"Hermit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the moral of that fate to the moral which is extorted from the gibbet and the hulks,—which makes scarecrows, not beacons; terrifies our weakness, not warms our reason. Who does not allow that it is better to repair than to perish,—better, too, to atone as the citizen than to repent as the hermit? Oh, John Wilkes, Alderman of London, and Drawcansir of Liberty, your life was not an iota too perfect,—your patriotism might have been infinitely purer, your morals would have admitted indefinite amendment, you are no great favourite with us ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are very plentiful. On the islands which enclose the noble lagoon of Funafuti in the Ellice Group, they are to be met with in great numbers, and in dull, rainy weather, an ordinarily good shot may get thirty or forty in a few hours. One day, accompanied by a native lad, I set out to collect hermit crabs, to be used as fish bait. These curious creatures are to be found almost anywhere in the equatorial islands of the Pacific; their shell houses ranging in size from a pea to an orange, and if a piece of coco-nut or fish ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... Hegel—or Heine! The greedy, capricious "Uranian Babyishness" of his pupil Oscar, with its peevish clutching at all soft and provocative and glimmering things, is mere child's play, compared with the deep, dark Vampirism with which this furtive Hermit drains the scarlet blood of the ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... of the lake, also had a summer-house that had been built there by the late Sir Wilfrid Lawson, composed of unhewn stone and covered with moss to make it look ancient. This was known as St. Herbert's Island, after a holy hermit who lived there in the sixth century, the ruins of whose hermitage could still be traced. It was said that so great and perfect was the love of this saintly hermit for his friend St. Cuthbert of Holy Island, whose shrine was ultimately ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... had never before seen this singular being, recognized him at once as Ralph the Ranger, as he was properly called in the village. For years he had lived a hermit-like existence in the forest, supporting himself mainly by his rifle. This was not difficult, for his wants were few and simple. What cause led him to shun the habitations of his kind, and make his dwelling in the woods, no one knew, ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... glisten We'll sometimes stop and listen To tales a gray old hermit tells, or wandering minstrel's song. We'll loiter by the ferries, And pluck the wayside berries, And watch the gallant knights spur by in haste to right a wrong. Oh, little 'Trude and Teddy, For wonders, then, make ready, You'll ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... from day to day, more anxious grew. The voice still seemed to vibrate on his ear. Nor durst he hope the Hermit's tale untrue; For man he seemed to love, and heaven to fear; And none speaks false, where there is none to hear. 'Yet, can man's gentle heart become so fell? 'No more in vain conjecture let me wear 'My hours ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... The speaker is the wise old hermit Trevrizent, who has cleared up for Parzival the mystery of the Grail and led him to inward peace. 6: In Book 6 it is related that Parzival, riding away from the castle of the Grail, comes upon three drops of blood in the snow—the blood of a wild goose that had been attacked by a ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... his hands devoutly folded and his head bowed in pious meditation upon the sufferings of his Redeemer, whose figure bound upon the Cross lies before him. The skull at his feet and the dreary landscape surrounding him indicate his hermit-life of isolation and penance. The Saint is dressed in the coarse brown habit of a mendicant friar, and his face is luminous with that gentleness that distinguished his character after his conversion; for it is recorded of him ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... your head about that!" said Melrose rising. "This house is at your disposal. Undershaw I daresay will tell you tales of me. Take 'em with a grain of salt. He'll tell you I'm mad, and I daresay I am. I'm a hermit anyway, and I like my own society. But you're welcome here, as long as you've any reason to stay. I should like you to know that I do not regard ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... violet, scentless, growing hidden and neglected among the rocks of the mountain-road, suggested to Basho[u] the life of the Buddhist hermit, and thus this poem becomes an exhortation to "shun the world, if you ...
— Japanese Prints • John Gould Fletcher
... undoubtedly, evolution has won the day. Nevertheless, in religious circles, old time prejudices and slow conservatism, clinging to its creeds, as the hermit crab clings to the cast-off shell of oyster or clam, still resist it. The great body of the Christian laity looks askance on it. And even in progressive America, one of the largest and most liberal of American denominations has recently formally tried and condemned ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... and the people had long become accustomed to the Norman yoke, when there was much talk among them of a hermit, who dwelt in a cell not far from the town, in the utmost penitence and humility. He was seldom seen, his face was deeply scarred, and he had lost his left eye, and nothing was known of his name or ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... blood besmear'd, and white with foam, While big the tears of anguish pour, He seeks amid the forest's gloom The humble hermit's ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... for the notice of William Le Worcestre's(293) appearance, and will send for my book as soon as I go to town, which will not be till next week. I have been here since Friday as much a hermit as yourself. I wanted air and quiet, having been much fatigued on my nephew's amendment, trying to dissuade him from making the campaign with his militia; but in vain! I now dread hearing of some eccentric freak. I am sorry Mr. Tyson has ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... storm-swept hills. In that beautiful story of the lost paradise, God pulls down the hedge built around Adam and Eve. The government through a fence outside was succeeded by self-government inside. The hermit and the cloistered saint end their career with innocence. But Christ, struggling unto blood against sin, ends His career with character. God educates man by giving him complete charge over himself and setting him on "the barebacked horse of his own will," leaving him to break ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... solitary hermit!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing here, with your nose buried in an exercise book? There's no getting at you nowadays. You'll grow old before your time, Gwen, my child! Come out this ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... England the partition of this opera of Rossini was transferred to the story of Peter the Hermit; by which means the indecorum of giving such names as "Moyse," "Pharaon," etc., to the dancers selected from it (as was done in ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... native soil, Or try some long abode within these woods? Well, I will hence depart, and hie me home. What, hie me home, said I? that may not be; In Amadine rests my felicity. Then, Mucedorus, do as thou didst decree: Attire thee hermit-like within these groves; Walk often to the beech, and view the well; Make settles there, and seat thyself thereon; And when thou feelest thyself to be athirst, Then drink a hearty draught to Amadine. No doubt, she thinks on thee, and will one day Come pledge thee at this ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... without a glance on either side of him, Naudheim left the room, amidst a silence which was almost an instinctive thing—the realization, perhaps, of the strange nature of this man, who from a stern sense of duty had left his hermit's life for a few days, to speak ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... upon Grace whom she had not seen for some little time. Grace, as usual, was full of complaints against Arthur for being so misanthropical, so cross- grained and so queer, shutting himself up like a hermit and refusing to see any one ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... speak, Yvon broke in. "He shall come! I tell him he shall come, Valerie! All my life I perish, thou knowest it, for a companion of my sex, of my age. Thou art my angel, Valerie, but thou art a woman, and soon, too, thou wilt leave me. Alone, a hermit in my chateau, my heart desolate, how to support life? It is for this that I cry to the friend of my house to return to his country, the country of his race; to bring here his respected father, ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... their olive or russet-brown backs and light-tinted, dark-spotted breasts, but have the most beautiful voices in all Birdland. The names of these wonderful singers, who make a musical quartette, are Wood Thrush, Hermit Thrush, Wilson's Thrush, and Olive-backed Thrush; but you will have to keep both your eyes and ears open to learn to tell them apart and name ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... queer style," returned Randy. "According to what he says, and what that Bill Hobson told me, he must be a good deal of a hermit." ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... being different, the King agreed with none of them, and gave the reward to none. But still wishing to find the right answers to his questions, he decided to consult a hermit, widely renowned for ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy
... all hearts and charm all eyes, gentle and intelligent, spiritual yet able to reason, courteous as though she had passed her life at court, simple as the hermit who had never known the world, the fire of her soul is tempered in ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... determined to search through the world till he found her. He flew on and on for several days, till he came to a great desert, where he saw a cavern, and, to his delight, there sat Celia, sharing the simple breakfast of an old hermit. ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... the mountains at all seasons until he loved them. His chief delights were the companionship of his stout horses and his even more intimate companionship with nature. To scare up a partridge, to scent the pines, to listen to the hermit thrush were meat and drink to him. That there was gold in these noble mountains moved him very little, though this fact provided him with a livelihood for which he was duly grateful. The school-teacher was fortunate to be brought up with a ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... the tomb of the anchorite, St. Herbot; his effigy reposes under a Gothic canopy, upon a granite sarcophagus, represented in his hermit's gown, the hood thrown back, flowing hair, long beard, his breviary suspended to his girdle, and his pilgrim's staff by his left arm. His feet repose on a recumbent lion. St. Herbot is the great patron of cattle; the three days of the fair and pardon all the bullocks rest; and when an ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... not often more than a few feet above it. I could not help having a fear that in those places there often lurked the fearful python; while some dark pools over which we crawled might, I thought it more than possible, harbour a hermit alligator or some ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... nuisance which they find them, complain more of these than they do of the other: so most men hate the unmannerly and untaught as much as they do the wicked, and more. There is no doubt that he who wishes to live, not in solitary and desert places, like a hermit, but in fellowship with men, and in populous cities, will find it a very necessary thing, to have skill to put himself forth comely and seemly in his fashions, gestures, and manners: the lack of which do make other ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... given me that the man might kiss the maidservant. I remember a common walk to a kind of well, on the road to which was a cottage shaded with damascene (Chapter I./2. Damson is derived from Damascene; the fruit was formerly known as a "Damask Prune.") trees, inhabited by an old man, called a hermit, with white hair, who used to give us damascenes. I know not whether the damascenes, or the reverence and indistinct fear for this old man produced the greatest effect on my memory. I remember when going there crossing in the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Hermit's Cave is a few miles from Galena, and is so named on account of having been used as a dwelling by its former owner, who kept a coffin in which he intended to place himself before the final summons, but was overtaken by death in the forest and it was never used. He wrote sermons on the rocks in ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... Balthasar, the third, was of a dark complexion, had a large beard, and offered 'myrrh' to our Saviour's humanity. We should, we confess, miss such pleasant little myths in other old books besides Bede's Histories. They seem appropriate to ancient works, as the beard is to the goat or the hermit; and the truth that lies in them is not difficult to eliminate. The next name of note in our literary annals is that of the great Alfred. Surely if ever man was not only before his age, but before 'all ages,' it was he. A palm of the tropics growing ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... But he didn't join her, and none of us knew what had become of him until today, when we heard of what had been found at Scarhaven. That explained it—he had taken that short cut from the Northborough road through the woods behind the Keep, and fallen over the cliff at the Hermit's steps. But that very night, you, Mr. Vickers, and Mr. Copplestone and Miss Greyle, nearly stopped everything, and if Andrius and Chatfield hadn't carried you off, the scheme would have come to nothing. Well—you know what ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... half-mad hermit in his mice-infested cabin—who had been at the bottom of it all! Tavish! The discovery did not amaze him profoundly. He had never been able to dissociate Tavish from the picture, unreasoning though he confessed himself to be, and now that ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... said, "the abode I have not left except once for two months—the evening when you met me. During all this time I have not got up from the bed where I work at the great work, for the sake of which I have condemned myself to this hermit's life, and which happily I have just finished, for my powers have come to an end." It must have been during these last months in his garret, when he neglected everything for his projected masterpiece, that, covered with vermin from the ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... hermit bird of tender sight! Ha! well thou fliest from the light, To lie in secret and repose, Hid in some crevice no one knows; And, wrapt in slumber's lightest sleep, Thy ears their vigils ever keep, Lest some stray wanderer may intrude, To mar thy sacred solitude. Thy pinions only bear thee out ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... "She sheltered me, gave me a new start. What she did for me she will do for any other person who really wishes to make a fresh start in life. I made few acquaintances, no friends. Fortunately, the average New Yorker asks only that his neighbor leave him alone. No hermit could find better and more complete solitude than in the heart ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... of my order, 'pour le merite,' around your neck, and that I may always have a rope around you, and make you completely my prisoner, I give you an apartment in my palace at Potsdam; and that you may not feel yourself a hermit, you will have every day six covers laid for your friends; and to mock you with the appearance of liberty, you shall have your own equipage and servants, who will obey you in all things with one exception—if you order your valet to pack up your effects, and your coachman to take ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Love's delight retired, In these sad groves an hermit's life I lead: And those false pleasures, which I once admired, With sad remembrance of my fall, I dread. To birds, to trees, to earth, impart I this; For she less secret, and as senseless is. O sweet woods! the delight of solitariness! O how much ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... the tradition of the place, lived the witch, Mother Ludlam, whose caldron lies in the tower of Frensham Church. Another excavation in the ground a few yards away has also its own tradition, or rather two traditions. One is that it was the regular abode of a hermit named Foote, who starved to death in it; another, that Foote was a lunatic who was found dying in the hole, but actually died in the workhouse. The details are precise. "Foote was a gentleman. He came one day to the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... The hermit dressed their wounds, and presently, when Sir Accolon had come to himself again, the King spoke gently to him, bidding him say how he had come to bear arms against him. "Sir and my lord," answered Sir Accolon, "it comes of naught but the treachery of your kinswoman, Queen Morgan le Fay. For on ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... an article published in the Missionary Review of the World for January, 1910, declares: "A half-century ago, China and Manchuria, Japan and Korea, Turkey and Arabia, and even the vast continent of Africa, were sleeping—hermit nations, locked in the cell of long seclusion and exclusion. Central Asia was comparatively unexplored, as was Central Africa. In many lands, Satan's long occupation was undisputed and his empire unmolested. Papal countries were as intolerant as pagan; Italy and ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... was much more reliable than his ear. He saw straight, but did not always hear straight. For instance, he seems always to have confounded the song of the hermit thrush with that of the wood thrush. He records having heard the latter even in April, but never the former. In the Maine woods and on Monadnock it is always the wood thrush which he hears, and never ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... not yet returned, and leaves me still a hermit. I am well pleased with my solitude, nor do I care much to go out of the country during the winter; but domestic circumstances make it advisable to go to Providence. There I shall have a good library at hand, which I miss a good deal here. Indeed, I think it likely that every ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... rapidly. The big house was made ready to shut up for a year at least, comforts for the long voyage laid in, and farewell visits paid. The general activity and excitement rendered it impossible for Charlie to lead the life of an artistic hermit any longer and he fell into a restless condition which caused Rose to long for the departure of the Rajah when she felt that he would be safe, for these farewell festivities were dangerous to one who was ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... night in the hut with the old hermit, and on the following morning, with the rising of the sun, buckled on the magic gaiters and stepped out briskly. All went well to begin with, nothing arrested his progress, and he sped over rivers, forests, and mountains. As the sun was setting he came to the borders of a second ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... coast; but where could he deposit the body of his mistress, how inter it with all the honours suitable to her rank and merit? he at length recollected, that in the forest which surrounded his mansion, dwelt an aged hermit, at whose cell the corpse might remain till its interment: he could then enjoy the sad pleasure of visiting daily the object of all his solicitude, and he determined to found on the spot an abbey, in which ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... and amuses himself with things of this sort. In old times there really was a hermit here, and this is his effigy. Come down these narrow stairs, if you please, and see the ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... canoness; cit, cittess;[161] coheir, coheiress; count, countess; deacon, deaconess; demon, demoness; diviner, divineress; doctor, doctoress; giant, giantess; god, goddess; guardian, guardianess; Hebrew, Hebrewess; heir, heiress; herd, herdess; hermit, hermitess; host, hostess; Jesuit, Jesuitess; Jew, Jewess; mayor, mayoress; Moabite, Moabitess; monarch, monarchess; pape, papess; or, pope, popess; patron, patroness; peer, peeress; poet, poetess; priest, priestess; prior, prioress; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... much authority for the consistent carrying out of this distinction; but it seems useful and logical. Some cases, such as "Paul the Apostle," "William the Conqueror," "Thomas the Rhymer," "Peter the Hermit," present no difficulty. The name and the descriptive title are blended together, and form as distinctly one name ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... cruisings o'er the seas, Westward to the Hebrides, And to Scilly's rocky shore; And the hermit's cavern dismal, Christ's great name and rites baptismal in the ocean's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... A sword so large as to require an hundred men to lift it; a helmet that by its own weight forces a passage through a court-yard into an arched vault, big enough for a man to go through; a picture that walks out of its frame; a skeleton ghost in a hermit's cowl:—When your expectation is wound up to the highest pitch, these circumstances take it down with a witness, destroy the work of imagination, and, instead of attention, excite laughter. I was both surprised and vexed to find the enchantment dissolved, ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... suddenly stopped at the entrance of a cave, to which was a door of iron, then moving his head, and once more licking the hands of his companion, the generous animal left him, and retired back to the woods. The youth now went to the cave, and having knocked at the door, it was opened by a venerable hermit, who bade him welcome, brought him warm water to wash his feet, and set before him refreshments of various kinds. When he had eaten, he inquired the cause of his coming to such a desolate country; and Ins al Wujjood having related his adventures, the old ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... many people, voided a calf. A portent of some new and unusual event, or rather the punishment attendant on some atrocious crime. It appears also from the ancient and authentic records of those parts, that during the time St. Elwitus {42} led the life of a hermit at Llanhamelach, {43} the mare that used to carry his provisions to him was covered by a stag, and produced an animal of wonderful speed, resembling a horse before ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... reported that these islanders only adored the visible stars and the heavens. But after mingling with them for some years, and the languages becoming mutually intelligible, many of the Spaniards began to notice among them divers ceremonies and rites. Brother Roman,[19] a hermit, who went, by order of Columbus, amongst the caciques to instruct them in the principles of Christianity, has written a book in the Spanish language on the religious rites of the islanders. I undertake to review this work, leaving out some questions of small importance. I now ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... with one who has no intellectual occupation, or one who has lived in solitude from infancy. In this case the hermit becomes a kind of savage, without any intellectual development, and reverts more or less to the state of ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... bound for the land of Egypt. Taking passage in her, after long journeying he arrived in that land when the silent wings of night were outspread, and darkness brooded on all things. Here, coming to a poor hermitage, he begged a night's lodging, on which the hermit replied: ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... name of Kilburn from Kule-bourne or Coal-brook. The earliest mention of this locality is when one Godwyn, a hermit, retired here in the reign of Henry I., and "built a cell near a little rivulet, called in different records Cuneburne, Keelebourne, Coldbourne, and Kilbourne, on a site surrounded with wood." This stream is the same which passed southward to ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... I am not living in a talking, babbling world, nor yet among people who are trying to worm facts out of me; you needn't look so frightened because you have let the cat out of the bag to a faithful old hermit like me. I shall never name his having been in England; I shall be out of temptation, for no one will ask me. Stay!' (interrupting himself rather abruptly) 'was it ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... that moment from the latter place were anything but churchly. In fact, the hermit and another voice were performing at the full extent of very powerful lungs an old drinking-song, of which this ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... eyes was the light twinkling out from the library window of Glenellyn on the dark fir hill two miles away. By that light I knew Alan Fraser must have returned from his long sojourn abroad, for it only shone when he was at Glenellyn. He still lived there, something of a hermit, people said; he had never married, and he cared nothing for society. His companions were books and dogs and horses; he was given to scientific researches and wrote much for the reviews; he travelled a great deal. So ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... how you'll ever get acquainted with him," said Felicity. "He never goes anywhere except to church. He just stays home and reads books when he isn't working. Mother says he is a perfect hermit." ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... pebbles was never wet by the rising tide. It had been the delight of Moses when a boy, to come here and watch the gradual rise of the tide till the grotto was entirely cut off from all approach, and then to look out in a sort of hermit-like security over the open ocean that stretched before him. Many an hour he had sat there and dreamed of all the possible fortunes that might be found for him when he should launch away ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... probably, or of a broken heart as we say; at any rate having this kingly gift left in him, that he cannot live and look on the ruin of his people, as St. Edmund's brother Edwold is doing in these same years, "near a clear well at Carnelia, in Dorsetshire," doing the hermit business there ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... things, the vicar said to himself; even his own wife—good, and nice, and sensible, and intelligent as she was—even she did not understand that a man in the world must meet all sorts of men; and that in these days it did not do for a clergyman to be a hermit. 'Twas thus that Mark Robarts argued when he found himself called upon to defend himself before the bar of his own conscience for going to Chaldicotes and increasing his intimacy with Mr. Sowerby. He did know that Mr. Sowerby was a dangerous man; he was aware that ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the wildest, the most confused, and consequently the most favorable appearance for the construction of any residence which it was desirable should escape the curious eyes of the settlers, at the same time that it possessed the advantage of overlooking their proceedings. A hermit would have chosen the place as a spot suited to distant and calm observation of the world, while it was every way adapted to solitary reflection and ascetic devotion. All who have journeyed through the narrow and ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... Cromwell's Ironsides. They are like the sound of the trumpet blown before the walls of Jericho, or the Psalms of David denouncing woe upon the enemies of God's chosen people. If there is any purely Puritan strain in American poetry it is in the war-hymns of the Quaker "Hermit of Amesbury." Of these patriotic poems there were three principal collections: Voices of Freedom, 1849; the Panorama and Other Poems, 1856; and In War Time, 1863; Whittier's work as the poet of freedom was done when, on hearing the bells ring for the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... This man, who baffled for a long time the rector's perspicacity and who might in a higher sphere have proved another l'Hopital, incapable of intrigue like all really profound persons, was by this time living in the contemplative state of an ancient hermit. Independent through privation, no personal consideration acted on his mind; he knew the laws and judged impartially. His life, reduced to the merest necessaries, was pure and regular. The peasants loved Monsieur ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... AURELIA, she has charms, Might in a hermit stir desire. T' attain the heav'n that's in her arms, I'd quit the world's alluring harms, And to a cell ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... other injures both, and dissolves at a breath; rude as it is, the great cable falls down and snaps at last. But this dimly resembles the dominion of the Creator. It does not need a subject like that of Peter the Hermit. If the stream be but bright and strong, it will sweep like a spring-tide to the popular heart. Not in word only, but in intellectual act lies the fascination. It is the homage to the Invisible. This power, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... to see it. Undignified to do a kindness? What a funny, selfish idea! The fact was, there was a certain streak in Polly's nature that made her more akin to all these good people than to him—him with his unsociable leanings towards a hermit's cell; his genuine need of an occasional hour's privacy and silence, in which to think a few ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... Work—work—work; that's all right, it's amusing; but I want women about me and I want pleasure. John Knox had a better time of it than I, with his godly females all leaving their husbands to follow after him; I would I were John Knox; I hate living like a hermit. Write me a nice letter if ever you are in the humour to write to me, and it doesn't hurt your head. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 92), "The Story of the Hermit," has as its subject the mystery of God's Providence, and is familiar to English readers in the form of Parnell's Hermit. The substance of the Sicilian version is as follows: A hermit sees a man wrongfully accused of theft and shockingly maltreated. He thereupon ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... arguments establishing the Vedanta doctrine, and then the Bharata-samhita (i.e. the Mahabharata) in a hundred thousand slokas in order to support thereby the teaching of the Veda—himself says in the chapter called Mokshadharma, which treats of knowledge, 'If a householder, or a Brahmakarin, or a hermit, or a mendicant wishes to achieve success, what deity should he worship?' and so on; explains then at great length the Pankaratra system, and then says, 'From the lengthy Bharata story, comprising one hundred thousand slokas, this body of doctrine has been extracted, with the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... Peter the Hermit conjured up the first crusadoes against the infidels by running about from monarch to monarch. Lady Craven should ,be as zealous and as renowned; and every fair Circassian would acknowledge, that one English lady had repaid their country for the secret which another had given to Europe from ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... England latterly, and most conspicuously of all. In one of his courses thither, after long labors in the Hebrides, Man, Wales, and down the western shores to the very Land's End and farther, he paused at the Scilly Islands for a little while. He was told of a wonderful Christian hermit living strangely in these sea-solitudes; had the curiosity to seek him out, examine, question, and discourse with him; and, after some reflection, accepted Christian baptism from the venerable man. In Snorro the story is involved in miracle, rumor, and fable; but the fact itself seems certain, ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... and preach." Afterwards, when the meaning of these words was explained to him, he exclaimed: "This is what I seek for!" He threw away his wallet, took off his shoes, and replaced his leather girdle by a cord. His hermit's tunic appearing too delicate, he put on a coarse, gray robe, reaching to his feet, with sleeves that came down over his fingers; to this he added a hood, covering his head and face. Clothing of this character he wore to the end of his life. This was ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... into a closeness of sympathetic and intellectual rapport never before imagined, they have at the same time enabled individuals, although keeping in closest touch with everything going on in the world, to enjoy, if they choose, a physical privacy, such as one had to be a hermit to command in your day. Our advantages in this respect have so far spoiled us that being in a crowd, which was the matter-of-course penalty you had to pay for seeing or hearing anything interesting, would seem too dear a price to ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... battalions of Debit and Credit were in hostile order, the weaker simply devoted to fighting for delay, when a winged messenger bearing the form of old Mr. Braddock descended to her with the reconciling news that a hermit bachelor, an acquaintance of Mr. Redworth's—both of whom wore a gloomy hue in her mind immediately—had offered a sum for the purchase of The Crossways. Considering the out-of-the-way district, Mr. Braddock thought it an excellent price to get. She thought the reverse, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in my bag as well as for a cordial the little collection distilled by Hello; as for the Spiritual Marriages, so well translated by Maeterlinck, they are disconnected and obscure, they stifle me, this Ruysbroeck oppresses me less. This hermit is singular, all the same, for he does not enter into us, but rather goes round about us; he endeavours, like Saint Denys, to arrive at God, rather in heaven than in the soul, but in wishing to take such a flight, he strains his wings, and ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... besides the lobster (and its near allies, hermit-crabs, prawns, shrimps, and cray-fish), all crabs, including those very quaint-looking animals (now so often seen in our living collections), the king-crabs (Limulus), and a variety of more or less strangely different ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... and not of truth, is the moving principle of his mind; and he is guided in his fantastic delineations by no rule but the impulse of an inexhaustible imagination. He luxuriates equally in scenes of Eastern magnificence; or the still solitude of a hermit's cell—in the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... said Philo Gubb, "don't mention it. A deteckative gent is obliged to keep up a set of disguises hitherto unsuspected by the mortal world. This Tasmanian Wild Man outfit will do for a hermit disguise. So you ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... rough and uneducated. The rough and uneducated are the chosen vessels into which God pours the elixirs at which we marvel. From among the rough and uneducated, prophets arise—an Apostle Peter, or St. Peter the Hermit. Wherever mental power is imprisoned, and remains intact and entire for want of an outlet in conversation, in politics, in literature, in the imaginings of the scholar, in the efforts of the statesman, in the conceptions of the inventor, or the soldier's toils of war; the fire within ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... the infant Jesus, and all approached and kissed it. Then from without came the sound of a guitar; the worshippers arose and ranged themselves against the wall; six girls dressed as shepherdesses; a man representing Lucifer; two others, a hermit and the lazy vagabond Bartola; a boy, the archangel Gabriel, entered the church. They bore banners and marched to the centre of the building, then acted ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... Lispenard, "few girls can resist the flattery of being treated by a man as if she is the only woman worth considering in the world, and Peter did that to an extent which was simply disgraceful. It was laughable to see the old hermit become social the moment she appeared, and to see how his eyes and attention followed her. And his learning to dance! That showed how ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... evening Peredur entered a valley, and at the head of the valley he came to a hermit's cell, and the hermit welcomed him gladly, and there he spent the night. And in the morning he arose, and when he went forth, behold, a shower of snow had fallen the night before, and a hawk had killed a wild-fowl in front of the cell. And the noise of the horse scared ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... refers to those substances naturally Saturnine in their quality of life and expression, such as lead, clay, and coal, among the minerals, and various deadly plants among the flora, the chief of which is the aconite or monkshood, so significant of Saturn and the isolated, monkish hermit. After some repetition, in order to impress the truth of correspondences, our author exclaims: "What is the human body but a constellation of the same powers that formed the stars in the sky?" Truly, what else? ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... wilderness &c (unproductive) 169; howling wilderness; rotten borough, Old Sarum. exclusion, excommunication, banishment, exile, ostracism, proscription; cut, cut direct; dead cut. inhospitality^, inhospitableness &c adj.; dissociability^; domesticity, Darby and Joan. recluse, hermit, eremite, cenobite; anchoret^, anchorite; Simon Stylites^; troglodyte, Timon of Athens^, Santon^, solitaire, ruralist^, disciple of Zimmermann, closet cynic, Diogenes; outcast, Pariah, castaway, pilgarlic^; wastrel, foundling, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... girl. I'm a sort of hermit, I suppose. At least folks call me that, and hermits always live alone, you know." The man smiled very ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on Grandpa's Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... the line which has excited the most talk is that in which Ariosto throws doubt on the general resurrection. Ariosto," I added, "in speaking of the hermit who would have hindered Rhodomonte from getting possession of Isabella, widow of Zerbin, paints the African, who wearied of the hermit's sermons, seizes him and throws him so far that he dashes him against a rock, against which he remains in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... whose ambition it had been to combine the hermit's indifference to social obligations with an indulgence in social festivities, the blow was a cruel one; and the more cruel because he realised that Clarice's criticism contained a grain of truth. He hit back cruelly. 'Drake ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... will ever live on history's pages, to be eclipsed only by that of Napoleon, the man of destiny, who, as a military genius, stands alone and unrivalled: "Grand, gloomy, peculiar, he sat upon the throne, a sceptred hermit, wrapped in the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... of yore there was once a certain hermit, who dwelt in a cell, which he had fashioned for himself from a natural cave in the ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... form, Oratorios and Lenten operas in Italy, Carissimi and Peri, Scarlatti's oratorios, Scenery and costumes in oratorios, The passage of the Red Sea and "Dal tuo stellato," Nerves wrecked by beautiful music, "Peter the Hermit" and refractory mimic troops, "Mi manca la voce" and operatic amenities, Operatic prayers and ballets, Goethe's criticism of ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... he sadly suffers in their grief, Out-weeps an hermit, and out-prays a saint: All the long night he studies their relief, How they may be supplied, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... personal habits which a modern spirit loves to point out, as the great essential of hermit-life, united with the family characteristic of the early Seton to verify the last line ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... group by Gerard Douw, called the "Evening School," enabling them to observe its exquisite finish and the wonderful way in which the picture seemed to be lit through its own windows. Peter pointed out the beauties of another picture by Douw, called "The Hermit," and he also told them some interesting anecdotes of the artist, who was ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... of that state of liberation, which has been alluded to in so many varied terms. The fact that Buddha, like many of the Oriental Masters, sought the seclusion of the forest; the isolation, and simplicity of the hermit,—has given rise to the belief, almost universally held among Oriental disciples, that liberation from maya, the delusions of the world, can not be ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... The Watch Tower; for the Frenchman was always on the high balcony, telescope in hand, gazing seaward. No one knew his name. He dealt with the villagers through his servant, who could speak English, himself professing that he could not speak the language. He was a recluse, almost a hermit. At odd times, a brig would be seen dropping anchor in the offing. She was always from across the water, from the old country, as villagers to this day insist upon calling Europe. The manor during these peaceful invasions ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... he went on to explain. "Don't do nothing, so far as nobody knows—lives like a hermit, stays in the house all the time, and has long whiskers. Don't know whether he's rich or not, but 'spect he ain't becuz no man with money'd live like he does." He thrust a long forefinger into Mr. Birnes' face. "And stingy! He's so stingy he won't let nobody come in the ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... your trouble, Stanbury; but you can come if you please, you know. If you should find yourself locked out, you won't be angry. A hermit such as I am must ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Stu. Or turned hermit; counting a string of beads in a dark cave; or under a weeping willow, praying for mercy on the wicked. Ha! ha! ha! Prithee be a man, and leave dying to disease and old age. Fortune may be ours again; ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... home deserted for the lonely wood, Tormented with a wound he could not know, His, like all deep grief, plunged in solitude: I 'm fond myself of solitude or so, But then, I beg it may be understood, By solitude I mean a sultan's, not A hermit's, with ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... The Hermit's cell occupies the background. It is built of mud and reeds, flat-roofed and doorless. Inside are seen a pitcher and a loaf of black bread; in the centre, on a wooden support, a large book; on the ground, here ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... in no sense a woodbird, we have in New York the wood thrush, the hermit thrush, the veery, or Wilson's thrush, the olive-backed thrush, and, transiently, one or two other species not so ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... the boy-artist. Before departing, I wished to take leave of my father, whom I had not seen for twelve years. I had heard divers reports of the extreme austerity of his life, and expected to see the withered figure of a hermit, worn-out, exhausted, macerated with fast and vigil. My astonishment was great when I beheld my father. No trace of exhaustion was on his countenance, which beamed with a joy whose source was not of this world. A beard as white as snow, and long thin hair ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... confined in them were starved to death. Matthew of Paris, the historian, says, that many of those unfortunate men were among the first of the Poitevin nobility. Another instance of John's barbarous disposition was his treatment of Peter of Pontefract, a poor hermit, who was imprisoned in Corfe Castle for prophesying the deposition of that prince. Though the prophecy was in some measure fulfilled by the surrender which John made of his crown to the Pope's Legate, the year following, yet the imprudent prophet was sentenced to be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... and gently spake and smiled; 1360 As they were loosened by that Hermit old, Mine eyes were of their madness half beguiled, To answer those kind looks; he did enfold His giant arms around me, to uphold My wretched frame; my scorched limbs he wound 1365 In linen moist and balmy, and as cold As dew to drooping leaves;—the chain, with sound Like earthquake, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... fresh supply of eggs on the third day, with a basket I had constructed out of young boughs, and which enabled me to carry a whole week's sustenance. Then I felt quite satisfied, and made up my mind that I would live as a hermit during my sojourn on the island, however long it might be; for I preferred anything to obeying the orders of one whom I detested as I did ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... come to me one by one, each bringing with it its separate pleasure. I have no fancy for buying up, at one fell swoop, the whole establishment of some bankrupt banker or confiscated Russian nobleman. Instead of slipping at once, like a dishonest hermit-crab, into the whole investment of somebody else, I rather choose to come by my own, as I suppose other more happily constituted shell-fish do, by gradual and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the red spot. A shell I had found in plenty in the Marquesas I found here also unchanged in all things else, but there were the red spots. A lively little crab wore the same marking. The case of the hermit or soldier crab was more conclusive, being the result of conscious choice. This nasty little wrecker, scavenger, and squatter has learned the value of a spotted house; so it be of the right colour he will choose the smallest shard, tuck himself in a mere corner of a broken whorl, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Weasel—things that almost any one else would have liked. For instance, there was music. The Pleasant Valley Singing Society, to which most of the bird people belonged, did not number Grumpy Weasel among its admirers. He never cared to hear a bird sing—not even Jolly Robin's cousin the Hermit, who was one of the most beautiful singers in the woods. And as for Buddy Brown Thrasher, whom most people thought a brilliant performer, Grumpy Weasel always groaned whenever he heard him singing in the ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... still sweeter, old Anthony describes Gayton, another worthy; "he came up to London to live in a shirking condition, and wrote trite things merely to get bread to sustain him and his wife."[50] The hermit Anthony seems to have had a mortal antipathy against the Eves ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... This hermit existence he kept up for over a fortnight. He had fought with Tommy Ashe and he felt diffident about inflicting his company on Tommy, considering the casus belli. Nor could he bring himself to a casual dropping in on Sam Carr. ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... me, and yet it looks like it. You are very mysterious. This 'something' must have been very important to have sent you back so soon. Was it a discovery, or was it a fright? Did you find a dead body? But what is that you can want to ask me about? I have been a hermit for twenty years. I crept into my shell before you were born, and here I ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... years old he went away from the city of Rome and became a hermit and lived in desert places in the East. One day, so the story goes, as he sat at the gate of the monastery a lion came up limping as though he had been hurt. The other hermits ran away but St. Jerome went to meet the lion. The ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... avenue of highway, to strike the centre point of branching alleys, or to find the aqueduct trailing, thousand-footed, through the brush. It is not a wilderness; it is rather a preserve. And, fitly enough, the centre of the maze is not a hermit's cavern. In the midst, a little mirthful town lies sunlit, humming with the business of pleasure; and the palace, breathing distinction and peopled by historic ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson |
