"Nun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lecturing? Is that it? You've not been crying, little one? It is all right, you know! You and I were jolly enough at Rockpier; but it was time we were taken in hand, or you would have grown into a regular little nun, among all ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... our neighbors. This was a powerful argument; the Countess made the most of it. Then, either by one of those tacit understandings, those veiled complaisances in which whoever wears the clerical garb excels, or through fortunate stupidity, serviable foolishness, the old nun brought a formidable support to the conspiracy. They thought she was timid; she showed herself bold, talkative, violent. This one was not trouble by the hesitations of casuistry; her doctrine seemed to be an iron bar; her faith never hesitated; her conscience had no scruples. She found quite natural ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... tale, Clarice," answered Heliet, in a low tone. "He loves her, and would cherish her dearly if she would let him. But there is not any love in her. When she was a young maid, almost a child, she set her heart on being a nun, and I think she has never forgiven her baron for being the innocent means of preventing her. I scarcely know which of them is the ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... the heavy cloak and hood that she wore and it fell behind her. But where was the lovely rounded form, and where the clustering golden curls? Gone, and in their place a coarse robe of blue serge, on which hung a crucifix, and the white hood of the nun. ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... the wonder of our love and thee, beloved, as I did see thee first within the thicket at Mortain, beautiful as now, though then was thy glorious hair unbound. I dream of thine eyes beneath thy nun's veil when I did bear thee in my arms from Thornaby—but most do I dream of thee as Fidelis, and the clasp of thy ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... any other answer. "There lies antique beauty, not corpse-like even in death, but arrested in the complete contentment of its sensuous perfection: and here stands beauty in its breathing life, with the consciousness of Christian centuries in its bosom. But she should be dressed as a nun; I think she looks almost what you call a Quaker; I would dress her as a nun in my picture. However, she is married; I saw her wedding-ring on that wonderful left hand, otherwise I should have thought the sallow Geistlicher was her father. I saw him parting from her a good while ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... das Urtheil gesprochen, welche die unbewusste Vorstellung des Zwecks in jedem einzelnen Falle vorwiegt; denn wollte man nun noch die Vorstellung des Geistesmechanismus festhalten so musste fur jede Variation und Modification des Instincts, nach den ausseren Umstanden, eine besondere constante Vorrichtung . . . eingefugt sein."—Philosophy of the Unconscious ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... would have looked perfectly ghastly in this last night, when you were as pale and hollow-eyed as a sick nun; but to-night," and she raised her eyes to my face, "I believe you will do. Don't you ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... intelligence and her secretary, and as she was telling him the substance of a letter that she wished to write to a Princess of the Court, to obtain from her some news of the King's health, she heard on the other side of the cloister a nun, whose brain was somewhat turned, lamenting and weeping loudly. Margaret, naturally inclined to pity, hastened to this woman, asked her why she was weeping, and encouraged her to tell her whether she wished for anything. Then the nun began to lament still more ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... husband for Helene myself, or she shall take the veil. That life, at least, has its distinction. Aunts, great-aunts, cousins, have chosen it before her. One of our best and most beautiful ancestors was a Carmelite nun." ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... is a nun in Dryburgh bower Ne'er looks upon the sun; There is a monk in Melrose tower, He ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... generous ardor so natural to youth. But, whatever you do, whatever the choice you may make, you will occasion the future weal or woe of many, perhaps for many generations. Whether spouse of Jesus Christ or of man, whether mother of a family or of the poor, whether a cloistered nun or a celibate in the world, you will neither save nor lose your soul alone; the effects of your virtues or vices shall be reproduced, long after your departure from the scene of life, in the lives of beings yet unborn, in favor of whom divine Providence implores your compassion. ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... NUN. Let me have it. I will take it to the Sisters' Home, and it shall live there. Your wife may come and nurse it. We will take ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... snow I saw a slight black figure, a woman, moving slowly up the glen. She stopped, and turned and looked at me. She was dressed as a nun. Her face looked pale. I saw her hand in the folds of her habit. Then she moved on, as it seemed, on a slope too steep for walking. When she came under the tree she disappeared—perhaps because there was no snow to show her outline. ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... is indorsed by John Bull himself, you will believe and come. Nothing can be better. As soon as the lectures are over, let the trunks be packed. Only my wife and my blessed sister dear—Elizabeth Hoar, betrothed in better times to my brother Charles,—my wife and this lovely nun do say that Mrs. Carlyle must come hither also; that it will make her strong, and lengthen her days on the earth, and cheer theirs also. Come, and make a home with me; and let us make a truth that is better than dreams. From this farm-house of mine you shall sally forth as God shall invite you, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... her courage, thinking rapidly. And as for the man, he thought nothing whatever; he just looked. She was bright-eyed and fair and wholly perfect. She was dressed in plain black, with deep white cuffs which turned back upon the sleeves, and a white turnover collar, as neat as a nun. Offsetting, somehow, the severity of this, was the boyish side-sweep of her hair, and the watch-chain looped to a crocheted pocket on her breast. And on the ground lay ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... Portman, who read the service over his dear sister departed, amidst his own sobs and those of the little congregation which assembled round Helen's tomb. There were not many who cared for her, or who spoke of her when gone. Scarcely more than of a nun in a cloister did people know of that pious and gentle lady. A few words among the cottagers whom her bounty was accustomed to relieve, a little talk from house to house, at Clavering, where this lady, told how their neighbor died of a complaint in the heart; while ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... picture has a religious basis, but heaven is not likely, I think, to be seriously affronted if one smiles a little at these aquatic sports. Legend has it that the little kneeling group on the right is Gentile's own family, and the kneeling lady on the left, with a nun behind her, is Caterina ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... showed them into the waiting-room, where they spent over an hour. They were greatly puzzled. What did the intervention of that nun mean? What part was she playing ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... Her hair had thinned, and was full of silver threads; a wrinkle invaded either cheek, and she was angular and bony; but something painfully sweet lingered in her face, and a certain childlike innocence of expression gave her the air of a nun; the world had never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... quaintness and noiseless bustle of the Lower Town thoroughfares, and came by and by to that old church, the oldest in Quebec, which was built near two hundred years ago, in fulfilment of a vow made at the repulse of Sir William Phipps's attack upon the city, and further famed for the prophecy of a nun, that this church should be ruined by the fire in which a successful attempt of the English was yet to involve the Lower Town. A painting, which represented the vision of the nun, perished in the ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... philosophy and theology; and here it was—for the first time in modern literature—that woman as a symbol of goodness and light found herself raised upon a pedestal and glorified in the eyes of the world. Many a pink and rosy Venus had been evoked before, many a pale-faced nun had received the veneration of the multitude for her saintly life, but here we have neither Venus nor saint; for Beatrice is the type of the good woman in the world, human in her instincts and holy in her acts. The air of mysticism ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... to doff his hat or drop a coin into the box placed in convenient proximity! He was an impious man, a heretic, and fortunate was it for him if he escaped with his life. To refuse to swell the collection of the monk or nun that came to a man's own door to solicit funds for the trial of the Protestants, was equally perilous. In short, it was no unfrequent device for a debtor to get rid of the importunity of his creditor by raising the cry, "Au Christaudin, an Lutherien!" It went hard with the former if he ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... own choice turned on Catharine von Bora, a former nun. Sprung from an ancient, though poor family of noble blood, she had been brought up from childhood in the convent of Nimtzch near Grimma. We find her there as early as 1509; she was born on January 29, 1499, and was consecrated as a nun at the age of sixteen. When ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... monastic life, and {3} Kentigerna retired to an island in Loch Lomond to live as an anchoress. Here in her solitary cell, on the hilly, wooded isle which is now called in memory of her Innis na Caillich (the Nun's Island), she spent many years of the remainder of her life. The island became the seat of the old parish church of Buchanan, which was dedicated to her, and in the graveyard, which is still in ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... Seville in the reign of Henry III of Castile,' consequently before 1406. 'The Catalans and the Normans frequented the western coast of Africa as far as the Tropic of Cancer at least forty-five years before the epoch at which Don Henry the Navigator commenced his series of discoveries beyond Cape Nun.'"[6] ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... saints on the tables, the likeness would have been complete. The house itself was conventual in aspect, and Lady Channice, as she stood there in the quiet light at the window, looked not unlike a nun, were it not for her crown of pale gold hair that shone in the dark room and seemed, like the roses, to bring into it the brightness of an ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the country whose composers have led the world for more than two centuries should produce many musical women. The list excels not only in point of length, but in merit and priority. It begins with the nun Roswitha, or Helen von Rossow, who flourished at the end of the tenth century, and won renown by her poetry, some of which she set to music. But in modern times many important names are found in Germany at a time when few or none ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... said Mr. Wilding, as meek and humble as a nun, and Trenchard, who had expected something very different from him, swore aloud and with some circumstance of oaths. "The fact is," continued Mr. Wilding, "that what I did last night, I did in the heat of wine, and I am sorry for it. I recognize that this quarrel is of my provoking; that it ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... followed by a rapid retreat on bicycles so soon as it had been ascertained that it was true; the Affair of the German Prince traveling incognito, into which the Mayor himself had been drawn; and the Affair of the Nun who smoked a short black pipe in the Great Court shortly before midnight, before gathering up her skirts and vanishing on noiseless india-rubber-shod feet round the kitchen quarters into the gloom ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... and her ladies had bathed. The tank, however, as you may conceive, was no longer used as a bath; for the washing of the body is an indulgence forbidden to cloistered virgins; and our Abbess, who was famed for her austerities, boasted that, like holy Sylvia the nun, she never touched water save to bathe her finger-tips before receiving the Sacrament. With such an example before them, the nuns were obliged to conform to the same pious rule, and many, having been bred in the convent from infancy, regarded all ablutions with horror, and ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... here and there, shrieking and crying out as if they were pursued. Their terror, however, was imaginary, for, savage as the image-breakers might have appeared, they had but one object in view, and not a nun or monk was in the slightest degree injured. In the prison of the Barefooted Monastery they found an unhappy monk who had been shut up for twelve years for his heretical opinions, and with loud shouts of joy they liberated ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... seemed to give the room the quiet hush of some little side-chapel in a cathedral, where green and golden glass softens the sunlight, and only the sigh and rustle of kneeling worshippers break the stillness of the aisles. It was small enough for a nun's apartment, and dainty in its neatness as the waxen cell of a bee. The bed and low window were draped in spotless white, with fringes of Mary's own knotting. A small table under the looking-glass bore the library of a well-taught young ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... the noble genius kindled her enthusiasm. And so the opposite ends of the chain of their attachment were fastened. After displaying exemplary zeal, for fifteen years, in all the works of duty assigned her, she was permitted to become a nun, taking the name of Bossuet in addition to the title of Sister Saint Benigne. Despite her humble origin and the mediocrity of her intellect, Bossuet preferred her above all the high-born and brilliant ladies who constantly knelt for his benedictions. It was only ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... who thought so much and loved to read, more than Leff who, if his brain was not sharp, might be supposed to have accumulated some slight store of experience, more than Daddy John who was old and had the hoar of worldly knowledge upon him. Compared to her they were as novices to a nun who has made an excursion into the world and taken a bite from ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... quarrel with nun or matron for following her vocation. But for our women, who are free, why should they rebel against Nature, shut their hearts up, sell their lives for rank and money, and forgo the most precious right of their liberty? Look, Ethel, dear. I love ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... me such a sermon, as if I were a heathen. Facts, when they happen to be real facts, are the best umpires in the world, and to their arbitrament I leave my character for charity. When Reuben Chalmers died, his wife was so overwhelmed with grief that she shut herself up like a nun; and when she drove out for fresh air wore two heavy crape veils, and never allowed any one to catch a glimpse of her countenance. Not even to church did she venture, until one morning, at the end of two years, she laid ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... since. Her face was high, narrow, and very regular; oddly enough, it was in outline, with its thin, pursed-up mouth, straight nose, and full eyelids and brows, very like a face one would expect to see in a nun's hood. Yet so little in the character of the cloister did this countenance keep, that it was plastered thick with chalk and rouge, and sprinkled with ridiculous black patches, and bore, as it rose from the low courtesy before me, an unnatural smile half-way ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... last abroad; they had however all forgotten me, nor could call to mind how much they had once admired the beauty of my eldest daughter, then a child, which I thought impossible to forget: one is always more important in one's own eyes than in those of others; but no one is of importance to a Nun, who is and ought to be employed ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of her house there lived a maiden lady of seventy, in the most retired manner, of whom my landlady gave me this account: that she was a Roman Catholic, had been sent abroad when young, and lodg'd in a nunnery with an intent of becoming a nun; but, the country not agreeing with her, she returned to England, where, there being no nunnery, she had vow'd to lead the life of a nun, as near as might be done in those circumstances. Accordingly, she had given all her estate to charitable uses, reserving only twelve pounds a year ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... duty of a mother to her child), and go with him to his estates in La Vendee, where he is to take up arms for the king. Unfortunately, the Vendeans by no means "see" their seigneur marrying an apostate nun, and strong language is used. So Delphine dies, not actually by her own hand, and Leonce gets shot, more honourably than he deserves, on the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... herself known, and how a cousin of her mother's, by the father's side, had been wiled away from her home by the abbot of Melrose, and never heard tell of for many a day, till she was discovered, in the condition of a disconsolate nun, in a convent, far away in Nithsdale. But the great difficulty was to get access to Marion Ruet's bower, for so, from that day, was Mrs Kilspinnie called again by her sister; and, after no little communing, it was proposed by Lucky Kilfauns, that Elspa should go with her to the ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... they were by no means frequent. The last that I remember was a case which occurred in a convent at Seville: a certain nun was in the habit of flying through the windows and about the garden over the tops of the orange trees; declarations of various witnesses were taken, and the process was arranged with much formality; the fact, I believe, was satisfactorily proved: of one thing ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... little gray nun! Outdoors is quite as 'proper' as indoors—rather more so, in fact. It's the onlooker that makes things proper or improper, and here there are no onlookers.—This is all too wonderful ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... of the Reformation, Luther at first continued celibate, but thinking "to vex the Pope," he suddenly, at the age of forty-two, gave his influence against celibacy by marriage with Catherine Von Bora, a former nun. But although thus becoming an example of priestly marriage under the new order of things, Luther's whole course shows that he did not believe in woman's equality with man. He took with him the old theory ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... a few minutes, I suppose, I shall be master of this place. Now you told me once you would rather be an abbess or a nun than marry me." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... bare feet blesse the way, The people doe not mock, but pray, And call thee, as amas'd they run Instead of prostitute, a nun. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... jolly, gentlemanly, clique-y, sensible, shrewd, au fait. The nuns—now I am vexed to look at them. Are nuns expected to be any more dead to the world than priests? Then I should like to know why they must make such frights of themselves, while priests go about like Christians? Why shall a nun walk black, and gaunt, and lank, with a white towel wrapped around her face, all possible beauty and almost all attractiveness despoiled by her hideously unbecoming dress, while priests wear their hair and their hats and their coats and their collars like any other gentleman? Why are ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... — I ride, I blasphemously ride Through all the silent countryside. The engine's shriek, the headlight's glare, Pollute the still nocturnal air. The cottages of Lake View sigh And sleeping, frown as we pass by. Why, even strident Paterson Rests quietly as any nun. Her foolish warring children keep The grateful armistice of sleep. For what tremendous errand's sake Are we so blatantly awake? What precious secret is our freight? What king must be abroad so late? Perhaps Death roams the hills to-night And we rush forth to give him fight. Or else, perhaps, ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... sisters-in-law more unlike? But Lord Ormersfield had done Rosita and her husband good service. If Aunt Melicent had first learned the real facts, her wrath would have been extreme—a mere child, a foreigner, a Roman Catholic, a nun! Her horror would have known no bounds, and she would, perhaps, have broken with her brother forever. But by making the newly-married pair victims of injustice, the Earl had made the reality a relief, and Melicent had written civilly ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have arraigned theology; they have damned all the philosophers even lower than they have damned the saints. Thousands of modern men move quietly and conventionally among their fellows while holding views of national limitation or landed property that would have made Voltaire shudder like a nun listening to blasphemies. And the last and wildest phase of this saturnalia of scepticism, the school that goes furthest among thousands who go so far, the school that denies the moral validity of those ideals of courage or obedience which are recognised even among pirates, this school ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... the poet with the lawless chief, and was supposed, years since, to have fallen in one of the desperate frays between prince and outlaw, which were then common; storming the very castle which held her, now the pious nun, then the beauty and presider over the tournament and galliard. In her arms the spirit of the hermit passed away. She survived but a few hours, and left conjecture busy with a history to which it never obtained further clew. Many a troubadour in later times furnished ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... now! Phyllis felt, with her substitute in her place, her own wraps on, and her feet taking her swiftly towards her goal, as if she were offering herself to be made a nun, or have a hand or foot cut off, or paying herself away in some awful, irrevocable fashion. She packed, mechanically, all the pretty things Mrs. De Guenther had given her, and nothing else. She found herself at the door ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... at this time a young nun of the Order of St. Dominic, who walked in the way of St. Catherine of Siena, Colomba da Rieti by name. You will find some marvellous things about her in the Perugian chronicles of Matarazzo, which, for that matter, abound in marvellous things—too ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... forbidden thoughts and cherished impossible hopes. Here she met and talked with Dr. John. Deep beneath this "Methuselah of a pear-tree," the one nearest the end of the alley, lies the imprisoned dust of the poor young nun who was buried alive ages ago for some sin against her vow, and whose perambulating ghost so disquieted poor Lucy. At the root of this same tree one miserable night Lucy buried her precious letters, and "meant also to bury a grief" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... some modern writers assert, without any authority, that he doubled the Cape of Good Hope: this assertion is made in direct unqualified terms by Mickle the translator of the Lusiad. Other writers limit the extent of his navigation to Cape Nun; while, according to other geographers, he sailed as far as Cape Three Points, on the coast of Guinea. That there should be any doubt on the subject appears surprising; for, as Dr. Vincent very justly remarks, we have Hanno's own authority to prove that he never was within 40 ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... atelier Hubert painted. Elaine sat on a dais, her hands folded in her lap; about her head twisted nun's-veiling gave her the old-fashioned quality of a Cosway miniature—the very effect he had sought. It was to be a "pretty" affair, this picture, with its subdued lighting, the face being the only target he aimed at; all the rest, the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... life was ended for her, she had devoted herself wholly to the cause, and self-repression had given to her face the gentleness and consecration of a nun. ...
— The Christmas Peace - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... a busy city man's is liable to become. His work had become an engrained habit, and, being a bachelor, he had hardly an interest in life to draw him away from it, so that his soul was being gradually bricked up like the body of a mediaeval nun. But at last there came this kindly illness, and Nature hustled James Stephens out of his groove, and sent him into the broad world far away from roaring Manchester and his shelves full of calf-skin authorities. At first he resented it deeply. ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... deplore, The others rejoiced that you trusted them still. Ingenuous Helen was sometimes your role, With her appetites, charms, and all else beside; Sometimes Roman probity wielded your soul, In honor becoming your rule and your guide. And though in a convent as guardian nun, You might have well managed some sprightly fun, In the world, as a keeper of treasures untold, Preferred you would be to a lamb of ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... little crowns and circlets, as bright as silver; as if for the gnome princesses to wear; here it is in beautiful little plates, for them to eat off; presently it is in towers which they might be imprisoned in; presently in caves and cells, where they may make nun-gnomes of themselves, and no gnome ever hear of them more; here is some of it in sheaves, like corn; here, some in drifts, like snow; here, some in rays, like stars: and, though these are, all of them, necessarily, shapes that the mineral takes in other places, they are all taken ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the railroad, even civilization, had been paralyzed by the dragon that fed upon humanity. If Jeb expected the villagers to be out in force to greet Barrow's unit, he was disappointed; for, with the exception of a crippled man laboriously pushing a cart, a nun who with bowed head came from one doorway and hurried into another, and a bent old woman struggling to take down the night shutters from her shop window, the place might have been deserted. On the far side of his train, however, where he had not looked, a group of soldiers ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... a nun is she; One weak chirp is her only note. Braggart and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Never was I afraid of man; Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... little modest. Newgate may be said to be his country-house, where he frequently lives so many months in the year; and he is not so much concerned to be carried thither for a small matter, if 'twere only for the benefit of renewing his acquaintance there. He holds a petit larceny as light as a nun does auricular confession, though the priest has a more compassionate character than the hangman. Every man in this community is esteemed according to his particular quality, of which there are several degrees, though it is contrary often to public government; for here a man shall be valued purely ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... such vanities. I often look on the picture, which is scarcely more tranquil than the original; and I wish I could speak a word of welcome sympathy to one who is so young, and yet so sorrowful. I was much touched, a few days since, by accidentally witnessing an interview between this nun, whose convent name is Cecelia, and her sister. It seems that she had taken the vows in opposition to the wishes and counsel of all her friends, having forsaken a widowed mother and an only sister for spiritual solitude and the cloister. I was copying an exquisite engraving of the Madonna, which ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... of it, while, in truth, it was owing to some lucky opportunity. If she had been born in time of peace she would never have imagined there could have been such a thing as war. If the Prior of the Carthusians had but pleased her, she would have been a nun all her lifetime. M. de Lorraine was the first that engaged her in State affairs. The Duke of Buckingham—[George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, assassinated when preparing to succour Rochelle.]—and the Earl of Holland (an English lord, ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... supernatural personage is permitted to make his appearance. It should seem that our managers reserve all their decorations for the inexplicable dumb show of the Wood Daemon (that diphthong is my delight), the Castle Spectre, &c. &c. The Bleeding Nun in Raymond and Agnes is ushered in with a pre-scent-iment of blue flame and brimstone. Angela's mother advances in a minuet step, to soft music, like Goldsmith's bear, and is absolutely enveloped in flames—none but a salamander, or Messrs. Shadrach and company ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... know the state of the neighbouring countries, both islands and terra firma:" they do not know the coast beyond the "Utmost Cape" of Bojador, which had taken the place of the first Arab Finisterre, Cape Non,[28] Nun, or Nam, as the limit ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... like Phoebe Bradford," she exclaimed indignantly. "Trying to shut up that poor girl like a nun to conform to some moth-eaten ideas of hers! If the Judge were alive that house wouldn't look as if there was a perpetual funeral going on! I certainly will call and see if I can do anything to change her mind, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... prodigious movement the going or coming of a few individuals was a matter of no concern. The hood that Julie Lannes had drawn over her hair and face, and her plain brown dress might have been those of a nun. She too passed ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... an abbey, and she was to be its inhabitant. Its long, damp passages, its narrow cells and ruined chapel, were to be within her daily reach, and she could not entirely subdue the hope of some traditional legends, some awful memorials of an injured and ill-fated nun. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... where he is hung, until the miracle becomes evident, and procures his pardon; an ignorant monk who knows only his Ave Maria, and is despised on that account, when dead reveals his sanctity by five roses which come out of his mouth in honour of the five letters of the name Maria; a nun, who has quitted her convent to lead a life of sin, returns after long years, and finds that the Holy Virgin, to whom, in spite of all, she has never ceased to offer every day her prayer, has, during all this time, filled ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... was certainly attached to little Julie, whose nurse she had been during a short period of her infancy. It was natural that Lady Rose should leave the child to her care. Indeed, she had no choice. An old Ursuline nun, and a kind priest who at the nun's instigation occasionally came to see her, in the hopes of converting her, were her only other friends in the world. She wrote, however, to her father, shortly before her death, bidding him good-bye, and asking him to do something for the child. "She is wonderfully ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not give his consent, darling," my little sweetheart had whispered often in my ear, "I shall tell him that I will go and be a nun." ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... and he has promised to come round along with a few of the Ghost-Dancers to let me see what I think of them. Fancy the ballet has been done before. That clever cuss GUS, must have used it at Covent Garden when he put up Robert the Devil. It seems like the Nun Ballet—uncommonly. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... which she had passed, and crushed in spirit by the dreadful scenes to which her brother had exposed her, now determined to withdraw wholly from the scene. She took the veil in the convent where she was confined, and went as a nun into the cloisters with the other sisters. The name that she ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... cheek, and lids tear-wet, Made answer sad: 'I would not be a widow.' Then Cuthbert spake once more with smile benign: 'I said that each of these three lives is best:— There are who live those three conjoined in one: The nun thus lives! What maid is maid like her Who, free to choose, has vowed a maidenhood Secure 'gainst chance or choice? What bride like her Whose Bridegroom is the spouse of vestal souls? What widow lives in such austere retreat, Such hourly ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... sweet contents. Now the great city is thoroughly awake. The miser and the beggar jostle each other on the crowded pavement, the little children are taken out for their morning airing by the white-capped nurse, a black robed nun glides along on some errand of mercy, with a face like a mediaeval saint, jostling her as he passes can be seen the excited face of the gambler who has staked his all and lost, and again another flower-girl bearing her bright burden, ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... the reign of King Henry the Second, and was so beautiful that it is said in some histories of England that the queen was jealous of her, and obliged her to take poison; but this story is now supposed to be untrue, as there is reason to believe that Fair Rosamond became a nun and died in a convent. The De Cliffords held the Barony of Clifford in Herefordshire, and the extensive manor of Skipton in Yorkshire, when the grandson of Rosamond's father married a rich heiress, who brought him the ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... action is repeated, as, "he walked, and walked, and walked," a proceeding not unknown to our own stories, or such expressions as the following are used: Cuntu 'un porta tempu, or lu cuntu 'un metti tempu, or 'Ntra li cunti nun cc'e tempu, which are all equivalent to, "The story takes no note of time." These Sicilian expressions are replaced in Tuscany by the similar one: Il tempo delle novelle passa presto ("Time passes quickly in stories"). Sometimes the narrator will ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... looked like a neat little nun, and limped painfully as she went about the room. Sometimes she used a crutch, but she seemed as lame with it as without it, and she was such a brisk little creature in spirit, and was so little depressed ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... in a lobster-ish fashion), were sent for in a hurry and brought down by their nurse, a beautiful doll dressed as a French bonne, and Maggie. Algernon wore the costume of a sailor boy, and Angelina was no other than a nun in a black robe! But never mind, they did very well to fill up, and sat smirking ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow
... Horibe Sama. Then the third Sho[u]gun died; a general pardon followed of all ordinary offenders. Under this order she was released, and the Miuraya had the hint or good sense not to press for renewed service. A nun, she cut off the long and beautiful hair, to pray in this world for the souls of father, sister, he who had acted as more than brother in the vengeance taken. Thus through the long years to her final and irrevocable ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... sun-dial bearing the motto "We stay not," and the date 1782, appears above the porch, and the church is entered by a fine old door of the Perpendicular period. A paddock on the west side of the graveyard is known as the nun's field, but I have no knowledge of any monastic institution having existed at Middleton. Aislaby, the next village to the west, is so close that one seems hardly to have left Middleton before one reaches the first cottage of the next hamlet. There is no church here, and the only conspicuous object ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... flowers, the latest colours of the earth, Ere nun-like frost Lay her hard hand upon this rainbow mirth, ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... 4. "The Spanish Nun." [Footnote: Published in "Narrative and Miscellaneous Essays."]—There are some narratives, which, though pure fictions from first to last, counterfeit so vividly the air of grave realities, that, if deliberately offered for such, they would ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... a high-backed chair, a sweet-faced nun, with her golden hair hidden from sight, and her dark-lashed eyes looking lovelier than ever when contrasted with the white bands across her forehead. She had been so busy dressing others that she had had no time to plan anything more elaborate for herself; but if she had worked for days ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Draconidae, whether open or close throated. But I propose myself to separate from them the flower which, for the present, I have called Monacha, but may perhaps find hereafter a better name; this one, which is the best Latin I can find for a nun of the desert, being given to it because all the resemblance either to calf or dragon has ceased in its rosy petals, and they resemble—the lower ones those of the mountain thyme, and the upper one a softly crimson cowl ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... fully—not just half live through a soul-cramping routine. I think it's the right of a man or a woman to face all the things that make life, to think—even if they make mistakes—to fight for what they believe, even if they're wrong. I'd rather be Joan of Arc than the most sainted nun that ever took ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Museum. Well, in all of these, with, I believe, only one exception, the account of the moves does occur exactly (!) as I have given them, always excepting or rather excluding a couplet about two camels (die namliche nicht in die Bude des Tachenspielers passten es weiter unten) Und nun geht es echt fesuitisch weiter, Alpha denies the existence (!) (A hat in Gegentheil Hyde I, p. 63 Citirt) of the account of the moves in every copy of the Shahnama. I, on the other hand pledge my truth and honour (!!) Linde), ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... History of Auricular Confession, vol. ii, p. 69. There was even, it seems, an eccentric decision of the Salamanca theologians that a nun might so receive money, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... was posted up in the town this morning, saying that three English "Panzerkreuzers" had been sunk by one German submarine. Of course the church bells pealed, and the flags came out, and the children sang "Nun danket alle Gott," because 950 brave Englishmen had gone under. We are much depressed, and our depression is aggravated by the want of occupation here. We dare not sketch for fear of being "verhaftet" (arrested). It is no good writing because every scrap of paper will be taken from us on the ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... only with reference to religious standards: as a layman he was perfectly free to seduce Heloise; the scandal, the horrible sin, was not the seduction, but the profanation by married love of the dress of a nun, the sanctuary of the virgin. So it is with the renunciation of all the world's pleasures and interests. The ascetic sacrifice of inclination, which the stoics had conceived as resistance to the tyrant without and the tyrant within, as a method for serene and independent ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... her young face; had drawn the skin over the aquiline profile, and compressed the sensitive mouth in a line too rigid for her years. This severity of feature she aggravated by pinning her coiffe low over a forehead as uncompromising as a nun's. Not a relenting suggestion of hair would she permit. Yet whatever of tenderness or hope she strove thus to hood, nothing could suppress the beauty of her luminous eyes; caressing eyes that belied her austere manner. No sight of blood nor weariness, no insult had hardened them. Even when ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... nun, the Catholics exclaimed that Antichrist would be born from such an incestuous intercourse. 'Nay,' Erasmus said, 'if monk and nun produce Antichrist, there must have been legions of Antichrists these ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... seeing you every day, to leaning on your arm in every walk, and going so constantly with you everywhere, that I shall miss you sadly when you are away; but," she continued, smiling through her tears, "I suppose I must turn nun" and live in seclusion ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... The features of his face became even harsher, coarser, and more unpleasant. When Abogin held out before his eyes the photograph of a young woman with a handsome face as cold and expressionless as a nun's and asked him whether, looking at that face, one could conceive that it was capable of duplicity, the doctor suddenly flew out, and with flashing eyes said, rudely rapping ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the two afflicted nuns were resting, and he requested the bailiff and the civil lieutenant to put off their inspection till a little later. The two magistrates were just about to go away, when a nun appeared, saying that the devils were again doing their worst with the two into whom they had entered. Consequently, they accompanied Mignon and the priest from Venier to an upper room, in which were seven narrow beds, of which two only were occupied, one by the mother superior and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Silk grass of which they make their nets, the bear grass for makeing their mats and Several other necessary of the Indians of the following nations who trade with them as also the Skillutes for their pounded fish. Viz. Skad-dats, Squan-nun-os, Shan-wappoms, Shall-lat-tos, who reside to the north and Several bands who reside on the Columbia above.- I precured a Sketch of the Columbia and its branches of those people in which they made the river which falls into the Columbia imediately above the ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... when Passaglia's reputation was great in Rome, his companion Clement Schrader shared the fame of his solid erudition. When Passaglia fell into disgrace, his friend smote him with reproaches and intimated the belief that he would follow the footsteps of Luther and debauch a nun. Schrader is the most candid and consistent asserter of the papal claims. He does not shrink from the consequences of the persecuting theory; and he has given the most authentic and unvarnished exposition of the Syllabus. He ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... was occasioned by an act of superstitious rigor. An amorous youth, who had stolen a nun from her cloister, was sentenced by the emperor to the amputation of his tongue. Euphemius appealed to the reason and policy of the Saracens of Africa; and soon returned with the Imperial purple, a fleet of one hundred ships, and an army of seven hundred horse ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... call it so, to offer the whole service of one's life to the creature." "There is not a trace of justice in that heart," says St. Leo, "in which the love of gain has made itself a dwelling." The same thing is emphatically taught us by the counsels of perfection, and by every holy monk and nun anywhere, who has ever embraced them; but it is needless to collect testimonies, when Scripture is ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... who, having taken the veil and renounced the sex, kindly consented to forego 410 her vows and meet him again; while a Devil behind her was hooking the cock'd-hat of the gay deceiver to the veil of the Nun, which created considerable laughter, for as they attempted to separate, they were both completely unmasked, and discovered, to the amazement of Tallyho, two well-known faces, little expected there by him—no other than Merrywell as ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... MERLIN WAS. Ambrose Merlin, the prince of enchanters, son of the nun Matilda, and an incubus, "half-angel and half-man." He made, in addition to Prince Arthur's armor and weapons, the Round Table for one hundred and fifty knights at Carduel, the magic fountain of love, and built Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. He died spellbound by the sorceress Vivien ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... briefly the mourning of the children of Israel over their great leader's departure and affirms the appointment of Joshua, the son of Nun, as his successor, and fitly closes the valuable collection of writings called ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... stage-driver. Aye, they 're capital husbands for Donald McLeod's lassies, are they no? Afore I let Esther marry the first scamp that comes simperin' aroond here, I'll put her in a convent, an' mak' a nun o' the bairn. I gave the ither lassies their way, an' look at the reward. I tell ye I'm goin' to bar the door on the last one, an' the man that marries her will be worthy o' her. He winna be a vaquero ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... a maid undone, And a widow re-wedded within the year; And a worldly monk and a pregnant nun, Are things which ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... moat. I wish Euphrasia was here. It's just the right place for her. She'll fancy herself in a monastery as soon as she comes, and nothing will make her half so happy, for she is always wishing to be a Nun, poor little simpleton. ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... twilight of a clear summer night when Natalie reached the cloister in which she was on the next day to take the vows and exchange her ordinary dress for the robe of hair-cloth and the nun's veil. ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... the invention of much wiser heads than mine. But can you possibly have lived at Lindenberg for three whole Months without hearing of the Bleeding Nun?' ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... wait until all there were asleep before I could come. Sometimes I could not come at all. For this house, I had my father's old key. It was only for this little time while I am being taught. Soon I will put on a nun's dress and cut my hair, and—and never—never leave there ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... Two Sisters of Ancona, a pretty little tale in the Juvenile Keepsake, by Mrs. Godwin. One sister in an attempt to carry provisions and intelligence to her lover, is taken prisoner by the French, and condemned to die; the other is a nun, who effects her escape by changing dresses, and remains, and actually perishes in her stead. On the stage, the sister is made the daughter of the Sister of Charity, and the fruit of a secret and unhappy connexion with a French officer, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... distant convents, in similar headgear, in caps flat or pointed like the small end of a watermelon, and with ears protected by black woolen shawls ungracefully pinned. Serviceable man's boots do more than peep out from beneath the short, rusty-black skirts. Each monk and nun holds a small pad of threadbare black velvet, whereon a cross of tarnished gold braid, and a stray copper or two, by way of bait, explain the eleemosynary significance of the bearers' "broad" crosses, dizzy "reverences ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... myself at the western extremity of the house; they were always cool on the hottest days. There I was wont to retire to pursue my literary labors; I was still writing works on conchology. My sister Una had rooms on the ground floor, adjoining the chapel. They were haunted by the ghost of a nun, and several times the candle which she took in there at night was moved by invisible hands from its place and set down elsewhere. Ghostly voices called to us, and various unaccountable noises ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... bashful yet, mamma; but down to the last sausage-casing I have to pay his fancy prices. Nun, look mamma, how red she gets! What you ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... faithful personal ally in the person of the Procureur-Syndic, the most important national functionary in the city. This man, Couplet, called Beaucourt, was a disreputable and apostate ex-monk who had married an ex-nun. His position, of course, gave him a great influence over the least respectable part of the population, and with Marat and Danton at his back in Paris he cared nothing for the mayor and the municipal authorities. From August 19 to August 31 he kept issuing incendiary placards and making ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert |
