"Seclusion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grandeur before he was two, which seemed to indicate that his dream tendencies were constitutional and not due to morphine, but the chill was upon the first glimpse that this was a world of evil. He had been brought up in great seclusion from all knowledge of poverty and oppression in a silent garden with three sisters, but the rumor that a female servant had treated one of them rudely just before her death plunged him into early pessimism. He felt that little Jane would come back certainly in the spring with ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... fountain like jets of weeping willow, half concealing the gray stone fronts of the farm-houses. He had been absent from home only six days, but the time seemed almost as long to him as a three years' cruise to a New Bedford whaleman. The peaceful seclusion and pastoral beauty of the scene did not consciously appeal to his senses; but he quietly noted how much the wheat had grown during his absence, that the oats were up and looking well, that Friend Comly's meadow had been ploughed, and Friend Martin had built his half of the line-fence along the ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... the uneven brick pavements which line them, at every step anathematizing the valise, which is far from being a light burden. The club-house was the residence of Lopez before the allied armies occupied the city. From its seclusion he went forth to meet his death at Cerro Cora. In the parlor is a large mirror with gilded mouldings, and the dining-room walls are hung with painted paper representing in vivid colors, and with much gilding and silvering, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... so she accompanied her sister to the sumptuous villa, less out of affection for the members of her family who were visiting there, than because fashion has ordained that every woman who has any self-respect must leave Paris in the summer. The green seclusion of Sceaux answered to perfection the requirements of good style and of the duties of ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... use and habitation, and now and then a man's whistle or footstep echoed from the distance through the halls. But she went on swiftly, from one corridor to another, till the guide opened a door and she stepped out from the public haunts of life to a bit of quite seclusion. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... seclusion, to forget The world and its disasters, And fill the mind with mignonette, Clove-pinks, ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... had decided finally to return to the wilds—long ago, in the irksome social life of London—he had dreamt of this possible cabin hidden in the peaceful seclusion of the forest, where he could study the ways of the birds and beasts, where he could live the life of a lonely scout and trapper, hunting or fishing for his own food, cooking his own meals, doing everything for himself without the help of servants. And now his ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... controlled, very wise and circumspect in her dealing with Tim, conscious of raw-edged nerves that would bear but the lightest of handling. But it was another woman altogether who, half-an-hour later, faced Geoffrey Durward in the seclusion of his study. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... withdrew into seclusion, and spent the last years of his life in literary studies. His family have published the Work on the Great Learning, and one or two others. He most vehemently impugns nearly every judgment of Chu Hsi; but in his own exhibitions of the meaning he blends many ideas of the Supreme ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... for as such Clark was now known, gave a luncheon at the works, which was to remain long in the mind of at least one of the participants. By this time he himself was beginning to withdraw to that seclusion which added much to the fascination of his personality. When his guests arrived they were turned over to Belding for a tour of inspection, and then, filled with interest and surprise, sat down to the meal Clark had had prepared in the small marquee. Now he appeared himself, the genius ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... Edgware Road; and here he set to work on the History of Rome, which he was writing for Davies. Apart from this hack-work, now rendered necessary by his debt, it is probable that one strong inducement leading him to this occasional seclusion was the progress he might be able to make with the Deserted Village. Amid all his town gaieties and country excursions, amid his dinners and suppers and dances, his borrowings, and contracts, and the hurried literary produce of the moment, he never ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... he seemed greatly to enjoy recounting how cleverly James Russell Lowell imitated Alfred Tennyson's reading of his own poems. Over the Sunday-school of our church Starr King had provided a small room where he could retire and gain seclusion. It pleased Emerson. He said, "I think I should enjoy a study beyond the orbit of the servant girl." He was as self-effacing a man as I ever knew, and the most agreeable ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... judged it most prudent to seclude myself for the past few days from the gayeties of the world, and give myself up to study and meditation. Though, after all, I could not deny, if closely questioned, that my seclusion was but little productive of results; for, upon being tempted out one evening, sorely against my judgment, to a feast at the house of the comedian Bassus, the true poetic inspiration overtook me at the end of my third goblet, and, calling for parchment, I there accomplished, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... complain; and he hailed the approaching shooting season as a relief from the dulness and monotony of home. Used to the lively conversation of foreigners, and passionately fond of the society of the other sex, the seclusion of Oak Hall was not very congenial to his taste. He soon ceased to take an interest in the domestic arrangements of the family, and the violin and guitar, on which he performed with great taste and skill, were alike discarded, and he imprudently afforded his brother daily opportunities of ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... of the weeper very naturally thought he had already "too much of water;" he, however, hired a nag, took a small suburban lodging, and as nobody spoke to him, nor seemed to care about him, he grew better, and felt sedately happy. This blest seclusion, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot," was not the predestined fate of Sighmon: odd circumstances always brought him into notice. The horse he had hired was a piebald, a sweet, quiet animal, warranted a safe support for a timid invalid. On this piebald ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... spectacle-glasses which prevents their seeing the handwriting on the wall, or in conserving reverently the barnacles on their ship's bottom and the dry-rot in its knees. We yield to none of them in reverence for the Past; it is there only that the imagination can find repose and seclusion; there dwells that silent majority whose experience guides our action and whose wisdom shapes our thought in spite of ourselves;—but it is not length of days that can make evil reverend, nor persistence in inconsistency that can give it the power or the claim of orderly precedent. Wrong, though ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... down in it for the remainder of his life. Little by little, such social ambitions as he had ever possessed left him, and with every passing year he grew more and more attached to the simplicity and seclusion of his surroundings. He had leisure for the indulgence of his delight in books, and he was able to give the rein to his passion for poetry, though it is nowhere recorded that he ever published the numerous essays, sonnets and rhymed pieces which, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... they could be long maintained under such circumstances. Nor even, in the case of exemption from the worst ills of life, can we be happy without some positive agreeables—family, general society, amusements, and gratifications. There is a certain degree of loneliness, seclusion, dulness, that destroys happiness without sapping health, or miming ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... not, for example, condemn her to inactivity and seclusion, for it is advisable to lead a moderately active life during pregnancy. Of course, such obvious indiscretions as prolonged exertion, violent exercise, and fatiguing journeys should be avoided, for transgression of the laws of health brings its own punishment, generally in the form of discomfort, ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... impertinent curiosity. She rarely or never allowed herself to be seen; Lord Mountjoy, with an official retinue, was in attendance in the house; but the occupation was not a pleasant one, and he was as willing to respect the queen's seclusion as she to remain secluded. Injunctions arrived however from the court at the end of June, which compelled him to request an interview; a deputation of the privy council had come down to inform the ex-queen of the orders of ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... father up to the station, in the hope that it would restore her to health. The mental strain which had been on her during the trial had nearly brought on an attack of brain fever; but here, far from the excitement of town life, in the quiet seclusion of the country, she had recovered her health, but not her spirits. Women are more impressionable than men, and it is, perhaps, for this reason that they age quicker. A trouble which would pass lightly over a man, leaves an indelible mark ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... they ceased to accompany her. They accepted the sentence of banishment with a good grace, knowing perfectly well that it was not for long. The Divorcee then withdrew from the flaming placards of the daily papers, on which she had figured during the past week, and betook herself to the seclusion of her bijou residence in the heart of the most fashionable quarter. Here she pondered for a short time upon the doubtful unkindness of fate which had deprived her of a husband whom she despised, and of a home which his presence had made insupportable. But ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... Robert Jeckel, hearing that his beloved friend was now again to be found at Swarthmoor, dwelling there in much seclusion, seeking to regain the strength that had been sorely wasted in long and terrible imprisonments,—this man, Robert Jeckel, would no longer be persuaded or gainsaid, but set out at once with several others, who were like-minded and desirous to come as ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... the same manner he secluded from each other and from himself all who had known Smerdis, in order to prevent their conferring with one another, or communicating to each other any suspicions which they might chance to entertain. Such seclusion, so far as related to the ladies of the royal family, was not unusual after the death of a king, and Smerdis did not deviate from the ordinary custom, except to make the isolation and confinement of the princesses and queens more rigorous and strict than common. By means of ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... She forgot the artificial stimulus and excitement of the life she had been leading so long; she forgot the small meannesses and smaller worries of her well-to-do experiences; she forgot herself,—rather she regained a self she had long forgotten. For in the sweet seclusion of this half darkened sanctuary the clinging fripperies of her past slipped from her as a tawdry garment. The petted, spoiled, and vapidly precocious girlhood which had merged into a womanhood of aimless triumphs and meaner ambitions; the worldly but miserable triumph of a marriage that had ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... that vantage point miles upon miles of rich pasture could be seen, dotted with grazing thousands of cattle. Trees, set out with a view to the future, by the creators of the ranch, imparted an aspect of homely comfort, of seclusion, peace and ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... calm, untroubled seclusion of Simiti, in its mediaeval atmosphere of romance, and amid its ceaseless dreams of a stirring past, the child unfolded a nature that bore the stamp of divinity, a nature that communed incessantly with her God, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... adoption. His natural mode of work was utterly to disregard precedent and to seek for fundamental solutions of his problems, having only in view the conditions to be fulfilled, the laws of mechanics, and the engineering materials of construction. This habit of independence and of seclusion within the narrow circle of his own work so grew upon him in later years that mechanical science made many advances of which he took little or no note, and of which he refused to avail himself, even though he might have done so greatly to his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... that as time passed he grew gloomy and morose and lived in seclusion, thinking only how he could solve the mystery of the murder, and loving more and more the little Emma as she grew into a beautiful girl. He neglected The Warren so that the property looked quite desolate and ruined, and at length superstitious ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... autumn came. Out of doors, it brought to the fields the prodigality of the golden harvest,— to the forest, revelations of light,—and to the sky, the sharp air, the morning mist, the red clouds at evening. Within doors, the sense of seclusion, the stillness of closed and curtained windows, musings by the fireside, books, friends, conversation, and the long, meditative evenings. To the farmer, it brought surcease of toil,—to the scholar, that sweet delirium of the brain which changes toil to pleasure. It brought the wild ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... her unstained seclusion, bright and pure as a first opening lilac, when it spreads its clear leaves to the sweetest ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... eulogizing. Lockhart too spoke kindly, though taking some exceptions. It was a questionable case. On the whole, Strafford remained, for the present, unlaunched; and Coeur de-Lion was getting its first timbers diligently laid down. So passed, in peaceable seclusion, in wholesome employment and endeavor, the autumn and winter of 1842-43. On Christmas-day, he ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... be submitted to the judgment of twelve men in the jury-box or of one man on the bench; twelve men fresh from the people and warmed with the instinctive sympathies of humanity, or one man, separated from the people by his station and by the habits of a life passed in seclusion and study. A jury-trial must be the same whether a man or woman be arraigned. And the subject under consideration is important even to men who are regardless of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... ambitious; and there are a thousand wants, necessities, and desires still to be gratified, which at present you neither perceive nor provide for. You are not destined, Wilton, to go on all your life, content in the seclusion of a college, with less than three hundred a year. Every man should strive to fulfil to the utmost his destiny—I mean, should endeavour to reach the highest point in any way which God has given him the capability of attaining. You must become more than you are, greater, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... them, and Mrs. Hazleton had been induced to leave the seclusion of the Parsonage, and become the guest of Mrs. Gleason. It must have been a strong motive that tempted her from the hallowed shades, which she had never quitted since her husband's death. Reader, can you conjecture ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... arose at once and got busy. There were five tables in the canteen above and already from each one there stretched a long line of men waiting silently, patiently for the time to arrive when there would be something good to eat. The girls had no more sleep that day, and there simply was no seclusion to be ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... devoured the produce of the entire country. There was no moral wrong in eluding the vigilance of the Midian spies, in transporting the wheat from the open country, where the wind might fan away the chaff, to the comparative seclusion and unlikeliness of the wine-press; but there was nothing specially heroic or inspiring in the spectacle. Yet, when the angel of the Lord appeared unto him, he said, "The Lord is with thee, ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... a little squawberry vine nestling under the dead leaves. It had not lived in peace and seclusion very long before the women came and tore up many of the vines, stopping just before they reached the changeling, and saying, "We will come back to-morrow ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... and in perfect taste if she announced her intention of going off to Carlsbad the week after her engagement was settled—she was always most careful of decorum. And, if the world of her friends thought John Derringham was well enough to be making love to her in the seclusion of her own house, it would be much wiser for her to show that she should always remain beyond the breath of ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... of its arch, and no coffin having been used, his struggles on reviving had broken the rotten masonry and he had fallen through, escaping finally into the cellar. Feeling that he was not welcome in his own house, yet having no other, he had lived in subterranean seclusion, a witness to our thrift and a pensioner on our providence. It was he who had eaten our food; it was he who had drunk our wine—he was no better than a thief! In a moment of intoxication, and feeling, no doubt, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... this melancholy seclusion, gazing out of his window, at the green landscape vexed by the omnipresent flash of white skirts, uneasily conscious that a crisis had arrived in his social progress that would have to be met, Skippy began to commune with himself and likewise to ruminate. ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... "Seclusion? Livin' shut up, you mean? Why, don't ye see, he believed the mouse was the sperrit o' the child—leastways the sperrit o' the child was in it. You see, when he got back from the funeral the first thing his eyes lit upon was that ere white mouse; and it was white, you see, and that ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... in the soft bank of the river, below the surface of the water, and there remains for two long years, feeding upon the decaying matters of the mould. During this aquatic residence, the little creature finds it necessary to breathe; and that he may do so comfortably, notwithstanding his habits of seclusion, and his constant immersion in fluid, he pushes out from his shoulders and back a series of delicate little leaf-like plates. A branch of one of the air-tubes of his body enters into each of these plates, and spreads out into its substance. The plates are, in fact, gills—that is, respiratory organs, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... said. "I shall try not to be unjust, but I see now that in seeking seclusion in that lonely canyon we thrust ourselves among the most lawless citizens of the state, and cut ourselves off from the very people we should have known. However, I have had enough of solitude. My mind has changed. This week's experience has swept away the fog in ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... pride struggled out in this obscure way to vindicate his unneighbourliness and the seclusion of his daughters from the society of girls of their age and condition; nor was it hard for Rhoda to assure him, as she earnestly did, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "after all these years of secrecy, after all these years of avoiding the central districts—in which Madame longs to live—after all these years of seclusion beyond the beat even of the buses, do you come here to me, and search yourself and say upon your oath that a prophet can live and be a prophet in the Berkeley Square, that he can read the stars with Gunter's just ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... scandal. Deep in her heart she felt that divorce was wicked, for marriage to her had always meant a sacred and unbreakable bond. And yet there seemed to be no alternative. She wished Ed would go away—leave her quietly and for ever, so that she might live out her empty life in seclusion—but that, of ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... individuals whose enforced habits give to these interesting ants the name of "honey-makers." Each one of these curious creatures was confined in a separate cell, the entrance to which was very small. Here they lived in absolute seclusion, being fed by the black workers with pollen, the nectar of flowers, ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... to divulge to Horace the contents of Mr. Cortlin's letter; he was under promise to keep the secret also, so there was no ground upon which the intercourse between them could be renewed. Besides this, Bettina was but recently become a widow. The proprieties of the situation demanded absolute seclusion for a year at least, and, in Mr. Spotswood's consciousness, propriety was supreme. He never took count of the fact that conventions could be disregarded by any right-minded person, and to this extent at least he conceived ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... indeed the majority of the women who come to the Asile Michelet are unmarried, some being girls who have even trudged on foot from Brittany and other remote parts of France, to seek concealment from their friends in the hospitable seclusion of these refuges in the great city. It is not the least advantage of these institutions that they shield unmarried mothers and their offspring from the manifold evils to which they are exposed, and thus tend to decrease crime and suffering. In addition to the maternity refuges, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Gassendi, Descartes, Malebranche, and Bacon in the seventeenth, and those of Diderot, Montesquieu, Helvetius. Locke, Hume, and Holbach in the eighteenth. Such will be your lot! Do now what you will, set type in a printing-office, bring up children, bury yourself in deep seclusion, seek obscure and lonely villages, it is all one to me; you cannot escape your destiny; you cannot divest yourself of your noblest feature, that active, strong, and inquiring mind, with which you are endowed; your place in the world has been appointed, and ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... down to the park and rummages through Violet's wardrobe in a state of hapless bewilderment, calling finally upon Gertrude to make a proper selection. Denise attires her young mistress, who looks really pale after this enforced seclusion. Mr. Grandon carries her down-stairs; and if it is not a conventional parlor, the room still has some picturesque aspects of its own, and the two luxurious wolf-robes on the floor are grudged afterward, as Laura steps on them. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... perhaps; but he had lived lonely for many years since his wife's death, and judged the hearts of others, most of all of his brother's son, by his own. He had often thought whether, in case of Elsie's dying or being necessarily doomed to seclusion, he might not adopt this nephew and make him his heir; but it had not occurred to him that Richard might wish to become his son-in-law for the sake ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... President and his friends, and to which a guard in uniform admitted us with a key. I was much impressed by the exterior of the Capitol (though in such an unfinished state), but when I found myself seated in the seclusion of the President's own private gallery, looking down upon the horseshoe of grave and distinguished senators, I could have wished that one of the ladies (of whom there were a number in the gallery opposite, ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... fay who married a mortal on condition that she should be allowed to spend her Saturdays in deep seclusion. This promise, after many years, was broken, and Melusina, half serpent, half woman, was discovered swimming in a bath. For this breach of faith on the part of her husband, Melusina was compelled to leave her home. She regularly returned, however, before the death ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... the rents of which he lived very straitly, and a single falcon, the best in the world. The estate was at Campi, and thither, deeming it no longer possible for him to live in the city as he desired, he repaired, more in love than ever before; and there, in complete seclusion, diverting himself with hawking, he bore his poverty as patiently as ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the people of other nations, his grief is loud but lasting, vehement but deep; and whilst its shadow has been chequered by the laughter and mirth of a cheerful disposition, still in the moments of seclusion, at his bedside prayer, or over the grave of those he loved, it will put itself forth after half a life with a vivid power of recollection which is ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... a duty. Retirement seemed to befit the widowhood, which she felt so entirely that when Miss Wells once drove her into disclaiming all possibility of marrying, she called it 'marrying again.' When Miss Wells urged the inexpedience of absolute seclusion, she said she would continue to make morning calls, and she hoped in time to have friends of her own to stay with her; she might ask the Raymonds, or some of the quiet, clerical families (the real elite, be it observed) to spend ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was so crest-fallen by the great and repeated losses he had sustained in this war from a mere handful of men, that he resolved to retire into religions seclusion, that he might conciliate the favour of his gods, and dismissed his allies and chiefs to act as they thought best. His princes and nobles endeavoured to dissuade him from this resolution, but he continued firm to his purpose, and went ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... made her acquaintance, she raised an impassable barrier of pride and reserve. Nor was her reputation altogether an evil one. She lived in a strange fashion, it is true, but the very fact of her extreme seclusion had kept her name free from stain. If people spoke of her as the Witch, it was more from habit and half in jest than in earnest. In strong contradiction to the cruelty which she could exercise ruthlessly ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... of the Club. Professor Chadd has no business there either. He is elected on the strength of having invented a language expressed by dancing, but it appears that he is really an employee in the Asiatic MSS. Department of the British Museum. Things are extremely absurd in The Eccentric Seclusion of the Old Lady. At the instigation of Rupert, who has heard sighs of pain coming out of a South Kensington basement, Basil, Rupert, and the man who tells the story, break into the house and violently assault ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... know, is a very beautiful house indeed, a still and gracious place, whose age-long seclusion was only effectively broken with the toot of the coming of the motor-car. An old Catholic family had died out in it, century by century, and was now altogether dead. Portions of the fabric are thirteenth century, and its last architectural revision was Tudor; within, it is for ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... accused him of receiving billets from madame. There was a duel. The duke carried a bad arm to Normandy, and the marquis dined a week with the governor of the Bastille. That was the marquis's last affair. It happened before the Fronde. Since then he has remained in seclusion, fortifying himself against old age. His hotel is in the Rue des Augustines, near the ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... brought up. To be sure, all young creatures nowadays are the same. Parents, on a plea of tenderness, keep them at home, where they get spoiled among grown people, when they had much better have the same kind of education that has succeeded so well with Giselle; bolts on the garden-gates, wholesome seclusion, the company of girls of their own age, a great regularity of life, nothing which stimulates either vanity or imagination. That is the proper way to bring up girls without notions, girls who will let themselves be married without opposition, and are satisfied with the state ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... quiet and seclusion. He was willing to develop the pearl fisheries, but objected to the flock of adventurers sure to descend upon his island if its wealth of pearls became generally known. His colony he selected with great care and with ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... only upon promising not to molest the nest or to annoy the mother bird by remaining too long near it. While it is well that the pupils should see the nest with the young birds, they should be taught to respect the desire of the bird for quietness and seclusion. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... one of the pretty parks that make our city so attractive. Stepping from the car, he loosened his grasp upon the captive moth near a big syringa bush that adorned the entrance way. He watched the dainty white wings flutter down into the cool seclusion of the blossom then turned and boarded the car and pursued his homeward way conscious, let us hope, of a very pretty and graceful deed of kindness to a most insignificant claimant for protection and succor. Sentimental, was it? Well, God help the world when all sentimentality of ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... holiday from the crowded and smoky city and find themselves in the heart of a delicious garden, have not a secret consciousness within them that the scene affords them a glimpse of a true paradise below. Rich foliage and gay flowers and rural quiet and seclusion and a smiling sun are ever associated with ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... their wounded and ill-humoured champion. The inhabitants of the other house, over on the shore, who had been interested but remote spectators through all the strange events of the morning, were now in comfortable seclusion, resting till it should be counted a safe time to go about their affairs. Some were sleeping, or gnawing on sappy willow sticks, in the spacious chamber of their house, while others were in the deeper and more secret retreats of their two burrows high up in the bank, connecting with the main house ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... light. Though she had some indistinct idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to look forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a screen. The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly represented, but with that bewitching yet indescribable difference ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... crown of the head in those days was no trifling matter. It formed what is known as the tonsure, then the mark of the monastic orders. A man condemned to the tonsure could not serve as king or chieftain, but must spend the remainder of his days in seclusion as a monk. So Paul was disposed of without losing ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... give these words the rather far-fetched meaning of "They are hatching some plot." Donatus, with much more probability, supposes him to refer to the daughter of Chremes, whom, as the young women among the Greeks were brought up in great seclusion, we may suppose Pamphilus ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... seclusion of the royal architect, the works were suspended, and it now remains unfinished. Censure and abuse have, however, always been abundantly lavished on its architecture, whether it be the result of royal caprice or of professional study; but the taste of either party deserves to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... "Yes, let's seek the seclusion of the mountain fastness and have Emma sit up and 'con-centrate' all night. If she can move a house and lot with her con-centration stunt, she surely should be able to move that touchy mountain savage further away from us," suggested Hippy to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... cases the obligation imposed by others should be void unless the patient should afterwards ratify it when in a sound state of mind. Penitents of this class might remain in their own houses, without seclusion within the walls of a monastery; but they were for ever compelled to wear the habit and shaven crown, to shun business and diversions, to lead exemplary and chaste lives: if single, they could not marry; if married, they could not enjoy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... collision which cannot exist except among the very innocent. Years, at any rate, will irresistibly remove this peculiar charm, and gradually replace it by the graces of the matronly character. But in Agnes this change had not yet been effected, partly from nature, and partly from the extreme seclusion of her life. Hitherto she still retained the unaffected expression of her childlike nature; and so lovely in my eyes was this perfect exhibition of natural feminine character, that she rarely or never went out alone upon any little errand to town which might require her to rely upon ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... not like blood; but I have a right to claim the perpetual seclusion of this evil-doer; my repose requires it; my health commands it; the law accords me this reparation; otherwise, I leave la France—ma belle France! ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... interview there was no witness. So it may best be chronicled in the report made by the interviewer to her friend Mrs. Festus Willard, who, in the cool seclusion of her sewing-room, was overwhelmed by a rush of Esme to the heart, as she put it. Not having been apprised of Miss Elliot's conflicting emotions since her departure, Mrs. Willard's mind was as a page blank for impressions when ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... go to the South Seas. She would escape the shame of coming home; Julia would be out of danger of religious contamination; and she herself would be saved from the necessary odium of keeping one daughter in banishment and the other in seclusion; which odium she must incur if both of them remained in England and neither of them ever saw the other. All this would be cleverly saved. Then also, if Eleanor married a missionary and went to the other end of the world, her case could be very well dismissed as one of a religious enthusiasm—a ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... by, summer ripened into fall, and fall faded into winter. All was monotony: the bleak winter season, the shorter days, the longer evenings, the city settling down into a period of seclusion and social inaction. There would be little of gayety this year. No foreign visitors would be entertained by the townsfolk. There would be no Mischienza to look forward to. It would be a lonely winter for the fashionable element, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... activities in a private retreat. We see this period marked by the creation of some of the most virile passages of a Work dealing exclusively in red corpuscles and huge primal impulses. We see this thoughtful man dragged from his calm seclusion to a horrifying publicity; forced to adopt the stage and, himself a writer, compelled to exploit the repulsive sentiments of an author not only personally distasteful to him but whose whole method and school in belles ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... are so like pictures of other growths. I felt that this scene was a worthy one for the kind but never familiar man who walked and reflected there. We enjoyed a constant outdoor life. But in those uninspired hours when there was no father in sight, and my mother was resting in seclusion, I played at grocer's shop on the sands with a little girl called Hannah, whom I then despised for her name, her homely neat clothes, her sweetness and silence, and in retrospect learned to love. As we pounded brick, secured sugary-looking ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... to good account. The army of the Queen Regent was indeed in an almost wrecked condition, and among the field officers jealousy and backbiting, which had smouldered through the war-time, broke out openly. General Vincente was rarely at home, and Estella passed this time in quiet seclusion. Coming as she did from Andalusia, she was accustomed to an even greater heat, and knew how to avoid the ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... a 'Palace of Art' that Des Esseintes would recreate his already over-wrought body and brain, and the monotony of its seclusion is only once broken by a single excursion into the world without. This one episode of action, this one touch of realism, in a book given over to the artificial, confined to a record of sensation, is a projected voyage to London, a voyage that never ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... whose love was sought by Orsino, duke of Illyria; but having lost her brother, Olivia lived for a time in entire seclusion, and in no wise reciprocated the duke's love; in consequence of which Viola nicknamed her "Fair Cruelty." Strange as it may seem, Olivia fell desperately in love with Viola, who was dressed as the duke's page, and sent her a ring. Mistaking Sebastian (Viola's ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... restored, his strength renewed and his outer man refurbished in excellent style, Paul began to weary of the seclusion and monotony of the farm, and was eager to enjoy even the mild relaxation of a walk across to the brothers of the neighbouring Priory. The basket was soon packed, and was intrusted to his care; and off he set down the easy slope which ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... prime minister, has accompanied the king in his carriage, from the very entrance of London, where the famous statesman met him. He is now the privileged companion of their majesties, in their seclusion for the rest of the evening. His cheerful face, in its full evening disguise of wig and tie, his invariable good humour, his frank manners, his wonderful sense, his views, more practical than elevated, sufficiently account for the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... fancy. In the old French house on Royal Street, with its quaint windows and Spanish courtyard green and cool, and made musical by the plashing of the fountain and the trill of caged birds, lived Odalie in convent-like seclusion. Monsieur le Juge was determined no hawk should break through the cage and steal his dove; and so, though there was no mother, a stern duenna ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... which the eastern emigrant had to pass, presented too, no inconsiderable barrier to its earlier location; while the cold, bleak, inhospitable region, extending from the North Branch to the Cheat and Valley rivers, seemed to threaten an entire seclusion from the eastern settlements, and to render it an isolated spot, not easily connected with any ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... dotting its surface from Olympia to Blaine and within easy reach of the cities located upon its shores. Some are hidden within partially concealed bays and others appear like portions of the mainland until circumnavigation has proved their seclusion. Although a few have sufficient area and commercial importance to form entire counties, the larger number are of rather small compass, and a few are tiny gems suitable only for private resorts away from the ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... absence be interposed between us. So worked my fate! These reflections continued to haunt and oppress me, by night and day, and life itself seemed a bitter burden in that interval of rebellious agony, and in that terrible seclusion, where luxury itself became ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... extent and, although not surrounded too closely by other villas, was nevertheless thoroughly overlooked by them, so that seclusion in that garden was impossible. Recognising this fact, a former proprietor had erected at the lower end of the garden a bower so contrived that its interior was invisible from all points except one, and that was a side door to the garden which ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Hudson Bay Company purchased the steamer, a few hours after its arrival, for about four times its value. They hoped to continue their seclusion by so doing; but were doomed to disappointment. Another and larger boat was built in the following year at Georgetown, Minnesota, the spot where the Northrup was launched. The isolation of the fur-traders was ended. The owners ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... places of pilgrimage, of temporary retreats into seclusion; the man turns inward to seek the God within him, and is aided by the atmosphere created by thousands of others, who before him have sought the same in the same place. For in such a place there is not only the ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... blameless, diligent, and peaceful life they adorned the name of disciple through all the twelve years of their sojourn, how honored and beloved they were among the churches and in the University of Leyden, there are abundant testimonies. The twelve years of seclusion in an alien land among a people of strange language was not too long a discipline of preparation for that work for which the Head of the church had set them apart. This was the period of Robinson's activity as author. In erudite studies, in grave debate with gainsayers ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... glory of Egypt! Woman was defended, revered, exalted above her sisters of any contemporary nation. No haremic seclusion for her; no semi-contemptuous toleration of her; no austere limits laid upon her uses. She bared her face to the thronging streets; she reveled beside her brother; she worshiped with him; she admitted no subserviency to her lord beyond the pretty deference that it pleased ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... author is not alone to blame for this, but also the world which first tempts and then reproves him. Goethe says, that, if a person once does a good thing, society forms a league to prevent his doing another. His seclusion is gone, and therefore his unconsciousness and his leisure; luxuries tempt him from his frugality, and soon he must toil for luxuries; then, because he has done one thing well, he is urged to squander ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... sail at my ease over the tops of the houses and across the beautiful river. When the tower of Memorial Hall comes in sight, I could pull a cord and drop gently down at my own door, having meanwhile had the seclusion and exaltation of an unusual ride. What a delightful experience! But there is one disadvantage. Balloons are not always at hand. I might be obliged to wait here for hours, for days, before getting one. I dismiss the thought ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... it, with his feet placidly reposing upon its window-sills. It is, indeed, in a new form. It no longer looks as it did to the early citizen of fifty years ago, driving out before breakfast upon the Bloomingdale Road, and surveying the calm river from the seclusion of Stryker's Bay. It had an indefinable road-side English air in those far-off mornings. The early citizen would not have been surprised had he heard the horn of the guard merrily winding, and ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... millionth part of what we may be able to reproduce present in our consciousness. Where are those words of the language, those faces of our friends, those landscapes, and those thoughts; where have they lingered in the time of their seclusion? Scientific psychology has no right to propose any other theory as explanation but that no mental states at all remain and that all which remained was the disposition of physiological centers. When I coupled ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... important part, Marcella seemed to be ill. She appeared at meals, but neither ate nor conversed. Christian had never known her so sullen and nervously irritable; he did not venture to utter Peak's name. Upon seclusion followed restless activity. Marcella was rarely at home between breakfast and dinner-time, and her brother learnt with satisfaction that she went much among her acquaintances. Late one evening, when he had just returned from he knew not where, Christian tried to ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... who have been but mere instruments—blind instruments, many of them, in your hands to accomplish they knew not what—come forward and assume place and power—you, Edmond, the noble author and first cause of all, remain quietly in seclusion, unknown, unnamed, unappreciated and uncommended, while the others reap the fruits ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... which has had its share of attention in every volume, becomes a strong feature, especially in the fine sketches that are given of famous writers. It is a fact that most writers have lived so quietly and in such comparative seclusion that their lives are devoid of the exciting events that make the liveliest appeal to young people, yet every one has done so much for the world and in such varied ways that there are things in their lives that interest and enthrall the mind ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... of Christendom arise and offer their unrifled zones to his noble fingers? Sister and Aunt, there is one at least, in Navarre, who so arises. I offer my child Berengere, called by trobadors (because of her chaste seclusion) Frozen Heart, to be thawed in the sun of your son. I offer, moreover, my great fiefs of Oliocastro, Cingovilas, Monte Negro, and Sierra Alba as far as Agreda; and a dowry also of 60,000 marks in gold of Byzance, to be numbered by three bishops, one each of our choosing, and ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... mountain on a shelf that gave back into a shallow cave. In front, facing the desert, was a heap of rock that formed a natural rampart. A tiny spring bubbled from the cave floor. Here the little party would seem as secure in their dizzy seclusion as eagles ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... himself 'A Protestant Dissenter,' has written to us, to remonstrate against one of the heroines of the tale in No. 424, with the above title, having been consigned by the author to the seclusion of a convent. As the same correspondent protests against the 'Visit to an English Monastery' in No. 413, as something calculated to introduce the wedge of Popery among our readers—the said article having given much offence to our Catholic readers, and terrified all our Protestant readers, but ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... ought to return to God. First of all, we should disentangle ourselves absolutely from the pleasures of the world, manfully turning our backs upon all vices; we should turn to God by continual prayers, by seclusion, and holy exercise, that the flesh may thus be subdued to the spirit. Next, we must offer ourselves willingly to endure all the troubles which may come upon us, from God, or from the creatures. Thirdly, ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... visit which the emperour paid his children, when the iron gate was opened to the sound of musick; and during eight days every one, that resided in the valley, was required to propose whatever might contribute to make seclusion pleasant, to fill up the vacancies of attention, and lessen the tediousness of time. Every desire was immediately granted. All the artificers of pleasure were called to gladden the festivity; the musicians exerted the power of harmony, and the dancers showed their activity before ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... to the utmost, must resign themselves to the emigration of their redundant population. But those which have remained within their own boundaries and have adopted a policy of isolation, like China, feudal Japan during its two and a half centuries of seclusion, and numerous Polynesian islands, have been forced to war with nature itself by checking the operation of the law of natural increase. All the repulsive devices contributing to this end, whether infanticide, abortion, cannibalism, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... neat and pretty. Queer little canvas-covered, two-wheeled carts, their tops shaped like half an egg-shell, are drawn about the town by bullocks at a lively trot. Some are closely curtained, containing women of the harem. Oriental seclusion is the rule with the women. Under the prince who rules here the population exhibits a marked contrast to those of India generally, over which the authority of England extends. There are no mud cabins here, no beggars, no visible want or ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... days for Lady Cochrane in her self-enforced seclusion, and her temper was not improved by the news, brought diligently to her by her waiting-maid, that her daughter was doing her utmost to make the persecutor's time pass pleasantly. Her mother had no suspicion at this point that Jean was really wavering ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... indeed, there be one. He rode out with the President yesterday evening, but neither were greeted with cheers. I suppose Gen. Lee has lost some popularity among idle street walkers by his retreat from Pennsylvania. The President seeks seclusion. A gentleman who breakfasted with him this morning, tells me the President complained of fatigue from his long ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... lives of scholars in their cloistered stillness;—literary men of retired habits, and Professors who study sixteen hours a day, and never see the world but on a Sunday. Nature has, no doubt, for some wise purpose, placed in their hearts this love of literary labor and seclusion. Otherwise, who would feed the undying lamp of thought? But for such men as these, a blast of wind through the chinks and crannies of this old world, or the flapping of a conqueror's banner, would blow it out forever. The light of the soul ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... wind passed over the vast forests of Lorraine. It seemed to wake an indefinite sly life proper to this seclusion, a life to which I was strange, and which thought me an invader. Yet I heard nothing. There were no adders in the long grass, nor any frogs in that dry square of land, nor crickets on the high part of the hill; but I knew that little creatures ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... no remoteness of life and thought, no hermetically sealed seclusion, except, possibly, that of the grave, into which the disturbing influences of this war do not penetrate. Of course, the general heart-quake of the country long ago knocked at my cottage-door, and compelled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various |
