"Unction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... connection with turtle; had his receipt for curry contained no cayenne; had he forgotten to send up tongues with asparagus, or to order a service of artichokes without napkins, he would have been thought forgetful; but when—with the unction of a gastronome, and the thoughtful skill of an artist—he marshals forth all the luxuries of the British breakfast-table, and forgets to mention its first necessity, he shows a sort of ignorance. We put it to his ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... lost none of his old quaintness and simplicity of phrase, none of his fervor. The people listened to his sermons with wondering interest, and were not slow to ascribe some of the credit of the new unction to Draxy. ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... could even now voyage amid the isles of the Pacific, and behold the glorious work wrought by the instrumentality of true Christian men of various branches of the one Church, and I believe that they would be compelled to acknowledge that an unction from on high is of more avail in saving souls alive than any mere official and external qualification, such as the Romish priesthood with its pretended apostolic succession claims. The means are best judged of by the result, and ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... his head and laughed, not loud, but gayly and with unction. Robert reddened, but he could not take offense, as he saw that none ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of the same day, the priest Vignali administered the sacrament of extreme unction. Some days before, Napoleon had explained to him the manner in which he desired his body should be laid out in state, in an apartment lighted by torches, or what Catholics call une chambre ardente. "I am neither," ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... invited such a preacher to our circuit:" but such people forget that the accompaniments of preaching cannot be printed. Who can write down the spiritual atmosphere? Who can reproduce the tone of voice in which Peter spoke? How can he describe what some of us have felt—the unction—the never-to-be-forgotten emotions of the soul? Depend upon it, these were present in a ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... precedents from history, and to screen his present conduct behind what he imagined Lord Bute's conduct had been under George III.[145] I listened patiently, and replied in the end: All this might be mighty fine and quite calculated to lay a flattering unction on his own soul, or it might suffice to tranquillize the minds of the Prince and Anson, but that I was too old to find the slightest argument in what I had just now heard, nor could it in any way allay my apprehension. I began ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... of vengeance. But meanwhile it was discovered that he had been living in adultery at Boston with a young woman whom he had seduced, the wife of a cooper, and the captain was forced to make public confession, which he did with great unction and in a manner highly dramatic. "He came in his worst clothes (being accustomed to take great pride in his bravery and neatness), without a band, in a foul linen cap, and pulled close to his eyes, and standing upon a form, he ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... ill, had confessed, and partaken of the Communion. Towards three o'clock in the afternoon the good Abbe Cornille had brought to her the sacred Viaticum. Then in the evening, as the chill of death gradually crept over her, a great desire came to her to receive the Extreme Unction, that celestial remedy, instituted for the cure of both the soul and body. Before losing consciousness, her last words, scarcely murmured, were understood by Hubertine, as in hesitating sentences she expressed her wish for the holy oils. "Yes—oh ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... such things: we are still far from Bottles; the three Lord Shaftesburys relieve us by not even threatening to appear. And accordingly the two essays add in no small degree, though somewhat after the fashion of an appendix or belated episode, to the charm of the book. They have an unction which never, as it so often does in the case of Mr Arnold's dangerous master and model Renan, degenerates into unctuosity; they are nobly serious, but without being in the least dull; they contain some exceedingly just and at the same time ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... at the meeting-house, a frequent and serious reader of the Bible, and the head of an orderly and well-regulated house. He is described as knowing Dr. Watts' hymns almost by heart, and as singing them on Sunday at meeting with equal fervour and unction. Bernard Barton feared in 1847—the date of his epistle—the breed of such men was dying out. It is to be feared in East Anglia the race is quite extinct. In our meeting-house at Wrentham, when I was a lad, there were several such. I am afraid there is not one there now. ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... with violent spasms. These passed off, but on his joining his family later, its members were struck by the change in his appearance. In a few hours he seemed to have aged years. At night he grew so ill that extreme unction was administered to him. It was an attack of cholera. When dying, he blessed his little grandchildren, the boy and girl, who, notwithstanding the nature of his illness, were brought to him. "God preserve you, dear children," he said. ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... Journals, in which she was rather roughly handled. We all know, however, what a pleasant thing it is to deem ourselves the objects of persecution, when it does not interfere with our profit—it is a flattering unction we love to lay to the soul, as it seems to augment our importance—and Miladi appears to have been highly delighted with the persecutions she has encountered. She is continually alluding to the attacks of the Quarterly, and whenever an opportunity occurs, favours us with extracts from them, and ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... comedy)—the celebration, by a classic chaunt, of his reaching the pinnacle of depravity; this was the ne plus ultra of dramatic invention. Robbers and murderers began to be treated, after the Catholic fashion, with extreme unction; audiences were intoxicated with the new drop; sympathy became epidemic; everybody was bewildered and improved; and nobody went and threw themselves off the Monument with a copy of the baleful ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... for a solution. The health and happiness of the coming generations depend upon the right education of the present one, and this responsibility the home and the school can neither shirk nor shift. We take great unction to ourselves for the excellence of the horses, pigs, and cattle that we have on exhibition at the fairs, but are silent as to our failures in the form of children, that drag out a half-life in our hospitals. In one state it costs more to care for the defectives and unfortunates ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... and stores of war. A Breslau scandalously gone;—a Breslau preaching day after next (27th, which was Sunday), in certain of its churches, especially Cardinal Schaffgotsch in the Dom Insel doing it, Thanksgiving Sermons, as per order, with unction real or official, "That our ancient sovereigns are restored to us:" which Sermons—except in the Schaffgotsch case, Prince Karl and the high Catholic world all there in gala—were "sparsely attended," ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... manufacturer. The Cubans are very particular indeed to preserve the aroma and fragrance of the cigars, by keeping them in wrappers of oiled and soft silks; it is, in fact, quite a sight to see with what ceremony some of these are produced at gentlemen's tables, with much unction, like the ushering in of old wine. My chapter on cigars would be incomplete did I fail to note the beautiful and courteous way in which all Cubans no matter of what position, whether the exquisite ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... life, the Roman Catholics understand the business of dying better than Protestants. They have an expert by them, armed with spiritual specifics, in which they both, patient and priestly ministrant, place implicit trust. Confession, the Eucharist, Extreme Unction,—these all inspire a confidence which without this symbolism is too apt to be wanting in over-sensitive natures. They have been peopled in earlier years with ghastly spectres of avenging fiends, moving in a sleepless world of devouring flames and smothering exhalations; where ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... suddenly entered a church and had felt all lighter interests sink under the weight of the dim, echoing nave. After a few moments the poet spoke again in a quieter tone, but his voice had lost none of the unction which had enriched it.... "Beauty is queen: by the virtue of Deity, whose image she is, she reigns, lifts up, fires. Let us beware how we tempt Deity lest we perish ourselves. Actseon died when he gazed unbidden upon the pure body of Artemis; but Artemis ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... caring for, and indeed as it seems to me rather enjoying,' said Fledgeby, with peculiar unction, 'the precious kick-up and row that will come off between Mr Twemlow ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... madam," said Nickie, with unction. "Can I tune your piano this morning?" His manner was most courteous, he smiled kindly, but he did not ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... keep this march going over dead Germans; then comes a telegram predicting blue ruin for American importers and a cheerless Christmas for American children if a cargo of German toys be not quickly released at Rotterdam, and I dimly recall the benevolent unction with which American children last Christmas sent a shipload of toys to this side of the world—many of them for German children—to the tune of "God bless us all"—do you wonder we often have to pinch ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... monotonous study in a somewhat Schumannesque manner, with a graceful finish. The "Congratulation" is a cheerful bagatelle; the "Irish Melody" is sturdy, simple, and fetching; but the "Scherzino" is a hard bit of humor with Beethoven mannerisms lacking all the master's unction. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... be dragged along. There was nothing else possible. Sir Adolphus continued, in a somewhat lower key, induced upon him by Charles's mute look of protest. It was a disquieting story. He told it with gleeful unction. It seems that Professor Schleiermacher, of Jena, "the greatest living authority on the chemistry of gems," he said, had lately invented, or claimed to have invented, a system for artificially producing diamonds, which had yielded ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... "You think he's so madly in love with you that it doesn't matter how you look, I suppose? Don't lay that flattering unction to your soul, Eleanor. I've known many an engagement broken off in consequence of the man coming suddenly upon the girl when she had a bad cold and had got a ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... way of exercising an act, as when it is said, "I baptize thee," or "I confirm thee," etc.; or by way of command, as when it is said in the sacrament of order, "Take the power," etc.; or by way of entreaty, as when in the sacrament of Extreme Unction it is said, "By this anointing and our intercession," etc. But the form of this sacrament is pronounced as if Christ were speaking in person, so that it is given to be understood that the minister does nothing in perfecting this sacrament, except to pronounce ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd;] To housel is to minister the sacrament to one lying on his death bed. Disappointed is the same as unappointed, which here means unprepared. Unanel'd is without extreme unction.] ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... eloquent pamphlet is from the pen of a sister of the late Thomas S. Grimke, of Charleston, S. C. We need hardly say more of it than that it is written with that peculiar felicity and unction which characterized the works of her lamented brother. Among anti-slavery writings there are two classes, one specially adapted to make new converts, the other to strengthen the old. We can not exclude Miss Grimke's Appeal from either class. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... that of extreme unction. These are holy and sacred words for all. It is with these words that our ancestors have fallen asleep, our fathers and our relatives, and it is with them that one day our children will see us sleep. ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... to search the Scriptures. Under the illumination of the Holy Spirit, the Scriptures will prove a mine of wealth to you. Education is all right in its place; but when you lean upon it as a means of understanding the Scriptures, or when you depend upon it for unction and liberty and for ability to teach, preach, or exhort, you will make a sad failure. You will disappoint yourself, ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... of grace Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, That not your trespass but my madness speaks. It will skin and film the ulcerous place; While rank corruption, winning ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... a small culture oven and opened the door. He busied himself with something inside. Over his shoulder he said with unction: ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... stood at the right hand of Prince Alexander. "The nasal twang of their chaplains seems of late to have overmastered, in their ears, the eloquence of the ordnance of Spain! Yet, i'faith, they might be expected to find somewhat more unction in the preachments of our musketeers than the homilies of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... of his public life he co-operated heartily with every enterprise of his Church, and was always ready to preach at the shortest notice for any of his brethren who required his help. In his later years there was an increasing spirituality and unction ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... honors, and in his declining age, shall be a worshipful member of his Majesty's council. A third—and he is the Master's favorite—shall be a worthy successor to the old Puritan ministers, now in their graves; he shall preach with great unction and effect, and leave volumes of sermons, in print and manuscript, for the benefit of ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... least, that this actor used to relate with much unction after a visit which he once paid to Dublin. The hero of the affair was an Irishman, named Baker, who relieved the monotony of his work as a master pavior by acting Sir John Falstaff and other parts. When he was in the streets, overseeing ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... door; and then, clothed with the imperial mantle, the crown on his head, and the sceptre in his hand, he ascended a throne placed at the end of the church. The high almoner, a cardinal, and a bishop, came and conducted him to the foot of the altar for consecration. The pope poured the three-fold unction on his head and hands, and delivered the following prayer:—"O Almighty God, who didst establish Hazael to govern Syria, and Jehu king of Israel, by revealing unto them thy purpose by the mouth of the prophet Elias; who didst also shed the holy unction of kings on the head of Saul and of David, ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... what she was taught in Domremy," answered Jacqueline, "She believed in Absolution, Extreme Unction, in the need of another priest than Jesus Christ,—a representative they call it." She spoke slowly, as if interrogating each point of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... the self-righteous moralists who puff themselves into a state of Jingo complacency over the failings of foreign nations, to declare with considerable unction that the domestic hearth, which every Frenchman habitually tramples upon, is maintained in unviolated purity in every British household. The rude shocks which Mr. Justice BUTT occasionally administers to the national conscience are readily forgotten, and the chorus of patriotic adulation ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... of intellect or taste Shall bow the pillars of this temple chaste Of ugliness and unction. What is't they argue lengthily and late? The flame of patriot passion for the State ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... must cause bring me that most veritable body of Christ, which you consecrate a-mornings upon the altar, for that, with your leave, I purpose (all unworthy as I am) to take it and after, holy and extreme unction, to the intent that, if I have lived as a sinner, I may at the least die like a Christian.' The good friar replied that it pleased him much and that he said well and promised to see it presently brought him; and so ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... disease first broke forth, our Brother Gerard ter Mollen, a Convert, fell sick and received the Unction after Compline on the day of the Translation of St. Martin the Bishop: in the night following, before the hour for Matins, his sickness grew heavy on him and he died. He was a faithful labourer, ever ready to toil for the common weal, and he was in the sixtieth year of his age, ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... exercises; and as he has mentioned in his Prayers and Meditations[1153], gave me 'Les Penses de Paschal', that I might not interrupt him. I preserve the book with reverence. His presenting it to me is marked upon it with his own hand, and I have found in it a truly divine unction. We went to church again ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... flint, and their talk was incredibly wicked. Not a penny would they give to help the accursed Yankees. It served them right. If they had stayed in Connecticut, where they belonged, they would have kept out of harm's way. And with a blasphemy thinly veiled in phrases of pious unction, the desolation of the valley was said to have been contrived by the Deity with the express object of punishing these trespassers. But the cruelty of the Pennsylvania legislature was not confined to words. A scheme was ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... into which everybody will try to tempt him. His lordship, my kind patron, bade me to come and watch over him, and I am here accordingly, as your ladyship knoweth. I know the follies of young men. Perhaps I have practised them myself. I own it with a blush," adds Mr. Sampson with much unction—not, however, bringing the promised blush forward to corroborate ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... delicate, I can assure you," said Julius, who, "laying the flattering unction to his soul" that he was the party alluded to, thought it rather ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... continued until bedtime to discuss with unction every item of information past, possible, or prospective, connected with the death of the old Captain, while Valmai lay on the old red sofa, and thought ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... the appropriate expression of his priestly office. The hero might have been stern and stolid enough on his own martial ground, but since he bore the old Anchises from the ruins of Ilium he had assumed a sacred mission. Henceforth a sacerdotal unction and lyric pathos belonged rightfully to his person. If those embers, so religiously guarded, should by chance have been extinguished, there could never have been a Vestal fire nor any Rome. So that all that Virgil and his readers, if they had any piety, revered in the world ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... back and turned round so as to allow of his looking fully at her. He muttered to himself: "Young, beautiful, wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice—and bored! What flattering unction that is to the soul of ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... the little chapel in the Bull-Ring, spending some time in silent prayer before the altar, while the wife at home is burning candles to the Virgin, and offering her prayers for his safety during the whole time that the corrida lasts. Extreme unction is always in readiness, in case of serious accident to the torero, the priest (mufti) slipping into the chapel before the public arrive ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... Him and seek Him with all their might! Truly, His name is as balm, and it is no wonder that so many ardent spirits follow Him with enthusiastic devotion, eagerly and joyously hastening to Him, led by the sweetness of His attractions. Oh! what great things we are taught by the unction of divine goodness! Being at the same time illumined by so soft and calm a light that we can scarcely tell whether the sweetness is more grateful than the light, or the light than the sweetness! Truly, the breasts of the Spouse are better ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... should officiate at his burial, he ordered that none should approach his bed. But the carrion crows of the death-chamber were not to be deterred by his well-known wishes. The Archbishop of Paris offered to visit the dying heretic and administer to him the supreme unction on behalf of the Church. M. Lockroy, the poet's son-in-law, politely declined the offer. Our newspapers, especially the orthodox ones, regard the Archbishop's message as a compliment. In our opinion it was a brazen insult. Suppose Mr. Bradlaugh wrote ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... Yes, it's true, I'm quite done up, my dears. As to extreme unction, that's absolutely necessary. Besides, they say it's good ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... the long drive, winding between different woods, ascending gradually to the hilltop on which Beechwood Hall was placed by an early eighteenth-century architect, seemed to the priest to be described with too much unction by the representative of Illustrated England. To the journalist Beechwood Hall stood on its hill, a sign and symbol of the spacious leisure of the eighteenth century and the long tradition that it represented, one that had not even ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... reserved woman, with no voluntary conversation, they all sent messages to her, inquired for her well-being at Fast-days, and brought her gifts of handkerchiefs, gloves, and such like. When they met at Theologicals and Synods they used to talk of Sarah with unction—till married men were green with envy—being simple fellows and helpless in the hands of elderly females of the Meiklewham genus. For there are various arts by which a woman, in Sarah's place, wins a man's gratitude, and it may be ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... appearance, from all three kinds of interest exhibited near the bed—from the young surgeon's professional interest in death, noticeable as being quite apart from his remarks on the deceased as an individual; from the old man's unction; and the little crazy woman's awe. His imperturbable face has been as inexpressive as his rusty clothes. One could not even say he has been thinking all this while. He has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor attention nor abstraction. He ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... trained for the purpose. Some of the performers are boys of about thirteen years, and of beautiful countenances. There is a peculiar manner of reading the service practised in the cathedrals, which is called "intoning." It is a plaintive, rhythmical chant, with as strong an unction of the nasal as ever prevailed in a Quaker or Methodist meeting. I cannot exactly understand why Episcopacy threw out the slur of "nasal twang" as one of the peculiarities of the conventicle, when ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... serene heights do they instruct the inexperienced beginners! Ten thousand a year gives one leisure for reflection, and elegant leisure enables one to view household economies dispassionately; hence the unction with which these gifted daughters of upper-air delight to exhort ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... drop as Field's organ-like voice, which all quickly recognized, rolled out the now familiar lines of "Dibdin's Ghost," then heard for the first time by everyone in that historic Corner. No point was missed in that weird recitation. I shall never forget the graveyard unction with which he propounded the question and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... the thirteenth century is the antithesis of the saint, he is almost always his enemy. Separated by the holy unction from the rest of mankind, inspiring awe as the representative of an all-powerful God, able by a few signs to perform unheard-of mysteries, with a word to change bread into flesh and wine into blood, ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Lamb is the only imitator of old English style I can read with pleasure; and he is so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his authors that the idea of imitation is almost done away. There is an inward unction, a marrowy vein, both in the thought and feeling, an intuition, deep and lively, of his subject, that carries off any quaintness or awkwardness arising from an antiquated style and dress. The matter is completely ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... opine,— But brought to bed at forty-nine. 70 Some say she died a Papist; some Are of opinion that's a Hum; I don't know that—the fellows Schlegel,[83] Are very likely to inveigle A dying person in compunction To try th' extremity of Unction. But peace be with her! for a woman Her talents surely were uncommon, Her Publisher (and Public too) The hour of her demise may rue— 80 For never more within his shop he— Pray—was not she interred at Coppet? Thus run our time and tongues away;— But, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... disclosed to us in these pages has been called joyless, by that sect of religious partisans whose peculiarity is to mistake boisterousness for unction. Was the life of Christ himself, then, so particularly joyful? Can the life of any man be joyful who sees and feels the tragic miseries and hardly less tragic follies of the earth? The old Preacher, when he considered all ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... door while a clerk held the canopy over him, and two others stood upon the threshold, straight as candelabra, holding up lighted lanterns. A single window of the house was lighted up, the one behind which the dying Christian was awaiting Extreme Unction. Faint shadows flitted across the brightness of that pale yellow square on which was outlined the whole ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... tone and uttering borrowed words, impressed many among its audience with its accent of personal sincerity. Mrs Polsue knelt and listened with a gathering choler. This Hambly had no unction. He could never improve an occasion: the more opportunity it gave the more helplessly he fell back upon old formulae composed by Anglicans long ago. She had often enough resented the Minister's dependence on ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Scotch dryness, Irish unction and cajolery, Waiterdom's wiles, Deacondom's pomp of port; Rustic simplicity, domestic drollery, The freaks of Service and the ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... year. This, however, after some misgivings, he declines. He does not like the idea of being cramped by official routine of duty. He will try what he can do with his pen. And for months after making this decision (we have heard it with unction from his own lips) he can do nothing. His friend Allston is going back to America; Leslie is making a reputation; and he, a bankrupt, and having wantonly thrown up the chance for a lucrative position at home, is suddenly bereft of all capacity for literary work; he makes trial; but it is in vain. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... country, where he has bitter adversaries as well as devoted friends, Mr. Wilson was regarded by many as a composite being made up of preacher, teacher, and politician. To these diverse elements they refer the fervor and unction, the dogmatic tone, and the practised shrewdness that marked his words and acts. Independent American opinion doubted his qualifications to be a leader. As a politician, they said, he had always followed the crowd. He had ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... one slept at Croisac. The young countess was dead. A great bishop had arrived in the night and administered extreme unction. The priest hopefully asked if he might venture into the presence of the bishop. After a long wait in the kitchen, he was told that he could speak with Monsieur l'Eveque. He followed the servant up the wide spiral stair of the tower, and from its twenty-eighth ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... Two Courts," says he, "put themselves each in the other's place; each think what it would want;" and in fact each, in a Christian manner, try to do as it would be done by! How touching in the mouth of a Kaunitz, with something of pathos, of plaintiveness, almost of unction in it! "There is no other method of agreeing," urges he: "War is a terrible method, disliked by both of us. Austria wishes this of Bavaria; but his Prussian Majesty's turn will come, perhaps now is (let him say ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Grattan. The Provost of Dublin University, a Privy Councillor, fought Mr. Doyle, a Master in Chancery, and several others. His brother, collector of Customs, fought Lord Mountmorris. Harry Deane Grady, counsel to the Revenue, fought several duels; and 'all hits,' adds Barrington, with unction. Curran fought four persons, one of whom was Egan, Chairman of Kilmainham; afterwards his friend, with Lord Buckinghamshire. A duel in these days was often a prelude ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... chapter of horrors how finished an allegory for old John Bunyan! With what religious unction he would have led his Christian traveller from that unknown city on the edge of the sands, across the Soul's Desert of Lop, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... thought of dying. Once it crossed the servant's mind to send for some clergyman; but she knew none, and was aware that Mrs. Ascott did not either. She had no superstitious feeling that any clergyman would do; just to give a sort of spiritual extreme unction to the departing soul. Her own religious faith was of such an intensely personal silent kind, that she did not believe in any good to be derived from a strange gentleman coming and praying by the bedside of a ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... remain magicians. But philosophy was another matter entirely; and must be ruled out as conflicting with the Christian scheme of things. From this silence our Druid-Medicine-men Theorists draw great comfort and unction for their pet belief. Reincarnation appears in some stories as a sort of thing that might happen in special cases; because "God is good to the Irish," and might be willing to give them sometimes another chance. But nothing ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... her the advantageous change which he proposed to make in her attire as soon as they should reach Edinburgh, by arraying her in his own colours of pink and carnation. Mysie Happer listened with great complacency to the unction with which he dilated upon welts, laces, slashes, and trimmings, until, carried away by the enthusiasm with which he was asserting the superiority of the falling band over the Spanish ruff, he approached his hand, in the way ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... only worried him for the moment. He was swearing eloquently at his team in the pride of his heart at the honor of hauling the Chief Magistrate of the Nation. He swore both plain and ornamental oaths with equal unction. ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... signs of rejoicing; St. Paul's spire was rigged with yards like a ship's mast, an adventurous sailor sitting astride on the weathercock five hundred feet in the air:[140] there was no interruption; and the next day (October 1), Arras having sent the necessary unction,[141] the ceremony was performed at the Abbey without fresh burdens being laid ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... with the rank and file. Her particular crony is one Private Mackay, an amorphous youth with flaming red hair. He and Gabrielle engage in lengthy conversations, which appear to be perfectly intelligible to both, though Mackay speaks with the solemn unction of the Aberdonian, and Gabrielle prattles at express speed in a patois of her own. Last week some unknown humorist, evidently considering that Gabrielle was not making sufficient progress in her knowledge ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... red screens is Henri. He is a priest, mobilized as infirmier. A good one too, and very tender and gentle with the patients. He comes from the ward next door, Salle II., and is giving extreme unction to the man in that bed, back of the red screens. Peek through the screens and you can see Henri, in his shirt sleeves, with a little, crumpled, purple stole around his neck. No, the patient has never regained consciousness since he's been here, but Henri says it's all right. He may be ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... the remoter glens. The notion of the thing pleased him, and he ordered drinks for each with a lavish carelessness. He asked for a match for his pipe, and the man who gave it wore a decent melancholy on his face and shook his head with unction. ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... Pope Stephen III. Charlemagne was twice anointed by the Sovereign Pontiff, first as King of Lombardy, and then as Emperor. Louis le Debonnaire, his immediate successor, was consecrated at Rheims by Pope Stephen IV. in 816. In 877 Louis le Begue received unction and the sceptre, at Compiegne, at the hands of the Archbishop of Rheims. Charles le Simple in 893, and Robert I. in 922, were consecrated and crowned at Rheims; but the coronation of Raoul, in 923, was celebrated in the Abbey of St. Medard de Soissons, and that of Louis d'Outremer, in 936, at Laon. ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... the mass-meeting to celebrate young Ginx's rescue from the incubus of a delusive superstition is described with rare appreciation of the foibles of character. The bombast, the cant, the flapdoodle and flubdub, the silly unction of different kinds of preachers are "done to a hair." Five hours the meeting raged, and at last a resolution that the Metropolitan pulpit should take up the subject, and the churches take up a collection for the ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... causing the invalid to drink water in which St. Bernard had washed his hands. Flowers which had rested on the tomb of a saint, when steeped in water, were supposed to be especially efficacious in various diseases. The pulpit everywhere dwelt with unction on the reality of fetich cures, and among the choice stories collected by Archbishop Jacques de Vitry for the use of preachers was one which, judging from its frequent recurrence in monkish literature, must have sunk deep into the popular mind: "Two lazy beggars, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... purposes: amongst the rest, for sending missionaries to the heathen, teaching them to divorce their wives and wear trowsers. And now he had been asked to pray, and had prayed with much propriety and considerable unction. To be sure Tibbie Dyster did sniff a good deal during the performance; but then that was a way she had of relieving her feelings, next best to ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... have flung away all the golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had enjoyed so many opportunities of harvesting, and most carefully to have stored their memories with the husks. They spoke with far more interest and unction of their morning's breakfast, or yesterday's, to-day's, or to-morrow's dinner, than of the shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago, and all the world's wonders which they had witnessed with their ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... room the conclave maintained a grim silence. The shuttered window screened from their sight the interview to which they were submitting with a rude sense of affording the man they had condemned some substitute for extreme unction: an interval to shrive his soul with penitence ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... Pastor: Uncle William used to drink before breakfast. Come: it will give your sermons unction. (He smells the wine and makes a wry face.) But do not begin on my mother's company sherry. I stole some when I was six years old; and I have been a temperate man ever since. (He puts the decanter down and changes the subject.) So I hear you are married, ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... life be crowned with success, and seem the thing it was not—an outcome of extemporaneous feeling! During what remained of the two days following he spared no labour, and at last delivered it with considerable unction, and the feeling that he ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... it came to something which, most of all, the young lady had hoped from this temporary acquaintance, viz., religious instruction, she found him indeed as learned on that as on other topics, but cold and devoid of unction. So much so, that one day she said to him, "I can hardly believe you have ever been a missionary." But at that he seemed so distressed that she was sorry for him, and said, sweetly, "Excuse me, Mr. Hazel, my remark was in rather bad taste, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... called sacraments, that is to say, Confirmation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and Extreme Unction, are not to be counted for Sacraments of the Gospel, being such as have grown, partly of the corrupt fallowing of the Apostles, partly are states of life allowed by the Scriptures; but yet have not like nature of Sacraments with Baptism and the Lord's Supper, for ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... it was the simple witness of the Word, and of the believer to the Word, that had praise of God. His preaching was not then much owned of God in fruit. Doubtless the Lord saw that he was not ready for reaping, and scarcely for sowing: there was yet too little prayer in preparation and too little unction in delivery, and so his labours were ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... I take unction to myself, sometimes, in the reflection that I have a soul to save, and in certain moments of uplift it seems to me to be worth saving. Some folks probably call me a sinner, if not a dreadful sinner, and I ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... recorded their enterprises in marriage, in birth, in death, copiously, and with a servile rapture of detail that, though it is not yet entirely withheld from their survivors, is now bestowed with equal unction on those who, in many instances, have taken their places, geographically, if not their place, socially, in Irish every-day existence. There is little doubt but that after the monsters of the Primal Periods had been practically extinguished, a stray reptile, here and there, escaped ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... just unction, recounted the sad tale as he halted his horses on the bridge; and as his passengers looked down the rock-fretted brown torrent towards the fall, Isabel seized the occasion to shudder that ever she had set foot on that suspension-bridge below Niagara, and to prove to Basil's ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... us in the ordinances, as there is something done for us in regeneration, while we actively repent and believe. Are you not so afraid of Romanism, and of 'sacramental grace,' that you go to an opposite extreme? for it seems to me a morbid state of feeling. I wish for no extreme unction, but I do believe that, in being baptized, and in receiving the Lord's Supper, something more is done for us than helping us to take up and offer to God something on the little needle-points of our poor feelings. I should feel, ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... torture of sermons, and that not a slight one; for I was very fond of them. If I heard any one preach well and with unction, I felt, without my seeking it, a particular affection for him, neither do I know whence it came. Thus, no sermon ever seemed to me so bad, but that I listened to it with pleasure; though, according to others who heard it, the preaching was not good. If it was a ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... that he saw indications on the part of Adele of its being not wholly unacceptable. Rose, too, seemed not disinclined to receive the assiduous attentions of the young minister, who had become a frequent visitor in the Elderkin household, and who preached with an unction and an earnestness that touched her heart, and that made her sigh despondingly over the outcast son of the old pastor. Watching these things with a look studiedly careless and indifferent, Reuben felt himself cut off more than ever from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... any application of mind, but as a thing really possessed after the sweetest manner. I experienced these words in the Canticles (Song of Solomon): "Thy name is as precious ointment poured forth; therefore do the virgins love thee." I felt in my soul an unction which, as a salutary balsam, healed in ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... he is the very best chairman of a committee or of a public meeting of our own or any other time. A Parnellite once said he had the unctuousness of a retired grocer, but was contradicted by a more reverent English Radical, who said, 'No, he has the unction of grace,' whereas, the truth is, he has the platform manner ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... contribute to her vanity or to her diversion. "She is a predestined soul," wrote Voltaire. "She will love comedy to the last moment, and when she is ill I counsel you to administer some beautiful poem in the place of extreme unction. One ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... are pitched in about the same key. Their methods are the same; so are their quaintness and scorn of rhetoric. Thoreau has the drier humor, as might be expected, and is less stomachic. There is more juice and unction in Lamb, but this he owes to his nationality. Both are essayists who in a less reflective age would have been poets pure and simple. Both were spare, high-nosed men, and I fancy a resemblance even in their portraits. Thoreau is the Lamb of New England fields and woods, and Lamb ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... sure enough of Kitty, at first, to dare risk telling her about that little mistake of hers. She is such an elusive person that I spend all my time in wooing her, and can never lay the flattering unction to my soul that she ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not nod—an act—which she considered as too flippant for the solemnity of devotion—but she gently bowed her head, and closed her eyes in assent—upon which was heard a somewhat cheerful groan, replete with true unction, inside the parlor, followed by a voice that said, "ah, Susannah!" pronounced in a tone of grave but placid remonstrance; Susannah immediately entered, and the voice, which was that of our attorney, proceeded—"Susannah take your place—long measure, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... had heard mass immediately after the communion, had passed two hours in devout communication with God, and that his reason then became embarrassed. Madame de Saint-Simon told me afterward that he had received extreme unction; in fine that he had ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... especial kindness of my heavenly Father, in being mindful of the smallest wants and comforts of his child. Having had more prayer than usual, I found that my intercourse with the saints at tea was with unction, ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... Earl of Perth's acceptance save complying with his mode of religion. Rob did not pretend, when pressed closely on the subject, to justify all the tenets of Catholicism, and acknowledged that extreme unction always appeared to him a great waste of ulzie, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... nor oil of unction, when the King of Beasts was crowned:— 'Twas his own fierce roar proclaimed him, rolling all ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... had dried his eyes, his soul had become strong and submissive, exempt from all human weakness. He had placed himself in the hands of God, and had resolved that he himself would administer extreme unction to Dario. With a gesture he summoned Don Vigilio and led him into the little room which served as a chapel, and the key of which he always carried. A cupboard had been contrived behind the altar of painted ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of this came to him late in the evening. He had been reading a novel which, whatever its other merits may have been, was not interesting, and it had sent him to sleep. He awoke to hear a well-known voice observe with some unction: 'Ah! M'yes. Leeches and hot fomentations.' This effectually banished sleep. If there were two things in the world that he loathed, they were leeches and hot fomentations, and the School doctor apparently regarded them as a ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... medicine Gave us out of his heart with great pain, Here in this transitory life for thee and me: The blessed sacraments seven there be, Baptism, confirmation, with priesthood good, And the sacrament of God's precious flesh and blood, Marriage, the holy extreme unction, and penance; These seven be good to have in remembrance, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... dead spit and image of your sister Eileen you are, with your nose always in a book; and you're like your mother, too, God rest her soul. (He crosses himself with pious unction and Mary also does so.) It's Nora and Tom has the high spirits in them like their father; and Billy, too,—if he is a lazy, shiftless divil—has the fightin' Carmody blood like me. You're a Cullen like your ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... judicious—nothing better could be done than to follow it; only her clients complained that she pronounced her sentences with too little tenderness, without granting any appeal. She was good, charitable, but lacked unction, and she had no sympathy with the illusions of others. A German poet, in making his New-Year offerings, wishes that the rich may be kind-hearted, that the poor may have bread, that the ladies may have pretty dresses, that ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... circumstances. After much persuasion The Crew was induced to add to the harmony of the evening. His voice was strong, but, like many strong things, under imperfect control; his tune was nowhere, and his intended pathetic unction was simply maudlin. Coristine could recall but little of the long ballad to which he listened, the story of a niggardly and irate father, who followed and fought with the young knight that had carried off his daughter. Two verses, however, could not escape his memory, on ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... discoursed for a time on the loss of parents, and on the dangers to which the unfortunate orphan is exposed. Then he spoke of the peculiar risks of the tender female child, left without its natural guardians. Warming with his subject, he dilated with wonderful unction on the temptations springing from personal attractions. He pictured the "fair and beautiful" women of Holy Writ, lingering over their names with lover-like devotion. He brought Esther before his audience, bathed and perfumed for the royal presence of Ahasuerus. He showed them the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the dauphin and will not enter into his inheritance till the day when the oil of the inexhaustible ampulla shall flow over his forehead. And God has chosen her, a young, ignorant peasant maid, to lead him, through the ranks of his enemies, to Reims, where he shall receive the unction poured upon Saint Louis. Unfathomable ways of God! The humble maid, knowing not how to ride a horse, unskilled in the arts of war, is chosen to bring to Our Lord his temporal vicar ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... diversions," as George Sand does here, seems to me a strange phenomenon. And how charmingly naive is the remark she makes regarding her relations with Chopin as a "PRESERVATIVE against emotions which she no longer wished to know"! I am afraid the concluding sentence, which in its unction is worthy of Pecksniff, and where she exhibits herself as an ascetic and martyr in all the radiance of saintliness, will not have the desired effect, but will make the reader laugh as loud as Musset is said to have done when she upbraided ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks |
