"Austere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... building designate prelates and doctors, who ought to be conspicuous for their heavenly manner of life, signified by the violet colored skins: and who should also be ready to suffer martyrdom, denoted by the skins dyed red; and austere of life and patient in adversity, betokened by the curtains of goats' hair, which were exposed to wind and rain, as the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... do," she declared, tyrannizing over him with a fine affectation of austere hostess-ship. "I say you are to come down-stairs this evening to meet a few of our friends. And you ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... were left a widow before having presented her husband with a son. Even if she were left an infant widow of an infant husband and their marriage could not possibly have been consummated, she was doomed to an austere and humiliating life of perpetual widowhood, whilst, on the other hand, if she died, her widowed husband was enjoined to marry again at once unless she had left him a son. To explain away this cruel injustice, her fate was supposed to be due to her own Karma, and to be merely the ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... see if she's there," Lois said, as she turned away, leaving the austere figure to stare after her with eyes that might have been those of the woman delivered ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... ever to commit great faults in order to avoid others still greater. You will see.... on one side, the heathen mythology, that debased the spirit, in its efforts to deify the flesh; on the other, the austere Christian principle, that debased the flesh too much, in order to raise the worship of the spirit. You will see, afterwards, how the religion of Christ embodies itself in a church, and raises itself a generous democratic power against the tyranny of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... life the Dutch movement of the devotio moderna had recently begun to make itself felt, also, at Paris. The chief of its promoters was John Standonck of Mechlin, educated by the brethren of the Common Life at Gouda and imbued with their spirit in its most rigorous form. He was an ascetic more austere than the spirit of the Windesheimians, strict indeed but yet moderate, required; far beyond ecclesiastical circles his name was proverbial on account of his abstinence—he had definitely denied himself the use of meat. As provisor of the college ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... austere and impersonal character of Sankara's system provoked dissent: He was accused of being a Buddhist in disguise and the accusation raises an interesting question[779] in the history of Indian philosophy ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... to kill me, Mike." Her fingers slipped round his throat. "And now I should like to kill you, yes, kill you! Strangle you and leave your austere, ascetic body ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... were perfect and whose dress never strikes the eye, but which seems to have developed on them as the natural foliage of their persons. He had a high appreciation of the enjoyments of life—vanity, ostentation, good eating, and even the austere joys of the family. At home with his wife he illustrated the tender assiduity of the young husband; abroad he was the personification of a youth just freed from parental discipline. While his wife was ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... private instructions to my ambassadors, differing altogether from what I myself had dictated to them. Upon the same principle she maintained at various courts envoys and ministers, who acted by her orders, and in her name; she even succeeded in obtaining the friendship of the grave and austere Marie Therese, who ultimately carried her condescension so far, as only to address the marchioness by the title of 'cousin' and 'dear friend.' I must confess, however, that these proceedings on the part of madame de Pompadour were by no means agreeable to me, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... find one; we want a man like the cardinal. But the Irish will have a native for their chief. We caught Churchill young, and educated him in the Propaganda; but he has disappointed us. At first all seemed well; he was reserved and austere; and we heard with satisfaction that he was unpopular. But, now that critical times are arriving, his peasant-blood cannot resist the contagion. He proclaims the absolute equality of all religious, and of the power ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... ‘Lilith,’ or (as he ultimately named them in the respective sonnets) ‘Soul’s Beauty’ and ‘Body’s Beauty.’ It may be well to remark that, by the time when he completed the ‘Venus Astarte,’ or ‘Astarte Syriaca,’ he had got into a more austere feeling than of old with regard to colour and chiaroscuro; and the charm of the picture has, I am aware, been less, to many critics and spectators of the work, than he would have deemed to be its due, as compared with some ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... conqueror of Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, was a man of simple life and austere virtue. When he was laid to rest in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, "in streaming London's central roar," the poet who wrote his funeral ode was ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... in undulating breadth to the deep shadow of the great building, which rose against the sky as cold, as seamless, as if it were cut from solid ice. The yellow flare of lamps about its base only added to its austere majesty. It was at its best, and Ida and Bradley looked up at it in silence, hearing the jingle of bells, the soft voices of the negro drivers, the laughter of children coasting on the mall, and the muffled ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... monsieur," Dominic broke the silence suddenly in an austere voice. "Take hold of the tiller." He bent his hood to my ear. "The balancelle is yours. Your own hands must deal the blow. I—I have yet another piece of work to do." He spoke up loudly to the man who steered. "Let the signorino take the tiller, and ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the shameless effrontery of vice, these ladies have not the austere rigour of virtue. Seeing that professed courtesans insnared the most promising youths, and snatched them from other women, this description of females sprang up, in a manner, to dispute with them, under the rose, the advantages which the others derived from their traffic. If they have not the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the early Romans of the republic), there was a sufficiently austere morality. A public officer of state, whose business was to inquire into the private lives of the citizens, and to punish offences against morals, is a phenomenon which we have seen only once on this planet. There was never a people before, and there has been ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... own horizon. After only one week in New York she put her diamond napkin pincher to doing other work, and after six months she dressed about as well as them prominent society ladies that drift round the corridors of this hotel waiting for parties that never seem on time, and looking none too austere ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Bensley was occasionally absent from the theatre, John Kemble thought it no derogation to succeed to the part. Malvolio is not essentially ludicrous. He becomes comic but by accident. He is cold, austere, repelling; but dignified, consistent, and, for what appears, rather of an over-stretched morality. Maria describes him as a sort of Puritan; and he might have worn his gold chain with honour in one of our old round-head families, in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... hand on Olive; the spell of the past was already losing power; the sense that it had all been a dream grew stronger every minute. In a few hours she would re-enter the little house close under the shadow of that old Wren church, which reminded her somehow of childhood, and her austere father with his chiselled face. The meeting with her husband! How go through that! And to-night! But she did not care to contemplate to-night. And all those to-morrows wherein there was nothing she had to do of which it was reasonable ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... he had been so much oftener vexed, and so much seldomer pleased than you do," continued I, mentally comparing the smooth though weather-beaten benignity of the straight-cut features beside me, with the austere and frown-puckered gravity ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... strength in the figures, the firm modeling, and the fine way in which the figures are grouped. The composition of the west face of the minor monument is especially fine, and the very graceful lines here make an intimate appeal that is not evident in some of the other groups. The whole monument is austere and strongly compelling rather than intimately charming. If it is the first duty of art to make people think, this is the most successful bit ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... of Bari, of mean birth, had risen by the virtues of a monk. He was studious, austere, humble, a diligent reader of the Bible, master of the canon law, rigid in his fasts; he wore haircloth next his skin. His time was divided between study, prayer, and business, for which he had great aptitude. From the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... every weakness. He operated on her jealous nature so as to subject her to all the tortures which that spirit begets. By turns he flattered and browbeat her. He was sunny and amiable, or crabbed and austere, as suited his purpose. In fact, he so played on the poor girl, whose vanity and suspicion and jealous fear of a rival were intense, that he made her life miserable. She was even thwarted in the quarter where her strength principally lay. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... appeared at a banquet. Thunder rolled, and lightning flashed: Ariel, in the form of a harpy, clapped his wings upon the table, and the banquet vanished. Prospero gave Ferdinand a rich compensation to make amends for past austere punishments; and that compensation was nothing less than the hand of Miranda. He recommended them to be prudent before their nuptials, and told them that if they disregarded his injunctions in this respect, they would have hate and discord between them. Ariel, by ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... him as a sheaf out of that sowing; had been assigned to his classes; had gone down town to the little packed and crowded book-store and bought the needful student's supplies—so making the first draught on his money; been assigned to a poor room in the austere dormitory behind the college; made his first failures in recitations, standing before his professor with no more articulate voice and no more courage than a sheep; and had awakened to a new sense—the brotherhood of young souls about him, ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... many small cones and craters, lava flows and other varied evidences of recent volcanic activity. Geologically recent, I mean. The grasses of the flowing plains were very brown, and the molehill craters very dark; the larger craters blasted and austere; the higher escarpment in the background blue with a solemn distance. The sizes of things were not originally fitted out for little tiny people like human beings. We walked hours to reach landmarks apparently ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... unquestioned prerogative of every Island girl or woman, and it only comes to them as a vague far-off horror in an unknown world that there are places under the sun and the stars where such is not the case. The punishment is appalling in the very few cases where sin has lifted its head amongst these austere people. The lepers' hut of old was no such living death of isolation as surrounds an Island girl who has smirched her good name. Henceforth there is an atmosphere about her that never lifts—of horror for some, of tragedy for others, ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... and the sounds of familiar life; the din of a busy world still vexed and cheered me; the unveiled faces of women still shone in the light of day. Yet, whenever I chose to look southward, I saw the Ottoman’s fortress—austere, and darkly impending high over the vale of the Danube—historic Belgrade. I had come, as it were, to the end of this wheel-going Europe, and now my eyes would see the splendour and havoc of ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... which will remain the honour of this restless century. I shall certainly be counted among those ten or twelve who revealed to France her own literary antiquities. My publication of the poetical works of Gautier de Coincy inaugurated a judicious system and fixed a date. It is in the austere calm of old age that I decree to myself this deserved credit, and God, who sees my heart, knows whether pride or vanity have aught to do with this self-award ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... life do excel: which Plato and Boethius well knew, and therefore made Mistress Philosophy very often borrow the masking raiment of poesy. For even those hard-hearted evil men, who think virtue a school name, and know no other good but indulgere genio, and therefore despise the austere admonitions of the philosopher, and feel not the inward reason they stand upon, yet will be content to be delighted: which is all the good fellow poet seemeth to promise: and so steal to see the form of goodness (which seen they cannot but love) ere themselves be aware, as if they ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... household had been so long drifting into a staid and ceremonious fashion of life that this visit of Betty's threatened at times to be disturbing. If Aunt Barbara's heart had not been kept young, under all her austere look and manners, Betty might have felt constrained more than once, but there always was an excuse to give Aunt Mary, who sometimes complained of too much chattering on the front door steps, or too much scurrying up and down stairs from Betty's room. It was impossible ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of the tragedy is full of fire and life, yet never wanting in a sort of lofty, austere grace, that lapses at last into a truly statuesque despair. Orestes mad, with Electra and Pylades on either side: it is the attitude and gesture of Greek sculpture, a group forever fixed in the imperishable ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... heard from Dhaumya these words suitable to the occasion, Yudhishthira the just, with heart concentrated within itself and purifying it duly, became engaged in austere meditation, moved by the desire of supporting the Brahmanas. And worshipping the maker of day with offerings of flowers and other articles, the king performed his ablutions. And standing in the stream, he turned his face towards the god of day. And touching ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... in the United States, and almost as common among the middle classes of England, Germany and Scandinavia—does himself a serious disservice, and that he is uneasily conscious of it. Having got himself a wife to his austere taste, he finds that she is rather depressing—that his vanity is almost as painfully damaged by her emotional inertness as it would have been by a too provocative and hedonistic spirit. For the thing that chiefly delights a man, when some, woman has gone through the solemn buffoonery ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... himself. He could not stay in bed, and he could not hang about the house. He did not know how to demean himself to either of the young men when he met them. He could not be cordial as he ought to be with Urmand; nor could he be austere to George with that austerity which he felt would have been proper on his part. He was becoming very tired of his dignity and authority. Hitherto the exercise of power in his household had generally been easy enough, his wife and Marie had always ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... step, unto our Jewish throne Of supreme dignity, the Rabbi's chair; Shrinking from public honors thrust upon Thy meek desert, regretting even there The placid habit of thy life foregone; Silence obscure, vast peace and austere days Passed in wise contemplation, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... Slopham's refrigerator, and looking about on either side with barbaric curiosity at her array of shelves of jars and bottles, while he ate raspberry jam out of a rare and elegant saucer with an exquisite silver spoon, might have seemed a ludicrous spectacle to anybody less austere than Miss Slopham. But she only gave a sigh of relief, and softly turned the key, and went away to prepare for her guests. Ogla-Moga did not miss her. He finished the saucer of jam, and finished the jar, and then began explorations. He found various relishes, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... voice was harsher, more positive, than usual; his shoulders seemed to square themselves and a frowning brow hardened an always austere face. His whole manner was that of a man consenting against his will. His young wife hung over his chair vainly endeavoring to smooth, with little pats of her fair hands, the stubborn locks that would stand on end, like the bristles of a brush, whatever she did. Her soft and vivacious beauty was ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... them than allow them to run their heads into a noose. The Kaffir trouble was like a shadow on our march; they imagined that they had old scores to pay off; they paid them with remarkable fidelity to their own austere sense of justice; and it was felt that in suffering death they were bearing the punishment for more than ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... express'd Their notion of its perfect rest. A convent, even a hermit's cell Would break the silence of this Dell; It is not quiet, is not ease, But something deeper far than these; The separation that is here Is of the grave; and of austere And happy feelings of the dead: And therefore was it rightly said That Ossian, last of all his race, Lies ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... a deep moral. The return of Nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water and a crust ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... temper, as well as her good sense, rendering her always ambitious of acquiring the affection of those she converted with, she had the secret to ingratiate herself not only to the youngest nuns, but also to the elder and most austere, that the one were never pleased but when in her company, and the others propose her as an example of piety and sweetness ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... libertine is sometimes the most devout; in the study of wisdom, the most indulgent in pleasures sometimes become the most austere. For my own part, I view Epicurus from a different standpoint in youth and health, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... times before it disappeared amid a series of widening ripples. After this they all were simply boys together, calling, shouting, and jesting with one another in good-humored rivalry. What use was it then ever again to attempt to be austere and unapproachable Fernalds? No use ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... able to display its secret to any sensible man in the language used by all sensible men. Milton's prophetic genius furnished the eighteenth century, out of the depth of the passionate age before it, with the theological tone it was to need. In spite of the austere magnificence of his devotion, he gives to smaller souls a dangerous lead. The rigidity of Scripture exegesis belonged to this stately but imperfectly sensitive mode of thought. It passed away with the influence of the older rationalists whose precise ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... strode more quickly down the forest side towards the building, which now revealed its austere proportions, though Dick could see that they were mitigated by a strange, formal flower-garden, with quaint statues and fountains. There were grim black allees of clipped trees, a curiously wrought iron gate, and twisted ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... divided into quarters, in each of which there is a mosque with an imaum to perform service at certain hours, at the head of the quarter which assembles there. The imaum of the division I live in is a surly curmudgeon, of an austere countenance, and the greatest hypocrite in the world. Four old men of this neighbourhood, who are people of the same stamp, meet regularly every day at this imaum's house. There they vent their slander, calumny, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... known, that Mr. Clifford, offended by his only son, had let him die of absolute starvation in Paris. Added to this rumor was a vague story of some crime committed by the younger Clifford, which his father would not overlook or forgive. That he was a hard man, austere to utter pitilessness, everybody averred. No transgressor need ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... them here In stone austere, To both was dear, and did not guess at all: Yet with her new-wed lord Walking the sward Paused, and for two dead friends a tear ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... before, and now ruled by Stephen Harding, an Englishman from Dorsetshire, was exceedingly austere, keeping Saint Benedict's rule literally. Here Bernard's uncompromising self-mortification, and his love of, and communion with, Nature, showed themselves as the chief characteristics of his noble ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... garland of verses that came to us with the flowers: to bid us welcome and to wish us God-speed on our way. Truly, 'twas a delicately fine bit of poetic courtesy. No troubadour in the days of Vienne the Holy (the holiness was not of an austere variety) could have cast a more graceful tribute upon the passing galley of ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... Hanseatic city; his mother is a Creole from South America. In his elder brother Heinrich Mann, perhaps a more ingenious, but a less finished writer, of the nervous, ardently passionate, impressionistic sort, the exotic heritage has tended to predominate; in Thomas Mann the correctness of the austere Hanseatic city and her old traditions seems to be the strongest element. Because he cannot escape the exasperating incompatibility between citizen and artist, between the instinct for conformity and the will to be different, he fights ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... was required to hold an annual term or sitting in each county of the state, two of the judges officiating. In every court-room in Ohio where Judge Sherman presided he made friends. His official robes were worn by him as the customary habiliments of the man. He was never distant, haughty, morose, austere, or overbearing on the bench. It was not in his nature to be so anywhere, and it was therefore always a personal pleasure to practice in his courts. The younger members of the profession idolized him in every part of the state; for them and their early efforts he systematically ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... next block, strange to say, he did not think so much about Eleanor as he did about Miss Isobel Bartlett. The whole situation kept presenting itself through her austere eyes, and instinctively he put a ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... designs, purely decorative, are interspersed among the figure subjects. "Quick March," a toy-book (Warne), is also full of the peculiar "quality" which distinguishes Mr. Hallward's work, and is less austere than certain later examples. The very notable magazine, The Child's Pictorial, illustrated almost entirely in colours, which the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge published for ten years, contains work by this artist, and a great many illustrations by Mrs. ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... temple. In front of her, on a little hill, stood the beautiful Norman church that Robert the King had erected there on the highest point of his kingdom in gratitude for his son's recovery from sickness, a miracle of austere strength and comeliness, with its great bronze image in a niche by the door of the Archangel Michael, all armored, with his hands resting on the hilt of his drawn sword. Below her lay all the splendor ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... inconsiderable influence in fixing the peculiar character of his philosophy. By nature severe and morose, and constitutionally inclined to reserve and melancholy, he early cherished this habit by submitting to the austere ami rigid discipline of the Cynics. Those qualities which he conceived to be meritorious in himself, and which he found to conciliate the admiration of mankind, he naturally transferred to his imaginary character of a wise or ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... with its fading, rose-colored reflections, not so far from the anchored vessels but they might, had they chosen, have spoken across to those on board, the monotonous, austere, and yet vaguely soft gray of the old town rising behind them against the melting sky, sat Mellony Pember and ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... of the men associated with Waterman prove that he was ranked among the chief citizens of the town. The austere manners of the age, among communities like that established here; the exclusion, at that time, by inexorable laws, of many forms of amusement; and the general sombre aspect of society, kept down the natural exhilaration ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... longer, mighty King, I was his disciple so long as I believed in him; but he is not holy. I have abandoned him. He is not austere; his disciples do not practise self-mortifications, and he speaks kindly and dines with sinners. My disciples do not dress in worldly garments; they would not accept the invitation of women; they would not touch ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... youth who stood with one older and of austere garb. By the vestments of this older man I knew he was of those who teach people in spiritual things. To him the young man had come in anguish of heart. Then the older man of priestly garb taught the young man in the teachings that had ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... of the Latin race, but they are the least and the last of the Latins, and the Italians are the first. To his Italian origin Zola owed not only the moralistic scope of his literary ambition, but the depth and strength of his personal conscience, capable of the austere puritanism which underlies the so-called immoralities of his books, and incapable of the peculiar lubricity which we call French, possibly to distinguish it from the lubricity of other people rather than to declare it a thing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... common interest. Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts, by striking their roots each year more deeply into the soil of America, became more and more self-supporting states in everything save name and political allegiance; while New France, which with its austere climate would have developed more slowly in any case, remained ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... And all my austere nights of midnight oil, all the books I had read, all the wisdom I had gathered, went glimmering before the ape and tiger in me that crawled up from the abysm of my heredity, atavistic, competitive and brutal, lustful with strength and desire ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... would have met it; nor, if her father had been already dead, would there have been any great improbability in the false story that was to be told of her death, that, like Goneril, she 'fordid herself.' Then, after those austere words ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... with miter and ring, And pastoral staff, and all that sort of thing, And a monk with a book, and a monk with a bell, And "dear linen souls," In clean linen stoles, Swinging their censers, and making a smell.— And see where the Choir-master walks in the rear With front severe And brow austere, Now and then pinching a little boy's ear When he chants the responses too late or too soon, Or his Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La's not quite in tune. (Then you know They'd a "movable Do," Not a fix'd one as now—and of course never knew How to set ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... own that they only display upon long acquaintance. You can see shadowy hands draw on the misty night cap or fold round massive shoulders the billowy gray drapery or inky cloak when passing rain squall or mountain tempest is brewing. They wrinkle their brows and draw near with austere familiarity; they retreat and let the sunshine and shadows play hide-and-seek round them, or lift their bald heads in still summer sunshine with calm joyfulness. The dwellers among them learn to love them through all ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... the venerable Vicomte Melchior de Voguee in France, who is best known to readers in this country for his standard tome on the Russian novel. In the austere pages of the Revue des Deux Mondes he carefully explained to his readers that d'Annunzio's lewdness must not be confused with the obscenities of Zola, whereat Ouida protested that they were alike in their complacent preoccupation ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... economy suffers from weak domestic and foreign demand, austere government budgets, and serious internal armed conflict, but seems poised for recovery. Other economic problems facing President URIBE range from reforming the pension system to reducing high unemployment. Two of Colombia's leading ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... prison walls. He knew not how she felt towards him now-whether a new pride might not take the place of that which had before actuated her, and a fear lest she should, by acknowledging, as it were, the former error, be led still to observe towards him the same austere manner and distance. ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... the theme of Prometheus. It refers to Prometheus Delivered. My idea is derived from her. Prometheus represents Divine Love—since he is the god who suffers unendurable agonies through his love for man. Zeus represents the old austere god of the sects and creeds—the gloomy God of ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... gift of the novelist's portrait. 'He looks superb in his beautiful, tasteful, gilded gibbet,' she says. A few years later, and Thackeray was to write the eloquent tribute to his admirer, which is familiar to his readers: 'I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc marching in upon us and rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals.' 'She gave me,' he tells us, 'the impression of being a very pure, and lofty, and high-minded person. A great and holy ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... religion, confounded with irksome ceremonies and unreasonable restraints, assumes the most ungracious aspect: not the sober austere one that commands respect whilst it inspires fear; but a ludicrous cast, that serves to point a pun. For, in fact, most of the good stories and smart things which enliven the spirits that have been concentrated ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... failed, was marched off, under the guard of a strong body of police to the State-Prison, there to await his trial and condemnation. A small crowd, hooting and cursing the criminal, pursued him as he went, and one personage, austere and dignified, also followed, at a distance, as though curious to see the last of the would-be murderer ere he was shut out from liberty,—and this was ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Permission should be solicited for both the married persons to be present on such occasions. It is difficult to estimate the good effect which the deputed, if of sweet and tender dispositions, or the bad effects which the deputed, if of cold and austere manners, might have upon those they visited, or what bias it might give the one in particular, who had never been in membership, for or against the society. Permission also might be solicited, even when the mission was over for future friendly opportunities or visits, which would shew in the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Judge Sewall pathetically recorded, "The communion bread was frozen pretty hard and rattled sadly into the plates." Sadly down through the centuries is ringing in our ears the gloomy rattle of that frozen sacramental bread on the Church plate, telling to us the solemn story of the austere and comfortless church-life of our ancestors. Would that the sound could bring to our chilled hearts the same steadfast and pure Christian faith that made their gloomy, freezing services warm with ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... historian of morals and ideas has a mission no less austere than that of the historian of events. The latter has the surface of civilization, the struggles of the crowns, the births of princes, the marriages of Kings, the battles, the assemblies, the great public men, the revolutions in the sunlight, all exterior; the other historian has the interior, ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... sense that every man is only a man, which, if the Russians ever are a democracy, will make them the most democratic democracy that the world has ever seen. Take this passage, for instance, from the austere conclusion of "Creatures ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... the receptacle for them; often it would be crammed to bursting before the speech had concluded. Yet there remained with him always the trace of his younger days of grave dandyism; he never abandoned the Parliamentary frock-coat, and sketches of him in the illustrated papers convey the austere correctness of its folds; and the hat from which so much service was exacted appeared each day unsurpassable ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... of the eleventh century. He is an accurate and picturesque chronicler of that iron, yet chivalrous age. If on the one hand, we see the sinister figure of Henry IV of Germany, on the other we find the austere but noble monk Hildebrand, who became Pope St. Gregory VII. We hear the clash of swords drawn in private brawl and vendetta, but see them put back into the scabbard at the sound of the church bells that ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... whoever breaks is certainly punished with death: They keep it so strict, that labourers ready to faint with thirst dare not taste a drop of water. They have a sort of monks called Dervises [sic], who live a very austere life, keeping a profound silence, go barefoot, with a leather girdle round their bodies, full of sharp points to mortify the flesh, and sometimes beat and burn themselves with hot irons: they are very charitable, and spare nothing ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... not half filled when Armitage and Thornton arrived, but a double line of visitors were standing in the rear aisle. Armitage caught the eye of one of the ushers and beckoned to him. But that frock-coated, austere personage coldly turned his glance elsewhere and Armitage had started forward to enlist his attention in a manner that would admit of no evasion when his companion caught him by ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... these orders, and moderately supplied the Doctor (he seemed to know that nobody else wanted anything to eat), he lingered as near the Firm as he decently could, watching with an austere eye their disposition of the viands, and but once relaxing the severe expression of his face. This was on the occasion of Mr. Craggs, whose teeth were not of the best, partially choking, when he cried out with great animation, 'I thought he ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... spoke, a tall gaitered man with weather-beaten face, strong, lean, austere, and the blue-gray eyes of the hill-country, came striding into the yard. And trotting soberly at his heels, with the gravest, saddest eyes ever ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... the Present brings, and those alloy'd; Th' expected fulness leaves an aching void; But HOPE stands by, and lifts her sunny eyes That gild the days to come.—She still relies The Phantom HAPPINESS not thus shall glide Always from life.—Alas!—yet ill betide Austere Experience, when she coldly tries In distant roses to discern the thorn! Ah! is it wise to anticipate our pain? Arriv'd, it then is soon enough to mourn. Nor call the dear Consoler false and vain, When yet again, shining through ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... in the house but card-playing; the almoner played with me, and so did the sub- rector, and I won money from both; not too much, however, lest they should tell the rector, who had the character of a very austere man, and of being a bit of a saint; however, the thief of a porter, whose money I had won, informed the rector of what was going on, and one day the rector sent for me into his private apartment, and gave me so long ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... audience might go to sleep, or perhaps go away, the science and the austere philosophy taught in these plays were enlivened by tavern scenes, and by the gambols of a clown, fool, or buffoon, called Vice, armed, as Harlequin, with a wooden dagger. And often, such is human frailty, the beholders went, remembering nothing but the mad pranks of ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... separated by a tremendous mountain wall, whose only gateway is the Brenner. On one side of that wall is Italy, with her vines, her mulberry-trees, her whitewashed, red-tiled cottages, her light-hearted, easy-going, Latin-blooded peasantry; across the mountains is the solemn, austere German scenery, with savage peaks and gloomy pine forests, a region inhabited by a stolid, slow-thinking Teutonic people. The Trentino and the Tyrol have about as much in ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... were her Bible, her prayer-book and the "Imitation of Christ." The notes she made in these books reveal her thoughts in that time, and will touch the uttermost depths of any nature nourished in that beautiful faith which is at once so tender and so austere. The prayer-book with those laconic entries on its fly-leaf, in which she set down the sad and eloquent chronology of her fate, the copy of the "Imitation" which she had read and marked during those weeks ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... none sufficiently austere to escape his solicitation; and while, as a rule, he waited until the object of his regard came to a standstill, he had been known to approach diagonally, and, at the point of incidence, presenting his query, pass on with a glance of impassive impersonality ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... by fate austere The impulse to discard, He never paused to idly veer About the bush; but calm and clear He said: 'How ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... steadily on under the direction of Hildebrand. The young King Henry endeavoured to free himself from the great German ecclesiastics who held him in thrall, by repudiating the wife whom they had forced upon him. He was checked by the austere and resolute papal legate, Peter Damiani, and was obliged to accept Bertha of Savoy, to whom subsequently he became much attached. Peter Darniani's visit, however, brought him relief in another way, for the legate took ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... Byron, there can be little doubt that his character would have been, in many respects, the better for it. In the following year his grand-uncle, the fifth Lord Byron, died at Newstead Abbey, having passed the latter years of his strange life in a state of austere and almost savage seclusion. It is said, that the day after little Byron's accession to the title, he ran up to his mother and asked her, "whether she perceived any difference in him since he had been ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... from that quarter, and on the other directly and manifestly to Concord River, which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds through which in some other geological period it may have flowed, and by a little digging, which God forbid, it can be made to flow thither again. If by living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit in the woods, so long, it has acquired such wonderful purity, who would not regret that the comparatively impure waters of Flint's Pond should be mingled with it, or itself should ever go to waste its sweetness in ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... fine and humble determination that nothing could shake could be discerned in her. There was a small vertical line between her brows which gave her charming face a look of concentrated thought, almost austere at the first glance. There was scarcely a ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... them to an inner office. Here they confronted an austere gentleman whose uniform denoted that he was a captain, and whose whole bearing ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... the light of the hope of eternal life. Just as the hunger after righteousness of the Prophets is intense, so their hope of finally sating that hunger in an eternity of sinless bliss and enjoyment of God is confessedly inconspicuous. In short, they have carried Theism to its austere extreme—'though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him'—while unconcerned about the rewards of Animism. This is certainly a strange result of a religion which, according to the anthropological theory, has ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... a custom until it became a root of corruption. This is what happened, and forms of the custom which had no sense but the gratification of licentiousness spread around the Mediterranean. The old female sex mores were very simple and austere, but they were corrupted after the middle of the second century B.C. Those of Roman Carthage, if we can trust Salvianus, became more corrupt than those of Punic Carthage ever had been. They were less ferocious and more frankly voluptuous. Salvianus's description ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... and the laudable desire of supporting the reputation of the society in which they were engaged, rendered the lives of the primitive Christians much purer and more austere than those of their pagan contemporaries or their degenerate successors. They were insistent in their condemnation of pleasure and luxury, and, in their search after purity, were induced to approve reluctantly that institution of marriage ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... insist," he said, and very sternly he thrust the redeemed weapon back into his shaps. A change came over him as he regarded her; there was an austere tightening of his lips and his eyes glowed with a light that Kitty ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... for an alliance were favorably considered, and all the arrangements were made for the betrothal of the parties. Suddenly, however, a new actor appeared on the stage, who overturned this well-arranged scheme. There resided in the city a grim, austere, and wealthy man, who had served in the French and Spanish armies, who was noted no less for his ferocity and pride—which had been displayed in several sanguinary duels—than for his wealth. He had an only son, a handsome, graceful, and fascinating young man, who, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... still remain in good condition, were inhabited by Becket. In the treasury is the black strip of a stole he used to wear, sewed on to another stole. Also relics of St. Edmund, and curious deeds connected with him and others, who had retired to this, then an austere Cistercian monastery. The walls of the cloister are hung with engravings representing scenes in the life ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... France were not, as one might suppose from their literature, cold and dry of temperament. They were sensitive and tender-hearted. They did not forever lead the austere life of scholarly seclusion; they did not ignore the affections nor the cares of family; they knew how to look upon life and its ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... growth over the past five years despite a serious armed conflict. In fact, 2007 is regarded by policy makers and the private sector as one of the best economic years in recent history, after 2005. The economy continues to improve in part because of austere government budgets, focused efforts to reduce public debt levels, an export-oriented growth strategy, improved domestic security, and high commodity prices. Ongoing economic problems facing President URIBE ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... flower-stands filled up the corners, with their roses and other blooms. This study, which Balzac himself has left us a description of in his novel The Girl with the Golden Eyes, was soon abandoned as a workroom for another more simple and austere, up under the roof. The latter, however, he likewise began, being tormented by the desire of change, to adorn ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the most recondite mysteries of human nature. Love, which is debauch of reason, the strong and austere joy of a lofty soul, and pleasure, the vulgar counterfeit sold in the market-place, are two aspects of the same thing. The woman who can satisfy both these devouring appetites is as rare in her sex ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... abroad, travels with us, watches, divides the times of our earnest and sports, shares in our country recesses and recreations; insomuch as the wisest and best learned have thought her the absolute mistress of manners and nearest of kin to virtue. And whereas they entitle philosophy to be a rigid and austere poesy, they have, on the contrary, styled poesy a dulcet and gentle philosophy, which leads on and guides us by the hand to action with a ravishing delight and incredible sweetness. But before we handle the kinds of poems, with their special ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... only thirteen years old when he came to the throne, and his youth naturally inclined him towards the less austere forms of divine worship: from the very first he tolerated much that his father had forbidden, and the spirit of eclecticism which prevailed among his associates rendered him, later on, an object of special detestation ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... whose austere spirit was unfolded in the desert, Jesus grew up among men, passing through and sanctifying childhood and youth, home duties, and innocent pleasures. But ere He enters on His work, the need which every soul appointed to high and hard tasks has felt, namely, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... eat, and the Concordia, being the only restaurant, daily entertained several citizens, besides guests staying in the house. One of these visitants excited my curiosity; he was a middle-aged man of austere countenance; shabby in attire, but with the bearing of one accustomed to command. Arriving always at exactly the same moment, he seated himself in his accustomed place, drew his hat over his brows, and began ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... in the middle of life, austere and grave in deportment.... God had sifted three kingdoms to find the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Twilight fell austere and sudden upon them with an immediate fall of temperature that found a thermometer in ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... sit and sob beside me — you, upon whose golden head Many rains of many sorrows have from day to day been shed; Who, because your love was noble, faced with me the lot austere Ever pressing with its hardship on the man of letters here — Let me feel that you are near me, lay your hand within mine own; You are all I have to live for, now that we are left alone. Three there ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... Revolution. It is not the same with citizen Billaud-Varennes." (Report of the Purveyor, Nivose 9.) "In certain clubs and groups there is a rumor that Robespierre is to be appointed dictator..... The people do justice to his austere virtues; it is noticed that he has never changed his opinions ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... calling to him soundlessly, and broke off abruptly and stood there at the window for a time, motionless and thoughtful. She was a tall girl, of a broad-shouldered, athletic type, a college girl by the sign of the austere cut of her gown, but a western girl by the sign of the flying ends of the scarf about her throat, the unafraid looseness of her bright hair. Her face, lit by her amber eyes and crowned by those loose ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... inevitable black cigar now toward one eye, now toward the other. Except the Storm Centre, who fondly closed his palm over his cob meerschaum and felt its warmth and seemed far away, a dangerous poet. Except Old Brothers and Sisters, most austere of Wesleyans, who had neither pipe nor quid. He was cleaning his pistols. They were men hewn for mighty deeds, but—cringe must we all before the irony that neither life nor romance may dodge—it was ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... her to resign from the team had been purely disinterested. She was reasonably sure that she had Mignon to blame for the humiliation. Jerry Macy had told her of Miss Arnold's respect for Mignon's father's money, and that Miss Archer's thin-lipped, austere-looking secretary was one of the ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... she came to him in the vestry, with a drop from the rather austere manner in which he had spoken, "what can I do ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... allegiance to your former sovereign, when you only get a severer one in his stead? Far more seldom does an ecclesiastical government call out its people to war; it gives a more efficient support to the poor; it does not lessen, nay rather increases the number of holidays; preaches no austere and gloomy morality; is patient and long-suffering, provided only no attack be made upon the faith." There were not a few, who lent open ears to such appeals. At a conference between their deputies and those of the Glarners at Wyl, the Zurichers were obliged to feel this. Envoys ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... dearly for it now; afraid to venture into the presence of a couple of swell dames not invincibly austere, lacking the touch-and-go gallantry of a mere Bulger who had probably never ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... moral side, he was a typical reformer, a man of impeccable private character, solitary, a little austere. He had never married; he had never sought the company of women, and in fact he knew nothing about them. Women had had no more bearing on his life than the ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... reduced to two main tribes, the Doric and the Ionian, historians have justly and generally concurred in noticing between them the strongest and most marked distinctions,—the Dorians grave, inflexible, austere,—the Ionians lively, versatile, prone to change. The very dialect of the one was more harsh and masculine than that of the other; and the music, the dances of the Dorians, bore the impress of their severe ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he stood the chieftain of that great austere party of Huguenots, the men who went on, their knees before the battle, beating their breasts with their iron gauntlets, and singing in full chorus a psalm of David, before smiting the Philistines ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... youth of Machiavelli, the Florence of those days is so well known that the early environment of this representative citizen may be easily imagined. Florence has been described as a city with two opposite currents of life, one directed by the fervent and austere Savonarola, the other by the splendour-loving Lorenzo. Savonarola's influence upon the young Machiavelli must have been slight, for although at one time he wielded immense power over the fortunes of Florence, he only furnished Machiavelli with a subject of a gibe in ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... a tall, spare woman, with a thin face and great dark eyes, with eyelids slightly reddened, as though by long weeping or sleeplessness. It was an austere face, but its severity softened into actual sweetness as she smiled at her ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... It was the first real event in her pale life, that and her uncle's funeral, which seemed closely related. They made the date from which she could reckon herself a person. What impressed her more than the austere dignity of the judge's private rooms, with their prints of famous personages, lined bookcases, and rich furniture, was Judge Orcutt himself. He was the first gentleman she had ever met in any real sense of the word. And Judge Orcutt ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... races on that earth Which spins in space where thousand other spin— The casual offspring of the Cosmic Mirth Perhaps—what is there any man can win, Or any nation? Ultimates aside, Men have their aims, and Israel her pride. She stands among the rest, austere, aloof, Still the peculiar people, armed in proof Of Selfhood, whilst the others merge or die. She stands among the rest and answers: "I, Above ye all, must ever gauge success By ideal types, and know the more and less ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... ornamentation. The home which she directed was a home without playing cards or dancing or smoking or wine-bibbing or other worldly frivolities, yet the memories of her presence which Catherine Page has left are not at all austere. Duty was with her the prime consideration of life, and fundamental morals the first conceptions which she instilled in her children's growing minds, yet she had a quiet sense of humour and a real love ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... D'Albani! It was a name not uncommon in the Roman States, but I had never heard it linked to a noble family. And yet I had somehow, somewhere; and in the vain effort at recollection I had almost forgotten my hunger. There was nothing bourgeois in the little lady. The austere servants, the high manner of condescension, spake of a stock used to deference, though, maybe, pitifully decayed in its fortunes. There was a mystery in these quiet folk which tickled my curiosity. Romance after all was not destined to fail me at ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... as one possessed of the highest honours of chivalry—the self-styled minstrel might not in reality be a man of that worth which he assumed. There was certainly something in his conversation, at least more grave, if not more austere, than was common to those of his calling; and when he recollected many points of Sir John de Walton's minuteness, a doubt arose in his mind, that the governor might not approve of his having introduced into the castle a person of Bertram's character, who was capable of making observations ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... put a question to the Governor across the table; and he sat now, leaning a little forward, while he waited for an answer. The light from the tall white candles, in branched candelabra of the Queen Anne pattern, fell directly on his handsome austere face, so full of delicate reserves and fine intentions; and all the disturbing questions fled from Corinna's mind while she looked at him. Surely, she repeated to herself, with a triumphant emphasis, surely there was no truth in that old ugly gossip! The backward ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... excitement he lifted the ancient cover and turned it over. The first page of the book was blank; so were the second and third. On the fourth page, Alan saw a few lines of writing, in an austere, rigid hand. He peered close, and with awe and astonishment read the words ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... 'Prospectus,' and, from the first, its guiding spirit. Happily so, for his was a spirit fitted to rule, both by power, and tact, and taste. With 'Uncle MARK' in the chair, I knew there would be neither austere autocracy, nor faineant laxity, neither weakness of stroke nor foulness of blow, neither Rosa-Matilda-ish, mawkishness, nor ...
— Punch, Volume 101, Jubilee Issue, July 18, 1891 • Various
... and on the other side of a doorway, through which he could see Rudolph noiselessly preparing the dinner table, was a swan-like sofa, in olive wood and pale yellow satin, from the Venice of the ottocento. At his right, beyond a window, mounted a tall, austere secretary in waxed walnut; and behind him, under the white chair rail, bookcases extended across the width of the room. Gustavus Hesselius' portrait of the first Howat Penny hung on a yellow painted ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... authentic trappings and utensils, some chosen individual be maintained at the public charge, to exhibit for the contemplation of a drouthing world the immortal flame of intoxication. He will be known, without soft concealments, as the Perpetual Souse. In his little bar, served by austere attendants, he will be kept in a state of gentle exhilaration. Nothing gross, nothing unseemly, I insist! In that state of sweetly glowing mind and heart, in that ineffable blossoming of all the nobler qualities of human dignity, this priest of alcohol will represent and perpetuate ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... the numerous valleys of the parish, and it was reached from the church by another cart-track along the valley between Pendhu and the towans. Probably it was an ancient farmhouse, and it must have been a desolate and austere place until, as at the date when Mark first came there, it was graced by the perfume and gold of acacias, by wistaria and jasmine and honeysuckle, by the ivory goblets of magnolias, by crimson fuchsias, and where formerly its grey walls grew mossy north and east by pink and white camelias and ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... his more sedate superior who presided over the spiritual welfare of the parish—and whose solemn celebration of the mass was by no means so agreeable as the lighter service of Father Phil. The Rev. Dominick Dowling was austere and long- winded; his mass had an oppressive effect on his congregation, and from the kneeling multitude might be seen eyes fearfully looking up from under bent brows, and low breathings and subdued groans often rose above the silence of his congregation, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... lying on my back in bed. Then the light of that white heaven broke upon my vision, that breadth of mere white which is indeed almost the definition of Paradise, since it means purity and also means freedom. But alas! like all heavens, now that it is seen it is found to be unattainable; it looks more austere and more distant than the blue sky outside the window. For my proposal to paint on it with the bristly end of a broom has been discouraged—never mind by whom; by a person debarred from all political rights—and even my minor proposal to put the other end of the broom into ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... overreach, and of steering a crooked course—not to your and my advantage—amid the sanctities of property. It has been accused further of loving if not too well at least too often, of being in fine as little austere as possible. I am not sure it is very brave, nor struck with its being very industrious. But it has an unfailing sense of the amenities of life; the poorest Venetian is a natural man of the world. He is better ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... been unscrupulous. There is, however, an exception in history which may perhaps serve to prove the rule. The Puritans who colonized New England were frontier men, and were, I think, in general scrupulously honest. They had their faults. They were stern, austere men, tyrannical at the backbone when power came in their way, as are all pioneers, hard upon vices for which they who made the laws had themselves no minds; ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... of Miss Vortex his daughter, and the whimsical incidents arising from their various designs, mistakes, detections and disappointments, form altogether a melange of pleasantry highly provocative of laughter, yet by no means so low as to reduce the piece to the rank of farce, which some austere critics in ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... furnished man's room, comfortable, austere, scholarly. The refuge of a busy man, to judge by the piles of books and papers which littered the large open writing-table. There were despatch boxes turned upside down, a sea of parchment and foolscap. In the midst of it all a man deep ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was satisfied that the seeds of belief were deeply sown in the human heart. It was on that principle that he permitted and justified, though he did not dare to authorize the revival of La Trappe and other austere orders. He contended that they might operate as a safety-valve for the fanatical and visionary ferment which would otherwise burst forth and disturb society. In his remarks on the death of Duroc and in the reasons he alleged against ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... time in his life Lewisham faced the necessity of telling a lie in cold blood. He glissaded from, the austere altitudes of his self-respect, and his next words were ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... record are continual expressions of the pain of separation from the dear home, of keen disappointment if the expected letter fails to come, and most affectionate references to the beloved parents, brothers and sisters. Even the austere Deborah is mentioned always with respect and kindness for, notwithstanding her frequent censure, she inspired the girls ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... and political "boss." The minister of the reformed faith became God's mouthpiece upon earth and inculcated an unbending puritanism in daily life. "No more festivals, no more jovial reunions, no more theaters or society; the rigid monotony of an austere rule weighed upon life. A poet was decapitated because of his verses; Calvin wished adultery to be punished by death like heresy, and he had Michael Servetus [Footnote: A celebrated Spanish reformer.] burned for not entertaining ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... calls his collection of detective stories His Last Bow (MURRAY), and also warns us that Sherlock Holmes is "somewhat crippled by occasional attacks of rheumatism," there is not in my lay opinion any cause for alarm. If I may jest about such an austere personage as Sherlock, I should say that there are several strings still left to his bow, and that the ever amenable and admiring Watson means to use them for all they are worth. At any rate I sincerely hope ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various
... love with Aunt Caroline from the moment your eye lighted upon her in church—in church, remember, you old darling!" and she nestled up against his shoulder again. Caresses like these she was always obliged to suppress in her austere aunt's presence; they were only to be indulged in upon great occasions, and to gain an important end, she knew! So the rogue smiled archly as she went on. "You could hardly wait until you were introduced at the garden party ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... He gazed as though he had been haunted. His unconscious face reflected the passing expressions of scorn, of despair, of resolution—reflected them in turn, as a magic mirror would reflect the gliding passage of unearthly shapes. He lived surrounded by deceitful ghosts, by austere shades. "Oh! nonsense, my dear fellow," I began. He had a movement of impatience. "You don't seem to understand," he said incisively; then looking at me without a wink, "I may have jumped, but I don't run away." "I meant no offence," I said; and added stupidly, "Better men ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... with their apparently disinterested conduct, they soon collected a numerous set of followers, half Christians and half Pagans. Unluckily for the cause of Christianity, a different sect of the same religion, but with principles more austere and of course less tolerant of others that deviated from their own, speedily followed the Jesuits into the East. The Dominicans, meeting with some of the half-christianized converts, soon gave them to understand that nothing ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... heard of this subject from Jamadagni's son Rama, while he discoursed on it, from the celestial Rishi Narada, and from Krishna-Dwaipayana. Asita-Devala, O son, Valmiki of austere penances, and Markandeya, speak of Govinda as the Most Wonderful and the Supreme. Kesava, O chief of Bharata's race, is the divine and puissant Lord of all. He is called Purusha, and pervades everything, having made himself many. Listen now, O Yudhishthira ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Frenchman; and much as they admired him, something in the subconsciousness of these Gauls was irritated at his pleading for peace in so peaceful a manner. To their party throughout Europe, however, Paul Hirsch was a saint of science. His large and daring cosmic theories advertised his austere life and innocent, if somewhat frigid, morality; he held something of the position of Darwin doubled with the position of Tolstoy. But he was neither an anarchist nor an antipatriot; his views on disarmament were moderate and evolutionary—the ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... began to sound in her voice and increased as she went on. "There was an old woman with him as precise and old-fashioned as himself. But you didn't see them? I never saw anything so ludicrous as that couple, austere and provincial as their clothes, walking along the deal boards between the rows of smart people." Mrs. Thesiger laughed as she recalled the picture. "They must have come from the Provinces. I could imagine them living in a chateau ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason |
