"Unworldly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... light should no more be hidden in an obscure province, but be set on a Roman candlestick, where it might give light to the faithful in all parts of the world. Thus two currents of worldly intrigue were uniting to push an unworldly man to a higher dignity than he either sought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... that a country girl wholly unaccustomed to the society of gentlemen is very likely, in spite of all your caution, to be more interested in you than you may in your modesty suppose. Whatever your cousins, who, from your account, must be unusually simple-minded, unworldly ladies, may think, their young protege may suspect that you would not come over every day for the sole purpose of working at their grotto, and may have a suspicion that she herself ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... on the other the constantly present possibility of agreeable encounters with a loyal old friend, might lead to anything—to a good deal more than Dora cared to say even to herself, feeling frightened at the length to which she had gone on the spur of the moment in this most recklessly unworldly match-making. Yet was it reckless, when Bell would be such a good poor man's wife, and when marriage with a woman like Bell might make ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... rode like a ship on a long ridge of sea. The angel with a trumpet on the jut of the roof was like a valiant seaman in the crow's nest. His agitation was calmed by this noble sight. Yes, he said, the Church is a ship behind whose bulwarks I will find rest. She sails an unworldly sea: her crew are exempt from ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... the Adowa, on board of which, gripped by the inclement winter alongside a quay in Rouen, the tenth chapter of "Almayer's Folly" was begun. With interest, I say, for was not the kind Norman giant with enormous mustaches and a thundering voice the last of the Romantics? Was he not, in his unworldly, almost ascetic, devotion to his art, a sort of literary, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... Ocean. At Kenmare, in a vale of perfect beauty green with groves of arbutus and fringed with thickets of fuchsia, stands a great stone circle, the last we shall record to the south. Like all the rest, it speaks of tremendous power, of unworldly ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... the vigour of the nation and the health of our own souls depends on keeping Sunday,—not only by going to Church, but by so arranging it that we get into an unworldly atmosphere, and have leisure for the thought and reading which develop ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... was irreproachable as he stood with the ponies at the hotel door and helped their riders to mount. There was an almost sad gravity in his demeanor that suggested a mind preoccupied with solemn and unworldly thoughts with which the doctor and his affairs had not ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... way which has stood in the way all along, and which he has never dreamed of surmounting. She means my accursed money. I told her she was completely mistaken; that love, inevitable love, knows nothing of obstacles; besides, this could not be an obstacle between him and me,—he is too unworldly to be the slave of such prejudice. If I thought she was right, who knows but what I should send my money spinning into the lap of Charity, and let that lady dispense it as indiscriminately and wastefully as she pleases. ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... "Unworldly" put the match, and he flamed up. He possessed, it seemed, the other necessary qualifications; for a thin tenor voice, not unmusical, was his, and also a smattering of Hebrew which he had picked up at Cambridge because he liked the ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... our subject, if we did not add a testimony to the peculiarly religious character and influence of the men of whom we speak. Shrewd, practical, capable, as they were, in the affairs of this life, perfectly natural and human as were their characters, still they were in the best sense unworldly men. Religion was the deep underlying stratum on which their whole life was built. Like the granite framework of the earth, it sunk below all and rose above all else in their life. No Acta Sanctorum contain more pathetic pictures of simple and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... him on their own private account, their hearts would probably sink within them at the idea of allowing him to expand himself according to his previous nature and habits in the great world without. In like manner, men of high, unworldly natures are often reverenced by those who are somewhat puzzled what to do ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... nor hear the sound They make in treading all around: Their office sweet and mighty prayer Float without echo through the air; Yet sometimes, in unworldly places, Soft sorrow's twilight vales, We meet them with uncovered faces, Outside their golden pales, Though dim, as they must ever be, Like ships far-off and out at sea, With ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... to the climate, yet who believes it her duty to remain alone, upon a barbarous coast, in a position which perhaps no other woman ever voluntarily occupied. She is faithful to her trust, as the companion of him who fell at his post, and is doubtless happy in obedience to the unworldly motives that guide her determination. Yet I cannot reconcile myself to the idea of a woman sharing the martyrdom, which seems a proper, and not an undesirable fate (so it come in the line of his duty) for a man. I doubt the expediency of sending missionary ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... laird of Burntroutwater drives his seven cows to their pasture with a wand of witch-tree, to keep Mary from milking them. But what has all that to do with haunted shallops, visionary mariners, and bottomless boats? I have heard myself as pleasant a tale about the Haunted Ships and their unworldly crews, as any one would wish to hear in a winter evening. It was told me by young Benjie Macharg, one summer night, sitting on Arbiglandbank: the lad intended a sort of love meeting; but all that he could talk of was about smearing sheep and shearing ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... wife said of him that "he was a most unworldly man." This may seem a strange thing to say of a great contractor and a millionaire. Yet, in the highest sense, it was true. Mr. Brassey was not a monk; his life was passed in the world, and in the world's most engrossing, and, as it proves in too many cases, most contaminating ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... is your own fault, for being so dear, so unworldly! Could you, can you, cast in your lot with an unknown Candy Man? He has no business to ask you. He did not mean to, but only to prepare the way. He knows he is no great catch, even from the point of view of a Little Red Chimney. These are not the ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... wretchedness increased in proportion. He brooded miserably over the scene he had witnessed; troubled, aside from his own interest in Dora, that she should be misled by a man of Smith's moral calibre. While he had delighted in her unworldly, childlike belief in people and things, in this instance he deeply ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... who had looked upon the whirlwind of passion that had swept him into a romantic and unworldly marriage, as likely to remain the one brief drama of his prosaic business man's life, began dimly to apprehend that he was hovering on the edge of a sinister and complicated drama whose end he could as little foresee as he could escape from the hand of Fate that was pushing him inexorably ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Pickering's unworldly life had not been of a sort to sharpen his perception of the ridiculous, but it seemed to me an unmistakable sign of his being under the charm, that this information was very soberly offered. He was preoccupied, he was irresponsive ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... the mortgages, proposes settlements to the tune of hundreds of thousands, and even offers to perpetuate the old family name in the person of his son, should he have one. Such a state of affairs could not but be gratifying to any man, however unworldly, and the Squire was not altogether unworldly. That is, he had a keen sense of the dignity of his social position and his family, and it had all his life been his chief and laudable desire to be sufficiently provided with the goods of this world ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... much more graspless, and in this way the very graces of his moral nature ministered eventually the heaviest of his curses. Most unworldly he was, most unmercenary, and (as somebody has remarked) even to a disease, and, in such a degree as if an organ had been forgotten by Nature in his composition, disregardful of self. But even in these qualities lay the baits for his worldly ruin, which subsequently caused or allowed ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... self-centred and self-scanned of human beings, unworldly and uncomplaining. As Doll Liddell says in his admirable letter to me, 'She was often ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... exception of his own family (and his wife formed an exception here), there are few indeed of his contemporaries, notwithstanding the eulogiums they are prone to heap upon him, who understood the elevated and unworldly character of this ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... metaphysical and ethical questions in which Mr. Corbet delighted to engage him. They lived together on terms of happy equality, having thus much in common. They were essentially different, however, although there were so many points of resemblance. Mr. Ness was unworldly as far as the idea of real unworldliness is compatible with a turn for self-indulgence and indolence; while Mr. Corbet was deeply, radically worldly, yet for the accomplishment of his object could deny himself all the careless pleasures natural to his age. The tutor and pupil allowed themselves ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... emaciated tribe, and in fact had the air of mummies temporarily revived and escaped out of museums. They were shabby, but not with the gallery shabbiness; they were shabby because shabbiness was part of their unworldly refinement; and it did not matter—they would have got their free seats even if they had ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Kensington Gardens with Peter Pan and his crew; and it is as impossible not to forget anger and care, not to feel sweeter and fresher, for David's jests, as for The Little White Bird. Only a Penguinity like David's is subtle, a little unworldly, and, like most gracious gifts, fragile. There are days when the world is too much for David, when his jests are silent and his conceits do not assemble. Then it is that he in turn needs the good cheer of another's Penguinity, and it is then my happy privilege ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... the gentle nature of their mother made amends. She is described by Edward FitzGerald, the poet's friend, as 'one of the most innocent and tender-hearted ladies I ever met, devoted to husband and children'. In her youth she had been a noted beauty, and in her old age was not too unworldly to remember that she had received twenty-five proposals of marriage. It was from her that the family derived their beauty of feature, while in their strength of intellect they resembled rather their father. One of Alfred's earliest literary passions was a love of Byron, and he remembered in ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... is—well! a little conventional; the kind of goodness that men themselves discount rather largely in their estimates of each other. Robert himself is certainly worth knowing—a really attractive union of manliness and saintliness, of shrewd sense and unworldly aims, and withal with that kindness and pity the absence of which so often abates the actual value of those other gifts. Mrs. Ward's literary power is sometimes seen at its best (it is a proof of her high cultivation of this power that so it should be) in the analysis of minor characters, both ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... estate, and returning it to Lydia Orr. Reluctantly he abandoned this quixotic scheme. The swindle—for as such he chose to view it—had already been accomplished. Other people would not return their checks. On the contrary, there would be new and fertile schemes set on foot to part the unworldly stranger ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... wholesome ignorance so confidently acknowledged, what man could remain unconcerned, uninterested in the development of such possibilities? Not Siward, amused by her sagacious and impulsive prudence, worldliness, and innocence in accepting Quarrier; and touched by her profitless, frank, and unworldly friendliness for himself. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... at St Andrews College under the late Dr Jackson, who was an eminent philosopher and friendly man; also under Mr Duncan, of the Mathematical Chair, whom I regarded as a personification of unworldly simplicity, clothed in high and pure thought; and I regularly attended, though not enrolled as a regular student, the Moral Philosophy Class of Dr Chalmers. Returning to Edinburgh and its university, I became acquainted, through my friend and countryman, Robert Hogg, with R. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the night my spirit followed after; Cold and remote were they, and there, possessed By a strange unworldly rest, Awaiting thy still voice heard only ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... now a man of middle age. By imperceptible degrees, he had become known among the people. Now, as heretofore, he labored for his bread, and was the same simple-hearted man that he had always been. But he had thought and felt so much, he had given so many of the best hours of his life to unworldly hopes for some great good to mankind, that it seemed as though he had been talking with the angels, and had imbibed a portion of their wisdom unawares. It was visible in the calm and well-considered beneficence of his daily life, the quiet stream of which had made a wide green margin all along its ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... side of good," said Honora, who was, after all, like a nun (save that her laboratory had been her cell, and a man's fame her passion), and who therefore brought to this vast, highly energized, capable, various gathering a judgment unprejudiced, unworldly, and clear. As she saw these women of many types, from all of the States, united in great causes, united, too, in the cultivation of things not easy of definition, she felt that, in spite of drawbacks, it must be good. ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... names of his time. He rediscovered Love, the principle of Christ. He reinstalled feeling, the spring of life which had been obliterated in the reign of scholasticism. He re-opened the inner eye of man, teaching contemplation in solitude, an unworldly life in abnegation, in chastity, in charity.... He broke the hard crust that had gathered round the heart of Christianity, by formalism and exteriority, and restored the free flow ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... wearing too worldly a wig. He mildly reproved and shamed the meddlesome women of his church by asking them to come to him and each cut off a lock of hair from the obnoxious wig until all the complainers were satisfied that it had been rendered sufficiently unworldly. Some Newbury church-members, in 1742, asserted that their minister unclerically wore a colored kerchief instead of a band. This he indignantly denied, saying that he "had never buried a babe even in most tempestuous weather," when he rode several miles, but he always wore a band, and he complained ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Burns; and he drew the bow gently across the resined rope. The sound that issued forth—the combined agony of the vibrating wash-boiler and the shrill squeak of the rope—was one hardly to be described. It was like a wail of some unworldly creature, ending with a shuddering twang that grated even on the nerves of Henry Burns's companions. Then Henry Burns laid the bow aside and was ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... and Dennis that unworldly fledgling know what Skippy suffered? The forty-eight hours of the Thanksgiving vacation had been like a narcotic dream. He had been under the same roof with her, sat by her side in the darkened theatre and thrilled at the low sobby music that sent his imagination helter-skelter ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... upon Napoleon dreaming of an Eastern Empire; upon battle and pestilence; upon the ceaseless misery of the Egyptian race; upon keen-eyed travellers—Herodotus yesterday, and Warburton to-day: upon all and more, this unworldly Sphinx has watched, and watched like a Providence with the same earnest eyes, and the same sad, tranquil mien. And we, we shall die, and Islam will wither away, and the Englishman, leaning far over to hold his loved India, will plant a firm ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... Station, at a little before two o'clock on 15th January, and was met there by myself, I do not think that he knew definitely what was coming, but he was a man of extraordinary shrewdness, and although essentially unworldly, could see as clearly and as far through a transaction as the keenest man of business. What he did know was that the army authorities were going to treat him well, but his one topic of conversation the whole way to Pall Mall was ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... merry little warblers! I love to hear you, too; Your fresh, unworldly feelings, your hearts so fond and true, Give to your songs a sweetness that no other strains possess; They soothe the harassed spirit when troubles thickly press, And evoke the warm petition, "O ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... hurt by the combination of circumstances that influenced her childhood I know not. As I remember her, she was a frank, fearless, generous, and unworldly woman, and had probably found in the subsequent independent exercise of her abilities the shield for these virtues. How much the passionate, vehement, susceptible, and most suffering nature was banefully fostered at the same time, I can better judge ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... succeeded in restoring the candle to consciousness, the light fell upon a tall, shy-looking man of about thirty-five, with long, hay-colored beard and mustache, upon which the rain-drops stood in clusters, like the night-dew on patches of cobweb in a meadow. It was an honest face, with unworldly sort of blue eyes, that looked out from under the broad visor of the infantry cap. With a deferential glance towards us, the new-comer unstrapped his knapsack, spread his blanket over it, ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... a lesser degree, true of our more immediate subject. It is the paradox of this time that only the unworldly things had any worldly success. The politics are a nightmare; the kings are unstable and the kingdoms shifting; and we are really never on solid ground except on consecrated ground. The material ambitions are not only always unfruitful but nearly always unfulfilled. The castles are all ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... "I do not say I am not to blame. I was a fool. My standards were false. In spite of the fact that my aunt and uncle are the most unworldly people that ever lived—perhaps because of it—I knew nothing of the values of life. I have but one thing to say in my defence. I thought I loved you, and that you could give ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... passed in cities; first in Brooklyn and New York, then in New Orleans, then in Washington, and lastly in Camden, where his body is buried. It was a poet's life from first to last,—free, unhampered, unworldly, unconventional, picturesque, simple, untouched by the craze of money-getting, unselfish, devoted to others, and was, on the whole, joyfully and contentedly lived. It was a pleased and interested saunter through the world,—no hurry, no fever, no strife; ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... inconsistency. The idea of a Divine society has been and is the inspiration of thousands of ardent workers in the Anglican Church. It lifted the religion of many Englishmen from the somewhat gross and bourgeois condition in which the movement found it, to a pure and unworldly idealism. And, unlike most other religious revivals, especially in this country, it has remained remarkably free from unhealthy emotionalism and hysterics. The social atmosphere of Oxford, always alien to mawkish sentiment, penetrated the whole movement, and ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... the Lord on more than one occasion, and differently applied at different times. As we might say among a great number of manufactured articles, all true and genuine, "few are first-rate;" so, among a great number of real disciples, few stand out unselfish, unworldly, and Christ-like, honouring their Lord, and making the world wonder. Most, even of those who are disciples indeed, and shall inherit eternal life, are so marred by self-righteous admixtures, and unsanctified temper, and conformity to the world, that their light is dim and their witness ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... post-card. Last night she had pretended not to see him— had hurried from the theatre immediately after her dance to pass a sleepless night in her apartment, thinking—as she had so often in the last month—of his pale, rather intent face, his slim, boyish fore, the merciless, unworldly abstraction that made him charming ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... suddenly realized that he could not keep you for ever in this part of the world; so he sends you to your aunt. That dress! Only a man—and an unworldly one—would have permitted you to proceed on your adventure dressed in a gown thirty years out of date. What is ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... Cradlebow, like some sadly out-of-fashion guest, arising unsolicited out of a half-forgotten dreamland, passing indeed both the ideal strength of the warlike Stephen and the gentleness of the saintly Arthur, but, alas! so crude, so unworldly, so ridiculously poor! And the vision extended and then narrowed helplessly to a home in one of the forlorn houses in Wallencamp by the sea, with its dingy walls and bare floors, its general confusion of objects and misery, and my lord's grand eyes ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... service—sufficient reason for thinking of it now. The statuesquely beautiful Goddess with her severely swept-back blonde hair and her deep gray eyes was the embodiment of the wisdom and strength for which her worshippers especially prayed. Her beauty was almost unworldly, impossible of existence in ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... you know them 'inside and under the skin,' as the saying goes." Baldwin, an Exeter labourer by birth, by turns a schoolmaster, archdeacon, Cistercian abbot, Bishop of Worcester, and primate—a silent, dark, strong man, gentle, studious, and unworldly—was delighted at the request. He sent off Robert of Bedford, an ardent reformer and brilliant scholar, and Roger Roldeston, another distinguished scholar, who afterwards was Dean of Lincoln. These, like Aaron and Hur, upheld the lawgiver's ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... the night-beams that, as Clinton said, made her their focus, so brightly were they reflected from her face. What Clinton said, it is unnecessary to repeat, for the language of passion is commonplace, unless it flows from lips as fresh and unworldly and impulsive ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... ambitious, my dear, you want to have a big position, to have big houses and plenty of money, and to take no thought of any material morrow. That is an advantage; it is only the stupid people, who call their stupidity unworldly, who think otherwise. But the great point is not to keep 'to-morrow' comfortable, but to keep an everlasting 'to-day.' You must be sure of that. Whatever the years bring—and Heaven knows what they will bring—you should ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... that understood everything, made allowance for everything in her and in himself, folded its wings round him as he scanned her that stood like a slender statue of silver—dark hair moon-brightened, white arms holding her skirts, white legs round which the spent waves sparkled with unworldly fire. He waded over to her and timidly kissed the edge ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the baldest young men that ever was seen. He seemed to be bald all over. He had no ascertainable eyebrows, or eyelashes, or hair, and this, with his bright, fresh complexion and his big spectacles, gave him a very unworldly appearance. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... themselves or their families. They tell their secrets to any one who politely expresses an interest, they will hand over their fortunes to the flattering stranger, to the smooth-tongued. Sometimes they are merely unworldly, absorbed in unworldly projects, but more often they ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... provident age, mercantile in our heroics, seeking a solid profit for every sacrifice. But this man—a child of the latter day—had not the new self-confidence, and he was at the best high-strung, unwise, and unworldly. Besides, he was broken with toil and excited with adventure. The last dying rays of the sun were resting on the far snow walls, and the great heart of the west burned in one murky riot of flame. But to the north, ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... and Roman, upon Arab and Ottoman conquerors,—upon Napoleon dreaming of an Eastern empire,—upon battle and pestilence,—upon the ceaseless misery of the Egyptian race,—upon keen-eyed travellers,—Herodotus yesterday, Warbarton to-day,—upon all, and more, this unworldly Sphinx has watched and watched like a Providence, with the same earnest eyes, and the same sad, tranquil mien. And we, we shall die; and Islam will wither away; and the Englishman, leaning far over to hold his loved India, will plant a firm foot on the banks ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... and surrounding circumstances. Alfieri pursued an ideal, slowly formed, but strongly fashioned and resolutely followed. Of wealth he had plenty and to spare, but he disregarded it, and was a Stoic in his mode of life. He was an unworldly man, and hated worldliness. Goldoni, but for his authorship, would certainly have grown a prosperous advocate, and died of gout in Venice. Goldoni liked smart clothes; Alfieri went always in black. Goldoni's fits of spleen—for he was melancholy now and then—lasted a day or two, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... you have not twenty Jardine cousins christened Joanna. I call Joanna in the Spanish style, because, although she conceals it, and you cannot have found it out yet, she is a vestige of romantic chivalry. Joanna is a Donna Quixotina, an unworldly, unearthly sort of girl, with a dream of tilting with the world and succouring the distressed. I term it a dream, because, of course, she will never accomplish it, any more than the knight of La Mancha, and she will be obliged to descend from her stilts by-and-by. ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... In his unworldly, unpractical dreamer's soul it did not occur to him for one moment that her existence might make him any less Mr. Allan's adopted son, or even that, with all the rooms in the big house at her disposal, she might have ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... in the scent of the violet, in the voluptuous perfume of the hyacinth, in the suggestive odor that comes to him at eventide from far-distant, undiscovered islands, over dim oceans, illimitable and unexplored. He owns it in all noble thoughts, in all unworldly motives, in all holy impulses, in all chivalrous, generous, and self-sacrificing deeds. He feels it in the beauty of woman, in the grace of her step, in the lustre of her eye, in the melody of her voice, in her soft laughter, in her sigh, in the harmony of the rustling of her robes. He deeply feels ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... "Woodchuck Day" in the valley), they had often decided what the affair should be and had begun rehearsals before the leaves had turned in the autumn. There was no corner of the great world of dramatic art they had not explored, borne up to the loftiest regions of endeavor by their touchingly unworldly ignorance of their limitations. As often happens in such cases they believed so ingenuously in their own capacities that their faith ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... a prophet, hierophant or church founder. As a moralist he stands in the first rank, and I doubt if either the Gospels or the Pitakas contain maxims for the life of a good citizen equal to his sayings. But he ignored that unworldly morality which, among Buddhists and Christians, is so much admired and so little practised. In religion he claimed no originality, he brought no revelation, but he accepted the current ideas of his age and time, though perhaps he eliminated many popular superstitions. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... to bring a clever young man, who has become sceptical and unsettled, to reason, is to make him feel something in any way. Love, if sincere and unworldly, will, in nine instances out of ten, bring him to a sense and assurance of something real and actual; and that sense alone will make him think to a sound purpose, instead of ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... hung upon the cross—upon what did he rely, if not upon God and his own soul? The heroism of the soldier, even at its best, is more or less a fleshy, worldly thing. The heroism of these others is more and more a spiritual unworldly thing, until, at the topmost grade of all, we meet the prophet, the saint, the martyr, who matches his naked soul against the world, and gladly loses the one that he may ...
— Heroes in Peace - The 6th William Penn Lecture, May 9, 1920 • John Haynes Holmes
... library, as I told you, much interested in what I was doing. The chaplain, a great friend of Lord Rantremly's son, and, indeed, a former tutor of his, assisted me with the documents that were in Latin, and a friendship sprang up between us. He was an elderly man, and extremely unworldly. Lord Rantremly never concealed his scorn of this clergyman, but did not interfere with him because ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... a charm that drew all the mice from the cellar and placed them upon the hats in the glass case, where they occupied the places the birds had vacated and looked very becoming—at least, in the eyes of the unworldly knook. To prevent their running about and leaving the hats Popopo rendered them motionless, and then he was so pleased with his work that he decided to remain in the shop and witness the delight of the milliner when she saw how daintily ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... her near to him, and kissed her forehead. He understood her. With that rare gift of sympathy—the highest, the most God-like of all human attributes—he felt at once what she meant. It was wonderful that this man, who was so unworldly, so unselfish, so pure of the stains of earth himself, should have seen at once her position from her own point of view; that was neither a very exalted one, nor was it very free from the dross of worldliness. But it was so. All ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... and was breaking no new ground. That is a provincial frame of mind, just as when a man begins to discard dressing for dinner, and can endure nothing but an old coat and slippers. It is easy to think of it as unworldly, peaceable, philosophical; but it is mere laziness. The really unworldly philosopher is the man who is at ease in all costumes and at ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... friend and companion, as her first love, with a devotion which, in its mingled and exalted nature, may be imagined by the mind, but can be but imperfectly depicted by the pen. It was a devotion created of innocence and gratitude, of joy and sorrow, of apprehension and hope. It was too fresh, too unworldly to own any upbraidings of artificial shame, any self-reproaches of artificial propriety. It resembled in its essence, though not in its application, the devotion of the first daughters of ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... elucidation of the riddle, which she narrated with many digressions, and with animated smiles, to conceal tears of sympathy. Paul Worthington and little Bessie did not like their history to be discussed by the rising frivolous generation; it was so unworldly, so sacred, and they looked forward with humble hope so soon to be united for ever in the better land, that it pained and distressed them to be made ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... wild and unworldly. His great-grandfather had been cut down at Culloden, certain in his last instant that God would restore the King. His grandfather, then a boy of ten, had taken the terrible claymore from the hand of the dead and hung it up in his house, burnishing it and sharpening it ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... of all time, and on it placed a lot of little figures, "pigmy minds"—all save one, and he the nearest great, an unworldly person summoned from a cloister, with the vision of genius and the practical incapacity of one who has run away from life, hating men but loving all mankind, eloquent but inarticulate in a large way, incapable of true self expression in his ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... Yourselves to witness with what holy joy, Shunning the polished mob of human kind, I have retired to watch your lonely fires And commune with myself. Delightful hours That gave mysterious pleasure, made me know All the recesses of my wayward heart, Taught me to cherish with devoutest care Its strange unworldly feelings, taught me too The best ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... was there, and with him a Quaker brother, whom he introduced as Phineas Fletcher. Phineas was tall and lathy, red-haired, with an expression of great acuteness and shrewdness in his face. He had not the placid, quiet, unworldly air of Simeon Halliday; on the contrary, a particularly wide-awake and au fait appearance, like a man who rather prides himself on knowing what he is about, and keeping a bright lookout ahead; peculiarities which sorted rather oddly with his ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... at their fair, unworldly countenances, a mist of tears bedimmed his spectacles. He almost regretted that it was necessary for them to know anything of the past or to provide aught for the future. He could have wished that they might be always the happy, youthful creatures who had hitherto ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... misgivings that it was a troubled one. He, too, had heard of the American defaulter, who has a celebrity of his own in Canada penetrating to different men with different suggestion, and touching here and there a pure and unworldly heart, such as Pere Etienne bore in his breast, with commiseration. The young priest did not conceive very clearly of the make and manner of the crime he suspected the elusive and mysterious stranger of committing; but he imagined that the great sum of money he knew him possessed of, ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... poor, little, meek, awkward, slim creature absolutely demolished them. Oh! she did it in such a fine, simple, unworldly sort of way. I only wish you had seen her! They were twitting her about not going in for all the fun here, and, above everything, for keeping her room so bare and unattractive. You know she has been a fortnight here to-day, and she has not got an extra thing— not ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... authorized list. This done, it remained for her to ponder upon the subsequent conclusion of this very unusual incident. Undoubtedly something must be done, if not with the letter at least with the packet, which, even to her unworldly eyes, had about it a suggestion of gold and gems that could not but bring a flutter of interest to a heart which, long as it had been consecrated to unworldly things, was still of the eternal feminine. It ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Steve to be that apostle, as you call him, I suppose." Looking at her intently a moment, he softened and added, "Well, you are a dear, unworldly woman." Then in sudden justification of himself, he went on: "I am willing he should be an apostle too, but one with money, so he can ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... Lord, of that radically "secular" ([Greek: bebelos]) spirit (ver. 16) of which Esau is the type, to which some "mess of meat," some material advantage, proves overwhelmingly more momentous than the unworldly "birthright" given by the promise of God? Let them all watch as for their life against such symptoms. It is a matter of eternal import. The ancient Esau found too late that he was an outcast, irrevocably, from the great ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... or, if they do, they'll drop him as a monkey drops a hot chestnut. Arlt plays like an artist; but he blushes, and he forgets to keep his cuffs in sight. He is as unworldly as he is conventional. Society doesn't care to ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... this mothering instinct toward the sensitive, imaginative, charming Stedman. She believed he had but two thoughts, his art and herself. She was content to place his art first. She could not guess that to one so unworldly, to one so wrapped up in his art, the fortune of a ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... I guess I'm old enough to settle down," Emeline added cheerfully. She and Mrs. Tarbury exchanged a look, and Julia knew exactly what concessions her mother had made before the reconciliation; knew just how sincere this unworldly wifely ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... thought the young man, with a sigh. For he could not quite satisfy himself by saying, that Mr Elliott was no man of business, an unworldly man. It came into his mind that even if the minister were chasing a shadow, it was a shadow more satisfying than his possible reality of political greatness. So he could not but sigh as he sat watching that peaceful face. The minister looked ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... Alma perceived his devotion or cared for him otherwise than as for an old friend. But thought is free, and so is love. The modest clerk had made this girl the light of his life, and whether far or near the rays of that ideal would guide him on his unworldly path. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... preference must be given to the later work. It was not unnaturally objected against Law, that he did not sufficiently base his arguments upon distinctly Gospel motives. No such objection can be raised against Wilberforce. Then again, though Wilberforce was a thoroughly unworldly man, he was in the good sense of the term a thorough man of the world, and knew by experience what course of argument would tell most with such men. What Law writes from mere theory, Wilberforce writes from practical knowledge. It would ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... she said as she led the way up the staircase. At its head stood a lady, who reminded Lucy strongly of the pictures of her dear mother, except that there was the difference of expression between a worldly and an unworldly character. Mrs. Brooke never had had—perhaps now never could have—the pure spiritual beauty which had been Mrs. Raymond's chief charm; but she was a graceful, stylish-looking woman, rather languid and unenergetic in appearance, as she ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... how can you treat me with such heartless levity?" and he wrung his hands bitterly. "I am pushed to desperation already. I never knew, until I lost you, what you were to me; how superior to all other women, how pure, how unworldly, how strong, how rich in all mental and womanly endowments! Hear me, Miriam," and he attempted to take my hand, an error of which ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... from Martha's garden gate they met the Methodist preacher. He was going to see Martha, but hearing of her wish to be alone, he turned and walked with Phyllis and Elizabeth toward the park. He was a little man, with an unworldly air, and very clear truthful eyes. People came to their cottage doors and looked curiously at the trio, as they went slowly toward the hall, the preacher between the girls, and ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... Berene on a railroad train, and had conceived one of those sudden and intense passions with which a woman with a past often inspires an innocent and unworldly young man. He was sincerely and truly religious by nature, and as spotless as a maiden in ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Jove, Ray," cried Doe excitedly, "it's only when I'm in my unworldly moods that I want so little as that. In my worse moments—that's nine-tenths of the day—I want yards more: Fame and Flattery ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... felt that everybody might become in time like two relatives from a Shaker establishment in Ohio, who visited the Boltons about this time, a father and son, clad exactly alike, and alike in manners. The son; however, who was not of age, was more unworldly and sanctimonious than his father; he always addressed his parent as "Brother Plum," and bore himself, altogether in such a superior manner that Ruth longed to put bent pins in his chair. Both father and son wore the long, single breasted collarless coats of their society, without buttons, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... he is so quick, and his feeling for me is so deep. And yet, mamma, now that I have thought more I fear that in sacrificing my own heart I am also sacrificing him. His friends will think so, at least. He is so young, chivalric, and unworldly that he may think it a noble thing to help us fight out our battle; but will he think so in coming years? Will he think so if the struggle is long and hard? Will he think so if we impede and retard him? Alas, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... You're the better driver. And I shall take it easy. Are you going to stay long in Seattle?" It was not merely a polite dinner-payment question. She wondered; she could not place this fresh-cheeked, unworldly young man so ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... appealed Kai Lung, as soon as Ming-shu's departing sandals were obscured to view, "out of the magnanimous condescension of your unworldly heart hear an added plea. Taught by the inoffensive example of that Lao Ting whose success in the literary competitions was brought about by a conjunction ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... tell the reader that after some hesitation Dennis had confided his feelings to his mother, and received from her the warmest sympathy. To Ethel Fleet's unworldly nature, that he should fall in love with and marry his employer's daughter seemed eminently fitting, with just a spice of beautiful romance. And it was her son's happiness and Christine's beauty that she thought ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... much of the world—never shall—nor will you. And as we were both born a little deficient in worldly caution and worldly policy, let us receive from others those, lessons,—do as well as we can, and keep our heart unworldly if our manners take on something ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... school days were over she returned to New York and gave herself into her mother's hands. Her mother's kindness of heart and sweet-tempered lovingness were touching things to Bettina. In the midst of her millions Mrs. Vanderpoel was wholly unworldly. Bettina knew that she felt a perpetual homesickness when she allowed herself to think of the daughter who seemed lost to her, and the girl's realisation of this caused her to wish to be especially ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... thought, leaving, ridiculously simple. His meeting with Miss Brundon was a fortunate chance. A fine, delicate, unworldly woman; a fineness different from Phebe's, submerged in the pursuit of her own salvation. The former, he realized, was close to forty. If she had been sympathetic with a strange child such as Eunice ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... pained him,—the idealistic dreamer then, the man of business now,—so that a spirit of unworldly peace and beauty known only to the soul in meditation laid its feathered finger upon his heart, moving strangely the ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... unworldly man, humble and plain in his ways, though of considerable learning. Las Casas seems to have been very fond of him, though he tells ...
— Las Casas - 'The Apostle of the Indies' • Alice J. Knight
... Hebrew, I forget: but in Manchester she had resumed this study with energy on a casual impulse derived from a certain Dr. Bailey, a clergyman of this city, who had published a Hebrew Grammar. The doctor was the most unworldly and guileless of men. Amongst his orthodox brethren he was reputed a "Methodist;" and not without reason; for some of his Low- Church views he pushed into practical extravagances that looked like fanaticism, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... dressing gown and the frayed slippers there was something about him that made Mrs. Davis feel a little of the old reverence for "the cloth" in which she had been brought up. After all, there WAS a certain divinity hedging a minister, even a poor, unworldly, abstracted one. ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... be wasted, bade him arise and gird his loins and wend him to the Regent's palace, and offer him the fruit—as King Vikram was absent—with a right reverend brahmanical benediction. She concluded with impressing upon her unworldly husband the necessity of requiring a large sum of money as a return for his inestimable gift. "By this means, "she said, "thou mayst promote thy present and ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... cherished, void of selfish ends, The social courtesies that bless And sweeten life, and loved his friends With most unworldly tenderness. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... way in which he moved through poverty and obscurity, flinging out exquisite poems or senseless rhapsodies, as a child might play with gems or straws or sunbeams indifferently. He was a gentle, kindly, most unworldly little man, with extraordinary eyes, which seem even in the lifeless portraits to reflect some unusual hypnotic power. He died obscurely, smiling at a vision of Paradise, in 1827. That was nearly a century ago, yet he still remains ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... husband. It is not too much to say that he was displeased—that he was much hurt. The Charlotte who in her too eagerness for money could so act was scarcely the Charlotte he had pictured to himself as his wife. Charlotte was lowered in the eyes of the unworldly man. But just because her husband was so unworldly, so unpractical, Charlotte's own more everyday nature began to reassert itself. She had really done no harm. She had but told a tale of wrong. Those who committed the wrong were the ones to blame. She, the sufferer—who could put sin at ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... arrived in Paris twenty-four hours before the end. The elder Browning had almost completed his eighty-fifth year. To the last he retained what his son described as "his own strange sweetness of soul." It was the close of a useful, unworldly, unambitious life, full of innocent enjoyment and deep affection. The occasion was not one for intemperate grief, but the sense of loss was great. Miss Browning, whose devotion during many years first to her mother, then ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... that the Lady Marina—that was to be," there was always some little stinging emphasis in the gracious speech, "had given a votive offering to the convent of the Servi? She was a devote then—quite unworldly—this ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Lomond, Lord St. Serf, the head of the house. What was that? Far, far better Philip Dennistoun, of Lakeside, the heir of his mother and his grandmother, two stainless women, with enough for everything that was honest and of good report, enough to permit him to be an unworldly scholar, a lover of art, a traveller, any play-profession that he chose if he did not incline to graver work. Ah! but she had not been so wise as that, she had not brought him up as Philip Dennistoun. He was Philip Compton, she had not been bold enough to change his name. ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant |
