"Recluse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... On the last page of "Letters from a Lady of Quality to a Chevalier" Chetwood had also advertised for speedy publication "a Book entitled, The Danger of giving way to Passion, in Five Exemplary Novels: First, The British Recluse, or the Secret History of Cleomira, supposed dead. Second, The Injur'd Husband, or the Mistaken Resentment. Third, Lasselia, or the Unfortunate Mistress. Fourth, The Rash Resolve, or the Untimely Discovery. Fifth, Idalia, or the Self-abandon'd.[19] Written by Mrs. Eliza Haywood." During the ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... before mine have undertaken to develop. Multitudes of readers have themselves passed through the very incidents I relate; but, for the most part, no work has hitherto recorded them. If I have hold them truly, I have added somewhat to the stock of books which should enable a recluse, shut up in his closet, to form an idea of what is passing in the world. It is inconceivable, meanwhile, how much, by this choice of a subject, I increased the arduousness of my task. It is so easy to do, a little ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... in these, his latter days, eschewed all society, and cared to see no faces but those of the surviving few whom he had loved in early life. And as those few survivors lived far away, and as he was but little given to move from home, his life was that of a recluse. Of the inhabitants of the place around him, who for the most part had congregated there since he had come among them, he saw but little, and his neighbours said that he was sullen and melancholic. But, according to their degrees, he had been a friend to Thomas ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... that the hardest part of the task 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 could ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... treasure to James. He knew nothing about the matter, and what he said will find its proper place when we come to investigate the history of Young Glengarry. The Prince at this time corresponded a good deal with 'Mademoiselle Luci,' that fair philosophical recluse who did little commissions for him in Paris. On April 4 he wants a list of the books he left in Paris, ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... one evening some days later, Cyril Waring met Elma Clifford once more, the first time for months, and had twenty minutes' talk in the tea-room alone with her. Contrary to his rule, he had gone to the Holkers' party that night, for a man can't remain a recluse all his life, no matter how hard he tries, merely because his brother's suspected of having committed a murder. In course of time, the attitude palls upon him. For the first year after Guy's sudden and mysterious disappearance, indeed, Cyril refused all invitations point-blank, except from the ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... 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 the corners of ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... and perhaps was chiefly 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 suppose himself to ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you say, the Waggoner in some sort came at my call, O for a potent voice to call forth the Recluse from his profound Dormitory, where he sleeps forgetful of his ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... wouldst aid me, and counsel me what I should do." "Dame," said the good man, "if it be so as thou sayest, ye must needs suffer it; for against thy lord and against his barons ye may do nought perforce." "Sir," said the good lady, "thou sayest sooth: but if it please God, I were fain to be a recluse nigh unto thee; whereby I may be at the service of God all the days of my life, and that I may have comfort of thee." "Dame," said the good man, "that would be over strange a thing, whereas thou art too young a lady and too fair. But I will tell thee what thou shalt do. Hard by my hermitage ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... omniscient, or by wry of a parable to signify that Confucius possessed the knowledge by which the river of disorder, which was barring the progress of liberty and freedom, might be crossed, we are only left to conjecture. Nor from the second recluse could Tsze-loo gain any practical information. "Who are you, sir?" was the somewhat peremptory question which his inquiry met with. Upon his answering that he was a disciple of Confucius, the man, who might have gathered his estimate of Confucius from the mouth of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... decided to go to England and seek medical advice. On the 1st of July they reached England, and shortly afterwards went to London to consult Sir Andrew Clark and other eminent physicians. Mrs. Stevenson writes from there: "I suppose it comes from being so long a recluse, but seeing the few people I have seen has quite shattered my nerves, so that I tremble and can hardly speak. Louis, on the contrary, is quite calm, and is at this moment, after a hearty meal, ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... all of Eustace marrying. He is of a shy and retiring temperament and sees few women. He is almost a recluse." ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... judgment of our press than for the enterprise which is born of competition, and, although that judgment has often to be framed under conditions which demand almost breathless rapidity, it does not always bear unfavorable comparison with the protracted meditation of the philosophic recluse. [Cheers.] ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... ruined hopes, of genius without wisdom: one of the sad stories which will ever excite the sympathy of the heart. Early sent to this university, he seems like Gibbon to have lived alone; and in the solitude of that impulsive and recluse spirit which formed his life-long peculiarity, to have nursed a spirit of atheism and wild schemes of reform. Charged by the authorities of his college with the authorship of an atheistical pamphlet,(644) ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... inexperienced imagination, she took not only marriage and the male sex into utter abomination, but resolved to quit the world for ever, and to make herself a perpetual prisoner for religion's sake. She determined, in short, to become what was then called a recluse, and as such to pass the remainder of her days in a narrow cell built within the wall of a church. On the 5th of October, accordingly, when the cell, only a few feet square, was finished in the wall of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... pleasant kitchen, was tempted to linger. Sallie's conversation yielded, to the discerning, something of the rich essence of the past; and Agatha began to yearn for a better knowledge of the recluse who had been her friend, unknown, through all the years. But she remembered her industrious plans for the day and ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... awakened all my ardor. What a blissful period of my existence was it that I passed beneath his roof. Another being seemed created within me, or rather, all that was amiable and excellent was drawn out. I was as recluse as ever I had been at the convent, but how different was my seclusion. My time was spent in storing my mind with lofty and poetical ideas; in meditating on all that was striking and noble in history or fiction; in studying and tracing all that was sublime and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... me. He was Richard Harding Davis. I recognized him, nor shall I forget that peculiar thrill I experienced at finding myself in actual, physical contact with an author. And that this author should be none other than the creator of Gallegher, prepossessing, vigorous, rather than a dry and elderly recluse, made my excitement the keener. It happened also, after entering the smoking-car, that the remaining vacant seat was at my side, and here Mr. Davis established himself. He looked at me, he asked if my name was Winston Churchill, he said he had read my book. How he guessed my identity ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... man, though his age can hardly have exceeded seventy. He was small and bent, with a finely wrinkled face which still wore the tan of youthful exposure. But for this dusky redness it would have been hard to reconstruct from the shrunken recluse, with his low fastidious voice and carefully tended hands, an image of that young knight of adventure whose sword had been at the service of every uprising which stirred the uneasy soil of Italy in the first half of ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... spot I love to meditate, as I watch the sunset; it suits a recluse like me. And there, a little farther off, I have planted some of the trees beloved ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... "you cannot think how much I pity you, or how much I have had you in my thoughts. Listen to me. In the monastery there is a recluse who never looks upon a human face. Of all men whom I know he has the broadest mind, and he breaks not his silence save to give advice. To him I went and said that I had a friend (though I did not actually mention your name) who was in great trouble of soul. Suddenly the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... of George Bradford is that of a long life as serene and happy as it was blameless and delightful to others. It was a life of affection and many interests and friendly devotion; but it was not that of a recluse scholar like Edward Fitzgerald, with the pensive consciousness of something desired but undone. George Bradford was in full sympathy with the best spirit of his time. He had all the distinctive American interest in public affairs. His conscience ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... a recluse, you see, but I am preparing to launch for the winter in a few days. Dick was detained in town by a bad fever:—you may suppose I was kept in ignorance of his situation, or I should not have remained ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... habitation. We heard that he had suffered some severe domestic calamity, which drove him to his present lonely life, but he spent his days in doing all the good that lay in his power, and doubtless many a passing traveller was the better in more ways than one for meeting the old recluse. ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... there were a large number, were apparently free to move from one neighbourhood to another, but the woman recluse, or "anchoress," seldom or never left the walls of her cell, a little house of two or three rooms built generally against the church wall, so that one of her windows could open into the church, and another, veiled by a curtain, looked on to the outer world, where ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... Jr., and five Rangers set out to fulfill all contracts pending and understood. The abandoned ranchita in the monte—the meeting point—had been at one time a stone house of some pretensions, where had formerly lived its builder, a wealthy, eccentric recluse. It had in previous years, however, been burned, so that now only crumbling walls remained, a gloomy, isolated, though picturesque ruin, standing in an opening several acres in extent, while trails, once in use, led ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... governor, forcing a laugh; "who would believe that a mere recluse, a man almost dead, could have committed crimes so numerous, and so long to ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... that there was some secret between his father and his sister Hannah; something which had made them what they were; something which had given his father the name of the half-crazy hermit, and to his sister that of the recluse; something which he must never try to unearth, lest it bring ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... enormous edifice. It was torn down in 1812. Here for nearly a quarter of a century the tall form, and face pale and meagre from intense thinking, appeared each Sabbath before a people among whom his recluse habits rendered him almost a stranger. Here, having rested upon the desk, upon the elbow of his left arm, whose hand held a tiny book of closely written MS., he read with stooping form and low tones those solemn arguments and tremendous appeals which now thrill us from the printed page. ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... for a moment, I beseech you. He sows hurry and reaps indigestion; he puts a vast deal of activity out to interest, and receives a large measure of nervous derangement in return. Either he absents himself entirely from all fellowship, and lives a recluse in a garret, with carpet slippers and a leaden inkpot; or he comes among people swiftly and bitterly, in a contraction of his whole nervous system, to discharge some temper before he returns to work. I do not care how much or how well ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... used as a court-room and offices for city and county officials, while in the basement were constructed the cells of the prison. It required a desperate effort on the part of the timid and delicate lady, who for years had almost been a recluse from the world, to summon courage to alight and approach a place that to her abounded in many and indefinite horrors. She was too preoccupied to observe that another carriage had drawn up to the entrance, and ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... been a recluse, a dreamer, a kind of isolated philosopher, easy-going, content with but little, harboring ill-feeling against no man, and without even a grudge against heaven. I have constantly lived alone; consequently, a kind of torture takes hold of me when I find myself in the presence of others. How ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... person loves not to behold the eye-sparkle of pure admiration between young man and maid? 'They worship, truly, they know not what.' In bowing down to their ideal, they bow to the real human—the purified man or woman of the better land. The recluse is ever the true prophet and seer, in this as in still higher matters. Your modest-eyed student, stealing glances of unfeigned admiration at ordinary maidens, is not such a simpleton as some suppose. His seclusion has cleared his vision. He sees on through the eons—sees ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... affairs you don't feel no call to speak on that point?" he observed, and with evident regret. He had hoped that Bladen would clear up the mystery, for certainly it must have been some sinister tragedy that had cost the general his grip on life and for twenty years and more had made of him a recluse, so that the faces of his friends had become as ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... closed, or which had chinks in their sides, or even hid them in a drawer or a cupboard, I found the males arrived in numbers as great as when the object of their search lay in the cage of open wire-work freely exposed on a table. I have a vivid memory of one evening when the recluse was hidden in a hat-box at the bottom of a wall-cupboard. The arrivals went straight to the closed doors, and beat them with their wings, toc-toc, trying to enter. Wandering pilgrims, come from I know not where, across fields and ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... not forget that during the Western and the Eastern Tsin (Shin) dynasties (A.D. 265-420) both Taoism and Buddhism grew prosperous to no small extent. And China produced, on the one hand, Taoists of an eccentric type, such as the Seven Wise Men of the Bamboo Forest, while she gave birth to many recluse-like men of letters, such as Tao Yuen Ming (To-yen-mei, died A.D. 427) and some others on the other. Besides there were some scholars who studied Buddhism in connection with Taoism and Confucianism, and led a secluded ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... Treaty Between the Peacocks and the Swans The Story of the Tortoise and the Geese The Story of Fate and the Three Fishes The Story of the Unabashed Wife The Story of the Herons and the Mongoose The Story of the Recluse and the Mouse The Story of the Crane and the Crab The Story of the Brahman and the Pans The Duel of the Giants The Story of the Brahman and the Goat The Story of the Camel, the Lion, and His Court The Story of the Frogs ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... had meant in these lines to regather, and send To our old home, my life's scatter'd links. But 'tis vain! Each attempt seems to shatter the chaplet again; Only fit now for fingers like mine to run o'er, Who return, a recluse, to those cloisters of yore Whence too far I have wander'd. "How many long years Does it seem to me now since the quick, scorching tears, While I wrote to you, splash'd out a girl's premature Moans of pain at what women ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... 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 with acclamation as soon as his name was mentioned, and during his stay in New York ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... all our ministers, he had the least occasion for an outfit, and I suppose spent almost nothing on that article. He was of a disposition, too, to restrain himself within any limits of expense whatever, and it suited his recluse turn, which is, to avoid society. Should he judge of what others should do, by what he did, it would be an improper criterion. He was in Europe as a voyageur only, and it was while the salary was five hundred guineas more ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... cell and read. The gentle stillness of a rare spring morning enveloped him with its benison. And the clear light fell upon the large pages of a book in his hand,—the window through which it streamed was the one link between the young recluse and the life of the world. From it he could see the roofs of the city beneath him; when he so wished, he might, without straining his gaze, distinguish the Pantheon at the end of that triumphal avenue which spanned the Seine ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... highest 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
... to earth's moral good, can be fully exerted. The boy at school inclines to rough manners. What more effectual restraint upon this tendency, than the delicacy and gentleness which marks the little girl? She again, may become painfully diffident, and a recluse in her bearing, if not subjected to the society of the more confident sex. Encourage the boy to sit always by the fireside, and studiously shun conversation with the opposite sex, or put the girl forward ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... me all the intelligence of what had happened at court since I had left it; and although I professed to have renounced the world, and to have become a recluse, a sitter in a corner, as it is called, yet still I found that I had an ear for what was passing in it. They informed me that the chief executioner had returned from his campaign against the Russians, and had brought the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... of Kanwa? The saintly man, though descended from the great Kasyapa, must be very deficient in judgment to habituate such a maiden to the life of a recluse. ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... princesses were invited thither; this clearly proved to the public, in general, how great was the opposition I experienced from the court party. I was now delighted to prove to the Parisians that I was not always to lead the life of a recluse, but that I could freely present myself at those parties to which other ladies were invited. However, as my friends apprehended that the comtesse de Provence might prevail upon her lady of honour not to invite me, by the advice ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... Absorbed in thought, in contemplation lost, Unconscious that a day and night had passed. I cannot reason with such earnestness— I dare not chide such deep and tender love, But much I fear his reason's overthrow Or that he may become like that recluse He shuddered at, and not a mighty king With power to crush the wrong and aid the right. How can we turn his mind from such sad thoughts To life's full joys, the duties of a king, And his great destiny ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... parties have been— what suffering, what danger, what years of miserable anxiety might have been spared to all who were interested—had the guardians and executors of my father's will thought fit to "let well alone"! But, "per star meglio" [2] they chose to remove my brother from this gentle recluse to an active, bustling man of the world, the very anti-pole in character. What might be the pretensions of this gentleman to scholarship, I never had any means of judging; and, considering that he must now, (if living at all,) at a distance of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... was 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, as to whether she was ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... would be 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 ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... identity was enveloped in a degree of mystery rendered him doubly interesting. In the case of each this was his introduction to the social life of Ophir. Each had been a resident of the town, the one as a student and recluse, the other as a business man, but each was a stranger to the stratum known as society. Each held himself aloof that evening from the throng: the one, through natural reserve, courteous but indifferent to the passing crowd; the other alert, watchful, studying the crowd; weighing, gauging this ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... feelings of awe and reverence, and as one approaches this particular rock, standing with its stupendous bulk poised, seemingly in a miraculous manner and point, one is struck with amazement. The recess in which it stands hath, behind this rock, and the rocks which surround it, a withdrawn and recluse passage which the eye cannot look into but with an idea of its coming from some more secret and holy adyt. All these circumstances, in an age of tutored superstition, would give, even to the finest minds, the impressions that ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... the woman was his property, if he thought fit to claim her, by virtue of the marriage already had; but it was a present supply of her necessary wants, by which he acknowledged her as his wife, and engaged to furnish her with alimony, not ample indeed, but suitable to the recluse life ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... part, the rock itself. There stands what is now described as the Einsiedlerstein,—that is, the stony dwelling of the hermit; a grievous misnomer surely,—for though the last occupant of that dwelling was doubtless a recluse, its original purpose, which for many ages it served, was that of a strong-hold, or castle. And perhaps nowhere, even in Germany, can a more perfect specimen be pointed out of the sort of nest which used, in the dark ages of feuds and forays, to shelter the robber-knights and barons, ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... superseded the pair of sympathetic and ready maids, whom she allowed to fade into the background with too scant recognition of their services; and when she had got Amy thoroughly warmed and rehabilitated she turned her thought toward Cope. Here, certainly, was a young scholastic recluse who had an admirable faculty for getting into the public eye. If one section of Churchton society had talked about his performance at her dinner, all sections of it would now be discussing his new performance on the high seas. Suddenly she was struck with the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... company of strolling players. You gain in knowledge what you lose in time. If you are a philosopher, you can study human nature through the buffoon and the mummer. If you are a naturalist, here are grand forests to contemplate. If you are not a recluse, here is free, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Mortlake," said the man of the island slowly. "After I knew I was ruined, I fled down here, where I was raised, and became a recluse on that island. It was cowardly of me, I know, but from now on I am going to lead ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... Stamen males, with appetencies just, Produce a formative prolific dust; With apt propensities, the Styles recluse Secrete a formative prolific juice; These in the pericarp erewhile arrive, Rush to each other, and embrace alive. —Form'd by new powers progressive parts succeed, Join in one whole, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... and Mrs. Hartley, he told us that he had been visited by a hardened creature, whose name did not concern us, and who, in anticipation of a reward which she had heard was offered for the recovery of the recluse, disclosed the fact that she had, under an assumed name, become a sister of charity, and was at present an inmate in a convent in —— street, where we would, doubtless, ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... and a half had gone by, 'you will of course let me have Annabel shortly. I pray you to remember that she is turned seventeen. You surely won't deprive her of every pleasure and every advantage?' And the recluse made answer: 'If bolts and shackles were needful I would use them mercilessly rather than allow my girl to enter your Middlesex pandemonium. Happily, the fetters of her reason suffice. She is growing into a woman, and by the blessing of the gods her soul shall ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... and who died rather than compromise her. Heart-broken, the marquise withdrew to the solitude of an old chateau situated between Moret and Montereau in the midst of a neglected waste. She remained a recluse for almost a year, given over utterly to her grief, refusing the consolations of the Church offered her by the old cure of the village of Saint-Lange. Then she re-entered society at Paris. There, at the age of about thirty, she yielded ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... yet commenced. Salome bent forward with all the interest and curiosity of a recluse, to look, for a moment, upon ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... schools, interest had been independently and strongly awakened in the minds of theologians and philosophical thinkers, in regard to the idea, history, and relations to society of the Christian Church. In Ireland, a recluse, who was the centre of a small knot of earnest friends, a man of deep piety and great freedom and originality of mind, Mr. Alexander Knox, had been led, partly, it may be, by his intimacy with John Wesley, to think out for himself the character and true constitution of the Church, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... 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 study of the law, which he did in 1745 under James Gridley, a prominent jurist ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... much further from him. All I could gather was that the Trewinions had been a great people, but had fallen on evil days as the result of their own sinning, and that the present representative of the family was a recluse, living alone in the old Manor House, and that many curious stories were ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... those two conditions are kept. I see as well as you do, even more than you do, how important it is that for the present,—ay, for a long time hence—I should still be but the curate's lonely son, unattached to anybody or anything, with no object of interest but his science; and you the recluse lady of the manor, to whom he ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... that night of horrors has to his shocked and shrinking fancy still been ever present; there still it broods—settled, perpetual and alone! Ah! Rosabelle! the petulancies of misfortune claim our pity, not resentment. My dear uncle is a recluse, but not a misanthrope; he rejects the society of mankind, yet is he solicitous for their happiness; and while his own heart breaks in silence under a weight of undivided sorrows, does he not seek incessantly to alleviate the burthen ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... pleasure-garden is greatly heightened by the delightful odour which this plant diffuses; and as it is most readily cultivated in pots, its fragrance may be conveyed to the parlour of the recluse, or the chamber of the valetudinarian; its perfume, though not so refreshing perhaps as that of the Sweet-Briar, is not apt to offend on continuance the ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. I - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... for it, there is a balance in its favour from the number of great men who have been convinced of its truth, after a serious consideration of the question. Grotius was an acute man, a lawyer, a man accustomed to examine evidence, and he was convinced. Grotius was not a recluse, but a man of the world, who certainly had no bias to the side of religion. Sir Isaac Newton set out an infidel, and came to be a very ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... hypocrites. Some of us feign for one matter, and some for other. I wis somewhat thereabout, child; for ere I came hither was I maid unto the Lady Julian [a fictitious person], recluse of Tamworth Priory. By our dear Lady her girdle! saw ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... smoking-room at a late hour—the centre of a group of eminent men entranced by the brilliancy of my conversation. And now—! I was nothing but a small, dull, soup-stained, sticking-plastered, nerve-racked recluse. Nerves, yes. I assured myself that I had not seen—what I had seemed to see. All very odd, of course, and very unpleasant, but easily explained. Nerves. Excitement of coming to Keeb too much for me. A good night's rest: that ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... 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, the first United States representative ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... thrown into prison on the charge of high treason; when all they proved against him was the remark, that if the king had signed the Quebec bill, he had broken his coronation oath. There, another, a poor harmless recluse, as I have ever supposed him, is dragged from his hut in the mountains and imprisoned to await his trial for an alleged murder, committed long ago, and in another jurisdiction; when his only crime, with his prosecutors, probably, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... Luella Gloaming 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 ...
— Why They Married • James Montgomery Flagg
... deserve, the admiration of mankind. There was at the time, as would be expected, some anger and disappointment at the result. Occasionally some bigot who can find nothing but evil in the history and life of his country, generally some recluse who has little knowledge of affairs, charges the Commission with having wickedly deprived the majority of the people of the fruits of an honest and lawful victory. But, in general, wherever I go I find that intelligent men of both ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... accomplices may have involved the country. We know something of how the knowledge of these anomalies in public life chafed the eager spirit of Nelson, but we can never know the extent of the suffering it caused except during the Neapolitan and Sicilian days. This lonely soul lived the life of a recluse for months at a time. The monotony of the weird song of the sea winds, the nerve-tearing, lazy creak of the wooden timbers, the sinuous crawling, rolling, or plunging over the most wondrous of God's works, invariably produces a ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... doubt the emissaries of some person or persons in Germany, who were interested in the old gentleman and would be benefited by his death. As this story coincided so fully with the mysterious appearance of the old man at South Norwalk; his recluse habits and avoidance of society, it soon gained many believers, who were thoroughly convinced of the correctness of the theory ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... who used to come on spiritual business to the metropolis. We have seen how these men used to entertain each other over their wine by quoting the Odes and other ancient saws; when consulting the imperial library to rectify their own dates, they would naturally meet the old recluse Lao-tsz, and hear from his own mouth what he thought of the coming collapse anticipated by all. He is said to have left orthodox China in disgust, and gone West—well, he must have passed through Ts'in if he went to the west. At the frontier pass (it is not known precisely whether ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... there and take it all in. There was no need of his saying anything so long as the other fellows had embarked on the task of drawing Obed out and learning just what he was doing to keep him marooned up there summer and winter, like a regular old recluse, or woodchuck. ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... to Hawthorne by the antediluvian print in the stone step at Smithell's Hall, in Lancashire, serves as the key- note of this romance; but the eccentric recluse, the big crab-spider, the orphaned grandchild, and even Bronson Alcott also appear in it. Alcott, however,—and his identity cannot be mistaken,—does not play the leading part in the piece, but comes ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... on that score. He was not, it is true, the drag-horse that Herkimer was, who lived like a recluse, shunning the cafes and the dance-halls, eating up the last gray hours of the day over his statues and his clays. But Rantoul, while living life to its fullest, haunting the wharves and the markets with avid eyes, roaming the woods and trudging the banks of the Seine, mingling in the crowds ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... in fact throughout his life, was a matter of personal choice. More and more, as he grew older, he avoided every action on his part, and on the part of his family, that might tend to keep his name and writings before the public. A few friends felt at liberty to visit the recluse, and were kindly welcomed, but he himself sought no one. His favorite companions were his grandchildren, with whom he delighted to pass his time, and his devoted wife, who was a constant assistant and adviser in his literary work, chiefly done at this ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... the world a notion that the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian,[40]—as unfit for any handiwork or public labor as a penknife for an axe. The so-called "practical men" sneer at speculative men, as if, because they speculate or see, they could do nothing. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... verse, somewhat intolerant of all worldly enjoyments, such as hunting, dancing, and theaters. "God made the country and man made the town," he wrote. He was a moralizing poet, and his morality was sometimes that of the invalid and the recluse. Byron called him a "coddled poet." And, indeed, there is a suspicion of gruel and dressing-gowns about him. He lived much among women, and his sufferings had refined him to a feminine delicacy. But ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... becoming a loyal, solid, representative college man, a tremendous power for good, at old Bannister, hang in the balance at this moment! I speak of John Thorwald. You students have it in your power to make or break him, to ruin his college years and make him a recluse, a misanthrope, or to gradually bring him to a full realization of what college life and ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... quite," Blackmore answered. "My uncle was a studious, solitary man, but he was not formerly a recluse. He was not much of a correspondent but he kept up some sort of communication with his friends. He used, for instance, to write to me sometimes, and, when I came down from Cambridge for the vacations, he had me to stay with him at ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... sister—Margaret's and mine; but I ought not to think of it, since a recluse should have no kindred out of her Order and the blessed saints. And there are three Sisters in the Priory named Alianora: wherefore, to make diversity, the eldest professed is called Alianora, and ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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 ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... works had during the last few weeks been absorbing more and more of his attention. When he returned home, tired, in the evening, he was not communicative. As for Otto von Holzen, he never showed his face outside the works now, but seemed to live the life of a recluse within the iron fence that surrounded ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... 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 he good; he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... understand me, least of all when I say I don't feel sure that I want him back. That would mean the fear and the shame again. But he was so marvellous. How right he was! They followed the lead he gave them at Henstead; and even you, dear recluse, know that there was a change of Government last year. And I am quite rich out of the Alethea. For he was right and the poor Professor, who was supposed to know all about it, was absolutely, utterly, hopelessly wrong. And the Crusade's come to ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... bricabrac, and sometimes real prizes are secured at very reasonable cost. A gentleman showed the writer an old, illuminated book, of a religious character, entirely illustrated by the hand of some patriot recluse, which was marked five dollars, and upon which probably four dollars had been loaned to the party who deposited it. The time for its redemption had long since expired, and our friend gladly paid the sum asked for it. He said he should take it to the Astor ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... of making some bitter reply about the undesirability of any guardianship assumed by Willis Morgan, squaw man, recluse, and recipient of common hatred and contempt. But he kept his counsel, and ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... young vagrant in his tattered clothes, knocking at the gate and delivering, with a blush, his letter of recommendation to the fair recluse, in the lonely path that leads from the house to the church. They were so present to our fancy, that it seemed as though they were expecting us, and that we should see them at the window or in the garden walks of ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... fallen over his face. Pearl realized that, for the moment, at least, he had forgotten her presence, and in truth, his mind had traveled back over the years and he was living over again the experience which had made him a wanderer on the earth and finally a recluse in the ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... with military life. In 1831 he had joined the insurgents in the Romagna who were in arms against the Papal Government. The death of his own elder brother, followed in 1832 by that of Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt, made him chief of the house of Bonaparte. Though far more of a recluse than a man of action, though so little of his own nation that he could not pronounce a sentence of French without a marked German accent, and had never even seen a French play performed, he now became possessed by the fixed idea that he was one day to wear the French Crown. A few obscure ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... as possible," she replied, "and you can judge for yourself if I am right or wrong. Three years ago my father's health was very bad. Since the death of my mother—now some ten years—he had devoted himself to hard study, and had lived more or less the life of a recluse in Berwin Manor. He was writing a history of the Elizabethan dramatists, and became so engrossed with the work that he neglected his health, and consequently there was danger that he might suffer from brain fever. The doctors ordered him to leave ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... the pages thoughtfully, and read aloud, presumably for the benefit of the cats: "In a symbol there is concealment yet revelation, the infinite is made to blend with the finite, to stand visible, and as it were attainable there." The Child sighed, "We had better go to the Recluse," she said. So ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... canons. Captain Sarrasin always professed that he found the illimitable spaces of the West too tranquillising for him. The sight of those great, endless fields, the isolation of those majestic mountains, suggested to him a recluse-like calm which never suited his quick-moving temper. So he did not very often visit his brother in Hampstead, and the brother in Hampstead, deeply engrossed in the grave cares of comparative folk-lore, seldom dropped from his Hampstead eyrie ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... routine under his well selected staff of overseers.[23] Even after the war Burnside kept on acquiring plantations, and with free negro labor kept on making large sugar crops. At the end of his long life, spent frugally as a bachelor and somewhat of a recluse, he was doubtless by far the richest man in all the South. The number of planters who had been merchants and the frequency of partnerships and corporations operating sugar estates, as well as the magnitude of scale characteristic of the industry, suggest that methods of a strictly ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... sentiments. Possibly, in their beginnings, no person did more in the exertion of those means which have wrought into the heart of the English people such undying hatred to Negro Slavery than the amiable recluse whose writings can never die so long as lovers of poetry continue to live. Who has not at times turned away from the best-loved of the living poets, to regale himself with the compact, polished, sweetly ringing numbers of Cowper? On the subject ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... up to him, I said, "Brother, I had no sooner parted from you, but a thought came into my head, which neither of us had reflected on before. You are a recluse dervish, used to live in tranquillity, disengaged from all the cares of the world, and intent only upon serving God. You know not, perhaps, what trouble you have taken upon yourself, to take care of so many camels. If you would take my advice, you would keep but ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... 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 ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... appropriated any popular name of the day, and affixed it to their publications; and who so popular with all playgoers of the period as the gentle, well-living Shakspeare? And his name would better suit his friends and the then public, than any mere recluse, unknown poet, until his name, like other myths, acquired sanctity by age. Indeed, we fear it is not necessary to go back to Shakspeare's time to find the practice of assumed authorship of purchased plays, without either the reasons or the excuses which apply to Shakspeare. Unfortunately, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... invented Purgatory, to escape the awful burnings of an everlasting hell of physical sufferings. It pervaded the whole theology of the Middle Ages, filling hamlet and convent alike with an atmosphere of fear and wrath, and creating a cruel spiritual despotism. The recluse, isolated and lonely, consumed himself with phantoms, fancied devils, and "chimeras dire." He could not escape from himself, although he might fly from society. As a means of grace he sought voluntary ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... residence in Lower California, marriage with a rich Mexican widow, whose dying childless left him sole heir, and some strange restraining idiosyncrasy of temperament had quite denationalized him. A bookish recluse, somewhat superfastidious towards his own countrymen, the more Clarence knew him the more singular appeared his acquaintance with Flynn; but as he did not exhibit more communicativeness on this point than upon their own kinship, Clarence finally ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... 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 three pence, nor even that most appropriately ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... enforced isolations taught them to brood, or whether they were brooders by nature, it is difficult to say. I think they were all easterners, and this would explain away certain characteristic shynesses of temper and of expression in them. Ryder, as we know, was the typical recluse, Fuller in all likelihood also. Martin I know little of privately, but his portrait shows him to be a strong elemental nature, with little feeling for, or interest in, the superficialities either of life or of art. Of Blakelock I can say but little, for I do not know him beyond a few stylish ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... For four days had passed and the recluse had not returned her call. True, there had come to her hotel a wicker full of superb wild tree blooms, and, again, a tiny box, cunning in workmanship of scented wood, containing what at first glance she had taken to be a jewel, until she saw that it was a tiny butterfly with ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 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 his house to listen to him, but especially ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... bore a resemblance to that of 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... see in the young soldier the same recluse and dreamer of Brienne. In boyhood parlance today, he "flocked by himself," building air castles which in part were to ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... some ways the greatest and most powerful thing that Bellini ever accomplished. The central figures and the attendant saints have a large gravity and carefully studied individuality. St. Jerome, absorbed in his theological books, an ascetic recluse, is admirably contrasted with the sympathetic, cultured St. Paul. The landscape, set in a marble frame, is a gem of beauty, and proves what an appeal nature was making to the painter. The predella, illustrating the ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... [Footnote: Properly an anchorite is a recluse, walled into his cell; a monk is a solitary; and an eremite or hermit is a dweller in the desert.] are commemorated in both the Greek Menaea and the Roman Martyrology more worthy to be esteemed Buddhists than Christian ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... 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 ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... 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 that brought him there, for he had the air of a shy and sad-hearted recluse. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... of interest. He was not a recluse or a bookworm; his work was to study men, and he lived among men, he fought strenuously, he enjoyed lustily, he suffered keenly, and he died prematurely, worn out by the force of his own emotions, and by the prodigies of labour to which he was impelled by the restless ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... of his own ancestry Drove the monks forth 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 ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... Sigden, a recluse of refined tastes who in The Bun demanded to know whether this Huckley-of-the-Hoopoe was the Hugly of his boyhood and whether, by any chance, the fell change of name had been wrought by collusion ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling |
