"Ascetic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but tender and solicitous as to birth and life—makes Love possible, imperative, soulful, overwhelming, that the purposed end and aim of life is Love. And how pitiful and barren seem to us the lives of the superstitious and ascetic hermits of the ancient world, who fled to desert places, to escape from Love, and believed that they were overcoming the foul fiend by prayers and fastings and scourgings. But outraged Nature, mighty amid the ruins of their ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... splendid head and aquiline features. A kind of mocking satisfaction seemed to flicker through the wrinkled face; and the general aspect of the man was still formidable indeed. And yet it was the phantom of a man that she beheld. He had paled to the diaphanous whiteness of the Catholic ascetic; his hand shook upon his stick; the folds of the cloak barely concealed the emaciation of his body. Victoria, gazing at him, seemed to perceive strange intimations and presages, and, in the deep harsh eyes, a spirit ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... still alive, but in capital spirits. To-day I took a fancy to ride a donkey, for such is the custom in Italy, so I thought that I too must give it a trial. We have the honor to associate with a certain Dominican who is considered a very pious ascetic. I somehow don't quite think so, for he constantly takes a cup of chocolate for breakfast, and immediately afterwards a large glass of strong Spanish wine; and I have myself had the privilege of dining with this holy man, when he drank a lot of wine at dinner and a full ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... Exercise of Ethics is a fine defence of that training of the heart and mind which has no affinity with the morbid discipline of hair shirt and scourge. "The ascetic exercise of the monasteries," he says, "inspired by superstitious fear and the hypocritical disesteem of a man's own self, sets to work with self-reproaches, whimpering compunction and a torturing of the body. It is intended not to result in virtue but to make expiation for ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... have been born middle-aged. Few men have so amicably combined the love of a good dinner and of the higher morality. He seems to have comfortably solved the problem of having your cake and eating it, at which the ascetic interpreters of Christianity teach us to despair. He serves us up his worldly wisdom in a sauce of Plato, and gives a kind of sensuous relish to the disembodied satisfactions of immortality. He is a better Christian than many an orthodox divine. If he do not, like Sir ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Colonel; "do you mean Hotchkiss the President of the Ditch Company?" He had recognized the name of a prominent citizen—a rigid, ascetic, taciturn, middle-aged man—a deacon—and more than that, the head of the company he had just defended. ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... Brahman priest who served the temple. Since I had joined Vanna I had begun with her help to study a little Hindustani, and with an aptitude for language could understand here and there. I caught a word or two as she spoke with him that startled me, when the high-bred ascetic face turned serenely upon her, and he addressed her as "My sister," adding a sentence beyond my learning, but which she willingly translated later.—"May He who sits above the Mysteries, have mercy ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... fine spirit! To be owned thy friend Was something to illume the unwelcome end Of comradeship below. A loving memory long our board will grace, In fancy, with that sweet ascetic face. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... disagree with you," the Bishop interposed, his pale, ascetic face betraying by a faint glow the intensity of his feelings. "Your premise is wrong. There is no such thing as a conflict of interest between labor and capital—or, rather, ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... cover from the packet, exposing the back of what seemed to be a photograph. Holding this to the light, its face invisible to Amber, he studied it for several minutes, in silence, a tender light kindling in his eyes to soften the almost ascetic austerity of his expression. "In the end, if you live, you shall win a rich reward," he said at length. He placed the photograph face down ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... half-naked creatures treading out the juice, dancing in the oozy stuff rhythmically, to the music of some wailing air of their own. Saturnia regna indeed, and in the haunt of Sant' Ambrogio, or under the hungry eye of San Bernardino, or other lean ascetic of the Middle Age. But that, after all, is Italian, not necessarily Florentine or Tuscan. I must needs abstract the unique quintessential humours of this my Eye of Italy. Stendhal, do you remember? didn't like one of these. He said that in Florence people talked about "huesta ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... be supposed that the blameless youth was an ascetic in his College days. The other old manuscript Mr. Gardner sends me is marked "'Song for Knights of ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... no ascetic: I'm as pleasant as can be; You'll always find me ready with a crushing repartee; I've an irritating chuckle; I've a celebrated sneer; I've an entertaining snigger; I've a fascinating leer; To everybody's ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... overtops the best gymnosophist among men, that they suffice themselves, and can walk in a high and cold zone without the countenance of any trousered being. I declare, although the reverse of a professed ascetic, I am more obliged to women for this ideal than I should be to the majority of them, or indeed to any but one, for a spontaneous kiss. There is nothing so encouraging as the spectacle of self-sufficiency. And when I think of the slim ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of little milk-white princesses as a nest is of young sparrows. All love me dearly at once.—Charming idea of life, but too high-colored for the reality. I have outgrown all this; my tastes have become exceedingly primitive,—almost, perhaps, ascetic. We carry happiness into our condition, but must not hope to find it there. I think you will be willing to hear some lines which embody the subdued and limited ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... flames threw a glow across the faces of the prisoners. Most of them were asleep, but Ned saw them very distinctly now. One was a boy but little older than himself, his face pale and worn. Near him was an old man, with a face very uncommon on the border. His features were those of a scholar and ascetic. His cheeks were thin, and thick white hair crowned a broad white brow. Ned felt instinctively that he was ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... last category, I may quote here a short extract from a description of the "Khlysti" by one who was initiated into their mysteries: "Among them men and women alike take upon themselves the calling of teachers and prophets, and in this character they lead a strict, ascetic life, refrain from the most ordinary and innocent pleasures, exhaust themselves by long fasting and wild, ecstatic religious exercises, and abhor marriage. Under the excitement caused by their supposed holiness and inspiration, they call themselves not only teachers and ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... genial mellowness. The usual English arrogance had evidently been subdued by reason of his training and cosmopolitan knowledge. In speech and action he was a Chesterfield, but in appearance he was not unlike a canon or a bishop, a little ascetic looking, and rather bald. ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... somewhat aloof, apartado. like Gil Terron. Vicente regards himself as a rustico peregrino (III. 390), an ignorante sabedor (I. 373) as opposed to the ignorant-malicious or ignorant-presumptuous of the Court. But Vicente was no ascetic, his was a genial, generous nature, he liked to have enough to spend and give and leave in his will. Kindly and chivalrous, he was a champion of the down-trodden but had first-hand knowledge of the malice and intrigues of the peasants and of the poor in the towns. ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... to deal with were stern, sedate, and rigid religionists. They were scandalized at the looseness and irregularity of his character and manners. He was vexed and tormented by what he considered their ascetic bigotry, by the restraints which they were disposed to put upon his conduct, and the limits with which they insisted on bounding his authority. Long negotiations and debates ensued, each party becoming more and more irritated against the ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... imperious duty; but she suffers continually, for she is not formed for those mystical contemplations, in the midst of which certain people, forgetting all affection, all earthly remembrances, are lost in ascetic delights. No; Fleur-de-Marie believes, prays, submits herself to the rigorous and harsh observance of her order; she pours out the most evangelical consolations, the most humble cares upon the poor sick women who are taken care of in the hospital of the abbey. She has even refused the assistance ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... in classic times among the Romans. The monks, indeed, were not seldom creators as well as copyists, though the works which they composed were mainly theological (as became their sacred profession and ascetic life). The Latin, however, being the almost universal language for so many centuries, the love of learning conspired to widen the field of monastic study. Many zealous ecclesiastics were found who revived the classic authors, and copies of the ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... came to the edge of the platform; and there, unable to interrupt that silent prayer, she too knelt. So for a space, until at last the pastor rose, and stood surveying the worshippers. For a moment my glance rested curiously on the thin, ascetic face, full of lofty resolve, and then with a rush memory came back to me, and I stood as if lightning-struck. As he looked around my mind went back with a leap to the days gone by, to that hideous morning when my hot hand had struck a death-blow at my friend. It could not be ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... when we turn the faculty introspectively. The sanctimonious undertone in which this young man spoke struck me as being false, for there was nothing in him that I could discover which linked him to the ascetic ideal of life. But then the question arose, Why was he there? He was strong and healthy; he had a deep colour on his cheeks, and a humorous twinkle in his eye. He did not look as if he had been crossed in ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... increasing affection. In 1848 he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, for Gogol never departed from the pious Christian faith taught him by his mother; in fact, toward the end of his life, he became an ascetic and a mystic. The last years were shadowed by illness and—a common thing among Russian writers—by intense nervous depression. He died at Moscow, 21 February 1852. His last words were the old saying, "And I shall laugh with a bitter laugh." ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... the nature of the Guru. He it is who defines the Guru's work, He it is who inspires the Guru's teaching. Every Guru on earth is a reflection of Mahadeva, and it is His life which he is commissioned to give out to the world. Yogi, immersed in contemplation, taking the ascetic form always—that marks out His functions. For the symbols by which the mighty Ones are shown in the teachings are not meaningless, but are replete with the deepest meaning. And when you see Him represented as the eternal Yogi, with the cord in His hand, sitting as an ascetic in contemplation, ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... account. She, therefore, would have no difficulty in thinking that such a life was consistent with cheerfulness, but ordinary readers will ask how it could fail to bring on another fit of hypochondria. The answer is probably to be found in the last words of the passage. Overstrained and ascetic piety found an antidote in affection. The Unwins were Puritans and enthusiasts, but their household was a ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... of the extreme seriousness of the situation. That Gallagher should be prepared to defy the clergy was bad enough. That he should adopt an ascetic's attitude towards drink was worse. But Doyle did not quite believe that Gallagher meant what he said. He opened a door at the far end of the office and whistled loudly. A small boy who had been cleaning type in the printing-room, appeared, rubbing his inky hands ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... submitting 'implicitly to the rule of her tastes. So absolute was her empire, that, when she became a devotee, he became a mystic: he followed her, as the satellite accompanies the planet, from the worldly gayeties of her youth, even to the foot of the altar, and the ascetic self-denial of Port-Royal. He survived her, as though he had survived himself, and lived to the extraordinary age of one hundred and four years, animated to unusual life by his gentle and amiable feelings. Such was Madame de Sevigne's principal ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... There is nothing more enigmatical to the Moslem mind than Christian Trinitarianism: all other objections they can get over, not this. Nor is he any lover of Islamism, which, like Christianity, has its ascetic Hebraism and its Hellenic hedonism; with the world of thought moving between these two extremes. The former, defined as predominant or exclusive care for the practice of right, is represented by Semitic and Arab influence, Koranic and Hadisic. The latter, the religion ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... They sat down to talk, and by chance the visitor noticed the Epistles of St. Paul lying on a table for playing games. This started the conversation. Pontitianus, who was a Christian, praised the ascetic life, and especially the wonders of holiness wrought by Antony and his companions in the Egyptian deserts. This subject was in the air. In Catholic circles at Rome, they spoke of little else than these ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... are now divided into three classes: the Brahmachari; the Gharbari; and the Bhope. The Brahmachari are the ascetic members of the sect who subsist by begging and devote their lives to meditation, prayer and spiritual instruction. The Gharbari are those who, while leading a mendicant life, wearing the distinctive black dress of the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... ribald dirtiness, at the next hymns full of holy solemnity; it is, I think, merely because this versatile artist takes pleasure in trying whether his face may not be painted into grinning drunkenness, and then elongated and whitened into ascetic gentleness. Instead of seeking, like most of his contemporaries, to be Greek, Roman, or mediaeval by turns, he preferred trying on all the various tricks of thought and feeling which he remarked among his unlettered townsfolk. His realism naturally drew him ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... Puritan bonfire! Persons, the librarian of Balliol, sold old books to buy Protestant ones. Two noble libraries were sold for forty shillings, for waste paper. Thus the reign of Edward VI. gave free play to that ascetic and intolerable hatred of letters which had now and again made its voice heard under Henry VIII. Oxford was almost empty. The schools were used by laundresses, as a place wherein clothes might conveniently be dried. The citizens ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... seat-mate was young, probably a scant five and twenty, tall, lean, close-knit of frame with finely chiseled, almost ascetic features, though the vigorous chin and generous sized mouth forbade any hint of weakness or effeminacy. His deep-set, clear gray-blue eyes were the eyes of youth; but they would have set a keen observer to ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... the honor of his disinterested virtue, as virtue always receives its meed of honor when it stands erect on its own prerogative, and is not moved by the contradictions of unreasonable and wicked men. Yet he was no ascetic. He liked companionship, was not fastidious or exacting, never petulant or vindictive, but gentle and forbearing. He had especial tenderness for those 'good-hearted' young men who can never refuse to do wrong when they are invited. A ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... sacraments; without the sacraments no salvation. The ecclesiastical institution is therefore indispensable to the believer. The canonical priesthood, the canonical hierarchy is necessary to him for the exercise of his faith.—He must have yet more, if fervent and animated with true old Christian sentiment, ascetic and mystic, which separates the soul from this world and ever maintains it in the presence of God. Several things are requisite ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... features of the whole history was essential to a proper conception of the orderly development of the ascetic ideal. To understand the monastic institution one must not only study the isolated anchorite seeking a victory over a sinful self in the Egyptian desert or the monk in the secluded cloister, but he must also trace the fortunes of ascetic organizations, involving ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... going to argue with you," he said, quietly. "I have ambitions, it is true, and the world is not exactly a playground for me. Nevertheless, I am not an ascetic like Mannering. The world, the flesh and the devil are very much to me what they are to other men. But in a sense you have cornered me, and you shall have the truth. I want to marry the Duchess of ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Thomas a Kempis, Drelincourt's Defence against Death, and Law's devotional works had all their part in kindling his piety into a flame. He was haunted with gloomy and superstitious fancies, and his religion assumed the darkest and most ascetic character. He always chose the worst food, fasted twice a week, wore woollen gloves, a patched gown, and dirty shoes, and was subject to paroxysms of a morbid devotion. He remained for hours prostrate on the ground in Christ Church ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... composed of Saint Bernards or Saint Dominies, it would be equally odious," said Pen, "and at the end of a few scores of years would cease to exist altogether. Would you have every man with his head shaved, and every woman in a cloister,—carrying out to the full the ascetic principle? Would you have conventicle hymns twanging from every lane in every city in the world? Would you have all the birds of the forest sing one note and fly with one feather? You call me a sceptic because I acknowledge ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... clasped round his knee, his head slightly bent, and an expression of impatience and of trouble upon his clear, well-chiselled features. Behind the thrones there stood two men in purple gowns, with ascetic, clean-shaven faces, and half a dozen other high dignitaries and office-holders of Aquitaine. Below on either side of the steps were forty or fifty barons, knights, and courtiers, ranged in a triple row to the right ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ought not to drink so much," said the abstemious and ascetic Simes. "They ought to stop this side of a ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... are likest to the Master who, like the Master, come eating and drinking, and yet ever hold all appetites and desires rigidly under control, and subordinate them all to loftier purposes. John the Baptist could be an ascetic; the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... contributions to the London Missionary Society. The conditions of membership implied the acceptance of "those views of doctrinal truth which for the sake of distinction are called Calvinistic." Thus over the poet's childhood and youth a religious influence presided; it was not sacerdotal, nor was it ascetic; the boy was in those early days, as he himself declared, "passionately religious." Their excellent pastor was an entirely "unimaginative preacher of the Georgian era," who held fast by the approved method of "three heads and a ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... began to preserve and use the ancient Roman books, and from using them at first as models for style, an interest in their contents was later awakened. While many of the monasteries remained as farming, charitable, and ascetic institutions almost exclusively, and were never noted for their educational work, a small but increasing number gradually accumulated libraries and became celebrated for their literary activity and for the character of their instruction. The monasteries thus in time became the storehouses of learning, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... almost gross. He seems afraid to give any artistic expression to his own faith, lest he should falsify it by over-expression, lest it should seem to be more accomplished than it is. He will not even try to take delight in it; he is almost fanatically an intellectual ascetic; and yet again and again he affirms a faith which he will hardly consent to specify by uttering the name of God. He is shy about it, as if it might be refuted if it were expressed in any dogmatic terms. So many victories ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... always afterwards a strong wish to meet the architect, Brother Michel; and one day, when I was talking with the Resident in Tai-o-hae (the chief port of the island), there were shown in to us an old, worn, purblind, ascetic-looking priest, and a lay brother, a type of all that is most sound in France, with a broad, clever, honest, humorous countenance, an eye very large and bright, and a strong and healthy body inclining to obesity. But that his blouse was black and his face shaven clean, you might pick ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... worthy of the veneration which his followers spontaneously accorded to him. Every person who knew him, whether of his own community or not, held him in the highest esteem. I vividly recall his tall, straight, ascetic figure, garbed in the saffron-colored garb of one who has renounced worldly quests, as he stood at the entrance of the hermitage to give me welcome. His hair was long and somewhat curly, and his face bearded. His body was muscularly firm, but slender and well-formed, and his step energetic. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... still enough is given us to let us see a very striking and commanding figure. We have a picture of him, his dress, his diet, his style of speech, his method of action—in every way he is a signal and arresting man. The son of a priest, he is an ascetic, who lives in the wilderness, dresses like a peasant, and eats the meanest and most meagre of food—a man of the desert and of solitude. And the whole life reacts on him and we can see him, lean and worn, though still a young man, a keen, rather excitable spirit—in every feature ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... not fit to teach children, or to be with them: I had already reduced the boy to little better than an automaton; I had broken his fine spirit with my rigid severity; and I should freeze all the sunshine out of his heart, and make him as gloomy an ascetic as myself, if I had the handling of him much longer. And poor Rachel, too, came in for her share of abuse, as usual; he cannot endure Rachel, because he knows she has a ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... swell and his limbs tremble, as if suffering from some violent internal complaint—the same, perhaps, that will terminate one day in his sudden and frightful death. There is a wild look about him, which at first sight is startling. His dress and demeanor are those of a rigid ascetic. He wears a long coat with short sleeves, and a scarf of only half size, such as was the mark of an austere life; and his hair hangs in a tangled mass over his head. He is usually silent, but at times breaks out into fierce excitement, such as will give the impression of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... in this way was to bring men out from the pits which cynicism on the one side, and asceticism on the other, had dug so deep for them, back to the warm precincts of the cheerful day. The cynic and the ascetic had each looked at life through a microscope, exaggerating blemishes, distorting proportions, filling the eye with ugly and disgusting illusions.[40] Humanity, as was said, was in disgrace with the thinkers. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... a help to priests. It is an attempt to bring into one handy volume many matters found in several volumes of history, liturgy, theology, and ascetic literature. Much of it they have met before, but some of it may be new and may enable some to pray more fervently and to aid them in the difficult work of saying each Hour and each part of an Hour with attention ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... life that continues and is increased in fuller measures of joy, heightened to fairer beauty, instinct with love in the heart of man. Wiser were the ascetics whom I used to scorn; they made themselves ascetics of the body, but I have been an ascetic ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... half-raised visor of Sir Malise, surnamed Poing-de-fer, who went up the breach at Ascalon shoulder to shoulder with strong King Richard—now, yet more grimly shadowed forth, under the cowl of Prior Bernard, the ambitious ascetic, whom, they say, the great Earl of Warwick trusted as his own right hand—now, softened a little, but still distinctly visible, under the long love-locks of Prince Rupert's aid-de-camp, who died at Naseby manfully in his harness—now, contrasting ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... and developed this outline with great vigor, and every skeptical head received its due buffeting in a tone and fashion that now scarcely survive. I sat in the darkness under the gallery. The preacher's fine ascetic face was plainly visible in the middle light of the church; and while the confident priestly voice flowed on, I seemed to see, grouped around the speaker, the forms of those, his colleagues and contemporaries, the patient scholars and thinkers of the Liberal host, ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... inclined was he to laugh, in spite of the agonies of the poor soul before him, and for whom he had a hearty pity and liking too. But each was looking at the matter with his or her peculiar eyes and view of morals, and the major's morals, as the reader knows, were not those of an ascetic. ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... assumed the characteristics of the great Diana of Ephesus, at once the type of Fertility, and the Goddess of Chastity, became, as the impersonation of motherhood, all beauty, bounty and graciousness; and at the same time, by virtue of her perpetual virginity, the patroness of single and ascetic life—the example and the excuse for many of the wildest of the early monkish theories. With Christianity, new ideas of the moral and religious responsibility of woman entered the world; and while these ideas were yet struggling with ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... assurances you require somewhat complicate the matter. I will try, first of all, if I can put up with the restrictions you have laid upon me. Oh! don't be afraid. I am accustomed to ascetic deprivations. Once I cured myself homoeopathically, and for five weeks I was unable to drink coffee or perfume my hair. I have a great deal of strength of mind. If, however, I can't stand the test, I'll try matrimony. But it would be best of all if some one would neatly ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... but all alike composed of pure, wholesome ingredients, guaranteed free from such deleterious substances or adulterants as yeast, chemicals, artificial colouring matter, mineral salt, &c. The variety of biscuits and cakes ranges from the plainest sorts, to suit the dyspeptic or ascetic, to the most delectable dainties for afternoon tea, not forgetting Oaten Shortcakes to specially delight the "Canny Scot." Nor need any one be at a loss to obtain supplies, for, besides the various Health Food Depots mentioned (see inside front cover), customers ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... the cool boys, and one of the self- sufficing. Probably a bit of an ascetic at bottom, with good capacity for self-control and self-direction. Not at all an uninteresting type," he summed it up. "An ebullient Puritan?" he ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... sensible. He was saved, therefore, from the contumely which vulgar minds are always ready to bestow upon saints and mystics who sit aloof from them, high enthroned amidst the truths and solemnities of God. The secluded and ascetic life of most scholars, highly favorable as it undoubtedly is to contemplation and internal development, has likewise its disadvantages, and puts them, as being undisciplined in the ways of life, at great odds, when they come to the actual and practical battle. A man should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... indifference to the outward, that impassivity, has already a touch of the corpse in it; we see already Angelico and the Master of the Passion in the artistic future. The crushing of the sensuous, the shutting of the door upon it, the ascetic interest, is already traceable. Those abstracted gods, "ready to melt out their essence fine into the winds," who can fold up their flesh as a garment, and still remain themselves, seem already to feel that bleak air, in which, like ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... youthful pain at the glance of your eyes, the ascetic lays the fruit of his austerities at your feet, the songs of poets hum and swarm round the perfume of your presence. Your feet, as in careless joy they flit on, wound even the heart of the hollow wind with the tinkle ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... practised medicine under the reputed inspiration of that deity, and were bound by oath not to reveal the secrets of their art. Is it necessary to speak of the king's touch, of the miraculous cures at the tomb of the French ascetic priest, Francois Paris (1690-1727), and especially of Lourdes, and other noted pilgrimage resorts? Many professional healers may be mentioned, "of whom some were honest and believed themselves to ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... towards a life of self-devotion, of self-abnegation whereof the ultimate motive was not always a subtle form of self-seeking. But as time passed, the monasteries became the recipients of the bounty of pious benefactors. Their inhabitants, in spite of ascetic regulations, found that life was none so hard—at least in comparison with that of serfdom or villeinage; luxuries were not less available than to the laity. The privileges of the sacred office gave increasing opportunities for vicious ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... are efficiently exemplary of the axiom that "all art aspires to the condition of music." I could almost hear Davies saying that, as if Pater had never so much as thought of it. They literally soothe with a rare poetry painted for the eye. They are illuminations for the manuscripts of the ascetic soul. They are windows for houses in which men and women may withdraw, and be reconciled to ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... slabs. Oddly branched dead trees form a hedge around the house, and on one side, on a sort of shelf, hang hundreds of boars' jaws with curved tusks. Inside, there are a few fireplaces, simple holes in the ground, and a number of primitive stretchers of parallel bamboos, couches that the most ascetic of whites would disdain. Among the beams of the roof hang all kinds of curiosities: dancing-masks and sticks, rare fish, pigs' jaws, bones, old weapons, amulets and so on, everything covered with a thick layer of soot from the ever-smouldering fires. These "gamals" are ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... student of the College, who has nothing in his appearance to call attention. But this is Burton, by some accounted a morose person, but by those who knew him intimately a cheery and witty companion. Here, too, with slow and faltering step comes Pusey in extreme old age, and Liddon of ascetic mien. Hark to the laughter! It is Stubbs—historian Bishop—with witty saying falling from his lips. And there is Liddell, feared of the undergraduate, but splendid both in figure and in face. And many another shade would fancy depict taking the old familiar way: men of renown, but none, ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... the slightest degree to their power), the St. Barbara and St. Elizabeth.[27] I do not know among the pictures of the great sacred schools any at once so powerful, so simple, so pathetically expressive of the need of the heart that conceived them. Not ascetic, nor quaint, nor feverishly or fondly passionate, nor wrapt in withdrawn solemnities of thought. Only entirely true—entirely pure. No depth of glowing heaven beyond them—but the clear sharp sweetness of the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... I wish she had: his book 's the eleventh commandment, Which says, 'Thou shalt not marry,' unless well: This he (as far as I can understand) meant. 'T is not my purpose on his views to dwell Nor canvass what so 'eminent a hand' meant; But certes it conducts to lives ascetic, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... of three years, Siva, mounted on his bull, with his spouse Parvati by his side, appears before the hermit, who is overjoyed at the sight of the deity. Siva bids him ask any boon and it should be granted. The royal ascetic desires to have a son. Then says Siva: "For thy long penance we grant thy request. Choose then—a son who shall always be with thee till death, but shall be the greatest fool in the whole world, or four daughters who ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... the picture of those times the piercing eyes and prominent nose of the ascetic face of the eminent divine who, even more than Colbert and Talon, has moulded the opinions of the Canadian people in certain important respects down to the present time. Monseigneur Laval was known in France as the Abbe de Montigny, and when the Jesuits induced him to come ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... crowns promised him by the echevins in payment of the pious and devout fare he has composed for the theater in the hall of the Palais de Justice. Beside the doleful and melancholy figure of the lover of Esmeralda, the chronicles of Bohemia can evoke a companion of less ascetic humor and more cheerful face—Master Francois Villon, par excellence, is this latter, and one whose poetry, full of imagination, is no doubt on account of those presentiments which the ancients attributed to their fates, continually marked by a singular foreboding of the gallows, on which ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... She had declared to herself that she would bear it; but the misfortune to be borne was a broken world falling about her own ears. She had thought of a nunnery, of Ophelia among the water-lilies, and of an early death-bed. Then she had pictured to herself the somewhat ascetic and very laborious life of an old maiden lady whose only recreation fifty years hence should consist in looking at the portrait of him who had once been her lover. And now she was told that he was coming to Matching as though nothing had been the matter! She tried ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... ascetic features a happy smile slowly and conqueringly spread. "My mother," he said, "has fifty-two grandchildren. And now," he turned to me, "which of us would you say ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... one for whom eternal truths outweighed all temporal seemings,—Cardinal Felix Bonpre, known favourably, and sometimes alluded to jestingly at the Vatican, as "Our good Saint Felix." Tall and severely thin, with fine worn features of ascetic and spiritual delicacy, he had the indefinably removed air of a scholar and thinker, whose life was not, and never could be in accordance with the latter-day customs of the world; the mild blue eyes, clear and steadfast, most eloquently suggested "the peace of God that ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... love me. What does it matter? I love you; that is the important thing to me. I thank you for that eternal possession. Let it be a dream, austere and pure. Passion has its own ascetic cell, where it can fast and scourge itself. I ask you for nothing, Blanche. I am yours wholly. Do what ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... something akin to the ancient crusading expeditions: soldiers who fought for an ideal, who bent the knee before beginning the fight, so that God might be on their side, and who at night, after a hard-fought field, slept the pure sleep of an ascetic; instead of which he found an armed mob, mutinous to their leaders, incapable of that fanaticism which rushes blindfold to death, anxious only that the war might last as long as possible, so that they might continue the life ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... not in the shop when Rickman Junior arrived on the scene. He was in a great bare room on an upper floor of the second-hand department. He looked more than ever studious and ascetic, having exchanged his soft felt hat for a velvet skull-cup, and his frock coat for a thin alpaca. He was attended by a charwoman with scrubbing brush and pail, a boy with ladder and broom, and a carpenter with foot-rule, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... observer might divine in him a genteel taste for literature. The fine features bear witness to the influence of an American environment, yet suggest the intellectual Englishman of Matthew Arnold's time. The face is distinguished, ascetic, the chestnut hair lighter and thinner than my own; the side whiskers are not too obtrusive, the eyes blue-grey. There is a large black cravat crossed and held by a cameo pin, and the coat has odd, narrow lapels. His habits of mind ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... purely episodic. Gringoire himself is as much out of place as any literary man who ever went into Parliament. Some may think better of Claude Frollo, who may be said to be the Miltonic-Byronic-Satanic hero. I own I do not. His mere specification—that of the ascetic scholar assailed by physical temptation—will pass muster well enough, the working out of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... so loose and on the strength of it one can be so much, everything, that it becomes nothing—therefore the consequences which you deduct from it also are based upon nothing. Nana, according to you, is a street-walker, and Angelle is a saint; the priest Mouret is an ascetic, Jacques Lantier a murderer, and all that on account of great-grandmother Adelaide! But I tell you with more real probability, that the good are good because they have my faith, because they believe in responsibility and immortality of the soul, and the bad are ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... Arthur. Nor had Love, in any proper and passionate sense of the word, anything to do with either. Women and marriage and breaches of marriage appear indeed; but the earlier Graal stories are dominated by the most ascetic virginity-worship, and the earlier Arthur-stories show absolutely nothing of the passion which is the subject of the magnificent overture of Mr. Swinburne's Tristram. Even this story of Tristram himself, afterwards fired and coloured by passion, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the mild Augustinian rule differed from the Benedictines, and it was not in their genius to seize great rocks and convert them into fortresses. Their attitude was humane, their rule not excessively ascetic; they allowed men and women to exercise the religious life side by side in neighbouring houses; they lived in the country but they were in familiar touch with the world. The White Canons ruled Maldon, but they lived at Beeleigh. They appear to have been admirable priests; the official ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... of Wilts, Somerset, Dorset, &c.,) or even a village common. Heaths were yet to be found in England, not so spacious, indeed, as the landes of France, but equally wild and romantic. In such a situation my brother lived, and under the tuition of a clergyman, retired in his habits, and even ascetic, but gentle in his manners. To that I can speak myself; for in the winter of 1801 I dined with him, and found that his yoke was, indeed, a mild one; since, even to my youngest brother H., a headstrong child of seven, he used no stronger ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... he formed a school, consisting at first of three hundred of the richest of the citizens, who bound themselves by a sort of vow to himself and to each other, for the purpose of cultivating the ascetic observances which he enjoined, and of studying his religious and philosophical theories. All that took place in this school was kept a profound secret; and there were gradations among the pupils themselves, who were not all admitted, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... Mofussil bungalow I had seen. The Takai drawing-room was delightful, a big, rather empty room, with one or two good reproductions of famous pictures on the walls, heaps of books, and an almost entire absence of ornaments—rather an ascetic room. It suited the simple, strenuous life there. Mrs. Edston's is quite different—bright and pretty, full of flowers and growing plants; tables laden with silver, and photographs of pretty women and children; comfortable chairs, with ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... not work. There are thrilling moments, doubtless, for the spectator, the amateur, and the aesthete; but there is one thrill that is known only to the soldier who fights for his own flag, to the ascetic who starves himself for his own illumination, to the lover who makes finally his own choice. And it is this transfiguring self-discipline that makes the vow a truly sane thing. It must have satisfied even the giant hunger of the soul ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... type of meal that either takes only a short time for preparation and devices which render the attention of the housewife unnecessary are ethical and healthy, both for the family and society. The joys of the table are not to be despised, and only the dyspeptic or the ascetic hold them in contempt; but simplicity in eating is the very heart of the joy of ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... later, a thin, grey-faced, rather ascetic-looking clergyman, the Reverend Edmund Shuttleworth, rector of Middleton, came across the grass and grasped his host's hand ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... that it would hardly do to send a missionary into a country like this who is not well versed in English—a country where they think, so far from understanding any language besides his own, scarcely one individual in ten speaks his own intelligibly; or an ascetic person where, as they say, high and low, male and female, are, at some period of their lives, fond of a renovating glass, as it is styled, in other words, ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... was called the bravest man in Belgium. Six feet five in height, a thin, scholarly face, with grayish white hair, and a forehead so white that one feels one looks on the naked bone, he presented the appearance of some medieval ascetic. But there was a humorous look about his mouth, and an expression of sympathy and comprehension which gave the effect of a keenly intelligent, as well as gentle, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... father, was big and florid, with bristling hair. He was marked in the town because he called himself a "Socialist," but Samuel did not know that. His wife was a little mite of a woman, completely swamped by child-bearing. Most interesting to Samuel was Friedrich, who played the violin; a pale ascetic-looking boy of fifteen, with wavy hair and ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... much is known, and that chiefly from its enemies. Catholic and Orthodox alike regarded the heresy with horror. But even its enemies allowed the Bogumils to have been an ascetic and temperate people. They abhorred the use of ikons and images, and unless the subterranean chapel at Jaitza be one, have left no church. Their doctrines spread into west Europe, and by the end of the twelfth century had developed ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... be a Christian, after all! Now just reflect how very absurdly you are choosing. Leave the Bible to that class of fanatics who may hope to be saved under its system, and, in the name of common sense, study the Koran, or some less ascetic tome. Don't be gulled by a plausible slave, who wants nothing more than to multiply professors of his theory. Why don't you read the Bible, you miserable, puling poltroon, before you hug it as a treasure? Why don't you read it, and learn out of the mouth ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... grey haires about his cheekes: which, with his countenance, was cleare, and fresh colour'd, his eyes quick and piercing, an ample forehead, manly aspect; low of stature, but very strong. He was for his life so exact and temperate, that I have heard he had never been surprised by excesse, being ascetic and sparing. His wisdom was greate, and judgment most acute; of solid discourse, affable, humble and in nothing affected; of a thriving, neat, silent and methodical genius; discretely severe, yet liberal on all just occasions to his children, strangers, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... of Jesus as it lies in the primary strata of Christian literature. Is he the kindly, peaceful Christ depicted in the Catacombs? Or is he the stern Judge who frowns upon the altar of SS. Cosmas and Damianus? Or can he be rightly represented by the bleeding ascetic, broken down by physical pain, of too many mediaeval pictures? Are we to accept the Jesus of the second, or the Jesus of the fourth Gospel, as the true Jesus? What did he really say and do; and how much that is attributed to him, in speech ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... life of remarkable fulness, great study, great thought, and great action; and yet," said I, coloring, "how small a place those feelings which have tyrannized over me and made all else seem blank and void, hold in that life! It is not as if the man were a cold and hard ascetic it is easy to see in him, not only remarkable tenderness and warm affections, but strong self-will, and the passion of all vigorous natures. Yes; I understand better now what existence in a true ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... these moods and whims. I am not merely a casual outsider who has looked about him, sniffed deprecatingly and taken the train for Dover—which leads to Calais—which leads to Paris—which leads to youthful romance. I have wallowed in London as the ascetic wallows in his punitive rites, with a strange, keen joy. I have been a voluntary St. Simeon on its cold grey street corners. I have eaten so often—and so much—at Simpson's that I know two of the waiters by their first names. And ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... ascetic life during these years was noted. He was known as a man of extremely refined tastes and sensitive though not querulous nature. A ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... loudly. One of the trio was a strong, heavy-faced heavy-handed, louring man of some thirty years (it seemed probable that he was the knocker), and the others were curates, with the proper physical attributes of curates; that is to say, they were of ascetic habit and clean-shaven and ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... was opened. A middle-aged man in black, with clean shaven ascetic face, and hair the colour of rust, and of remarkably wiry ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... and men of all sorts and conditions struggled toward that light and came to our shores with an eager desire to realize it, and a hunger for it such as some of us no longer felt, for we were as if satiated and satisfied and were indulging ourselves after a fashion that did not belong to the ascetic devotion of the early devotees of those great principles. Strangers came to remind us of what we had promised ourselves and through ourselves had promised mankind. All men came to us and said, "Where is the bread of life with which you promised to feed us, and have you partaken of it yourselves?" ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... of the Christian Fathers that concupiscence, or the sensual passion, was the "original sin" of human nature; and it must be owned that the progress of knowledge, which is usually extremely opposed to the ascetic theory of life, concurs with the theological view, in showing the natural force of this appetite to be far greater than the well-being of man requires. The writings of Malthus have proved, what the Greek moralists ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... her affair! But it is your other aunts who delight me. Your Aunt Marcia, when I first knew her, was in an ascetic phase. People called it miserliness—but it wasn't; it was only a moral hatred of waste—in anything. We envied her abominably, when I was a girl in my early teens, much bothered with dressing, because she had invented a garment—the only one of any kind that she wore under her dress. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... time, though her sunken cheeks were hard to reconcile with the enjoyment of a summer holiday, she had matured a resolve to betray nothing of what she had gone through. Her state of mind resembled that of the ascetic who has arrived at a morbid delight in self-torture. She regarded the world with an intense bitterness, and persuaded herself not only that the thought of Everard Barfoot was hateful to her soul, but that sexual love had become, ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... to meet every evening, beside the cistern, as she was leading away her cattle. She ran after me. The rings on her feet glittered in the dust, and her tunic, open at the hips, fluttered in the wind. The old ascetic who hurried me from the spot addressed her, as we fled, in loud and menacing tones. Then our two camels kept galloping continuously, till at length every familiar object had vanished from ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... a significant fact in the history of Enoch, that his piety shone brightest amid family surroundings. He was not an ascetic or an anchorite. He was a husband and a father. It is said that he "walked with God after the birth of Methusaleh." With what measure of fervour he served God before the coming of a child into his house, we are not told; but we are told that after that event "he walked with God ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... them that - This good but wearisome ascetic; He jumped and thumped upon his hat, He ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... difficult to tell. Religion was the groundwork of his character,—faith in God and devotion to duty. His piety was also more enlightened than the piety of his age, since it was practical and not ascetic. His temper was open, frank, and genial. He loved books and strangers and travellers. There was nothing cynical about him, in spite of his perplexities and discouragements. He had a beautifully balanced character and a many-sided nature. He had the power of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... no asceticism, but they are more visionary than any ascetic, and their invisible life is but the life about them made more perfect and more lasting, and the invisible people are their own images in the water. Their gods may have been much besides this, for we know them from fragments of mythology picked out with trouble ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... particularly the history of the interpretation. But the mode of treating the subject which he had previously adopted, is not without its advantages, and has a certain right to be retained. The former character of the work, in so far as the avoidance of everything properly ascetic is concerned, has been, in the present edition, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... do him justice we must admit that he led an ascetic and saint-like life, renouncing all worldly pleasures. An Englishman who saw much of him about 1851 declared that his goodness of soul surpassed even his ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... wrong," said Hawthorne, "by a too strenuous resolution to go right." Lady Byron was to him an intolerably irreproachable person, just as Stevenson felt a little of the same towards Thoreau; notwithstanding that he was the "sunnily-ascetic," the asceticism and its corollary, as he puts it: the passion for individual self-improvement was alien in a way to Stevenson. This is the position of the casuistic mystic moralist and not of the man who sees ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... praises the tables laden with bread and meat, and the cupbearer filling the wine-cups of the guests, saying, "This seems to me the best thing," strong opposition has been aroused, shown even in antiquity by the sharp protest of Plato and Lucian. Still this Phaeacian enjoyment is innocent enough; not ascetic is the trait, yet not sensual; to-day good people usually eat and drink without the song of bard or other spiritual entertainment accompanying the material one ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... establish Sunday evening concerts at a club of Polterham workmen. His discourse on this subject, systematically developed, lasted until the ladies withdrew. It allowed him scarcely any attention to his plate, but Mr. Vialls had the repute of an ascetic. In his buttonhole was a piece of blue ribbon, symbol of a ferocious total-abstinence; his face would have afforded sufficient proof that among the reverend man's failings were few ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... opposed to the ascetic mode of life he adopted, and the extreme of hardship which he so often and so willingly encountered in his work. But he himself often said, and there are many references in his diary to the same effect, that the kind ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... spirit. His pious sister Jacqueline warned her brother that he was going too far. But he was still more effectively warned by an accident, in which he almost miraculously escaped from death. Withdrawing from the world, he adopted a course of ascetic practices, in which he continued till he died—in his thirty-ninth year. He wore about his waist an iron girdle armed with sharp points; and this he would press smartly with his elbow when he detected himself ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... convinced, no doubt, that "nocit empta dolore voluptus," he had taken effective means of avoiding injury in the future by completely amputating his penis at the root. Some days after his admission to the hospital he asked to be castrated, stating that he intended to become an ascetic, and the loss of his testes as well as of his penis appeared to him to be an imperative condition to the attainment of that happy consummation. Chevers mentions a somewhat ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... much imbued with vulgar earthly taint; E'er he renounced the honors of a Knight And doffed his coat of mail and helmet bright, For sober cassock and monastic hood, Leaving the castle for the cloister rude, And changed the banquet's sumptuous repast For frugal crusts and the ascetic fast; Forsook his charger and equipments for The crucifix and sacerdotal war; While yet with valiant sword and blazoned shield He braved the dangers of the martial field, Or sought the antlered trophies of the chase In forest and sequestered hunting place; Or, tiring of the hunt's exciting sport, ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... They were all young, and several of them pretty; but as they had been among the most sincere of the sisterhood, so they had the most rigidly performed all the fasts, penances, vigils, imposed on them, and already the bloom of youth had departed, and the pallor or the ascetic had ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... he who commanded that an ascetic should be slain before his pre-ordained time was come, by his own son was imprisoned in a seven-walled prison as the due recompense ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... imbibed the doctrines and instructions of this sincere and zealous confessor of the faith. She frequently mingled in the devotions that were there offered up; but her piety was of a more moderate and amiable cast—less violent and ascetic, not unmixed with love and pity for her enemies and the persecutors ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... liked them better, and liking them better have become a better painter. We had the same kind of religious feeling, but I could give a crude philosophical expression to mine while he could only express his in action or with brush and pencil. He often told me of certain ascetic ambitions, very much like my own, for he had kept all the moral ambition of youth with a moral courage peculiar to himself, as for instance—'Yeats, the other night I was arrested by a policeman—was walking round Regent's Park barefooted ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... little jackals thronged about him in sinful circle by night. No school of picturesque disciples surrounded him by day. If he peeped above his blinds he could see the radiant procession of omnibuses on their halting way towards Westminster. The melodies of wandering organs sang in his ascetic ears, not once, nor twice, but many times a week. The milk-boy came, it must be presumed, to pay his visit in the morning; and the sparrows made the air alive, poising above the chimneys, instead of the wild eagles, whose home ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... great piety; who, after his Commission was done, settled at Halle; and lived there, without servant, in privacy, from the small means he had;—seeking his sole satisfaction in attendance on the Theological and Ascetic College-Lectures, where I used to see him ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... prejudice, it is impossible not to see that Christ rejected wealth only because it had its source in exploitation. There is nothing in the life of Christ to suggest that He was such a gloomy ascetic as He must have been if He had held wealth, as such, to be sinful: numberless passages in the Gospels afford unequivocal evidence of the contrary. Christ's daily needs were very simple, but He was always ready to enjoy whatever His adherents ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... some three miles below Gulmarg; the ziarat is named after a rishi, or ascetic, of the sixteenth century. Baloo, (Kashmiri, Harpat) "Rara avis in terras, nigroque similima cignis." Anglice, a bear. Bandipur, An important village on the north shore of the Wular Lake, the starting-point ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... admit. But the mental atmosphere in which those heroes lived and wrought was one of carelessness with regard to moral duties and religious aspirations, of exuberant delight in pleasure as an object of existence. The glorification of the body and the senses, the repudiation of an ascetic tyranny which had long in theory imposed impossible abstentions on the carnal man, was a marked feature in their conception of the world; and connected with this was a return in no merely superficial spirit to the antique paganism ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... of Lucian and Apuleius, we may place that of the Emperor Julian, an ascetic and devotee, who was nephew of Constantine the Great, and brought up a Christian. Julian's early life was spent in terror, for Constantius, Constantine's son, imprisoned him at Milan, after having put his elder brother to death. Perhaps this treatment at the hands of ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... a pace, like one pricked in conscience, and the paleness of his ascetic features took a deadly hue. His lips moved as if he would have spoken, but the sounds were smothered by an oppression that denied him utterance. The gentle Florinda saw his distress, and she endeavored to interpose between the impetuous youth ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sleigh: they had regained their former spirits. "Where shall I take you?" said the stranger quietly. There was a hurried whispering; and then Kate said boldly, "To the Institute." They drove silently up the hill, until the long, ascetic building loomed up before them. The stranger reined up suddenly. "You know the way better than I," he said. "Where do you go in?"—"Through the back-window," said Kate with sudden and appalling frankness. "I see!" responded their strange ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... lines of his chin. His features appeared to have been chiseled with great precision out of some pale, tan-colored marble; his nose was long and straight; his full eyelids gave him a slightly languorous look; but his lips, as sharply defined as a gem of carnelian, seemed somehow to be ascetic as well as sensual—virile as well as effete. Tall and spare, with small hands, he wore an outrageously inappropriate, ill-fitting sack suit. To Lilla it was as if some romantic young character from the tales of Scheherazade ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... gradually made its way. It had to meet first of all the bitter hostility of the Taoists; and secondly, the fitful patronage and opposition of the court. Several emperors and empresses were infatuated supporters of the faith; one even went so far as to take vows and lead the life of an ascetic, further insisting that to render full obedience to the Buddhist commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," the sacrificial animals were to be made of dough. Other emperors, instigated by Confucian advisers, went to the opposite extreme of persecution, closed all ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... the Conservatoire. Comte de Beust brought Liszt to me one day. I wanted so much to see that complex character, made up of enthusiasms of all kinds, patriotic, religious, musical. He was dressed in the ordinary black priestly garb, looked like an ascetic with pale, thin face, which lighted up very much when discussing any subject that interested him. He didn't say a word about music, either then or on a subsequent occasion when I lunched with him at the house of a great friend and admirer, who was a beautiful ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... celebrated, and justly so. At her receptions one always heard the best singers and players of the season, and Epicurus' soul could rest in peace, for her chef had an international reputation. Oh, remember, you music-fed ascetic, many, aye, very many, regard the transition from Tschaikowsky to terrapin, from Beethoven to burgundy with hearts aflame with anticipatory joy—and Mrs. Llewellyn's dining-room ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... the Mahommedan religion in general is sinking to corruption along the coast, there are ascetic sects rising up in the interior which unite its last zealous followers by a religious bond. From some of these sects travellers receive much ill-treatment and annoyance. On the 15th of July the doctor determined ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... limbs shook his body violently to and fro while he vociferated the sentences of the Mishnah in the traditional argumentative singsong. Near the central raised platform was a group of enthusiasts, among whom Froom Karlkammer, with his thin ascetic body and the mass of red hair that crowned his head like the light of a ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... possession proves. Michault is the writer of two volumes of agreeable "Melanges Historiques et Philologiques;" and the present is a very curious piece of literary history. The "Dictionnaire Historique" has compiled the article of Lenglet entirely from this work; but the Journal des Scavans was too ascetic in this opinion. Etoit-ce la peine de faire un livre pour apprendre au public qu'un homme de lettres fut espion, escroc, bizarre, fougueux, cynique, incapable d'amitie, de soumission aux loix? &c. Yet they do not pretend that the bibliography of Lenglet du Fresnoy ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... a rather ascetic-looking individual of middle age, with small, intelligent eyes set far back in his head, bushy brows and a clean-shaven face—clearly an American. He stood looking at me for a moment ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... the courts of justice, by the help of such periodical memoranda. The Church of Rome, with its unerring skill in absorbing and insinuating itself into all the business or pleasures of mankind, did not overlook these popular gatherings. And if the ascetic Anthony, the sturdy Christopher, or that "painful martyr," St. Bartholomew, minded earthly matters in the regions of their several beatitudes, they must have been often more scandalized than edified by the boisterous amusements ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... we all want is inward rest; rest of heart and brain; the calm, strong, self-contained, self-denying character; which needs no stimulants, for it has no fits of depression; which needs no narcotics, for it has no fits of excitement; which needs no ascetic restraints, for it is strong enough to use God's gifts without abusing them; the character, in a word, which is truly temperate, not in drink or food merely, but in all desires, thoughts, and actions; freed from the wild lusts and ambitions to which that old Adam yielded, and, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... the mortification of sense a spring of unearthly joy brimming higher with each self-conquest, may experience temptation and relapse, but the former is a new occasion for the arming of the spirit, and the latter speedily leads to a remorse which is the strongest of all incentives to ascetic struggle. Emily had not upon her the seal of sainthood. It was certain that at some point of her life asceticism would make irresistible claim upon the strongholds of her imagination; none the less certain that it would be but for a time, that it would prove but a stage in ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... and the wholesome companionship of other girls, of course the ascetic impulse died a natural death; but the temper did not die. It only hid itself under that sense of propriety which is responsible for so much of our good behavior. When it did break loose, the child suffered afterward from the consciousness ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... The staple diet of the Tibetans is Chamba, the meal of toasted barley, mixed sometimes with warm water, but more frequently with hot tea, and I think it is probable that these were the elements of the ascetic diet rather than the mere bran which Polo speaks of. Semedo indeed says that some of the Buddhist devotees professed never to take any food but tea; knowing people said they mixed with it pellets ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Lord' by his tortuous interpretations; but he did not pervert them 'to his own lusts.' The high moral character of Marcion was unimpeachable, and is recognized by the orthodox writers of the second century; the worst charge which they bring against him is disappointed ambition. He was an ascetic of the most uncompromising and rigorous type. I cannot but regard it as a significant fact that when Scholten wishes to fasten this denunciation on Marcion, he stops short at 'pervert the oracles of the Lord,' and takes no account of the concluding words 'to his own lusts,' though these ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... consulate of Publius Rutilius Rufus and Gnaeus Mallius Maximus. His parents were well-born though poor, and he was educated in a knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures. His fervent devotion and a gravity beyond his years led his parents to dedicate him to the religious and ascetic life, and soon after a visit to Jerusalem, in which the extraordinary intelligence and eagerness for knowledge of the youth were shown in his seeking of the doctors in the Temple, he was sent to be trained in an Essene community in the southern Judaean desert. When he had reached ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... Peterbrusians, were the Cathari and the Waldenses (founded by Peter Valdez A.D. 1177) who soon spread to Northern Italy and amalgamated with the sect of the Lombards. The Cathari advocated a simple and ascetic life, in accordance with the teaching of primitive Christianity, refrained from all ecclesiastical ceremonies and despised the sacraments, particularly baptism. More radical than later reformers, they rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... matter is evil and its source also evil. If this were true, God, who is in no wise evil, could not have created matter. And since our bodies are matters they are evil and God could not have created them. From this notion that our bodies are evil two extremes of error arose: (1) That only by various ascetic practices, whereby we punish the body, can we hope to save it, 2:20- 23. (2) That since the body is evil, none of its deeds are to be accounted for. License was, therefore, granted to evil conduct, and evil passions were indulged at pleasure ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... pies and doughnuts, ugliness of physical surroundings, and squeaky feminine voices. Public opinion justified making all the money one could, provided it was not spent in rendering life ornate or beautiful. So lived our fathers and mothers, our up-right, vigorous, single-minded, ascetic predecessors; and in our day their precepts were still held in reverence. Yet even then there were indications of a change. The newly created species took it into her head to look around her, especially in summer, first by itineraries along the rock-bound ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... party were hospitably entertained for two days at the Priory of the Holy Trinity at Canterbury. Then brother Richard Ingworth, with another Richard—a Devonshire youth conspicuous for his ascetic fervour and devotion, but only old enough to be admitted to minor orders—set out for London, accompanied by the Lombard and another foreigner, leaving behind him Agnellus and the rest, among them William of Esseby, the third Englishman, enthusiastic and ardent as the others, but a ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... wheel, had made the arbiter of his life. Even to one so young and inexperienced, it was impossible to know Andrew Henderson and not to feel that some strange peculiarity set him apart from other men. In his ascetic face, in his large, light-blue eyes, in his extraordinary air of abstraction and aloofness from mundane things, there was something that fascinated and repelled; and with a wondering interest the boy studied these things, trying in his unformed way to reconcile ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... stories were told of his powers, of his preternatural age, of his hoarded treasures. Apart from such disputable titles to homage, there seemed no question, from all I heard, that his learning was considerable, his charities extensive, his manner of life irreproachably ascetic. He appears to have resembled those Arabian sages of the Gothic age to whom modern science is largely indebted,—a mystic enthusiast, but an earnest scholar. A wealthy and singular Englishman, long resident in another part of the East, afflicted by some languishing disease, took a journey to Aleppo ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fashion, were exchanging salutations and experiences, while the negroes grinned, chattered, and shouted, with the careless good-humour which even the Koran has not been able to alter. The leader of the new-comers was a greybeard, a worn, ascetic, high-nosed old man, abrupt and fierce in his manner, and soldierly in his bearing. The dragoman groaned when he saw him, and flapped his hands miserably with the air of a man who ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was justified. Alvarez lived with Indian frugality and looked ascetic; besides he had been long in power and had no doubt had opportunities for enriching himself at his country's expense. Kit liked Alvarez, but did not think him much honester than other Spanish-American ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... cow—The jôgi is a Hindu ascetic, but like the word faqîr, jôgi is often used for any kind of holy man, as here. Supernatural powers are very commonly ascribed to them, as well as the universal attribute of granting sons. Classically ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel |
