"Recluse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said the host. "Yes; I'm afraid I became a bit of a recluse latterly. I had to take such confounded care of myself. Well, I didn't want to go out of the world before I could help it, and I was enjoying the quiet here after the strenuous years in Africa—Africa ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... had been practically a recluse these past several years, had, nevertheless, the metropolite's inborn indifference to the passerby. He had scarcely noticed the steadily increasing group before the steps. Now he ignored them all. He was hungry. That invitation to partake of ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... means an unimportant part, of the greater whole. The classic movement, against which he set his face steadily, was not to be easily annihilated; it survived in Rome in such illustrious representatives as Canova, Thorwaldsen and Gibson. But Overbeck grew more and more the recluse; he shortly became a proselyte to the Romish Church, shut himself out from other associations, and thus after a time devoted his pencil ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... favour from the number of great men who have been convinced of its truth, after a serious consideration of the question. Grotius was an acute man, a lawyer, a man accustomed to examine evidence, and he was convinced. Grotius was not a recluse, but a man of the world, who certainly had no bias to the side of religion. Sir Isaac Newton set out an infidel[1337], and came to be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... becoming its personification. The Christian passion, in the eleventh century, for the deliverance of Jerusalem and the triumph of the Cross was fortunate in this respect. An obscure pilgrim, at first a soldier, then a married man and father of several children, then a monk and a vowed recluse, Peter the Hermit, who was born in the neighborhood of Amiens, about 1030, had gone, as so many others had, to Jerusalem "to say his prayers there." Struck disconsolate at the sight of the sufferings and insults undergone by the Christians, he had an ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... have been long enough before the recluse young Blounts would have encountered the gay little belle, had it not been that they were of necessity obliged to pass through the toll-gate, and sometimes forced to stop there. From some of her ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... tenderness of her tone and her gratitude openly expressed, something disconcerting had come into her eyes and voice. She was more and more the lady and less and less the recluse, and as she receded and rose to this higher plane, the ranger lost heart, almost without ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... office with no light heart: there will be much trouble and thought needed to work it satisfactorily, but it will take me out of myself a little, and so may be a real good—my life was tending to become too much that of a selfish recluse. ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... this sudden turn was the new Vicomte, the dreamer and the recluse, caught up by the career of events, as a straw is borne away by a torrent, when the French lords marched with their vassals to Harfleur, where they were soundly drubbed by the King of England; as afterward ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... his first visit to England, but, indeed, to any spot further afield than Interlaken. All of his six-and-twenty years that he could recollect had been passed in a chalet on the Scheidegg above Grindelwald, his only companion an elderly recluse who had deliberately cut himself off from communion with his fellows. The trouble which had driven Mr. Strange, an author at one time of some mark, into this seclusion, was now as completely forgotten as his name. Even David ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... naturally glum, So she married young Grouch, the recluse; For she says when she's sad, she just looks at his face— Then she can't help but laugh ...
— Why They Married • James Montgomery Flagg
... fragile charms less attractive to his eye than the healthful vivacity of her sisters; while condolence was so distasteful to his ears, that he fairly scowled down Elsie's plaintive assurances of sympathy. As a matter of fact, it was brightness and amusement of which the recluse was in need; and as the last visitors were the least humorous members of the family, it followed that their presence was least welcome. Awkward silence recurred at intervals; and when the girls rose to say good-bye, no request was made for a further visit, though a message was sent to Nan, begging ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... upset everything,—driven Nathaniel to be a recluse and to close his doors on near ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... all," muttered he, as he wandered aimlessly from one deserted room to another: "the very house seems under a spell. Sybil, sitting like a recluse in her own rooms, growing pale, and wild-eyed, and spectre-like, every day. Evan, in his room, sick with drink, and verging on the D. T. Mother, gliding like a stately ghost from the one to the other, or closeted in ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... begins. Let us listen; it is a long time since both women have been listened to. What is the subject of their talk? The old woman brings news of the outer world, relates stories, curious incidents of married and unmarried life, tales of wicked wives and wronged husbands. The recluse laughs: "os in risus cachinnosque dissolvitur"; in a word, the old woman amuses the anchoress with fabliaux in an embryonic state. This is a most remarkable though little known example, for we can here observe fabliaux in a rudimentary ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... stood four-square, with a patched-up conservatory on one wing. In the front room they found the recluse's body decently disposed, with an undertaker's assistant in charge. From the greenhouse came ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... no recluse, He went out amongst men and sought them (Mark 10:45) in the market-place, in the fields and by the lakeside. Everywhere He entered into personal conversation, with those whom He met, about the kingdom of God; now it was with Nicodemus (John 3:1-21), then again ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... vihara," says Hardy, "is the residence of a recluse or priest;" and so Davids:—"the clean little hut where the mendicant lives." Our author, however, does not use the Indian name here, but the Chinese characters which express its meaning—tsing shay, "a pure dwelling." He uses ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... Europe I called on President Wilson, who had taken the opportunity of the war and the death of his first wife, to withdraw even more than ever from the outer world. He was generally known as the recluse of the White House. He only received people with whom he had political business to settle. Particularly from diplomats and other foreigners Mr. Wilson kept very aloof, because he was anxious to avoid the appearance of ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... estate were possessed by a devil,—a foul and melancholy fiend,—who resented the attempted possession of others by subjecting them to himself. One had turned from quiet and sober habits to reckless dissipation; another had turned from the usual gayety of life to recluse habits, and both, apparently, by the same influence; at least, so it appeared to Redclyffe, as he insulated their story from all other circumstances, and looked at them by one light. He even thought that he felt a similar influence ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had become more or less of a recluse, enjoying a quiet old age with his books; but his mother was an energetic, bigoted lady of the old school, who had allowed much natural kindliness to become absorbed in her devotion to church precepts and ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... civilized beings descended from these great cats would have been rich in hermits and solitary thinkers. The recluse would not have been stigmatized as peculiar, as he is by us simians. They would not have been a credulous people, or easily religious. False prophets and swindlers would have found few dupes. And what generals they would have ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... that it was finally decided to go to England and seek medical advice. On the 1st of July they reached England, and shortly afterwards went to London to consult Sir Andrew Clark and other eminent physicians. Mrs. Stevenson writes from there: "I suppose it comes from being so long a recluse, but seeing the few people I have seen has quite shattered my nerves, so that I tremble and can hardly speak. Louis, on the contrary, is quite calm, and is at this moment, after a hearty meal, resting quietly in ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Generally grave and dreamy; when quiet as calm as a dove, as fierce as a hawk when aroused; moving always in an eccentric orbit, which few understood; flashing out now and then gleams which some said were sparks of genius but which most people said were mere eccentricity, he had sunk into a recluse. He was in this state when he met HER. He always afterward referred to her so. He was at a reception when he came upon her on a stairway. A casual word about his life, a smile flashed from her large, dark, luminous eyes, lighting up her face, and ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... capable of the nicest perceptions, and with a mental and moral constitution which tended always, with the certainty of a physical law, to the beautiful, the pure, and the sublime, he led what many might call an ideal life. Yet was he far from being a recluse, or from being disposed to an excess of introversion. On the contrary, he was a popular, high-spirited youth, almost passionately fond of society, maintaining an unusual number of warm friendships, and unsurpassed by any of the young men of ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... rested musingly on the bleak promontory. It would be a fit abode, she thought, for some recluse, determined to eschew the society of his fellow-men; here he could dwell, solitary and apart, surrounded on three sides by the grey, dividing sea, and protected on the fourth by the steep untempting climb that lay betwixt the town and the ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... who died before him. In like manner the dominion of South Wales descended to Rhys son of Gruffyd, owing to the death of several of his brothers. During the childhood of Richard, a holy man, named Caradoc, led a pious and recluse life at St. Ismael, in the province of Ros, {107} to whom the boy was often sent by his parents with provisions, and he so ingratiated himself in the eyes of the good man, that he very often promised him, together with his blessing, the portion ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... power, preparing for his supersession by some more public administration. Modern religion admits of no facile flights from responsibility. It permits no headlong resort to the wilderness and sterile virtue. It counts the recluse who fasts among scorpions in a cave as no better than a deserter in hiding. It unhesitatingly forbids any rich young man to sell all that he has and give to the poor. Himself and all that he has must be alike ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... Dion and with the old Robin, the Robin blessedly unchanged, she could not be really unhappy. Yet it was sad to give up the dear garden and all the dreams which belonged to it. Far down in her—she knew it—there was certainly a recluse. She could see the black figure, the sheltered face, the eyes looking down, the praying hands. It would have been very natural to her long ago to seek God in the way of the recluse. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... American. An early residence in Lower California, marriage with a rich Mexican widow, whose dying childless left him sole heir, and some strange restraining idiosyncrasy of temperament had quite denationalized him. A bookish recluse, somewhat superfastidious towards his own countrymen, the more Clarence knew him the more singular appeared his acquaintance with Flynn; but as he did not exhibit more communicativeness on this point than upon their own kinship, Clarence finally concluded that it was due to the dominant character ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... has much of the witchcraft and subtlety of William Blake. Many verses of the shy recluse, whom Mr. Higginson so happily has introduced to the world, are not only daring and unconventional, but recklessly defiant of form. But, as her editor has well said, "When a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence." ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... by since he had last crossed that threshold. Instead of evincing any surprise, she seemed to consider his extraordinary return quite natural, and remained as silent and discreet as usual. She led, indeed, the life of a recluse, never speaking unless her work absolutely required it. And thus she now contented herself with saying: "Monsieur l'Abbe, Monsieur Bertheroy is in the study, and has been waiting there for a ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... replied Arthur. "Perhaps his father, the scientific recluse, had accumulated some money, and the boy came to America to get rid of it. He will be extravagant and wasteful for awhile, and then go back to his island with the idea that ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... the Arab magician, recluse in his wretched hut below the castle, prepared to serve her? Was it through him and Foresto that she might hope to escape or at least to manage some revenge? Thereafter she often watched the renegade's window, from which, no matter how late the hour, shone a glimmering ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... closed, or which had chinks in their sides, or even hid them in a drawer or a cupboard, I found the males arrived in numbers as great as when the object of their search lay in the cage of open wire-work freely exposed on a table. I have a vivid memory of one evening when the recluse was hidden in a hat-box at the bottom of a wall-cupboard. The arrivals went straight to the closed doors, and beat them with their wings, toc-toc, trying to enter. Wandering pilgrims, come from I know not where, across fields and meadows, they knew perfectly what was behind ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Here was I ruminating how to address this mysterious recluse: he appears, and proves to be ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... needless to multiply examples; the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When we came to Apemama, of so many white men who have scrambled for a place in that rich market, one remained—a silent, sober, solitary, niggardly recluse, of whom the king remarks, "I think ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a lot of lies. A casual eye could see no change in the recluse: his head does not hang down on his breast, his locks are not long and matted, his sighs do not resound through the primeval forest and scare away the panthers. When you look closely at him, or have been with him ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... full play for a few minutes with this question. Some recluse, preferring the absolute simplicity of nature, or perhaps wearied with the artificialities of society, had secluded himself here with the company of his only daughter. Proficient as a pathfinder, ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... relief," said Paul lightly, yet with purposely vague official mystery of manner. Then, turning quickly to Yerba, as if replying to the only real question at issue, he continued pointedly, "I am sorry to say the colonel's health is so poor that it keeps him quite a recluse. I have a letter from him and a message for you." His bright eyes added plainly—"as soon as we can ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... form which in our age didactic composition ought to take. As in ancient Greece the dialogue reflected most truly the intellectual life of the people, and as in the Middle Ages learned literature naturally assumed with the recluse in his monastic cell the form of a long monologue, so with us the lecture places the writer most readily in that position in which he is accustomed to deal with his fellow-men, and to communicate his knowledge to others. It has no doubt certain ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... and recluse readily welcomed two such promising guests for the winter. A charming woman of twenty-six, with a mind as well as emotions, and a man not much older, who was both a philosopher and an artist, promised no end ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... Americans,—wrote to his mother and others, saying he had swum from Sestos to Abydos, was sick of Fletcher bawling for beef and beer, had done with authorship, and hoped on his return to lead a quiet recluse life. He nevertheless made notes to Harold, composed the Hints from Horace and the Curse of Minerva, and presumably brooded over, and outlined in his mind, many of his verse romances. We hear no more of the, Maid of Athens, but there is no fair ground to doubt that ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... could get nothing much further from him. All I could gather was that the Trewinions had been a great people, but had fallen on evil days as the result of their own sinning, and that the present representative of the family was a recluse, living alone in the old Manor House, and that many curious stories ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... castellan, an old, gloomy man, the more devoted to the young knight from his dark melancholy and wild deeds, hastened to lower the drawbridge. Greetings were exchanged in silence, and in silence did Sintram enter, and those joyless gates closed with a crash behind the future recluse. ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... her shawl on the edge of the orchard overlooking the valley—a deep carpet of grass sprinkled with wind-blown petals; to watch the sky kindle and burn out; see the recluse Evening come forth before the Night and walk softly down the valley toward the woods; feel as an elixir about her the air, sweet from the trees, sweet with earth odors, sweet with all the lingering history of the day. Nearer, ever nearer would swing the stars into ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... hardly believe the tales which their hostess had previously told him of the courage and ability that this small and dainty girl had frequently shown. But only a few minutes' conversation with her father convinced Frank that he was an amiably weak and incompetent individual, more fitted to be a recluse and a bookworm than a roamer in wild jungles where his work brought him in contact with strange peoples and constant danger. It was evident that the reputation which his large section of the Terai Forest bore as being well managed and efficiently ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... has been in history a height without sustaining breadth, a needle, not a cube. Genius has been tremulous, recluse,—has been cherished in solitude with Nature,—has been a feminine partiality among men, holding for gods its favorites, for dogs the refuse of mankind. It still counts the practical life an interruption. It is therefore only melancholy cheer, a forlorn ark with nine souls ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... visible to the crew; either standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to grow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as if, when the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. And, by and by, it came to pass, that he was almost continually in the air; but, as yet, for all that he said, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... quest he found himself again opposed by his London friends. Unable to secure a new Alice in Wonderland for his child readers, he determined to give them Kate Greenaway. But here he had selected another recluse. Everybody discouraged him. The artist never saw visitors, he was told, and she particularly shunned editors and publishers. Her own publishers confessed that Miss Greenaway was inaccessible to them. "We conduct all our business ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... without sharing their mood; that the artist and the moral being are separate, and may not be used to interpret each other. Yet, after giving due weight to such answers, Perugino, being what he was, living at the time he did, not as a recluse, but as a prosperous impresario of painting, and systematically devoting his powers to pietistic art, must be for us a puzzle. That the quietism of his highly artificial style should have been fashionable in Perugia, while the Baglioni were tearing each other to pieces, and the troops ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... I have certainly made you see, a recluse of the most uncompromising type; but he was such for only half his time. From ten in the morning till five in the afternoon, he came and went like any other citizen, fulfilling his judicial duties with the same scrupulous ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... little studio, cold and cheerless under its glass ceiling, the empty fireplace, the wind blowing as it blows outside, and making the candle flicker, the only light that shone upon that vigil of a penniless recluse, reflected upon scattered sheets all covered with writing,—in a word, that atmosphere of inhabited cells wherein the very soul of the inhabitants exhales,—enabled de Gery to comprehend at once the impassioned Andre Maranne, his long hair thrown back and flying in the wind, his somewhat ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... colonies. Most loyalists went to London or Glasgow. Except for William Byrd III and Attorney-General John Randolph, most native Virginia loyalists, including Richard Corbin, John Grymes, and Ralph Wormeley stayed quietly on their plantations.[38] Virginia's only nobleman, aging recluse, Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax, owner of the Northern Neck, 9,000 square miles of land, remained untouched at his hunting ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... inquisitive and acquisitive, versatile yet stubborn, with thrift passing over into avarice, and mental power degenerating into smartness; cold and hard under long repression of emotion, yet capable of passion and fanaticism; at worst, a mere trader, a crank, a grim recluse; at best, endowed with an austere physical and moral beauty. Miss Jewett preferred to touch graciously the sunnier slopes of this provincial temperament, to linger in its ancient dignities and serenities. ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... was nothing to the subject of his thoughts, either because her own were elsewhere, too, or because they were in league with a nice taste, that permitted them to take no interest in what was going on. Even her eyes, trained as they had been to recluse habits, were far less busy than those of her companions; indeed, they were not busy at all; for the greater part of the time, one hand was upon the brow, shielding them from the glare of the gas-lights. Ostensibly ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... upon the helmets, and banners, and insignia of many a defunct Knight of the Garter. I wondered if posterity would care much for George the Fourth, or Third, or Second, or First, whose portraits I had just been gazing at; I was sure that a good many would remember the recluse scholar of Pembroke Hall, the Cambridge Professor of Modern History, who cared for nothing but ancient history; who projected twenty great poems, and finished only one or two; who spent his life in commenting upon Plato and studying botany, and in writing letters to his friend Mason; and who ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... a lofty expression. I should have put him down as a scholarly recluse. His first ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... half-castle, set in its own grounds, and shut off from the rest of the world by high walls and groves of pine and fir, which had belonged for many a generation to the old family of Carstairs. Its last proprietor, Sir Alexander Carstairs, sixth baronet, had been a good deal of a recluse, and I never remember seeing him but once, when I caught sight of him driving in the town—a very, very old man who looked like what he really was, a hermit. He had been a widower for many long years, and though he had three children, it was little company ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... ornaments, and became more modest and more pious. "Those of Montreal," pursues the worthy nun, "even outdid those of Quebec; for they bound themselves by oath to wear neither ribbons nor lace, to keep their throats covered, and to observe various holy practices for the space of a year." The recluse of Montreal, Mademoiselle Le Ber, who, by reason of her morbid seclusion and ascetic life, was accounted almost a saint, made a flag embroidered with a prayer to the Virgin, to be borne against the ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... which Johnson was certainly very deficient. Both of these great men, however, impress us by their deep sense of the evils under which humanity suffers, and their rejection of the superficial optimism of the day. Butler's sadness, undoubtedly, is that of a recluse, and Johnson's that of a man of the world; but the sentiment is fundamentally the same. It may be added, too, that here, as elsewhere, Johnson speaks with the sincerity of a man drawing upon his own experience. He announces himself as a scholar thrust ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... first perceiving that life was to be her portion, where her own intended feelings were ascribed to a maiden who had taken the veil, believing her crusader slain, but who saw him return and lead a recluse life, with the light in her cell for his guiding star. She smiled sadly to find how far the imaginings of four and twenty transcended the powers of four and thirty; and how the heart that had deemed itself able to resign was chafed at the appearance of compulsion. She felt that ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mountains, where I met with a Religious who had withdrawn himself from the world. So I joined myself to him and complained to him of my case and acquainted him with all that had befallen me. Quoth the Recluse, 'Wottest thou why this befel thee and thou wast defeated?' Quoth I, 'I know not;' and he said. 'Because thou didst put thy trust in the multitude of thy warmen and reliedst not upon Allah the Most High. Hadst thou ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... not a real hermitage I'd chuse, Nor wish to live from all the world recluse; But with a friend sometimes unbend the soul, In social converse, o'er the sprightly bowl. With cheerful W——, serene and wisely gay, I'd often pass the dancing hours away; He skill'd alike to profit and to please, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... preached to the prisoners on the rights of man and attacked the monarchy. The day following the authorities freed him on the ground that he was demoralizing the prisoners. Time has dealt lightly with him, and no one can read of his latter days—his brilliancy all eclipsed—a recluse except for his love and companionship for children—unmoved. In his day he was a power and in no small degree did he contribute to the living monument of great ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... saw the young vagrant in his tattered clothes, knocking at the gate and delivering, with a blush, his letter of recommendation to the fair recluse, in the lonely path that leads from the house to the church. They were so present to our fancy, that it seemed as though they were expecting us, and that we should see them at the window or in the garden walks of Les Charmettes. We would walk on, then stop again; the spot seemed ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Miss Mordaunt was somewhat of a recluse in her habits; she was a nervous, diffident woman, who made weak health an excuse for shutting herself out from society. Fay had lived with her ever since her father's death; but during the last year Miss Mordaunt had been much troubled by qualms of conscience, as to whether she was ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 1831 he had joined the insurgents in the Romagna who were in arms against the Papal Government. The death of his own elder brother, followed in 1832 by that of Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt, made him chief of the house of Bonaparte. Though far more of a recluse than a man of action, though so little of his own nation that he could not pronounce a sentence of French without a marked German accent, and had never even seen a French play performed, he now became possessed by the fixed idea that he was one day to wear the French ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... in California, which, I regret to add, caused him to look both alarmed and embarrassed. A queer, shy man was this pastor—a sort of living mummy, dried up and bleached by Icelandic snows. His manner was singularly bashful. There was something of the recluse in it—a mixture of shyness, awkwardness, and intelligence, as if his life had been spent chiefly among sheep and books, which very likely was the case. All the time I was trying to say something agreeable he was looking about him as if he desired to make his escape into some Icelandic ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... days when Jacqueline was a model of elegance: "Oh, how fine you are!" Then again, Madame d'Avrigny, notwithstanding the good manners on which she prided herself, could not conceal that the obligation of sending home the recluse to the ends of the earth, at a certain hour, made trouble with her servants, who were put out of their way. Jacqueline seized on this pretext to propose to give up the Monday music-lesson, and after some polite hesitation ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... years the recluse headquarters of the Jesuits, so of all enslaved Spanish-Americans probably the Guaranis are the worst. During Lent they will inflict stripes on their bodies, or almost starve themselves to death; and their abject humility to the Pa is sad to witness. On special church celebrations ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... curious thing that one is reminded at times of Ballantyne's "Martin Rattler," written very much earlier, even down to to the presence of a "recluse". That doesn't mean you won't enjoy the book just as much as you might have enjoyed "Martin Rattler." Best, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... would have said, to look at him, that he was not at the party by choice; and it was natural enough to think, with Susy Pettingill, that it must have been a freak of the dark girl's which brought him there, for he had the air of a shy and sad-hearted recluse. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of a perfect recluse with her child, during her husband's absence, at his villa somewhere in the south—near Marseilles, where the department forwards ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... all the actors being equally fools and madmen; and therefore if any be so pragmatically wise as to be singular, he must even turn a second Timon, or man-hater, and by retiring into some unfrequented desert, become a recluse ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... witness how soon the recluse had once more become an active man of the world, and for a while forgotten ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... have been forged in the period immediately following 473 is particularly unlikely, for no one, as a rule, hastens to identify himself with a lost cause. As for Yeh Shui-hsin's theory, that the author was a literary recluse, that seems to me quite untenable. If one thing is more apparent than another after reading the maxims of Sun Tzu, it is that their essence has been distilled from a large store of personal observation and experience. They reflect ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... damsels shall be sent Attired in holy hermits' weed, And skilled in blandishment, That they the hermit may beguile With every art and amorous wile Whose use they know so well, And by their witcheries seduce The unsuspecting young recluse To leave his father's cell. Then when the boy with willing feet Shall wander from his calm retreat And in that city stand, The troubles of the king shall end, And streams of blessed rain descend ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... latter project would end, the American tried the efficacy of a little worldly temptation. He had arranged, he said, "to have a good time of it in Paris"; and he proposed that Amelius should be his companion. The suggestion produced not the slightest effect; Amelius talked as if he was a confirmed recluse, in the decline of life. "Thank you," he said, with the most amazing gravity; "I prefer the company of my books, and the seclusion of my study." This declaration was followed by more selling-out of money in the Funds, and by a visit to a bookseller, which left a handsome ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... junior, and used by us to distinguish between her and that other Elizabeth who was Aunt Lizzie Peabody). Of my grandmother Hawthorne I have no personal recollection at all; she was a Manning, a beautiful old lady, whom her son resembled. She had been a recluse from society for forty years; it was held to be good form, in that age and place, to observe such Hindoo rites after the death of a husband; hers had died in his thirty-fourth year in Surinam. But ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... with his gyves, the semblance of the most perfect indifference; and the seriousness of useful retrospection was lost in the levity of frivolous amusement. Apart from the other prisoners was seated a recluse, whose appearance excited the attention of the two visitants; a deep cloud of dejection overshadowed his features, and he seemed studiously to keep aloof from the obstreperous revelry of his fellow-captives. There was in his manner ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... believe that to men who have never bathed in eastern moonlight, the description will sound hyperbolical and false. But when I think of those old days, how serene they were, how apart, I let the words stand: I am not artist enough to give them a more plausible simplicity. All conditions that a recluse might crave seemed now to be fulfilled for my benefit. The virgin forests and great hills were a perpetual joy, but there was a tranquil pleasure in the plantation which man's labour had reclaimed from these. ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... monotonous drone of his bagpipe was reproduced in most comical imitation; and anon there was a gush of bird-songs, as if a whole aviary were in the vicinity. Indeed, no half-hour passed without audible indication that the little recluse was in merry mood. ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... trees and sky shall you find it? The more solitary the recluse and the more confirmed and grounded his seclusion, the wider and more familiar becomes the circle of his social environment, until at length, like a very dryad of old, the birds build and sing in his branches and the "wee wild beasties" nest in his pockets. If ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... established by Zoroaster at Balch, but removed in the seventh century to Kerman, a province in Persia on the southern ocean. To gain the better reputation to his pretensions, Zoroaster first retired to a cave, and there lived a long time as a recluse, pretending to be abstracted from all earthly considerations, and to be given wholly to prayer and divine meditations; and the more to amuse the people who there resorted to him, he dressed up his cave with several mystical figures, representing Mithra, and other mysteries of their religion. ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... Asiatic court, that we next find honors paid to the name and memory of Aesop. Maximus Planudes, a learned monk of Constantinople, made a collection of about a hundred and fifty of these fables. Little is known of his history. Planudes, however, was no mere recluse, shut up in his monastery. He took an active part in public affairs. In 1327 A.D. he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Venice by the Emperor Andronicus the Elder. This brought him into immediate contact with the Western Patriarch, whose interests he henceforth advocated with ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... most important meetings of the Congress of Scientists which was being held in New York. He was quite unprepared for the reception that was given him there. Of a very quiet and retiring disposition, and having lived the life of a recluse for many years, known to the world only by his writings, it never seemed to have occurred to him that his name was a famous one in other countries as well as his own. His first appearance was greeted with acclamation as soon as his name was mentioned, and during his stay in New York ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... Faubourg du Roule. The house stood in the centre of a garden, which was protected from the gaze of the curious by high walls that surrounded it on every side. Served by an old woman whom he had brought from Arras, he apparently lived the life of a recluse who desires to remain a stranger to the changes and emotions of the moment, and to end his days in peace and quietness. He received no visitors; and the people in the neighborhood thought him a poor man who had lost his family and squandered his money in unfortunate ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... magnetism of manner, the weight of social position, all of which tend to secure to an inferior man a pre-eminence in the circle in which he moves, are equally evanescent, and the shy, rugged, and tactless recluse often emerges on the strength of his genuine and abiding performances to a position in the eyes of the world which he never attained ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... It would be tedious to repeat his arguments, and my contradictions. He said, "it was altogether impossible to find such a solitary island as I desired to live in; but I might command in my own house, and pass my time in a manner as recluse as I pleased." ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... me almost my judge," she said, with a desperate air. "I must speak now, in virtue of the right that all calumniated beings have to show their innocence. I have been, I am still (if a poor recluse forced by the world to renounce the world is still remembered) accused of such light conduct, and so many evil things, that it may be allowed me to find in one strong heart a haven from which I cannot be ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... country's hope thy fame extends: The rescued merchant oft thy words resounds: Thee and thy cause the rural hearth defends: His bowl to thee the grateful sailor crowns: The learn'd recluse, with awful zeal who read Of Grecian heroes, Roman patriots dead, Now with like awe doth living merit scan: While he, whom virtue in his bless'd retreat Bade social ease and public passions meet, Ascends the civil scene, and knows to ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... 'You a recluse of Port Royal! I cannot believe in it,' I said. 'Tell me, Monsieur, is your motive despair? For I know what your ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... years old he lived alone high above a busy part of the town. He was a recluse. His black hair that fell in a slant across his forehead and the rigidity of his eyes gave him the appearance of a somnambulist. He found life unnecessary and submitted ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... experiment would be. I, to whom nature had denied the impromptu faculty; who, in public, was by nature a cypher; whose time of mental activity, even when alone, was not under the meridian sun; who needed the fresh silence of morning, or the recluse peace of evening, to win from the Creative Impulse one evidence of his presence, one proof of his force; I, with whom that Impulse was the most intractable, the most capricious, the most maddening of masters (him before me always ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... all my ardor. What a blissful period of my existence was it that I passed beneath his roof. Another being seemed created within me, or rather, all that was amiable and excellent was drawn out. I was as recluse as ever I had been at the convent, but how different was my seclusion. My time was spent in storing my mind with lofty and poetical ideas; in meditating on all that was striking and noble in history or fiction; in studying and tracing all that was sublime ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... prison on the charge of high treason; when all they proved against him was the remark, that if the king had signed the Quebec bill, he had broken his coronation oath. There, another, a poor harmless recluse, as I have ever supposed him, is dragged from his hut in the mountains and imprisoned to await his trial for an alleged murder, committed long ago, and in another jurisdiction; when his only crime, with his prosecutors, probably, is his bold denunciations of their tyranny, unless, as some suspect, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... answered the recluse. "Your young eyes will wax heavy with these midnight vigils. You must sleep, my boy, and to-morrow I will communicate my plans ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... Buddha. It will suffice to recall the Buddha's education in a secluded palace, his encounter successively with a decrepit old man, with a man in mortal disease and poverty, with a dead body, and, lastly, with a religious recluse radiant with peace and dignity, and his consequent abandonment of his princely state for the ascetic life in the jungle. Some of the correspondences in the two stories are most minute, and even the phraseology, in which some of the details of Josaphat's history are described, almost ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... of a recluse is not God's kind—only running water is pure; the living love of a live man and woman absolves itself, refines, benefits, and blesses, though it be the love of Aucassin and Nicolete, Plutarch and Laura, Paola and Francesca, Abelard and Heloise, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... to make my meaning plain. There are subjects relating to the human body, mind, and soul, which cannot be said to have been really studied at all, except by some recluse here and there, who is generally considered mad. You deal with the things which are seen, but think not of the great unsolved spiritual problems of life. For example, the effect of mind upon mind, animal magnetism, mesmerism, biology, and kindred subjects are unknown to you. ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... Joanna must have watched it many a day. There was the world, and here was she with eternity well begun. In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... out of sight of the rectory in a fold of the hill was this great gaunt building, erected, so popular gossip said, by one who had been crossed in love and desired to live the life of a recluse, a desire which was respected by the superstitious town-folk of Great Bradley. The Secret House had been built in the hollow which was known locally as "Murderers' Valley," a pretty little glen which many years before had been the scene ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... books, newspapers from the town; horses made their appearance in the stables; in a word, Feodor Ivanitch provided himself with everything that was necessary and began to live—not exactly like a country squire, nor yet exactly like a recluse. His days passed monotonously, but he was not bored, although he saw no one; he occupied himself diligently and attentively with the farming operations, he rode about the neighbourhood on horseback, he read. He read but little, however: it was more agreeable for him to ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... him Kathrien, whom he had adopted at my suggestion (made at a time when he seemed to be getting morose and verging on becoming a recluse) that he needed a child in the house; Frederik, his nephew and heir; James Hartmann, his secretary, and Willem, the son of Anne Marie, the ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... he did not mean that, he was, I repeat, playing with words and deceiving his hearers, who would certainly understand him to mean something to that effect; and if he did mean that, he departed very palpably from the truth. The Bishop of London is no recluse, shut up in a monastery among men of his own faith. He is a man of the modern world, and he must know, and know that he knows, scores of men as good as himself who have no belief in anything that he would recognize as religion. Perhaps ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... the man of the island slowly. "After I knew I was ruined, I fled down here, where I was raised, and became a recluse on that island. It was cowardly of me, I know, but from now on I am going to ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... artistic and literary, should be lying here on a Bering Sea seal-hunting schooner. Cabin-boy! I had never done any hard manual labour, or scullion labour, in my life. I had lived a placid, uneventful, sedentary existence all my days—the life of a scholar and a recluse on an assured and comfortable income. Violent life and athletic sports had never appealed to me. I had always been a book-worm; so my sisters and father had called me during my childhood. I had gone camping but once in my life, and then I left ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... business by expediting now a pension eagerly but ineffectively solicited by many great people, as I am told, for a most deserving woman, the widow of Mr. Green, the consul at Nice?... Deserve and receive a kind and constant remembrance in the benedictions of a recluse who has still the ambition to live in your regard by the good which he would excite you to perform. At all events forgive this very unexpected intrusion and importunity from the old and long sequestered admirer of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... curse of frontier life,—had left early, inquired the way to his Commandant's bungalow, and now stood on the threshold, scarcely able to believe the evidence of his senses. Strange developments must have taken place during his absence, if Lenox—the woman-hater, the confirmed recluse—were actually ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... My uncle's habits are those of a recluse. When he comes home from the bustle of the city, it would be a great annoyance to have company around him: in fact, I do not care for it, and, I dare say, we shall ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... father comfort his unhappy daughter; and her mother embracing her again did all she could to soothe her feelings. In spite of all their tenderness her anguish was too poignant to be soon allayed; and from that fatal night, she continued to live the life of a recluse under ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... represented the demon forces forever in collision with beauty, virtue, and the gentle uses of life; they made a fine contrast in the picture with the wandering minstrel, the soft-lipped princess, the pious recluse, and the timid Israelite. That was a time of color, when the sunlight fell on glancing steel and floating banners; a time of adventure and fierce struggle,—nay, of living, religious art and religious enthusiasm; for were not cathedrals built in those days, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... population, planing and levelling society down in their carpentry of human nature. They would yoke and harness the loftier spirits to one common and vulgar destination. Man is considered only as he wheels on the wharf, or as he spins in the factory; but man, as a recluse being of meditation, or impelled to action by more generous passions, has been struck out of the system of our political economists. It is, however, only among their "unproductive labourers" that we shall find those men of leisure, whose habitual pursuits are consumed ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... taking up what I could nearest spy, I digged about That place where I had seen him to grow out; And by and by I saw the warm recluse alone to lie, Where fresh and green ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... demand, though with a chagrin of spirit toward the instrument of his defeat which became settled hatred, and never lifted from his heart for a moment in those long succeeding years, when the king, like a recluse in the Escurial, brooded over his defeat. His troops forced from Flemish territories, Philip himself departed from a region he had never loved and had scarcely tolerated, departed, not to return any more, save by proxy of fire and sword, and cruel soldiery, and more cruel generals—the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... invisible grain in the mill now. The peasants came no longer with their corn. She had enough to live on, and her long seclusion unfitted her for strange men in the mill, and people she must talk to. And so long was the habit of the recluse on her, that though her soul flew leagues her body never wandered more than a few hundred yards from her home. Some who had heard of her, and had glimpses of her, spoke to her when they met; but they could make no headway with this sweet, shy, silent woman. Yet children and boys and girls ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... and amusement. To speak of pleasure and amusement to this unfortunate man, was in his present state to insure a refusal, and so it of course happened. Father d'Aigrigny did not at first try to gain the recluse's confidence, nor did he speak to him of sorrow; but every time he came, he appeared to take such a tender interest in him, and showed it by a few simple and well timed words. By degrees, these interviews, at first so rare, became more frequent and longer. Endowed ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Luke and Cecile Shepard Mr. Northrup appeared very well indeed at dinner that night in the Corner House. They learned he could be very entertaining if he wished; that he had not forgotten how to interest women if he had been a recluse for so long; and that even Tess and Dot found something about him to admire. The former said afterward that Mr. Northrup had a voice like a distant drum; Dot said he had a "noble looking forehead," meaning that it was very ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... on the threshold of young womanhood, she goes to stay with her grandfather in Ireland, with the trust from her mother of reconciling him and his son, Bertha's father. Bertha finds her grandfather a recluse and a miser, and in the hands of an underling, who is his evil genius. How she keeps faith with her mother and finds her own fate, through many strange adventures, is the ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... th'exhausted Khan returned, Enough of waste his sword had dealt, The Russian cot no longer burned, Nor Caucasus his fury felt. In token of Maria's loss A marble fountain he upreared In spot recluse;—the Christian's cross Upon the monument appeared, (Surmounting it a crescent bright, Emblem of ignorance and night!) Th'inscription mid the silent waste Not yet has time's rude hand effaced, Still do the gurgling ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... years of miserable anxiety might have been spared to all who were interested—had the guardians and executors of my father's will thought fit to "let well alone"! But, "per star meglio" [2] they chose to remove my brother from this gentle recluse to an active, bustling man of the world, the very anti-pole in character. What might be the pretensions of this gentleman to scholarship, I never had any means of judging; and, considering that he must now, (if living at all,) at a distance of thirty-six years, be gray headed, I shall respect his ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... a recluse, he was by no means an ascetic. He was marked by deep gravity of countenance coupled with a kindly humorous disposition. No one knew where he came from, or why he had taken up his abode in such a lonely spot. Many of the rough fellows ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... accessories of the humorous, if the age demands it, might relieve the pathetic; Charlotte's own innocence and piety might be made to soften her hard fate, with the assurance of a better life; Saville might become a wisely-resigned recluse; and while the sins of the fathers are not gently, though justly, visited on the children, the villain of the story ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... didn't care what means you used," corrected Moore, with delicate emphasis. He added, reflectively: "Blair has always been something of a recluse; but I've noticed that when a Puritan once feels a little of the warmth of the devil's presence that he's rather loath to step out into the cold again." The look of anger from Mrs. Latimer made him change both tone and words. "We have depended on you to get Charlie," he ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... bigamists; and one who was not only a heretic but a leader of heretics. For, among other heresies which he taught, one was that God had a beginning, [a doctrine] which only very learned men understood. Another was a prebend whom his illustrious Lordship held as a recluse in our college, for heinous and atrocious crimes, whose final end was a sentence of degradation, and delivery to the secular arm; the dean settled this case, without examining the documents in the case (which they did not find), by condemning him to six months of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... "Oh, I am so glad to see him!" and she bounded on ahead of Oliver. The recluse, for such he seemed, welcomed Manita affectionately, but his gaze was turned towards Oliver. "Who are you, young sir?" he exclaimed, looking from one to the other ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... Andes' clifted side, Or by the Nile's coy source abide, Or starting from your half-year's sleep From Hecla view the thawing deep, Or, at the purple dawn of day, Tadmor's marble wastes survey, You, recluse, again I woo, And ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... had known that temptation and conquered it. After her reception as a Dominican Tertiary, she had possessed the extraordinary resolution to live for three years the recluse life, not in the guarded peace of a convent, but in her own room at home, in the noisy and overcrowded house where a goodly number of her twenty-four brothers and sisters were apparently still living. And these had been years of inestimable preciousness; ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... From so large a collection of letters, written by so eminent a man, during so varied and eventful a life, we should have expected a complete and spirited view of the literature, the manners, and the politics of the age. A traveller—a poet—a scholar—a lover—a courtier—a recluse—he might have perpetuated, in an imperishable record, the form and pressure of the age and body of the time. Those who read his correspondence, in the hope of finding such information as this, will be utterly ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Raleigh it is observed, to employ the language of Hume, "They were struck with the extensive genius of the man, who, being educated amidst naval and military enterprises, had surpassed, in the pursuits of literature, even those of the most recluse and sedentary lives; and they admired his unbroken magnanimity, which, at his age, and under his circumstances, could engage him to undertake and execute so great a work, as his History of the World." He was assisted in this great work by the learning of several eminent persons, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to heed The words of wisdom that might serve my need, Frown on my doctors, with the friends am wroth Who fain would rouse me from my fatal sloth, Seek what has harmed me, shun what looks of use, Town-bird at Tibur, and at Rome recluse. Then ask him how his health is, how he fares, How prospers with the prince and his confreres. If he says Well, first tell him you rejoice, Then add one little hint (but drop your voice), "As Celsus ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... his skill and his power to command. He did not need the pay; he needed the occupation and the being in touch with the things about him. For the last fifteen or more years he had nursed a sorrow and lived the life almost of a recluse. It was time ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... taking lessons in painting ever since I arrived, I was always very fond of it and mean to stick to it; it suits me and I am not without hopes that I shall do well at it. I live almost the life of a recluse, seeing very few people and going nowhere that I can help—I mean in the way of parties and so forth; if my friends had their way they would fritter away my time without any remorse; but I made a regular stand against it from the ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... they were utterly commonplace. They know that if they can boast a knighthood or a baronetcy or a Privy Councillorship, they will taste day by day and every day that respect, that confidence from all about them that no one but a trained recluse despises. And life will abound in opportunities. "Oh, well!" they will say. Such things give them influence, consideration, power to ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... necessarily presupposes relations of kindness and cooperation with those other persons that form the immediate environment. But it is quite compatible with a neglect of those wider aspects of duty that we call public morality. The Stoics, the anchorites, some communities of monks, and many a well-to-do recluse today, are examples of those who have found a selfish happiness for themselves without taking any hand in forwarding the general welfare. Yet the greatest total good is not to be attained in any ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... dread a fair outside, to mistrust a popular bearing, to shudder before distinction, grace, and courtesy. Beauty and affability had come in my way when I was recluse, desolate, young, and ignorant—a toil-worn governess perishing of uncheered labour, breaking down before her time. These, Caroline, when they smiled on me, I mistook for angels. I followed them home; and when into their hands I had given without reserve my whole chance of future happiness, it ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Ward lived like a recluse. He was not one with his college mates. He felt that he was not the only freshman who had gotten a bad start in college. Sometimes when he sat near a sad-faced classmate, he knew instinctively that here was a fellow equally in need of friendship. Still these freshmen were ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... departure, and that his lady would die a fortnight after him, which happening accordingly, they were both buried in the grave together. A romantic cavern, at the place called Guy's Cliff, is shown as the dwelling of the recluse. The story is a curious relic of the religious ideas ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... great cat-war: Ratopolis beleaguered sore, Their whole republic drained and poor, No morsel in their scrips they bore. Slight boon they craved, of succor sure In days at utmost three or four. "My friends," the hermit said, "To worldly things I'm dead. How can a poor recluse To such a mission be of use? What can he do but pray That God will aid it on its way? And so, my friends, it is my prayer That God will have you in his care." His well-fed saintship said no more, But in their faces shut the door. ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... room to be attended by her housekeeper; the other two ladies retired to their rooms—Kate principally engaged in arranging her presents for her little scholars: and Mr. Aubrey repaired to his library—as delightful an old snuggery as the most studious recluse could desire—where he was presently attended by his bailiff. He found that everything was going on as he could have wished. With one or two exceptions, his rents were paid most punctually; the farms and lands kept in capital ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... arrested progress, if not steady decline. We are told, though this may have been a mistake, that active signs of consumption were apparent in her even before the illness of 1859, which was in a certain sense the beginning of the end. She was completely an invalid, as well as entirely a recluse, during the greater part if not the whole of this ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... always professed that he found the illimitable spaces of the West too tranquillising for him. The sight of those great, endless fields, the isolation of those majestic mountains, suggested to him a recluse-like calm which never suited his quick-moving temper. So he did not very often visit his brother in Hampstead, and the brother in Hampstead, deeply engrossed in the grave cares of comparative folk-lore, seldom dropped from his Hampstead ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... terror at once into the heart of the assailant who should dare to cast a glance on that invincible maiden, that Pallas Athene:—how much of personal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray! ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to earth's moral good, can be fully exerted. The boy at school inclines to rough manners. What more effectual restraint upon this tendency, than the delicacy and gentleness which marks the little girl? She again, may become painfully diffident, and a recluse in her bearing, if not subjected to the society of the more confident sex. Encourage the boy to sit always by the fireside, and studiously shun conversation with the opposite sex, or put the girl forward and incite her to a bold and boisterous manner, and their mutual influence is diminished ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... head above the low sedges, often brightened with colonies of the grass pink at the same time, this shy recluse of the swamps woos the passing bee with lovely color, a fragrance like fresh red raspberries, an alluring alighting place all fringed and crested, and with the prospect of hospitable entertainment in the nectary ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... something in this report—in the manner of the man as well as his words—that caused the strangers to hesitate. The description of "the Student" led them to suspect he was a recluse who might not welcome them cordially, but Mary Louise reflected that there was a daughter and decided that any American girl shut up on this three-acre "estate" for three years would be glad to meet another American ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... cannot do better than quote Mr. Lathrop. One of these young men "is Edward Wolcott, a wealthy, handsome, generous, healthy young fellow from one of the sea-port towns; and the other Fanshawe, the hero, who is a poor but ambitious recluse, already passing into a decline through overmuch devotion to books and meditation. Fanshawe, though the deeper nature of the two, and intensely moved by his new passion, perceiving that a union ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... of the Impossible that blind the mind, and looked out into the unknown. Amid stiff, abrupt sentences I wandered; and, presently, I had no fault to charge against their abrupt tellings; for, better far than my own ambitious phrasing, is this mutilated story capable of bringing home all that the old Recluse, of the vanished house, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... day. Two hours in the morning, and two in the afternoon, were devoted to work in the fields or in the garden by those who were able for such tasks. Confession and communion were frequent, but no uniform rule was enforced. In this, as in fasting and austerities generally, each recluse was left to his own free will; and, as will be seen in Pascal’s case, there was no need to stimulate the morbid desire for ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... details of horror, which came to be incorporated with the doctrine of hell, is to be found in the gloomy theories of certain philosophers whose relentless speculations were tinged and moulded by their own recluse misanthropy and the prevailing superstitions of their time. Out of the old asceticism of the East the false spiritualism which regarded matter as the source of evil and this life as a penance arose the dogma of metempsychosis. The consequence of this theory, rigidly carried ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... influence. She remembered something she had caught sight of at the end of a little cross-passage in Waterfall Cottage. There was a statue, a throbbing rosy lamp in the darkness. Mrs. Wade was at 7 o'clock Mass at the Convent every morning despite her recluse habits. She was a good woman, whatever ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... the Friday afternoon that Blue Bonnet and Carita had left for Woodford, that Joy Cross entered the room which she and Blue Bonnet occupied jointly. She glanced about, a look closely akin to joy lighting her plain features. Joy Cross was a recluse by nature, and the thought of having the room solely to herself for three days gave her ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... creed, but take you with me into that upper chamber that looks toward the golden sunrise. I would share your happiness and give you in return a portion in the hope that I too have found. With you at my side I could walk through the world, (for I am not such a recluse as you might suppose,) knowing that the desire of all men's hearts had fallen to me, and that my life was consecrated henceforth to noble uses. And yet to-day I ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... these fierce little notes is not the gentle recluse we are apt to imagine him. They show, on the contrary, that he was not wanting in spirit when occasion demanded. He was himself upright and honest in all his dealings. And he never forgot a kindness, as more than one entry in his will abundantly ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... true, with the exception that the name of the manor-house is a fictitious one. With regard to "Good Master Systeme," I have been furnished by M. Duportal du Godasmeur with further details which do not confirm certain ideas entertained by my mother as to the mystery in which this aged recluse enveloped his existence. I have, however, made no change in the body of the work, thinking that it would be better to leave M. Duportal to publish the true story, known only to himself, of this ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... shall be ever absorbing the things great men have written; with such experience I will charge my mind to the full. Nor will I try to give anything in return. Once, in the delusion that Art, loving the recluse, would make his life happy, I wrote a little for a yellow quarterly and had that succes de fiasco which is always given to a young writer of talent. But the stress of creation soon overwhelmed me. Only Art with a capital H gives any ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... Senor Colonel! As you see, I've had them coupled according to orders. What a well-matched pair!" he added, ironically, as his eyes fell upon Cris Rock and the hunchback. "Ay Dios! It's a sight to draw laughter from the most sober-sided recluse that ever lodged within these walls. Ha! ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... adversity, and inured to retirement from her infancy, she had acquired a taste for all those amusements which a recluse life affords. She was fond of walking and riding—was accomplished in the arts of music and drawing, by the most careful instructions of her mother—and as a scholar, she excelled most of her sex, from the pains which Sandford had taken with that part of her education, ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald |
