"Vestal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Claudius, and by the tidings which had spread rapidly through the streets, of what had occurred. The soldiers whom Claudius had sent forward, were making arrests in the streets, and searching the houses. In the midst of this excitement, Messalina, with her children, attended by one of the vestal virgins, named Vibidia, whom she had prevailed upon to accompany her and plead her cause, came forth from her palace on foot, and proceeded through the streets, her hair disheveled, her dress in disorder, and her whole ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... bewildered your understanding," exclaimed the lady. "Whatever my ambition may be, my morality is unimpeached; a vestal would lose none of her ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... sufficiently cruel and mortifying; for the intention, at least, of the infidelity was so obvious, that she had not even taken the trouble to disguise it. She could never have imagined that G—— M—— meant to venerate her as a vestal. She must therefore clearly have made up her mind to pass at least one night with him. What an avowal for a lover's ears! However, I considered myself as partly the cause of her guilt, by having been the first to ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... VESTAL. A woman of the town, or prostitute; Drury-lane and its environs were formerly the residence of many of ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Queen of Crete To take a town-bull for her sweet, And from her greatness stoop so low, 395 To be the rival of a cow: Others to prostitute their great hearts, To he baboons' and monkeys' sweet-hearts; Some with the Dev'l himself in league grow, By's representative a Negro. 400 'Twas this made vestal-maids love-sick, And venture to be bury'd quick: Some by their fathers, and their brothers, To be made mistresses and mothers. 'Tis this that proudest dames enamours 405 On lacquies and valets des chambres; Their haughty stomachs overcomes, And makes ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... adopt you as my only son; have you ever bucked a wood saw?" said he, and a sardonic leer distorted his evil features. After I recovered sufficiently from the shock, I answered indignantly, "Sir, know ye not that I have pledged my service to the vestal virgins of yon temple?" "Ha! Ha!" laughed the villain, "get busy now, son, and if by morning this wood has not been cut, you will go minus your breakfast." Thereupon ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... doctors call; Let this estate from parents' care descend: The getting it too much of life does spend. Take such a ground, whose gratitude may be A fair encouragement for industry. Let constant fires the winter's fury tame, And let thy kitchens be a vestal flame. Thee to the town let never suit at law, And rarely, very rarely, business draw. Thy active mind in equal temper keep, In undisturbed peace, yet not in sleep. Let exercise a vigorous health maintain, Without which all the composition's vain. In the same ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... annual festival; births, marriages, deaths, and similar occurrences are, of course, as common and frequent in our temples as in our homes. Gentlemen, can any amount of esoteric whitewashing justify these disgraceful and fairly incredible practices? Then there are the deva dasies, our 'vestal virgins,' of whom even small and poor temples have one or two to boast. They are the recognized prostitutes of the country, and many sociologists are of opinion that no 'civilized' human society can completely get rid of such ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... those humbler friends who helped the parson's busy daughter in her cooking and cleaning; from all alike we hear of an active, genial, warm-hearted girl, full of humour and feeling to those she knew, though shy and cold in her bearing to strangers. A different being to the fierce impassioned Vestal who has seated herself in Emily's ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... by private jars, The war sleeps. Lo! my wrath is o'er: And him the Trojan vestal bore (Sprung of that hated line) ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... the guardians of a state, And when they fail, portend approaching fate: For that which Rome to conquest did inspire, Was not the Vestal, but the Muses fire; Heav'n joins the blessings, no declining age E'er felt the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... the blast! Who is the victor of the day? Thou of the delicate form, and golden hair, And manhood glorious in its midst of May; Thou who upon thy shield of argent bearest The bold device, "The loftiest is the fairest!" As bending low thy stainless crest, "The vestal throned by the west" Accords the old Provencal crown Which blends her own with thy renown; Arcadian Sidney, nursling of the muse, Flower of fair chivalry, whose bloom was fed With daintiest Castaly's most silver dews, Alas! how soon thy amaranth leaves were shed; ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... unwilling, to their accustomed passions. Consider the timorous, they are afraid even of those things that preserve them. Consider the pettish, they are angry with their best and dearest friends. Consider the amorous and lascivious, in the height of their fury they dare violate a Vestal. For custom is very powerful to draw the temper of the body to anything that is suitable to it; and he that is apt to fall will stumble at everything that lies in his way. So it is no wonder that those ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... too amiable Wallace, it as powerfully denounced to her, that she had devoted herself to one who must ever be to her as a being of air. No word of sympathy would ever whisper felicity to her heart; no-the flame that was within her (which she found would be immortal as the vestal fires which resemble its purity) must burn there unknown; hidden, but ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... hundred years were the Latin tribes. After eleven generations of kings, Amulius usurps the throne, which belonged to Numitor, the elder brother, and dooms his only daughter, Silvia, to perpetual virginity as a Vestal. Silvia, visited by a god, gives birth to twins, Romulus and Remus. The twins, exposed by the order of Amulius, are suckled by a she-wolf, and brought up by one of the king's herdsmen. They feed their flocks ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... of Apulius, as some say, tho' according to others the Son of Mars by one of the Vestal Virgins, built the City of Rome, and reign'd there 37 Years; after him reigned six Kings successively (their Names are of no Consequence) but the Wickedness of the last King put an end to the regal State, and introduced the Consular, which we may say lasted ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... of that "Vestal Virgin" business—Sahwah was flourishing a chamois vest to give us the idea of vestal—Nyoda walked in. There was only one low lamp burning in order to carry out Sahwah's idea of what a Rain Jinx ceremony should be like, and ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... the closed and barred gates of that vestal establishment, Maitland's cabman "pulled, and pushed, and kicked, and knocked" for a considerable time, without manifest effect. Clearly the retainers of Miss Marlett had secured the position for the night, and expected no visitors, though ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... saw, but thou could'st not, Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all-arm'd: a certain aim he took At a fair Vestal throned by the West, And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watry moon, And the Imperial Votress ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... good enough for little Mary Ware," he had said once, when she was a romping child. He was thinking of her unselfishness, her sturdy sincerity, her undaunted courage. Now he repeated it, thinking of her as this letter revealed her, a white-souled vestal maiden who took the stars as a symbol of her duty, and who would not swerve a hair's-breadth from the orbit which she thought ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... is not her social equal; the fear that love will rob her of her freedom and independence; the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will only hinder her in the full exercise of her profession—all these together make of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory vestal, before whom life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep, entrancing joys, rolls on without ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... the aching heart, Lest the freed malefactors should dispread Infamous ruin with their liberty. There's not a man—the fairest of ye all— Who is not fouler than he seems. This life Is one unending struggle to conceal Our baseness from our fellows. Here stands one In vestal whiteness with a lecher's lust;— There sits a judge, holding law's scales in hands That itch to take the bribe he dare not touch;— Here goes a priest with heavenward eyes, whose soul Is Satan's council-chamber;—there a doctor, With nature's secrets wrinkled round a brow Guilty with conscious ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... tavern! One is tempted to believe that the father was a man of robuster judgment in such matters than the son, whose own rather mediocre literary equipment, made him the easy prey of that acidulous vestal of literature, Voltaire. However that may be, he left a useful and unexpected legacy to his son, provided, indeed, the sinews for the making of ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... powerful enough in its way, but the conclusion which the fair artist draws is at least an odd one. We prepare ourselves to hear that woman has resolved to extirpate such a monster as this, or that she will remain an obstinate vestal till a nobler breed of wooers arises. What woman owns that she really does is to mould herself as much on the monster's model as she can. According to her own account, she puts nature's picture of herself into the hands of this imbecile, invites him ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... with money. Don't worry about the vestal virgin. He won't have time in this game to bother with poor relations, no matter how pretty they may happen ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... chose the kingdom; but Amulius, having the money, and being able to do more with that than Numitor, took his kingdom from with great ease, and, fearing lest his daughter might have children who would supplant him, made her a Vestal, bound in that condition forever to live a single and maiden life. This lady some call Ilia, others Rhea, and others Silvia; however, not long after, contrary to the established laws of the Vestals, she had two sons of more than human size and beauty, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... very time I saw (but thou couldst not), Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid, allarm'd: a certain aim he took At a fair vestal, throned by the west; And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts: But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon; And the imperial vot'ress passed on, In ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... do I woo? Because her spirit's vestal grace Provokes me always to pursue, But, spirit-like, eludes embrace; Because her womanhood is such That, as on court-days subjects kiss The Queen's hand, yet so near a touch Affirms no mean familiarness; Nay, rather marks more fair the height Which can with safety so neglect To dread, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... materialise; in the walnut and chestnut forest around them not a leaf stirred; and gradually the mountains cleared, became inartistically distinct, and turned a beautiful but disturbing dark-blue colour. And Thusis wore her vestal veil in ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... the jewels; and she looked on the paper, and said, "It is my lord's writing. That I was shipped at sea, I well remember, but whether there delivered of my babe, by the holy gods I cannot rightly say; but since my wedded lord I never shall see again, I will put on a vestal livery, and never more have joy." "Madam," said Cerimon, "if you purpose as you speak, the temple of Diana is not far distant from hence; there you may abide as a vestal. Moreover, if you please, a niece of mine shall there attend you." This proposal was accepted with thanks ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... face was very sweet, very pure and noble. She would have gone without another word, but Haward caught her by the sleeve. "Stay awhile!" he cried. "I too am a dreamer, though not like you, you maid of Dian, dark saint, cold vestal, with your eyes forever on the still, white flame! Audrey, Audrey, Audrey! Do you know what a pretty name you have, child, or how dark are your eyes, or how fine this hair that a queen might envy? Westover has ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... end by roaring at as the delusion; this common bloom of the ripeness of a season; this would never have utterly captured a sceptic, to vanquish him in his mastery, snare him in her surrender. It must have been the veritable passion: a flame kept alive by vestal ministrants in the yewwood of the forest of Old Romance; planted only in the breasts of very favourite maidens. Love had eyes, love had a voice that night,-love was the explicable magic lifting terrestrial to seraphic. Though, true, she had not Henrietta's golden smoothness of beauty. Henrietta, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... compelled to quit Italy. The censors hold a lustrum, and find the number of the citizens to be two hundred and seventy-one thousand two hundred and twenty-four. [Y. R. 479. B. c. 273.] A treaty of alliance formed with Ptolemy, king of Egypt. Sextilia, a vestal, found guilty of incest, and buried alive. Two colonies sent forth, to Posidonium and Cossa. [Y. R. 480. B. C. 272.] A Carthaginian fleet sails, in aid of the Tarentines, by which act the treaty is violated. Successful operations ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... within it! So there was nothing for it but flight. The braver, stronger men shut themselves up in the Capitol; all the rest, with the women and children, put their most precious goods into carts and left the city. The Vestal Virgins carried the sacred fire, and were plodding along in the heat, when a plebeian named Albinus saw their state, helped them into his cart, and took them to the city of Cumae, where they found shelter in a temple. And so Rome ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... low and indelicate than in the plays we see posted at the doors of our theatres. The French of the time of Louis XIV. must have been a much more refined people than the contemporary English. At least, Thalia in Paris was a vestal, compared with her tawdry, indecent, and drunken London sister. One is ashamed to be seen reading the unblushing profligacy of Wycherley, Cibber, Vanbrugh, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... knows much more of it than she will find in this "Tale of the Jewish Dispersion." "Adonijah" is simply the feeblest kind of love story, supposed to be instructive, we presume, because the hero is a Jewish captive and the heroine a Roman vestal; because they and their friends are converted to Christianity after the shortest and easiest method approved by the "Society for Promoting the Conversion of the Jews;" and because, instead of being written in plain language, it is adorned with that peculiar style of grandiloquence ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... cooperated with the endless other Pagan superstitions in anchoring the whole Pantheon to the Capitol and Mount Palatine. So long as Rome had a worldly hope surviving, it was impossible for her to forget the Vestal Virgins, the College of Augurs, or the indispensable office and the indefeasible privileges of the Pontifex Maximus, which (though Cardinal Baronius, in his great work, for many years sought to fight off the evidences for ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Cicisbeo—Platonic of course—was requested to leave the house, and discontinue his visits to Madame Lebrun. This simple proceeding let loose all the winds of heaven; poor Lebrun was pounced upon by the whole female sex. Even his old mother turned against him; even his sister, a sour vestal of thirty-seven, sided with her injured sister-in-law; and what had the wretched poet to say for himself? He suspected nothing improper—a good easy man—he adored his "Fanny"—he wanted her to come ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... sepulchral echo that floats down the arcade of centuries. "Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant," nineteenth century womanhood frowns, and deplores the brutal depravity which alone explains the presence of that white-veiled vestal band, whose snowy arms are thrust in signal over the parapet of the bloody arena; yet fair daughters of the latest civilization show unblushing flower faces among the heaving mass of the "great unwashed" who crowd ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... still thickest came, As near the centre motion doth increase; Till he, press'd down by his own weighty name, Did, like the vestal,[13] under spoils decease. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... performing the ordinary acts of a mortal world. He had the feeling that she moved on higher levels—that she was a creature too shy and perfect to be made the instrument of passion. She should be guarded in her purity like a vestal virgin, so that her straight young body might be forever valiant and her eyes might never learn the ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... made a complete and universal conquest. In the darkest ages and most benighted regions, it has been found impossible utterly to extinguish the light of reason. There always have been some in whose souls the torch of truth has been kept burning with vestal watchfulness: we can discern its glimmer here and there through the deepest night that has yet settled upon the earth. In the midst of the most extravagant superstition, there have been individuals who have disowned the popular belief, and considered it ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Jersey ferry would be as flagons of cod-liver oil to me. Who conspicuously walks the Rialto now, and what does he or she wear? Are the trees still green in Madison Square, or have they grown brown and dusty? Does the chaste Diana on the Garden Theatre still keep her vestal vows through all the exasperating changes of weather? Who has your brother's old studio now, and what misguided aspirants practice their scales in the rookeries about Carnegie Hall? What do people go to see at the theaters, and what do they eat and drink there in ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... to herself. Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having once silently ridden with her in the same coach, afterward threw a decanter at the head of a confederate for mentioning her name in a barroom. The over-dressed mother of a pupil whose paternity was doubtful had often lingered near this astute Vestal's temple, never daring to enter its sacred precincts, but content to ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... David, before he had left "those few sheep in the wilderness"; and by the prophet who "was in the deserts till the time of his showing unto Israel." Its primary "institution," for Europe, was Numa's, in that of the Vestal Virgins, and College of Augurs; founded on the originally Etrurian and derived Roman conception of pure life dedicate to the service of God, and practical wisdom ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... pitched upon its right object; it flamed up in direct fervors of devotion to God, and in collateral emissions of charity to its neighbor. It was not then only another and more cleanly name for lust. It had none of those impure heats that both represent and deserve hell. It was a vestal and a virgin fire, and differed as much from that which usually passes by this name nowadays as the vital heat from the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... imagine, continued the gentleman; for I assure you they were all vestal virgins for anything which I knew to the contrary. The reputation of intriguing with them was all I sought, and was what I arrived at: and perhaps I only flattered myself even in that; for very probably the persons to whom I showed their billets ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... are forsaken now; Dark mould and moss cling to thy fretted towers; Deep rents and seams, where struggling lichens grow, And no sweet voice of prayer at vestal hours; But voice of screaming shot and bursting shell, Thy deep damnation and thy doom foretell. The 'fire' has left a pile of broken walls, And Night-hags revel ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... could not control. Does he hear in a dream, through the buzz of the crowd, The Duke's blithe associates, babbling aloud Some comment upon his gay humor that day? He never was gayer: what makes him so gay? 'Tis, no doubt, say the flatterers, flattering in tune, Some vestal whose virtue no tongue dare impugn Has at last found a Mars—who, of course, shall be nameless, That vestal that yields to Mars ONLY is blameless! Hark! hears he a name which, thus syllabled, stirs All his heart into ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... rose our Tuscan poet saw, With saints for petals. When this rose was perfect Its hundred thousand petals were not saints, But senators in their Thessalian caps, And all the roaring populace of Rome; And even an Empress and the Vestal Virgins, Who came to see the gladiators die, Could not give sweetness to a rose like this. The sand beneath our feet is saturate With blood of martyrs; and these rifted stones Are awful witnesses against a people Whose pleasure was the pain of ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... this critical moment, so the Mystic Seven filed off like vestal virgins to feed the fire which Miss Gibbs, with her accustomed energy, had already lighted. Their contribution of wood was so substantial that it drew comment from the rest of the party, but they received the congratulations with due modesty, and did not ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... wore the conventional sailor suit, but without color, and this effect of purity, the inscrutable delicacy of her, seemed to set her apart from these dark, materialistic sisters as though she had strayed like a lost vestal into the wrong atmosphere. His brows relaxed. For a moment the censor that had come to hold dominion in his heart was off guard. He felt the magnetism of her personality drawing him once more; he desired to cross the deck ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... Zappi reminds me of his wife, the daughter of Carlo Maratti, the painter. She was so beautiful that she was her father's favourite model for his Nymphs, Madonnas, and Vestal Virgins; and to her charms she added virtue, and to her virtue uncommon musical and literary talents. Among her poems, there is a sonnet addressed to a lady, once ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... of Rome is indeed far more poetical than anything else in Latin literature. The loves of the Vestal and the God of War, the cradle laid among the reeds of Tiber, the fig-tree, the she-wolf, the shepherd's cabin, the recognition, the fratricide, the rape of the Sabines, the death of Tarpeia, the fall of Hostus Hostilius, ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... lives of millions of workers go to the adornment of women. In painting they sometimes excel, but a Madame Le Brun does her best work when she paints herself and her child, and when Angelica Kauffmann would paint a vestal virgin, she drapes a veil over her own head and transfers her features to the canvas. Sculpture and architecture are too impersonal and abstract to attract much attention from women at present. Even a sculptor like Mrs. ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... family is the heart of the state, and that the state is but the widened family, is the fact which the old vestal consecration, power, and honor set forth and ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... those virtues with a vestal fidelity; mark this day, by your verdict, your horror of their profanation; and believe me, when the hand which records that verdict shall be dust, and the tongue that asks it, traceless in the grave, many a ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... hair and by his mincing walk got charged with effeminacy: and Pompey's scratching his head with one finger was construed in the same way, though both these men were very far from effeminacy or wantonness. And Crassus was accused of an intrigue with one of the Vestal Virgins, because he wished to purchase from her a pleasant estate, and therefore frequently visited her and waited upon her. And Postumia, from her readiness to laugh and talk somewhat freely with men, got accused and even had to stand her trial for ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... serious delay arose, during the first act, through the evolutions of a triumphal march. With the most vociferous emphasis the master expressed intense dissatisfaction with the apathetic demeanour of our populace during the procession of vestal virgins. He was quite unaware of the fact that, in obedience to our stage manager's instructions, they had fallen on their knees upon the appearance of the priestesses; for he was so excited, and withal so terribly ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... which first the vestal fire begun, Which might be borrowed from no earthly flame, Devised a vessel to receive the sun, Being stedfastly opposed to the same; Where with sweet wood laid curiously by art, On which the sun might by reflection beat, Receiving strength for every secret part, The ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... virgins to various deities, of which the classic example is the institution of the Vestal Virgins at Rome, and the fact that at Thebes and elsewhere even the male deities had their priestesses as well as priests, are other indications that at this time woman was regarded as divine or as capable of ministering to divinity. ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... him exceedingly. He was not sure, indeed, but that he ought to go straight to Norbanus and tell him what had happened, yet he feared that in such a case the anger of the magistrate would be so great that Ennia would be forced by him into becoming one of the vestal virgins, or be shut up in strict imprisonment. Scarce a word was spoken as they passed down the hill and into the streets, now almost deserted. At last Ennia stopped at the entrance used by the slaves ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... lonely marshland and dykes between us and the nearest human habitation. And then perhaps he remembered the soothing fact for he allowed a gleam to light up his eyes, like the reflection of some inward fire tended in the sanctuary of his heart by a devotion as pure as that of any vestal. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... from Portia, and strongly individualized by a certain moral grandeur, a saintly grace, something of vestal dignity and purity, which render her less attractive and more imposing; she is "severe in youthful beauty," and inspires a reverence which would have placed her beyond the daring of one unholy wish or thought, except in such a man ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... spray; as if, in the language of ancient poetry, and fable, the genii of the place, pleased with the beholder's near approach to the seat of their empire, decked the devotee with the appropriate robes of the cataract, the vestal veil of fleecy spray, and the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... a beautiful open fireplace, but which was now walled up with broken bricks, and surmounted by a mantel of Italian marble sculptured with the story of Prometheus's boon to mankind, and supported on either end by caryatides in the shape of vestal virgins bearing flaming brands in their hands. Overhead the ceiling showed great patches of bare lath, where the plaster had fallen away, and the uncarpeted floor was strewn with bread-crumbs and marked by a trail of coal-siftings from the stove to a closet-door from which the fire was ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... own sagacity and the overweening petulance of hard-earned and late-acquired wisdom. They do not fall in love with every meretricious extravagance at first sight, or mistake an old battered hypothesis for a vestal, because they are new to the ways of this old world. They do not seize upon it as a prize, but are safe from gross imposition by being as wise and no wiser than those who went ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... a shake of her head, she threw her long black hair over one shoulder, then, dropping one end of the counterpane from the other like a vestal tunic, she stepped before Carry with a purposely-exaggerated classic stride. "And what if I have, miss! What if I happen to know a gentleman when I see him! What if I happen to know, that among a thousand such traditional, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... saw the grave where Laura lay, Within that temple where the vestal flame Was wont to burn: and, passing by that way To see that buried dust of living fame, Whose tomb fair Love and fairer Virtue kept, All suddenly I saw the Fairy Queen, At whose approach the soul of Petrarch ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... I sawe the grave where Laura lay; Within that temple, where the vestal flame; Was wont to burne: and passing by that way, To see that buried dust of living fame, Whose tombe fair love, and fairer virtue kept, All suddenly I sawe the Fairy Queene: At whose approach the soul of Petrarche wept And from henceforth, those Graces were not scene; For they this queen ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... vocabulary?—I think life has not yet done with the vivacious Ricord, whom I remember calling the Voltaire of pelvic literature,—a sceptic as to the morality of the race in general, who would have submitted Diana to treatment with his mineral specifics, and ordered a course of blue pills for the vestal virgins. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the practice of magic and the inspection of the entrails of animals capital offences, he proceeded to prohibit sacrifices, A.D. 391, and even the entering of temples. He alienated the revenues of many temples, confiscated the estates of others, some he demolished. The vestal virgins he dismissed, and any house profaned by incense he declared forfeited to the imperial exchequer. When once the property of a religious establishment has been irrevocably taken away, it is needless to declare its worship a ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... plovers, snipes, or rabbits."* Sometimes they enjoyed fishing in the near-by brook or the larger river. The two brothers were devoted to their sister Gertrude, to whom Sidney referred in later years as his "vestal sister, who had, more perfectly than all the men or women of the earth, nay, more perfectly than any star or any dream," represented to him "the simple majesty and the serene purity of ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... lay and looked into the room, It wavered, changed, dissolved beneath the sun, Which mingled both the mornings in their eyes, Till the true conquered, and the unreal passed. No walls, but woods bathed in a level sun; No ceiling, but the vestal sky of morn; No bed, but flowers floating 'mid floating leaves On water which grew audible as they stirred And lifted up their heads. And a low wind That flowed from out the west, washed from their ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... bunting of a first voyage, with a fair wind, and on a fine morning; and when such a ship came back long after as an old plank bearded with sea moss, to the dunes under which it stranded the day was still the same, vestal and innocent; for they were on a voyage of greater length and import. They had buried many ships; but, as time moved to them, all ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... natural sense; And those perpetual yearnings sweet Of lives which dream that they can meet Are given that lovers never may Be without sacrifice to lay On the high altar of true love, With tears of vestal joy. To move Frantic, like comets to our bliss, Forgetting that we always miss, And so to seek and fly the sun, By turns, around which love should run, Perverts the ineffable delight Of service guerdon'd with full sight And pathos of a hopeless want, To an unreal victory's ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... afterwards explained, and the English and French forms given in each case are the terms which would be used in answering the rapid question, 'Of what order is this flower?' the answer being, It is a 'Cyllenid,' a 'Pleiad,' or a 'Vestal,' as one would answer of a person, he is a Knight of St. John or Monk of St. Benedict; while to the question, of what gens, we answer, a Stella or an Erica, as one would answer of a person, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... on, and came to a great city, where, upon his arrival, he understood there was a great and solemn procession, in order to shut up a young woman against her will among the vestal-nuns. The prince was touched with compassion; and thinking the best use he could make of his cap was to redress public wrongs and relieve the oppressed, he flew to the temple, where he saw the young woman, crowned with flowers, clad in white, and with her disheveled hair flowing ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand And steal immortal blessing from her lips, Who, even in pure and vestal modesty, Still blush, as thinking their ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... instance as we require of the lowest supposable phase of immodest or licentious art in music; the "inner consciousness of good" being dim, even in the musician and his audience, and wholly unsympathized with, and unacknowledged by the Delphian, Vestal, and all other prophetic and cosmic powers. This represented scene came into my mind suddenly one evening, a few weeks ago, in contrast with another which I was watching in its reality; namely, a group of gentle school-girls, leaning over Mr. Charles Halle, as he was playing a variation ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... upon the vestal earth, The morn she rose exulting from her birth; A living harmony, a perfect plan Of power and beauty, ere the rebel man Defiled with sin, and stain'd with kindred blood, The paradise his God ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... utensils for their religious services, and with the ashes of some of their Aztec princes who had fancied this airy sepulcher. Before each sanctuary stood an altar, with that undying fire upon it, the extinction of which boded as much evil to the empire as that of the Vestal flame would have done in ancient Rome. Here also was the huge cylindrical drum made of serpents' skins, and struck only on extraordinary occasions, when it sent forth a melancholy, weird sound, that might be heard for miles" over the country, indicating ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... Vesta, called Vestales or Vestal Virgins, played a conspicuous part in these festivals. They were six in number, and were chosen—between the ages of six and ten—from the noblest families in Rome. Their term of office was thirty years. During the first ten years, they were initiated in their religious duties, during the ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... they all do! I got there, I threw myself into a chair. "What shocking weather! How tiring the streets are!" Then some gossip: "Mademoiselle Lemierre was to have taken the part of Vestal in the new opera, but she is in an interesting condition for the second time, and they do not know who will take her place. Mademoiselle Arnould has just left her little Count: they say she is negotiating with Bertin.... That poor Dumesnil no longer knows either what he is saying or what he is ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... aspirants then graciously withdrew their claims, and pledged their cordial support to the regular nominee of the convention.[157] Such machine-like precision warmed the hearts of Democratic politicians. The editor of the People's Advocate declared the integrity of Douglas to be "as unspotted as the vestal's fame—as untarnished and as ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... her hand on his mouth. "Silence," she said. "I am studying you. I am unbridled desire, immaculate. I am a vestal bacchante. No man has known me, and I might be the virgin pythoness at Delphos, and have under my naked foot the bronze tripod, where the priests lean their elbows on the skin of the python, whispering questions to the invisible god. My heart is of stone, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... conscientious, rigid, and devoted Papist. When the house of Saint Roque was despotically dissolved by the fiat of the impetuous monarch, the Lady Foljambe received her friend into her spacious mansion, together with two vestal sisters, who, like their Abbess, were determined to follow the tenor of their vows, instead of embracing the profane liberty which the Monarch's will had thrown in their choice. For their residence, the Lady Foljambe contrived, with all secrecy—for Henry ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... have never doubted my mother's faith. When I imagined I did I was self-deceived. Everything here confirms it, and Miss Walton more than all. I will consult the divine oracle. She shall be the fair vestal, the gentle priestess. She lives near to heaven, and knows its mind. If her kind and womanly nature shrinks from me, if she coldly draws her skirts aside that I pollute them not even with a touch—if she by word or even ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... their tyranny, for us possibly to think rationally that they still possess that power over us which they had formerly, so far as to work wonderful things which appeared miraculous; such as they relate of the vestal virgin, who, to prove her virginity, carried water in a sieve; and of her who by means of her sash alone, towed up the Tiber a boat, which had been so completely stranded that no human power could move it. Almost all the holy doctors agree, that ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... especially of her personal attentions, on the sick and the poor, she will find all she has done of good at home an invaluable prompter and aid. For the sake, therefore, of others, as a social and responsible being, let the flame she would support on the public altar be kindled from the vestal fire ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... last four hundred years? Have we not had tumblers, conjurers, allegories, martyrdoms, marriages, elephants on the tight-rope, learned horses, and learned asses too, if we may trust Apuleius of Madaura; with a good many other spectacles of which we must not speak in the presence of a vestal? It is an age of execrable taste, and we must ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... and stalked by me as grave as a Judge. A Citizen then desired me to give free Ingress and Egress to his Wife, who was dressed in the gayest coloured Ribbons I had ever seen. She went in with a Flirt of her Fan and a smirking Countenance, but came out with a Severity of a Vestal, and throwing from her several Female Gugaws, told me with a Sigh, that she resolved to go into deep Mourning, and to wear Black all the rest of her Life. As I had many Coquets recommended to me by their Parents, their Husbands, and their Lovers, I let them ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... this girl who had drawn him to her which made it necessary that he should assert mere sportiveness on his part as his reason in seeking her—something in her quite antipathetic to that side of him which had been occupied with literary study and the magnificent Christminster dream. It had been no vestal who chose THAT missile for opening her attack on him. He saw this with his intellectual eye, just for a short; fleeting while, as by the light of a falling lamp one might momentarily see an inscription on a wall before being enshrouded in darkness. And then this passing ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... extinguish'd glory Revived in Latium's later story, When, by her auspices, her son Laurentia's royal damsel won. She vestal Rhea's spotless charms Surrender'd to the War-god's arms; She for Romulus that day The Sabine daughters bore away; Thence sprung the Rhamnes' lofty name, Thence the old Quirites came; And thence the stock of high ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... I fear this novelty celestial That very night was visible and clear; At least two youths of aspect most terrestrial, And clad in uniform, were loitering near A villa's casement, where a gentle vestal Took their impatience somewhat patiently, Knowing the youths were somewhat green and "bestial"— (A certain slang of the Academy, I beg the ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... baser passion of sense, or transfigures it so that we know it no longer. The idea-driven is callous to the blandishments of beauty, for his is a love stronger than the love to woman. The vestal, the virgin, the eunuch for the kingdom of heaven's sake are the exemplars of ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... would reach Italy, where in due time his son would found Alba Longa. Jupiter added a brief sketch of what would befall this hero's race, until, some three hundred years after his death, one of his descendants, the Vestal Ilia, would bear twin sons to Mars, god of War. One of these, Romulus, would found the city of Rome, where the Trojan race would continue its heroic career and where Caesar would appear to fill the world ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... presents, for the first time in fiction, a correct and adequate account of the Vestal Virgins, their powers and privileges, as well as of many strange Roman customs ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... marked—but thou could'st not— Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all armed. A certain aim he took At a fair vestal throned by the west, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow As he would pierce a hundred thousand hearts. But I might see young Cupid's fiery dart Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial votaress passed ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... erratic in its changes of key. It is full of reminiscences of Haydn's "Creation" and other works. The musical stimulation of this boy was meager indeed. Not until he was thirteen years of age did he hear an opera; and not until he was fifteen a really first-class work, Spontini's "Vestal," in 1812. Three years later he probably heard Gluck's "Iphigenie en Tauride," a work which in his estimation eclipsed them all. During the same year there were the sixth and seventh symphonies, the choral fantasia and portions of the mass in C, and the overture to "Coriolanus," of Beethoven. ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... rushing of a stream at his feet. The sun was shining. It was a clear morning. From the other shore came his wife, young, beautiful, in a dress of flowered goods, rowing her skiff. Her full, gentle figure had the charm of the vestal virgin and the wife. From woods nearby, Ingigerd appeared in the delicacy and the adornment of her light hair and naked body. The sunny landscape, of which her pure nudity was a part, seemed to belong to the time before Adam and Eve were driven from ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... agitated. She had always looked on Alice as excluded by her misfortune from the usual destiny of her sex, as consecrated from her birth for a vestal's lot. She had never thought of her being wooed as a wife, and she repelled the idea as ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... been a religion among them; and seeing that the worship had been carried on without fail, that the vestal fire had never gone down upon the hearth, I should not have said that the Dales had walked their ways without high principle. To this religion they had all adhered, and the new heir had ever entered in upon his domain without other encumbrances than those with which ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... done when the army of Xerxes approached. It was resolved to abandon the city to the barbarians, but to maintain the citadel, the home of the gods of Rome. The holy articles in the temples were buried or removed, the Vestal Virgins sent away, and the flower of the patricians took refuge in the Capitol, determined to defend to the last that abiding-place of the ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... but by luck we found a halcyon morning which had got lost in the year's procession. It was a Sunday morning, and it had not been ashore. It was still virgin, bearing a vestal light. It had not been soiled yet by any suspicion of this trampled planet, this muddy star, which its innocent and tenuous rays had discovered in the region of night. I thought it still was regarding us as a lucky find there. Its light was tremulous, as if with ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... us that he himself wrote books on history with his own hands in large letters, that the boy might start in life with a useful knowledge of what his forefathers had done, and he was as careful not to use an indecenr expression before his son as he would have been before the vestal virgins. He never bathed with him; which indeed seems to have been customary at Rome, as even fathers-in-law scrupled to bathe naked before their sons-in-law. In later times, however, the Romans learned from the Greeks the habit of bathing ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... surprise, even irritation. What business had she touching the bits of pasteboard like that—like some old gambler. Such a slight slip of a thing, with all the beauty of early youth in her face, and all the guilelessness of a vestal in the pure white of her garb. He fancied he would have felt different if he had seen her playing cards in that Indian dress; it would not have brought such a discord with it. And it was not merely ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... poets, Lucy Harington, to Edward Russell, third earl of Bedford, on December 12, 1594; or that of William Stanley, earl of Derby, at Greenwich on January 24, 1594-5. The elaborate compliment to the Queen, 'a fair vestal throned by the west' (II. i. 157 seq.), was at once an acknowledgment of past marks of royal favour and an invitation for their extension to the future. Oberon's fanciful description (II. ii. 148-68) of the spot where he saw the little western flower called 'Love-in-idleness' ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Gulf; and the clarion-call James R. Randall so nobly used—"There's Life in the Old Land Yet!"—warmed every southern heart, by the dead ashes on its hearth. Who does not remember "Beechenbrook," that pure Vestal in the temple of Mars? Every tear of sympathy that fell upon its pages was a jewel above rubies, in the crown ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Terentia, whose half-sister was a Vestal, seems to have taken sanctuary with the Vestals, as did the mother and sister of Augustus in B.C. 43. The special indignity of which Cicero complains is that she had been forced to leave the sanctuary and ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... it, and there are many strokes of the most melting tenderness. Cartesmunda, the Fair Nun of Winchester, inspires the King with a passion for her, and after a long struggle between honour and love, she at last yields to the tyrant, and for the sake of Canutus breaks her vestal vows. Upon hearing that the enemy was about to enter the Cloister, Cartesmunda breaks out into ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... the scene galante by Pater. We next note 659, a fine portrait group by Nattier: Mlle. de Lambec as Minerva, arming her brother the young Count of Brienne. To the same skilful portraitist are due: 660, a Knight of Malta; and 661, A Daughter of Louis XV. as a Vestal Virgin. By Boucher are: 48, R. of entrance, The Painter in his Studio, and R. wall, 47, The Three Graces; 46 and 49, L. wall, Venus and Vulcan, and Vulcan's Forge. Fragonnard is represented by some of his characteristic ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... all alike in these stages. (Aloud.) No, my Vestal. We're going along the quietest ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... its vestal virgins, its holy women, mothers of ideas rather than of men; its Marys, as well as its Marthas, who, rather than be busy housewives, preferred to sit at the feet of divine wisdom, and ponder the mysteries of the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... coquette, A brow of marble, but a heart of jet; An eye that shows no vestige of the deep And stained thoughts that in her bosom sleep: By day a vestal, but by night a bawd; Her ways a riddle, her whole life a fraud; At church an angel, but at home a shrew, Cheating her mother, to her sire untrue; Vain without talent, without merit proud; By all who see her, still a fool allow'd; Without all love, ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... of the city has in a memorial set forth three propositions which he considers of force—that Rome, he says, asks for her rites again, that pay be given to her priests and vestal virgins, and that a general famine followed upon the refusal of the priests' ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... us to look a little deeper into its heart, we will attempt to celebrate that unpublished and vestal wisdom written there. Age does us only indirect justice,—by the value it gives to memory. It slights and forgets its own present. This day with its trivialities dwindles and vanishes before the teeming hours wherein ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... refrain from exhausting the theme and the reader? Some few passages of coquetry it would certainly be pleasant to give in outline; the story of Mme. de Beauseant's demurs and sweet delayings, that, like the vestal virgins of antiquity, she might fall gracefully, and by lingering over the innocent raptures of first love draw from it its utmost strength and sweetness. M. de Nueil was at an age when a man is the dupe of these caprices, ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... with her; thou art dear Beyond what vestal lips have told, And, like a lamb from fountains clear, She turns confiding to thy fold. She, round thy sweet domestic bower, The wreath of changeless love shall twine, Watch for thy step at vesper hour, And blend her ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... abates thou wilt have closed thy wings For ever. When the happy living things Of the old world come forth upon the new I know my heart shall miss thee; and the dew Of summer twilights shall shed tears for me —Tears liker thee, ah, purest! than mine own— Upon thy vestal grave, O ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the street, Benda said in a tone of compassion: "They are three delicate creatures; they live their lonely lives like vestal virgins guarding a ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Pleasure! you are indeed a pleasant thing, Although one must be damn'd for you, no doubt: I make a resolution every spring Of reformation, ere the year run out, But somehow, this my vestal vow takes wing, Yet still, I trust it may be kept throughout: I 'm very sorry, very much ashamed, And mean, next ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... was responsible for many changes for the better in the lives of these people. Her very presence in a room was an inspiration for cleanliness. Her clothes were no better than theirs but she stood out among them like a vestal virgin. She came into their quarters and made the women ashamed that the rooms were not better fitted to receive so pure a being. You would scarcely have recognized Michele's rooms at the end of the first year. The windows were cleaned, the floors scrubbed, and even the bed linen ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton |
