"Recluse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... intellectual level. Solitude fostered a sensitiveness which to begin with was extreme; the lack of stated occupation encouraged his natural tendency to dream and procrastinate and hope for the improbable. He was a recluse in the midst of millions, and viewed with dread the necessity of going forth ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... to him, I said, "Brother, I had no sooner parted from you, but a thought came into my head, which neither of us had reflected on before. You are a recluse dervish, used to live in tranquillity, disengaged from all the cares of the world, and intent only upon serving God. You know not, perhaps, what trouble you have taken upon yourself, to take care of so many camels. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... mockery! Once I had foreseen myself wearing it in the smoking-room at a late hour—the centre of a group of eminent men entranced by the brilliancy of my conversation. And now—! I was nothing but a small, dull, soup-stained, sticking-plastered, nerve-racked recluse. Nerves, yes. I assured myself that I had not seen—what I had seemed to see. All very odd, of course, and very unpleasant, but easily explained. Nerves. Excitement of coming to Keeb too much for ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... Here was I ruminating how to address this mysterious recluse: he appears, and proves to be my old and ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... 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 ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... 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 ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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. That was a meet place indeed for the meditation of a quiet hour, and no more grateful ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... 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 ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... hear, no heart 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 bears his fortune well or ill, So bear ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... a rather 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, as always, as ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... done. To acquaint Bruce's father with Sprudell's plot and enlist him on Bruce's side seemed altogether the easiest part of her plan. She had no notion that she was the brilliant lady-journalist to whom the diplomat, the recluse, the stern and rock-bound capitalist, give up the secrets of their souls, but she did have an assured feeling that with the arguments she had to offer she could manage ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... Folly, 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 from all mankind. ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... the Hall Basil Hurlhurst, the recluse invalid, lay upon his couch, trying to shut out the mirth and gayety that floated up to him from below. As the sound of Pluma's voice sounded upon his ear he turned his face to the wall with a bitter groan. "She is so like—" he muttered, grimly. "Ah! the pleasant ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... Powell's Sermons from Ardbraccan or Dr. Beaufort; the Primate lent them to my father. There is a charge on the connection between merit and preferment, and one discourse on the influence of academical studies and a recluse life, which I particularly admire, and wish it had been quoted ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... experienced at finding myself in actual, physical contact with an author. And that this author should be none other than the creator of Gallegher, prepossessing, vigorous, rather than a dry and elderly recluse, made my excitement the keener. It happened also, after entering the smoking-car, that the remaining vacant seat was at my side, and here Mr. Davis established himself. He looked at me, he asked if my name was Winston Churchill, he said he had read my book. ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... Saracen in Granada. His left hand held a great, old-fashioned two-bladed axe, his right hand led an elephant covered with silk. On its back was a castle wherein sat a lady looking like a nun, wearing a mantle of black cloth and a white head-dress like a recluse.[7] ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... hallowed by the reputation of having been the residence of anchorets, seeking for scenes in which they might practise uninterrupted devotion. Thus, St. Baldred or Balther lived for some time, during the course of the seventh century, as a religious recluse, upon the rugged and precipitous island of the Bass, as stated by Boece, Leslie, Dempster,[117] etc., and, as we know with more certainty from a poem written—upwards now of one thousand years ago—by a native ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... worn at her neck while a girl, and which, after she became a mother, she had placed round her child's. It had even happened, that being, while pregnant, abandoned by all the world, and constantly occupied in contemplating the image of this benevolent recluse, her offspring had contracted some resemblance to this revered object. She therefore bestowed upon him the name of Paul, giving him for his patron a saint who had passed his life far from mankind by whom he had been first deceived and then forsaken. Virginia, on receiving ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... men were men of affairs, of action. Given a good literary style they could hardly have been other than interesting, they had so much to say that they gained from external sources. Even FitzGerald—the one recluse—had all the treasures of literature constantly passing into his study. Cowper had but eighteen books altogether during many of his years in Olney, and some of us who have lent our volumes in the past and ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... allowance, and a military force not equal to his own estimates for the Netherland work, he was ordered to go forth from the Netherlands to conquer France—and with it the dominion of the world—for the recluse of the Escorial. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... apparel was boots. A long grey beard dangled from his chin. He fixed glinting, fiery eyes upon the heap of men, and remained motionless. Fascinated, their tongues cleaving, their blood cold, they arose to their feet. The gleaming glance of the recluse swept slowly over the group until it found the face of the little man. There it stayed ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... great of spirit to sink into the recluse, and first beguiled into Rossetti's studio, he soon met Millais, and by degrees he responded again to friends and friendships, and life called to him with many voices. In the late summer of 1862 the poet and his son were at "green, pleasant ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... Mannering had been living in a house whose garden adjoined his own for a year before my arrival on the scene. His life, until the Colonel had recognized him as an acquaintance he had made at the house of a friend some years before, had been that of a recluse, the object of his retirement being to perfect some mechanical invention upon which he was engaged. He had soon developed into a friend of the family, and I had found him firmly installed as such when I made my appearance at ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... learned man. "Yes, yes, she often dwells a recluse in large cities! Poesy! Yes, I have seen her—a single short moment, but sleep came into my eyes! She stood on the balcony and shone as the Aurora Borealis shines. Go on, go on—thou wert on the balcony, and went through the ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... conceived a great wish to meet the marquise; for, having got M. de Nocheres who no doubt regretted her prolonged retreat—to entrust him with a commission for his granddaughter, he came to the convent parlour and asked for the fair recluse. She, although she had never seen him, recognised him at the first glance; for having never seen so handsome a cavalier as he who now presented himself before her, she thought this could be no other than the Marquis de Ganges, of whom people ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... discipline and organisation, but in regard to instruction and study. Even the mysterious Palladius, Patrick's forerunner, is said to have left books in Ireland.[2] But the earliest important references to that use of books which distinguishes the educated missionary from the mere fanatical recluse are in connexion with Patrick. Pope Sixtus is said to have given him books in plenty to take with him to Ireland. Later he is supposed to have visited Rome, whence he brought books home to Armagh.[3] He gave copies of parts of the Scriptures to Irish chieftains. ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... toleration, Pray, what's the use of our Reformation? What is the use of our Church and State? Our Bishops, Articles, Tithe and Rate? And still as he yelled out "what's the use?" Old Echoes, from their cells recluse Where they'd for centuries slept, broke loose, Yelling ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... 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 to ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... Distracted by the news of the warlike preparations of Servia and Greece, Abdul Hamid looked on Russia's advice in a contrary sense as a piece of Muscovite treachery. About the same time, too, there were rumours of palace plots at Constantinople; and the capricious recluse of Yildiz finally decided to keep his best troops near at hand. It appears, then, that Nihilism in Russia and the spectre of conspiracy always haunting the brain of Abdul Hamid played their part in ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... found in many ancient carvings and paintings accompanying various Saints. There is also a legend specially connecting this creature with S. Giles. In a retreat in a forest in the diocese of Nismes, the recluse, with one companion, is said to have lived on the fruits of the earth and the milk of a hind. Some dogs that were out hunting pursued this hind, and she took refuge in the dwelling of the Saint. ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... Siddartha sat Under a giant cedar's spreading shade. Absorbed in thought, in contemplation lost, Unconscious that a day and night had passed. I cannot reason with such earnestness— I dare not chide such deep and tender love, But much I fear his reason's overthrow Or that he may become like that recluse He shuddered at, and not a mighty king With power to crush the wrong and aid the right. How can we turn his mind from such sad thoughts To life's full joys, the duties of a king, And his great ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... finally ruffled. Most of the sheets, in excusing the paucity of biographical detail, had remarked that Priam Farll was utterly unknown to London society, of a retiring disposition, hating publicity, a recluse, etc. The word "recluse" grated on his sensitiveness a little; but when the least important of the evening papers roundly asserted it to be notorious that he was of extremely eccentric habits, he grew secretly furious. Neither his modesty nor his philosophy was influential enough to restore ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... when a boy, made occasional visits to Hamilton, in the West of Scotland, where the descendants of his Covenanting ancestors still lived. One of them was an old bachelor—a recluse sort of man; and yet he had the Nasmyth love of cats. Being of pious pedigree and habits, he always ended the day by a long and audible prayer. My father and his companions used to go to the door of his house to listen to him, but especially to hear his culminating finale. He prayed ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... people. In certain quarters, too, the press had become the exponent of these sentiments. Possibly, in their beginnings, no person did more in the exertion of those means which have wrought into the heart of the English people such undying hatred to Negro Slavery than the amiable recluse whose writings can never die so long as lovers of poetry continue to live. Who has not at times turned away from the best-loved of the living poets, to regale himself with the compact, polished, sweetly ringing numbers of Cowper? On the subject of Slavery ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... readin', when he wasn't goin' fishin' or off in the woods with his gun, and never made no trouble, and was about the easiest man to get along with she ever see. You mind your business and he'll mind his'n." That was the sum of Aunt Hepsy's delivery about the recluse, though no doubt her old age was enriched by constant "study" over his probable history and character. But Aunt Hepsy, since she had given up tailoring, was something of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... if 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
... the living gold, Him I desire who dwells recluse, And not his image, worn and old, Day-servant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... Found the sweet leisure in his fields, To virtuous minds retirement yields. The king, who had his foes believ'd, The loss of him ere long perceiv'd. To bring him back again intent, To his retreat alone he went: "My friend, you must return with me," He said, "your value now I see." "Forgive me," the Recluse replied; "Here I determine to abide. By sad experience well I know, Were I to court again to go, And all my best endeavors do, To serve my country, sir, and you, Art and intrigue so much prevail, Again I certainly should fail; Against your will and ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... latest recollection of him. The episode of that night under the bay tree had gone with her clear across the Atlantic. Even the influence of the wholly new environment, in which she had grown from a girl recluse to a woman, had not served for a long time to erase that ugly stain on her memory. Here and now was the man who served so to perturb her once—and she could look on him, with her more mature eyes, as an attractive, unlicked young cub. She surprised herself taking revenge upon the past ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... rebelled at the crude presentations of Bromstead, at the secrecies and suppressions of my youth, at the dull unrealities of City Merchants, at the conventions and timidities of the Pinky Dinkys, at the philosophical recluse of Trinity and the phrases and tradition-worship of my political associates. None of these things were half alive, and I wanted life to be intensely alive and awake. I wanted thought like an edge of steel and desire like ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... not disdain the company of strolling players. You gain in knowledge what you lose in time. If you are a philosopher, you can study human nature through the buffoon and the mummer. If you are a naturalist, here are grand forests to contemplate. If you are not a recluse, here is ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... that lay outside the windows of his mind that Townsend found life a thing of odd discoveries, strange secrets, and thrilling hazards. His own existence, though in reality an exceedingly quiet one, indeed almost that of a recluse, was still to him a great adventure. There was always for him the possibility of the sudden appearance of the man in the black cloak with hat drawn over his brows, either looking, or saying "Beware!" I remember well his ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... of vengeance entertained by the latter, but thought that the honour of the family was sufficiently cleared by what was evidently a flight. Paolo was disappointed and puzzled by the manner of the unfortunate recluse. Instead of bursting out into furious denunciations, he became as pale as ashes, and then hiding his face in his hands, wept aloud. His agony continued for more than an hour; after which he raised his head, and exhibited a serene brow to the astonished servitor. 'Let us return to Santa Maddalena,' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... beasts as if they were the same with us. If I associate not with these people,— with mankind,— with whom shall I associate? If right principles prevailed through the kingdom, there would be no need for me to change its state [1].' About the same time he had an encounter with another recluse, who was known as 'The madman of Ch'u.' He passed by the carriage of Confucius, singing out, 'O phoenix, O phoenix, how is your virtue degenerated! As to the past, reproof is useless, but the future may be provided against. Give up, ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... 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 who hang on the outskirts of the wilderness ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... not unfrequently, at any rate in public life, supplied the decisive criterion to determine what ought and what ought not to be done. In truth the dominant tendencies of my mind were those of a recluse, and I might, in most respects with ease, have accommodated myself to the education of the cloister. All the mental apparatus requisite to constitute the 'public man' had to be purchased by a slow experience and inserted piecemeal into the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... us, through it the river escapes. The hills rear high and steep, their swelling flanks cloaked in sombre green and grey, with here and there a bald spot like a splash of ochre where there's been a landslide, climbing directly from the plain, with no foothills. A recluse, I have thought, must have chosen this spot for a town site; sickened of the world, he sought seclusion—and found it here to his heart's content. Until the coke-ovens come, following the miners, with their attendant hordes ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... one of your industrious fellows for a moment, I beseech you. He sows hurry and reaps indigestion; he puts a vast deal of activity out to interest, and receives a large measure of nervous derangement in return. Either he absents himself entirely from all fellowship, and lives a recluse in a garret, with carpet slippers and a leaden inkpot; or he comes among people swiftly and bitterly, in a contraction of his whole nervous system, to discharge some temper before he returns to work. I do not care how much or how well he works, this fellow ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who was an unmarried invalid, transferred the Roman estates to his younger brother, who was married and had children, and, in exchange, took the Neapolitan estates and title, which had just fallen back to the main branch by the death of a childless Marchese di San Giacinto. Late in life this old recluse invalid married, contrary to all expectation—certainly contrary to his own previous intentions. However, a child was born—a boy. The old man found himself deprived by his own act of his principality, and the succession turned from his son to the son of his ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... massive building, the upper part of which was used as a court-room and offices for city and county officials, while in the basement were constructed the cells of the prison. It required a desperate effort on the part of the timid and delicate lady, who for years had almost been a recluse from the world, to summon courage to alight and approach a place that to her abounded in many and indefinite horrors. She was too preoccupied to observe that another carriage had drawn up to the entrance, and the first intimation that she had of Mrs. Arnot's presence ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... entered the room: 'tis a girl all clothed and veiled in white; on her forehead a fillet of black and gold. She sees him. In amazement she lifts her white hand: 'Am I, then, such a stranger in the house already? Alas, poor recluse!... But I am ashamed, and withdraw. ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... Eugene Mortlake," said 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
... the purity of his style, only where he can compare himself with others of acknowledged excellence. This can be done only where men congregate in large and populous cities, where the want of amusement is best supplied; the recluse or the solitary man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... institutions dear to many, have no doubt given impressions unfavorable to Thoreau's thought and personality. One hears him called, by some who ought to know what they say and some who ought not, a crabbed, cold-hearted, sour-faced Yankee—a kind of a visionary sore-head—a cross-grained, egotistic recluse,—even non-hearted. But it is easier to make a statement than prove a reputation. Thoreau may be some of these things to those who make no distinction between these qualities and the manner which often comes as a kind ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... 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 with her by correspondence. ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... of September 1558 died the imperial recluse of Yuste, once Charles V., and it is said his last looks were steadfastly directed towards that great canvas The Trinity, which to devise with Titian had been one of his greatest consolations at a moment when already earthly glories held him no more. Philip, on ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... and his great toe coming against me I fancied it was the Frog. From the ardour of my greediness I closed my teeth upon it, and the child died on the spot. The holy man discovered the fact, and from regret for his son, attacked me, and I, turning toward the open country, fled with speed, and the recluse pursued me and cursed me, and said: 'I desire of my Creator that He will make thee base and powerless, and cause thee to be the vehicle of the Frog-king. And, verily, thou shalt not have power to eat Frogs, save ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... in quiet introspection, and he might well be accused of a species of Pharisaism, were these poems not so artlessly and passionately sincere, and often so tinged with religious awe. His withdrawal, in his verse, from the life of his times was the act of a natural recluse. ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... desired of her. This gave her a haughty, sullen, and reserved turn; made her stiff, formal, and affected. She had sense enough to discover early the faults of Coquetilla, and, in dislike to them, fell the more easily into that contrary extreme, which a recluse education, and her papa's cautions, naturally led her. So that pride, reserve, affectation, and censoriousness, made up the essentials of her character, and she became more unamiable even than Coquetilla; and ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Major only had one arm left after the war was over but he fought a duel with a chap who insinuated that his wandering wife wasn't all she might have been. By the time he'd got things settled he was the finest old grouch you'd meet in a lifetime. Had the recluse business down to a fine point. Summers he used to go off to the wilds of Canada or the Adirondacks or somewhere that his wife's will had specified their daughter must live and winters he used to lock the girl up in that mansion next to our church. ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... years afterwards, when on tour with my lecture-entertainments, I "put in" a week in the Channel Islands, under the management of a gentleman who had been intimately acquainted with Boulanger when he was a political recluse in Jersey; and one afternoon he drove me to the charming villa the General had occupied, situated in an ideal spot on the coast. The villa was most solidly built, and of picturesque architecture—the freak of a rich Parisian merchant, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... characteristic of creative ability, and he grew thinner and grayer at the temples, and grayer of flesh, too, so that within a month, between the torrid New York summer and his own unwisdom, he became again the gaunt, silent, darkly absorbed recluse, never even stirring abroad for air until some half-deadened pang of hunger, or the heavy warning of a headache, set him ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... twenty-five, a student and scholarly recluse, delving all day in accounts and dispatches, grubbing in books at night, and walking an hour before sunrise in the park every morning. It was about then that he accepted the invitation ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... institutions for the proper care of paupers developed with immense strides, and during the twelfth century expanded into gigantic proportions. In the ensuing age, the mediaeval mind was fired with a faith in the efficacy of unstinted charity; members of society, from holy pontiff to the humblest recluse by the wayside, rivalled each other in gratuities of clothing and food, founding of hospitals, and endowment of beneficent public institutions. St. Louis's highest claim to pious glory arose from his restless and unstinted charities to the indigent and sick. Even the lepers, which were shunned or ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... work, idle thoughts cannot gain mastery over him: selfish wishes or desires are kept at bay. Art is truth: and truth is religion: and its study and practice a daily work of pious duty. What are the world's struggles, brawls, successes, to that calm recluse pursuing his calling? See, twinkling in the darkness round his chamber, numberless beautiful trophies of the graceful victories which he has won:—sweet flowers of fancy reared by him:—kind shapes of beauty which he has devised and moulded. The world enters into the artist's studio, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the life 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
... apologists. Buddhism was an after-thought, only reached after six years of bootless asceticism. There is no evidence that when Siddartha left his palace he had any thought of benefiting anybody but himself. He entered upon the life of the recluse with the same motives and aims that have influenced thousands of other monks and anchorets of all lands and ages—some of them princes like himself. Nevertheless, for the noble decision which was finally ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... shameful flight and hid myself in one of the 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 put thy trust in the Almighty and believed of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Prelate's authority, to avoid doing that which I proclaim my readiness, though not my willingness, to do, I can only say, that you are the first who has doubted the faith of Hugo de Lacy."—And while the proud Baron thus addressed a female and a recluse, he could not prevent his eye from sparkling, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... our father's sister—Margaret's and mine; but I ought not to think of it, since a recluse should have no kindred out of her Order and the blessed saints. And there are three Sisters in the Priory named Alianora: wherefore, to make diversity, the eldest professed is called Alianora, and the second (that is myself) Annora, ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... been brought by a friend to this mouldering house in a northern suburb, through an old garden to the room where Ambrose the recluse dozed and dreamed ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... treacherous.' replied the Father. Then he was silent, and seemed lost in revery. The pure, ever-present breeze of Mackinac played in his long silvery hair, and his bright eyes roved along the wall of the old house; he had a broad forehead, noble features, and commanding presence, and as he sat there, recluse as he was,—aged, alone, without a history, with scarcely a name or a place in the world,—he looked, in the power of his native-born dignity, worthy of a ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... first bishop of Saintes, and St. Eustelle lived a recluse in her cavern, where miracles were long afterwards performed by her, and where she expired at the same moment that her holy companion suffered the martyrdom which secured him a crown of glory to ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... balance in its 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
... independence; or, if there had been still an Act of Union, they could have come in, as the Scots came, on their own terms. For an Englishman to write the history of Ireland without prejudice he must be either a cosmopolitan philosopher, or a passionless recluse. Froude was an ardent patriot, and his early studies in hagiology had led him to the conclusion, not now accepted, that St. Patrick never existed at all. His scepticism about St. Patrick might have been forgiven to a man who had probably not much belief ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... expressing the rapturous rejoicing of celestial beings, but his conception of the angelic nature remains unapproached, unapproachable: it is only his, for it was the gentle, passionless, refined nature of the recluse which stamped itself there. Angelico's angels are unearthly, not so much in form as in sentiment; and superhuman, not in power but in purity. In other hands, any imitation of his soft ethereal grace would ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... island of Tenedos, and I also visited him at Mitylene." We had never then heard of his lordship's fame, as we had been some years from home; but "Childe Harolde" being put into our hands we recognized the recluse of Calcla in every page. Deeply did we regret not having been more curious in our researches at the cottage, but we consoled ourselves with the idea of returning to Mitylene on some future day; but to me ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... trusted her to no one else. Gimmerton was an unsubstantial name in her ears; the chapel, the only building she had approached or entered, except her own home. Wuthering Heights and Mr. Heathcliff did not exist for her: she was a perfect recluse; and, apparently, perfectly contented. Sometimes, indeed, while surveying the country from her nursery ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... Italians, Danes, Greeks, Turks, and 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 ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... with his sword his long flowing locks, and, taking off his ornaments, sends them and the horse back in charge of the unwilling Channa to Kapilavastu. The next seven days were spent alone in a grove of mango trees [v.04 p.0684] near by, whence the recluse walks on to Rajagriha, the capital of Magadha, and residence of Bimbisara, one of the then most powerful rulers in the valley of the Ganges. He was favourably received by the raja; but though asked to do so, he would not ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... than mere travel, Wordsworth showed himself no mere recluse. He watched the great affairs then being transacted in Europe with the ardent interest of his youth, and his sonnets to Liberty, commemorating the attack by France upon the Swiss, the fate of Venice, the struggle of Hofer, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... messenger, Don Ramon, Jr., and five Rangers set out to fulfill all contracts pending and understood. The abandoned ranchita in the monte—the meeting point—had been at one time a stone house of some pretensions, where had formerly lived its builder, a wealthy, eccentric recluse. It had in previous years, however, been burned, so that now only crumbling walls remained, a gloomy, isolated, though picturesque ruin, standing in an opening several acres in extent, while trails, once in use, led ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... 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 run was not ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... not find a person who claimed to know him intimately. Everybody had something to praise him for: "But it was such a pity that"—and here would follow one of the thousand bits of gossip which were floating about and had been floating for years, I had seen M—-y often,—for he was no recluse, and could be met daily in the streets. His general appearance so fascinated me that the desire to know the man led me to adopt the course I have just mentioned. So much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... influence of the sexes, so important 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 ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... Jesus was 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 with the woman of Samaria (John 4:4-26) ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... the recluse. 'You see,' he remarked in explanation, 'I was articled by my parents to a hermit at a very tender age—to the learned man, in fact, who preceded me in the tenancy of this modest cell. We plunged immediately into the fascinating ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... allowed to fade into the background with too scant recognition of their services; and when she had got Amy thoroughly warmed and rehabilitated she turned her thought toward Cope. Here, certainly, was a young scholastic recluse who had an admirable faculty for getting into the public eye. If one section of Churchton society had talked about his performance at her dinner, all sections of it would now be discussing his new performance on the high seas. Suddenly she was struck with the notion that possibly his first ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... Presley's morbidly keen observation, the general impression of the shepherd's face was intensely interesting. It was uncommon to an astonishing degree. Presley's vivid imagination chose to see in it the face of an ascetic, of a recluse, almost that of a young seer. So must have appeared the half-inspired shepherds of the Hebraic legends, the younger prophets of Israel, dwellers in the wilderness, beholders of visions, having their existence in ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... 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 South, East, West. What years they were!" He sighed. "Only the luck came too late to save my ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... heard little of Selby except as a literary recluse, whose only distraction from books was the operatic stage. But he heard much of Isaura; of the kindness which Madame de Grantmesnil had shown to her, when left by Selby's death alone in the world; of the interest which the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... same family—with several thousand ancestors where types must have reappeared again and again. If she wants New York Society, especially if she wants money for those starving children, I'll go the limit. But I'm going to find out about her all the same. I'll hunt up Harry Thornhill tomorrow—he's a recluse but he'll see me—and I'll get on the track of some Hungarian refugee. She can't be the usual rank impostor, that's positive. She has the same blood as Mary in her veins, and if she's Mary's daughter and wishes to keep it dark, that's her business. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... thought of such a bridal, and began to be jealous for myself. It was not thus that I desired to be loved. And then I began to fall into a great pity for the girl herself. I thought how sharp must be her mortification, that she, the student, the recluse, Felipe's saintly monitress, should have thus confessed an overweening weakness for a man with whom she had never exchanged a word. And at the coming of pity, all other thoughts were swallowed up; and I longed only ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sphere, business, sociology, charity, Belle Wellington's genius would have carried her as far as in that domain wherein she had set her endeavors. As to charity, for that matter, she had given a mountain recluse, a physician, five hundred thousand dollars with which to found a tuberculosis sanitarium, and—but those were things which not even her friends knew and concerning which, therefore, ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... As for solitary habits, the world is right in condemning a man who, out of pure affectation or eccentricity, shuts himself up alone, loses his friends, and sets society against him. Those, however, who act in this way naturally, because their profession obliges them to lead a recluse life, or because their character rebels against feigned politenesses and conventional usage, ought in common justice to be tolerated. What claim by right have you on him? Why should you force him to take part in those vain pastimes, which his ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... fairyland. Arthur and Miss Wishart had gone on in front and were now strayed among boulders. She liked this trim and precise young man, whose courtesy was so grave and elaborate, while he, being a recluse by nature but a humanitarian by profession, was half nervous and half entranced in her cheerful society. They talked of nothing, their hearts being set on the scramble, and when at last they reached the highway and the farm where the Glenavelin traps had been put up, they found themselves a ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... 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 a something inducing ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... this coppice, not far from the eastern or more remote end of the island, Legrand had built himself a small hut, which he occupied when I first, by mere accident, made his acquaintance. This soon ripened into friendship,—for there was much in the recluse to excite interest and esteem. I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. He had with him many books, but rarely employed them. His chief amusements were gunning and fishing, or ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... a well, possessed of some medicinal qualities, which, of course, claimed the saint for its guardian and patron, and occasionally produced some advantage to the recluse who inhabited his cell, since none could reasonably expect to benefit by the fountain who did not extend their bounty to the saint's chaplain. A few rods of fertile land afforded the monk his plot of ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... distance of his residence, and the freedom of the place, made excusable, had, even in the minute points of his exterior, none of the negligence, or wildness, which might be supposed to attach to the vestments of a misanthropic recluse, whether sane or insane. As he paid his compliments round the circle, the scales seemed to fall from the eyes of those he spoke to; and they saw with surprise, that the exaggerations had existed entirely in their own preconceptions, and that whatever ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... descended upon her, the little recluse payed them the tribute of a fascinated stare, and they, in return, did their best to instill into her mind the belief that they were creatures of another and a brighter sphere. Uncle Dan presented her with a peppermint lozenge, Mrs. Daymond held ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... man, living the life of a recluse in his own observatory, which was situated in a lonely part of the country, had, or at any rate, believed that he had, opened up a communication with the inhabitants of Mars, by means of powerful electric lights, flashing in the manner of a ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... Peacocks and the Swans The Story of the Tortoise and the Geese The Story of Fate and the Three Fishes The Story of the Unabashed Wife The Story of the Herons and the Mongoose The Story of the Recluse and the Mouse The Story of the Crane and the Crab The Story of the Brahman and the Pans The Duel of the Giants The Story of the Brahman and the Goat The Story of the Camel, the Lion, and His Court The Story of the Frogs ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... exceptional feature of the repast was the appearance of one who had never yet been seated there in Jean's presence; this guest was the hermit who dwelt on the extreme point, against which the Atlantic waves dashed in their fiercest fury. The recluse did not seem to cultivate the duty of abstemiousness, but he maintained silence. Jean could not forbear furtively scanning his appearance, which was indeed remarkable. He would have been of large stature in any country; compared with the natives his proportions were gigantic. His broad shoulders ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... the three brothers whom I have mentioned above as our neighbors, had not been remarkable during his lifetime, in consequence of his recluse habits, but became the more remarkable after his death, by leaving behind him a direction that common workingmen should carry him to the grave, early in the morning, in perfect silence, and without ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... by solitary thinking. Some definite shape must be given to our thoughts before we can submit them to the operation of other minds; the greater the originality, the longer must be the process of solitary elaboration. The "Principia" was composed from first to last by recluse meditation; probably the attempt to discuss or debate any parts of it would have only fretted and paralysed the author's invention. Indeed, after an enormous strain of the constructive intellect, a man may be in no humour to ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... promised, from its geographical relations, to expose him less to the molestations of conversation than most other parts of the room. This was a small recess beside the fire-place, not uncommon in old-fashioned houses, and which, from its incapacity to hold more than one, secured to the worthy recluse the privacy he longed for; and here, among superannuated hearth-brushes, an old hand screen, an asthmatic bellows, and a kettle-holder, sat the timid youth, "alone, but in a crowd." Not all the seductions of loo, limited to three pence, nor even that most ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... rather were defensive of each. [Sidenote: The conversion of the Bulgarians.] In the eighth century there were several isolated conversions, including a whole family of boiars from whom sprang the recluse, saint Joannicius; but there was no general movement. The Bulgarians remained enemies of Christianity and destroyers of all Roman civilisation: S. Theodore of the Studium declared that it was criminal sacrilege to exchange hostages with them. ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... mild religious bustle which sometimes besets the wealthy and moral recluse. My father had left the Church of England for some odd sect, I forget its name, and ultimately became, I was told, a Swedenborgian. But he did not care to trouble me upon the subject. So the old carriage brought my governess, when I had one, the ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... see me some time or other 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 ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... cabin. But after that morning, he was every day 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, or perceptibly did, on the at last sunny deck, he ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... us quite live up to our best intentions, and Miss Sommerton was no exception to the rule. She did not work as devotedly as she had hoped to do, nor did she become a recluse from society. A year after she sent to the artist some sketches which she had taken in Quebec—some unknown waterfalls, some wild river scenery—and received from him a warmer letter of commendation than she had hoped for. He remembered her former sketches, and now saw a great improvement. ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... death Alfred de Vigny wrote nothing. He lived in retirement, almost a recluse, in La Charente, rarely visiting Paris. Admitted into L'Academie Francaise in 1845, he describes in his 'Journal d'un Poete' his academic visits and the reception held out to him by the members of L'Institut. This work appeared posthumously ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... curse of barrenness. Before it towers the great chain of mountains separating Old and New Castile. Behind it the chilled winds sweep down to the Madrid plateau, over rocky hillocks and involved ravines,—a scene in which probably no man ever took pleasure except the royal recluse who chose ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... glasses did more to soothe the ruffled spirit of the recluse than anything else. He wiped them tenderly, and looking through them, observed that they were all right. Then he sat in profound silence, while Susan, under Katherine's directions, cleared up the hearth, and removed the heap of dust ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... 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 Crown. A few obscure adventurers ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... table, spoke of the gentleman who occupied the private apartments, wondered that no one appeared to be aware who he was, and then in confidence informed the assembled party that the recluse was the celebrated author of the "Pleasures of Memory," now engaged in illustrating "HIS ITALY" with splendid embellishments from the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... letter; and that he never hunted, shot, or fished with the squiredom of the country. He was of large form, loud voice, had a sullen look, and no trust in her Majesty's ministers for the time being. At length, on some occasion of peculiar public excitement, the recluse had gone to Gravesend, where, tempted by the impulse of the moment, he had broken through his reserve, dashed out into a diatribe of singular fierceness, but of remarkable power, accused England of all kinds of oppression to all kinds of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... for two years, and during that time his friends heard much good of him. He lived the life of a recluse and a hard worker. He learned to know his own strength, and taught the world to recognize ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... up at last, having learned certain unimportant facts: that the recluse had led a lonely life; that he had never tried to make the place more than carry itself; that he was a student, and that he had ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of bearing, grossness of manner, will be the distinctive mark of no section of the community whatever. The coarser reasons for privacy, therefore, will not exist here. And that savage sort of shyness, too, that makes so many half-educated people on earth recluse and defensive, that too the Utopians will have escaped by their more liberal breeding. In the cultivated State we are assuming it will be ever so much easier for people to eat in public, rest and amuse themselves in public, and even work in public. Our ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... influence, speaking strictly,—an efflux, that is, purely of mind and character," Mr. Emerson thinks she had more than any other person he ever knew. Even a recluse like Hawthorne yielded to this influence. Hawthorne was married to Miss Sophia Peabody in 1842, and began housekeeping in the Old Manse in Concord. The day following their engagement Miss Peabody wrote Miss Fuller addressing her "Dear, most noble ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... in a well-ordered life. As with many other common blessings we forget its benefits. Nor are these benefits so evident until we see the blighting result in the life of the one who, for any reason whatsoever, has become a social recluse. We have known a few persons who have once been in society, but who have allowed themselves to remain away from all sorts of gatherings, for a number of years. In every case, the result has been openly ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... exclaimed Manita. "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 ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... after this, we find him school master of Kingston upon Thames, and happy for him, had he continued in that more certain employment, and not have so soon exchanged it for beggary and reputation. Mr. Brown, impatient of a recluse life, quitted the school, and came again to London; and as he found his old companions more delighted with his wit, than ready to relieve his necessities, he had recourse to scribbling for bread, which he performed with various success. Dr. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... with books for the most part, but with some valuable pictures, and a great table full of drawers, and several presses or secretaries, filled with papers and family documents of every kind. Mr. John Montfort, recluse though he was, was the head of a large and important family connection. Few of his relatives ever saw him, but most of them were in more or less constant correspondence with him, and he knew all their secrets, though ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... affectionate manner. His advice, and the use of his library, were promptly tendered. Burr commenced a course of reading on religious topics, and was thus occupied from sixteen to eighteen hours a day. His habits were those of great abstinence, and a recluse. His conversations with the reverend divine were encouraged and indulged in with freedom, and his inquiries answered. Here he remained until the spring of 1774, when, to use his own language, he "came to ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Michael was in England, he heard through the 'Ulama of the riwak in el-Azhar to which he belonged by nationality, that the old man had arrived and that he was now living the life of a mystic and a recluse. In a beautiful imagery of words, he had begged the 'Ulama to send his gratitude and thanks to the Englishman by whom, God, in His everlasting mercy, had ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Murtagh, with his wonderful stories of the Pope. These were the friends with whom he spent the real life of his latter days, and it is hardly surprising that under the influence of their companionship he should have become somewhat of a recluse, and lost touch ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... nook in England and surround it by velvety lawns and ancient trees that have grown and spread with the lapse of ages, your existence would become a long and romantic daydream, and you would be in danger of living the life of a recluse and never separating yourself from these influences. Custom would never stale their infinite variety; familiarity would never breed contempt. Who tires of wandering through a gallery of the old masters? who can endure the modern in comparison? ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... encomiums awakened 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
... and involuntary shudder ran cold over the affrighted girl, as with a wild and appalled look she gazed on the recluse birds, which their arrival had disturbed; she clung eagerly to Gomez Arias, as they both sat down on ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... disappeared under that hospitable doorway, I flashed through the mind of Denis that Eames was a confirmed recluse; he might not like being ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... regular and sober life! how much more agreeable would they render themselves in the sight of God! What a much greater honour and ornament would the be to the world! They would then be considered as saints, indeed, upon earth, as those primitive Christians were led, who joined sobriety to so recluse a life. By living, like them, to the age of one hundred and twenty, they might, like them, expect, by the power of God, to work numberless miracles; and they would, besides, enjoy constant health and spirits, and be always happy within themselves; whereas they ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... 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 ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... it, he poured out his soul with all the fervour and abandon of which only the shy are capable. Williams was afraid of his own past. It was not a hideously criminal one, for his life had been that of a bookworm and recluse. But out of that past Williams would conjure up the slightest incident—a trifling breach of manners, a mere word out of place, a moment in which he had lost control of his emotions, and the memory of it would put him into a cold sweat ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... this platform of the lonely mountain station, Spinrobin detected the atmosphere of the scholar, almost of the recluse, shot through with the strange fires that dropped from the large, lambent, blue eyes. All these things rushed over the thrilled little secretary with an effect, as already described, of a certain bewilderment, that left no single, dominant impression. What remained ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... 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 Henry Floyd awoke. ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... by no means dull in the little town. There were picnics in summer, sleigh-drives in winter, dances, and what not; and Eelan was no recluse. Still, she loved the place better than the people, and there was not a spot of ground in the neighbourhood that she did not know ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... goes down, turns to this side and that; it leaves one vein for another of better flavour, but without moving too far from the inner depths, where the temperature is milder and greater safety reigns. A day is at hand, a dangerous day for the recluse obliged to quit its excellent retreat and face the perils of the surface. Eating is not everything: we have to get out of this. The larva, so well-equipped with tools and muscular strength, finds ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... Bertha Grace is 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 ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... 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 ...
— Why They Married • James Montgomery Flagg
... few years before, had delighted Paris with his daily feuilletons, with his duels, with his forty-two lawsuits, who had been the master of revels in the Latin Quarter, in New York lived almost as a recluse, writing a book on Buddhism. While he was in New York I was a reporter on the Evening Sun, but I cannot recall ever having read his name in the newspapers of that day, and I heard of him only twice; once as giving an exhibition of his water-colors at the American ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... renouncing their luxurious life, and fly to the jungle, where they wander about for years as ascetics, wearing a single garment, subsisting on the most elementary food, and developing their spiritual consciousness. John remained a recluse until he reached the age of about thirty years, when he emerged from the wilderness to preach the "Coming of the Lord," in obedience to the movings of the Spirit. Let us see where he was, and what he ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... decapitate, chapter, biceps Cedo, cessum go concede, accessory Centum hundred per cent, centigrade *Civis citizen civic, uncivilized *Clamo shout acclaim, declamation *Claudo, clausum close, shut conclude, recluse, cloister, sluice Cognosco (see Nosco) *Coquo, coxi, coctum cook decoction, precocious *Cor, cordis heart core, discord, courage Corpus body corpse, incorporate Credo, credituin believe creed, discreditable Cresco, cretum grow ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... plebeians, who, with cunning rather than with skill, exercised a sordid and pernicious trade. Some of them procured admittance into families for the purpose of fomenting differences, of encouraging suits, and of preparing a harvest of gain for themselves or their brethren. Others, recluse in their chambers, maintained the dignity of legal professors, by furnishing a rich client with subtleties to confound the plainest truths, and with arguments to color the most unjustifiable pretensions. The splendid and popular ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the opinions of the early Christians, who were unanimous in the belief that the Baptist lived on the produce of a particular tree which still abounds in the desert. Nay, the friars at the present day assert, that the very plants which yielded sustenance to the holy recluse continue to flourish in their ancient vigour; and the popish pilgrims, says Mr. Maundrell, who dare not be wiser than such blind guides, gather the fruit of them, and carry it ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... cost that you of all others need fear rivalry from no quarter. There; don't break any more. What superb taste the doctor has! This lovely spot comes nearer my ideal of European elegance than any place I know at the South. I suppose the fascination of his home makes him such a recluse! Why doesn't he visit more? He neglects us shamefully! He is such a favorite in society too; only I believe everybody is rather afraid of him. I shall make a most desperate effort to charm him so soon ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the inquisitor, and the Jesuit were lords of Spain,—sovereigns of her sovereign, for they had formed the dark and narrow mind of that tyrannical recluse. They had formed the minds of her people, quenched in blood every spark of rising heresy, and given over a noble nation to a bigotry blind and inexorable as the doom of fate. Linked with pride, ambition, avarice, every passion of ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... she never allowed it to turn her head. She gave away large sums for charitable purposes and, strange to say, when the gift came direct from her, the money was never returned on the plea that it was "tainted." She shared her husband's dislike for entertaining, and led practically the life of a recluse. The advent of Shirley, therefore, into her quiet and uneventful existence was as welcome as sunshine when it breaks through the clouds after days of gloom. Quite a friendship sprang up between the two women, ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... in and for them that which is imperishable, and so wrought although he was to have no part in their fame and perhaps but a small financial recompense; and that it is the loves, griefs, fears, forebodings and sorrows of the student and recluse, thus circumstanced and ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... and fed, in fit condition for effective routine under his well selected staff of overseers.[23] Even after the war Burnside kept on acquiring plantations, and with free negro labor kept on making large sugar crops. At the end of his long life, spent frugally as a bachelor and somewhat of a recluse, he was doubtless by far the richest man in all the South. The number of planters who had been merchants and the frequency of partnerships and corporations operating sugar estates, as well as the magnitude of scale characteristic of the ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... his writings to make the fortune of a great poet, in spite of their ballast of mediocre and tiresome verses, which the reader should disregard as he goes along. Between him and his contemporary, the haughty recluse Alfred de Vigny, there is not a little resemblance. Needless to say that Lebensohn had no acquaintance whatsoever with the works ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... Cyril Waring met Elma Clifford once more, the first time for months, and had twenty minutes' talk in the tea-room alone with her. Contrary to his rule, he had gone to the Holkers' party that night, for a man can't remain a recluse all his life, no matter how hard he tries, merely because his brother's suspected of having committed a murder. In course of time, the attitude palls upon him. For the first year after Guy's sudden and mysterious disappearance, indeed, Cyril refused all invitations ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... temples were sunk, his beard scanty, the hair on his head long.... By his face it was impossible to tell his class: gentleman, merchant, or peasant; judging by his appearance and long hair he looked almost like a recluse, a lay-brother, but when he spoke—he was not at all like a monk. He was losing strength through his cough and his illness and the suffocating heat, and he breathed heavily and was always moving his dry lips. Noticing that Goussiev was looking at him, ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... for two breakfasts. She found the servants' hall a more amusing place than the invalid's chamber and just now everybody wanted to hear the news from up-stairs. There was a great deal of joking about the unpopular young recluse who, as the cook said, "had found his master, and good for him." The servants' hall had been very tired of the tantrums, and the butler, who was a man with a family, had more than once expressed his opinion that the invalid would be all the ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... often call in at the Monte de Piedad, looking for bargains in bricabrac, and sometimes real prizes are secured at very reasonable cost. A gentleman showed the writer an old, illuminated book, of a religious character, entirely illustrated by the hand of some patriot recluse, which was marked five dollars, and upon which probably four dollars had been loaned to the party who deposited it. The time for its redemption had long since expired, and our friend gladly paid the sum asked for it. He ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... peculiar situations. Mrs. Ventress is a puzzle to the townspeople. They believe odd things about her. The particular family in Tupton with which she comes in contact is an eccentric one. The father is a recluse—for reasons. His adopted daughter, Bessie Gedney, is an odd character among young girls in fiction. Dr. Gedney's real daughter had disappeared years before. Why? What has become of her? This ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... less like the popular idea of him than the writer of The Angel in the House. Certainly an autocrat in the home, impatient, intolerant, full of bracing intellectual scorn, not always just, but always just in intention, a disdainful recluse, judging all human and divine affairs from a standpoint of imperturbable omniscience, Coventry Patmore charmed one by his whimsical energy, his intense sincerity, and, indeed, by the childlike egoism of an absolutely self-centred ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... privacy of one's own room, away from the allurements provided for those who have nothing to do. No one would recommend you to so separate yourself from the world as to sacrifice health and strength, or to become a recluse, even if you did learn ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... at their one o'clock dinner before the recluse made any sign. Then he gave note of his continued existence by bumping and thumping sounds within his state-room, as if some one were dressing there ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... Sybarite. There was a vein of strong scorn of all self- indulgence in him, which was very different. He was, of course, very much of a recluse, with a vein of misanthropy towards men in the abstract, joined to a tender-hearted sympathy for the actual men and women around him. He was the very reverse of Carlyle's description of the sentimental philanthropist, who loves man in the abstract, but is intolerant ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... gray stands the House, four-square to the wind, Embosomed in the hills. The garden old Of yew and box and fishpond speaks her mind, Sweet-ordered, quaint, recluse, fold within fold Of quietness; but true and choice and kind— A sober casket for a ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett |
