render the last days of the old recluse more restful than they could have been during his more ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... revolutionary outbreak in 1811 replaced the Spanish intendant by a triumvirate, of which the most prominent member was Dr. Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia. A lawyer by profession, familiar with the history of Rome, an admirer of France and Napoleon, a misanthrope and a recluse, possessing a blind faith in himself and actuated by a sense of implacable hatred for all who might venture to thwart his will, this extraordinary personage speedily made himself master of the country. A population composed chiefly of Indians, docile in temperament ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... Captain Hardwicke determined that Miss Nadine should know his heart before long, and have also a chance to know her own mind. "The fact is, the old boy has lived the life of a recluse, that's all, but I'll find a way to pierce the shell of his moroseness. There's one comfort," he smiled, "No other fellow is making ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturb'd, Give me for marriage a sweet-breath'd woman of whom I should never tire, Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the world a rural domestic life, Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own ears only, Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... of Coventry, Bid him his fate explore. Prancing in pride of earthly trust, His charger hurled him to the dust, And, by a base plebeian thrust, He died his band before. God judge 'twixt Marmion and me; He is a chief of high degree, And I a poor recluse; Yet oft, in Holy Writ, we see Even such weak minister as me May the oppressor bruise: For thus, inspired, did Judith slay The mighty in his sin, And Jael thus, and Deborah" - Here hasty Blount broke in:- "Fitz-Eustace, we must march our band; Saint Anton' fire thee! wilt thou ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... elsewhere are dwarfs." He went on a visit to some relations on the coast of Norfolk a few years later, and, writing to Lady Hesketh, lamented: "I shall never see Weston more. I have been tossed like a ball into a far country, from which there is no rebound for me." Who but the little recluse of a little world could think of Norfolk as a far country and shake with alarm before the "tremendous ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... God, sir, you amaze me at your words; Think with your self, sir, what a thing it were To cause a recluse to remove her vow: A maimed, contrite, and repentant soul, Ever mortified with fasting and with prayer, Whose thoughts, even as her eyes, are fixd on heaven, To draw a virgin, thus devour'd with zeal, Back to the world: O impious deed! Nor by the Canon Law can it be done Without ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... gold, for its own sake. Yet not exclusively, for he was genial, warm-hearted, and humane. He appreciated the enjoyments of personal, domestic, and social life. No man could be more affectionate, kind, generous, or public-spirited. He was never a recluse or an ascetic. He was ready to take anything in hand, and liked to have his hands full. He desired an estate, he studied a profession, he amused himself with useful arts, he loved a farm, a garden, an orchard, a fruitery, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... are those of a recluse. When he comes home from the bustle of the city, it would be a great annoyance to have company around him: in fact, I do not care for it, and, I dare say, we shall get ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... abominations of the world, but, greatly embarrassed, she could not find the necessary words. What a grief it would be to her if some day she were forced to accuse herself of having brought about the unhappiness of this child, who had been kept alone as a recluse, and allowed to dwell in the continued falsehood of ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... was a recluse, Hawthorne was an anchorite. He brought up his children in such purity and simplicity as is scarcely credible,—not altogether a wise plan. It was said that he did not even take a daily paper. In the following year Martin F. Conway, ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... purpose of sheltering myself behind the Prelate's authority, to avoid doing that which I proclaim my readiness, though not my willingness, to do, I can only say, that you are the first who has doubted the faith of Hugo de Lacy."—And while the proud Baron thus addressed a female and a recluse, he could not prevent his eye from sparkling, and his cheek ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... attended the most important meetings of the Congress of Scientists which was being held in New York. He was quite unprepared for the reception that was given him there. Of a very quiet and retiring disposition, and having lived the life of a recluse for many years, known to the world only by his writings, it never seemed to have occurred to him that his name was a famous one in other countries as well as his own. His first appearance was greeted ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... the squire, being the sort of recluse he is, has never seen the place, or, at any rate, not for years, and knows ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... intellectual sort, had been strangely reviving within her. Just emerged, as she was, from the long gloom of nursing, she already wished to throw it all behind her—to travel, to read, to make acquaintances—she who had lived as a recluse for twenty years! There was in it a last clutch at youth, at life. And she had no desire to enter upon this new existence—in comradeship with Marcella. They were independent and very different human beings. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... way beneath the austerities he practised; and one evening he was found by some fishermen insensible on the turf. They bore him for medical aid to the opposite convent; and one of the sisterhood, the daughter of a prince, was summoned to attend the recluse. But when his eyes opened upon hers, a sudden recognition appeared to seize both. He spoke; and the sister threw herself on the couch of the dying man, and shrieked forth a name, the most famous in the surrounding country,—the name of a once noted ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... governor, forcing a laugh; "who would believe that a mere recluse, a man almost dead, could have committed crimes so numerous, and ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... his entertainers and the Doctor. One would have said, to look at him, that he was not at the party by choice; and it was natural enough to think, with Susy Pettingill, that it must have been a freak of the dark girl's which brought him there, for he had the air of a shy and sad-hearted recluse. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that he leads two lives, the one trivial and ordinary, the other sacred and recluse; the one which he carries to the dinner-table and to his daily work, which grows old with his body and dies with it, the other that which is made up of the few inspiring moments of his higher aspiration and attainment, and in which his youth survives for him, his dreams, his unquenchable longings ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... much even beyond these surpassingly beautiful things, and make a more unique and distinctive contribution to the verse of his era. In the years that followed the production of his early writings the poet matures in thought as his art ripens and reaches still higher qualities of craftsmanship. Recluse as he was, he moreover had his experiences of life and drank deeply of sorrow's cup, as we see in "In Memoriam,"—that noble tribute to his youthful friend, Arthur Hallam, with its grand hymnal qualities and powerful and reverent lessons for ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... this. I could see that was only a variation of the traditional hermit's cave, a modern hole in a marble cliff. This tall, high-shouldered man with his spade-shaped beard and ragged smoking jacket, the cotton wool oozing from the quilting and the pockets burst at the corners, had recluse written all over him. He walked over the half dozen rugs that lay between the door and his encampment behind the table and left me forlorn, twiddling my hat and pulling at my coat, somewhere in outer darkness. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... may son," said the venerable recluse, giving me a farewell pat on the shoulder, "come back soon to your spiritual father who loves you, and amiably favor him with another tiny, tiny pinch of the ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... man of Bacon's genius and family, and of such eager and unconcealed desire to rise and be at work. No doubt he was often pinched in his means; his health was weak, and he was delicate and fastidious in his care of it. Plunged in work, he lived very much as a recluse in his chambers, and was thought to be reserved, and what those who disliked him called arrogant. But Bacon was ambitious—ambitious, in the first place, of the Queen's notice and favour. He was versatile, brilliant, courtly, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... (unproductive) 169; howling wilderness; rotten borough, Old Sarum. exclusion, excommunication, banishment, exile, ostracism, proscription; cut, cut direct; dead cut. inhospitality^, inhospitableness &c adj.; dissociability^; domesticity, Darby and Joan. recluse, hermit, eremite, cenobite; anchoret^, anchorite; Simon Stylites^; troglodyte, Timon of Athens^, Santon^, solitaire, ruralist^, disciple of Zimmermann, closet cynic, Diogenes; outcast, Pariah, castaway, pilgarlic^; wastrel, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... whose existence grew more and more mysterious, went back for a few days to her house at Neuilly. She would vanish, would reappear, living like a recluse, almost in entire solitude, receiving none ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... and sky shall you find it? The more solitary the recluse and the more confirmed and grounded his seclusion, the wider and more familiar becomes the circle of his social environment, until at length, like a very dryad of old, the birds build and sing in his branches and the "wee wild beasties" nest in his pockets. If he fails to ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... does not correspond exactly to any European word. It takes in Buddhism the place occupied in other religions by prayer—prayer, that is, in the sense of ecstatic communion with the divine being. The sermon[485] which the Buddha preached to King Ajatasattu on the fruits of the life of a recluse gives an eloquent account of the joys of samadhi. He describes how a monk[486] seats himself in the shade of a tree or in some mountain glen and then "keeping his body erect and his intelligence alert and intent" purifies his mind from all lust, ill-temper, sloth, fretfulness and perplexity. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... especially when one considers how he disliked the opposite sex and what a recluse he was. He could not endure ladies. I scarcely ever saw him. My room was in quite a remote wing of the house, and I never went out if I knew he was in the park. I was most careful. And when he died of course I knew I must ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... shyness, discouraged and offended his new companions. Hay did not return more than twice, Pringle never at all, and there came a time when Archie even desisted from the Tuesday Club, and became in all things - what he had had the name of almost from the first - the Recluse of Hermiston. High-nosed Miss Pringle of Drumanno and high-stepping Miss Marshall of the Mains were understood to have had a difference of opinion about him the day after the ball - he was none the wiser, he could not ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Meredith. My Lord, I will put it with a convincing brevity, not indeed a dust-scattering brevity fit only for the mumbling recluse, who perchance in this grey London marching Eastward at break of naked morn, daintily protruding a pinkest foot out of compassing clouds, copiously takes inside of him doses of what is denied to his external bat-resembling vision, but with the sharp brevity of a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... of all instruments, and although on account of its nature it is excluded from the concert hall, it is the companion of the recluse. The latter says to himself: 'Here I can produce the feelings of my heart, can shade fully, drive away care, and melt away a tone through all its swellings,'" This critic ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... of a recluse is not God's kind—only running water is pure; the living love of a live man and woman absolves itself, refines, benefits, and blesses, though it be the love of Aucassin and Nicolete, Plutarch and Laura, Paola and Francesca, Abelard ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard |
