"Beatifical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strong and skilful, the stocks or scourge if he ever failed to please him, and the old age and death of the worn-out hack who once has caracoled in the procession, or snorted at the coming fight. What are his prospects now? a moment's agony, a martyr's death, and the everlasting beatific vision of Him for whom he died. The multitude cry out, "To the ass or to the lion!" worship the ass, or fight the lion. He was dragged to the ass's head and commanded to kneel down before the irrational beast. In the course of a minute he had lifted up his eyes to heaven, had signed ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... The first beatific vision that was to greet my gaze would be, of course, that one which I was to behold most frequently throughout the aeons without end—even the face of that radiant being who had gone before, to await me in the angelhood; where, beaming seraphic ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... said Frothingham carelessly. "I didn't find out what he was getting at. Doctor Schoolman always looks beatific when we sing. While he continues to beam I shall still consider that singing in the choir is about the most ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... have no monopoly of beatific visions. It offers much in that direction. It draws a picture of a future State of great riches and general equality; and the picture is glorified by a vision of general brotherhood. To some this seems more attractive than any other which ...
— Social Justice Without Socialism • John Bates Clark
... are going to an ampler ether, a diviner air. You have attained the beatific state and at once take flight. If they confer perfection like an academic ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... conceived, to the stars; where the sun and the planets of the Ptolemaic system (for the true one was unknown in Dante's time) form a series of heavens for different virtues, the whole terminating in the empyrean, or region of pure light, and the presence of the Beatific Vision. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... baggy pockets, and tilted slowly to and fro on the points of his carpeted toes. Anon he took his pipe from his mouth, and blew out big whiffs of smoke, glancing around the while with an expression of beatific contentment. The whole appearance of the man was an embodiment of the holiday spirit, the unrestrained enjoyment of one who has escaped from work, and sees before him a pageant of golden idle hours. Margot and Ronald smiled in sympathy even as they looked. He was a plain little man, a fat little ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... indicate how the Ideas of Plato, the "sub specie aeternitatis" of Spinoza, the "Liberation" from "the Will" of Schopenhauer, the "Beatific Vision" of the Catholic saints are all analogues and parallels, expressed under different symbols, of the same universal feeling. The difference between these philosophic statements of the situation and mine, is that, whereas ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... men had a word from her mouth, or a kiss of her hand, and were happy all the day after. For they loved her with a love mightier than ever Hereward had heaped upon her; for she had given him all: but she had given those two wild men naught but the beatific vision of a ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... me Thy ruddiest blazing torch, That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch Of the glad Palace of Virginity, May gaze within, and sing the pomp I see; For, crown'd with roses all, 'Tis there, O Love, they keep thy festival! But first warn off the beatific spot Those wretched who have not Even afar beheld the shining wall, And those who, once beholding, have forgot, And those, most vile, who dress The charnel spectre drear Of utterly dishallow'd nothingness In that refulgent ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... universe. I will go to the mountain cave or to the ocean cliff, and there, while the salt wind whistles through my hair, I will be stronger than you, safer than you, richer than you, happier than you. Richer than you, for I shall have for my companion the beatific vision of God, and of all things and beings God- like, fair, noble, just, and merciful. Stronger than you, because virtue will give me a power over the hearts of men such as your force cannot give you; and you will have to come to my lonely cell, and ask me to advise ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... Anything short of this is a condition of incompleteness, and therefore the enlightened souls who have passed over in possession of both sides of their mentality will realize that their condition, however beatific, is still one of incompleteness; and that what is wanted for completion is expression through a material body. This, then, is the direction in which such souls would use their powers of initiative and selection as being the true line of evolution—in a word they ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... that. Oh that men could understand that. Oh that they would do God justice; and confess His glorious Name. Oh that He would teach them His Name, and shew them His glory, that they might be dazzled by the beauty of it, awed by the splendour of it. Oh that He would gladden their souls by the beatific vision of Himself, till they loved Him, worshipped Him, obeyed Him, for His own sake; not for anything which they might obtain from Him, but solely because He is The perfectly Good. Oh that God would set up Himself above the heavens, and His glory above all the ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... from St. Luke's head (on the Duomo) to the stone on San Primo over Como, while the signorina held on her note! You listened, you gasped—you thought of a poet in his dungeon, and suddenly, behold, his chains are struck off!—you thought of a gold-shelled tortoise making his pilgrimage to a beatific shrine!—you thought—you knew not what ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... only a continual compromise between labor and pain, love and enjoyment, justice and egoism; and the voluntary sacrifice which man makes in obedience to his inferior attractions is the baptism which prepares the way for his reconciliation with God and renders him worthy of that beatific union and eternal happiness. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... hours daily, and attend concerts of the most exclusive and expensive kind. Similarly with religion in its finest flower. You need slaves to cook and wash for you if you mean to ecstaticise and see beatific visions: you must get the most fashionable and picturesque specialists to come and feel your religious pulse, and you must on no account neglect the subscription lists. But only those rich enough to be hypochondriac can afford such luxuries. Now, in the toiling classes there ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... those Emmaus travellers we go Forth from the city-gate of things below; Christ at our side, His Scripture for our light, Here burning hearts and there the beatific sight. ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... in that beatific smile I saw not only his perennial pleasure in the well-known story, but the fact that he, too, would have stood there, with the bullets raining round him, sooner than ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... forward with his bombers. Presently came Warren, bright and jaunty as a bird, and carrying his left arm. 'I'm all right,' said Montag, 'got a cushy one here.' On his heels came G.A.; his face was that of a man fresh from the Beatific Vision. Much later, when I had managed to get transport to push him away, I asked him, 'Got your stick, G.A.?' This was a stout stave on which he had carved, patiently and skilfully, his name, 'H.T. Grant-Anderson,' and a fierce and ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... will hope, I will believe, that thou hast experienced feelings and emotions, like those high and holy ones of which I would endeavour now to preserve a faint transcript. Come then, let us unite our ideas, let us speak together, but let us yet mention as present, those beatific thoughts and imaginings which are indeed past. Let us ever remember and cherish in our heart of hearts those golden fore-tastes of future eternity, or (according to Platonism) those rapturous reminiscences of past, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... what Bishop Berkeley calls 'the philosophy of fire' if we set before our minds in this connection, the raging element whose strength is in destruction. Let us rather picture to ourselves as the type of fire the benign and beatific solar heat, the quickener and fosterer of all terrestrial life. For according to Zeno, there were two kinds of fire, the one destructive, the other what we may call 'constructive,' and which he called 'artistic'. This latter kind of fire, which was known as aether, was the ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... and linking his thoughts together by a simple 'and,' he passes from the unimaginable splendours of the Beatific Vision to the plainest practical talk. Mysticism has often soared so high above the earth that it has forgotten to preach righteousness, and therein has been its weak point. But here is the most mystical teacher of the New Testament insisting on plain morality as vehemently as his ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... perceived that although neither master nor man was in such a state as could be described as "intoxicated," yet both were in that semi-beatific condition which may be ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... the cat's body. The felicitous adder was slowly burning in two and busily engaged in impregnating his organic system with his own venom. The joyful rat had lost his tail by a falling bar of iron; and the beatific rabbit, perforated by a red-hot nail, looked as if nothing would be more grateful than a cool corner in some Esquimaux farm-yard. The members of the delectated convocation were all huddled together ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... become wholly self- identified with evil, so the term "heaven" expresses the spiritual state of the pure in heart, to whom it is given to see GOD. So regarded, heaven is simply the ideal consummation of progressive spiritual advance, the perfect fruition of that "beatific vision" which the saints of GOD desired. It has ever been the conviction of the Christian Church that her members are already, even in this present life, made partakers in the life of heaven, just in proportion as their affections are set upon things above ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... Johnny, whom all Epworth set down as good for nothing, reflected the Wesley notions of the Church's majesty. In his dreams—but only in his dreams—he saw himself such a man, an Oxford scholar, treading that beatific city of which the Rector disclosed a glimpse at times; his brows bathed by her ineffable aura, and he—he, Johnny Whitelamb—baptized into her mysteries, a participant with the Rector's second son John, now at Christ Church— of ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sick And his eyes blind. I think the monks and beeves Are all the same too: scarce have they changed the wick On good Saint Gualbert's altar which receives The convent's pilgrims; and the pool in front (Wherein the hill-stream trout are cast, to wait The beatific vision and the grunt Used at refectory) keeps its weedy state, To baffle saintly abbots who would count The fish across their breviary nor 'bate The measure of their steps. O waterfalls And forests! sound and silence! ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... extravagant, and a little disconcerting, the completeness of Lydia's content in so simple a thing as standing in the first sunshine of an early morning in September, and she would have been unquestionably disturbed, perhaps even a little alarmed, by the beatific expression of Lydia's face as she gazed fixedly up into the sky, the tempered radiance of which was as yet not too ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... had promised to take me with him. Now, this was a great favour. St. Fernando is one of the patrons of Seville; he has been dead a long time, but his corpse refuses to putrefy, like those of ordinary mortals; it is a sacred corpse, and in a beatific state of preservation. Three times a year the remains of the holy man are uncovered, and the faithful are admitted to gaze on his incorruptible features. This was not one of the regular occasions; the Cardinal Archbishop had ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... motionless, and in a profound but yet a most active trance. I remained thus for hours, ardently thinking on Olivia, recollecting every incident of my past life in which she had had the least part, placing all her divine perfections full in view, and unable to detach my mind one moment from the beatific vision. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... dignified—and Dutch; Only art like yours can show How the pine logs gleam and glow, Till the firelight laughs and passes 'Twixt the tankards and the glasses, Touching with responsive graces All those grave Batavian faces, Making bland and beatific All that ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... blasphemy. His attack compelled the more learned to renounce or dissemble the simple devotion of their brethren; and Gregory Palamas introduced a scholastic distinction between the essence and operation of God. His inaccessible essence dwells in the midst of an uncreated and eternal light; and this beatific vision of the saints had been manifested to the disciples on Mount Thabor, in the transfiguration of Christ. Yet this distinction could not escape the reproach of polytheism; the eternity of the light of Thabor was fiercely denied; and Barlaam still charged ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Mammon led them on— Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed In vision beatific. By him first Men also, and by his suggestion taught, Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew Opened into the hill a spacious wound, And digged out ribs of gold. ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... Such are the beatific visions that opium bestows, having once enchained its victims. Little wonder that, after spending nights upon a poisoned rack, Mr. Jocelyn was in no condition to meet his fellow-men and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... slightly forward, giving prominence to the chin, which in reality retreated, a defect chiefly noticeable in profile. Ted had painted what he saw. It might have been the head of a saint looking for the Beatific Vision; it was only that of an ordinary ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... orange and lemon groves which render its environs so inviting, I caught a glimpse of a countenance so serene, so indescribably lovely, that for an instant I was disposed to believe I had encountered the beatific spirit of St. Rosalie herself. The face was that of a woman apparently about eighteen years old, who evidently ranked among Sicilian aristocrats, and whose elegant attire enhanced her beauty. I followed, at a respectful distance, until ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... of a concert before the war, the curtain rose upon an empty stage. The Carpenter's party happened upon him, as archaeologists might excavate a Sleeping Bacchus or a recumbent Budda, in the process of dismantling the stage. Private Mason was underneath it, breathing stertorously, a smile of beatific contentment on his worn features, his head pillowed on ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... return to the dinner. The fare is excellent, the company delightful, and I am just revelling in that beatific state of mind born of a sufficiency of the good things of this earth, when nothing seems to me more pleasant than a City dinner, when I am tapped upon the shoulder by the Toastmaster, who bears a warrant to consign me to misery. I have to make ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... which she took her two youngest boys, since Jock was the godson of the house, and had moreover been shaken off by his two elder brothers. Happily he was too good-tempered to grumble at being thrown over, and his mind was in a beatific state of contemplation of his newly-purchased treasures, a small pistol, a fifteen-bladed knife, and a box of miscellaneous sweets, although his mother had so far succumbed to the weakness of her sex as to prevent the weapon from being ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... books we now refrain to read we shall one day be endowed with wisdom and knowledge. For the music we will not listen to we shall join in the song of the redeemed. For the pictures from which we turn we shall gaze unabashed on the Beatific Vision. For the companionship we shun we shall be welcomed into angelic society and the communion of triumphant saints. For the amusements we avoid we shall keep the supreme jubilee. For all the pleasures we miss we shall abide, ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... fruits of this insight are undeniable. During such a vision the world is perfect. There is no fever or confusion, but rapture and rest. And to some degree, at a religious service, a momentous crisis, joy at deliverance or resignation at calamity, during beatific interludes of friendship or of love, men have felt a clear enveloping ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... long it seemed. A cavern next Entering, with mole-like hands he scooped his way, And reached at last the gates of morn. Ah me! A stone's cast from him rose the Tree of Life: He heard its sighs ecstatic: Full in view The Beatific River rolled; beyond All-glorious shone the City of the Saints Clothed with God's light! And yet from him that realm Was severed by a gulf! Not wide that strait; It seemed a strong man's leap twice ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... probably temporal, and therefore must at last cease. The lost souls will enjoy there quite as much as they can do here, minus the temporal sufferings of this life. They continue natural beings, and therefore can enjoy all natural joy; and that which they lose, being the "beatific vision," of which they have no conception, is a loss of which ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... very fine, Messiou," said the general confidently. And in the interest of international courtesy he immediately assumed the beatific expression he usually ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... Earl of Strafford, Sept. 24.-Journey to Houghton. State of his nephew's affairs. Lady Mary Coke's ardour of peregrination. Beatific print of Lady Huntingdon. Whitfield and the Methodists. Death of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... enunciated her remarks in a loud and clear voice, so that Paul Ford could not have failed to hear every word. A faint but beatific smile concealed itself roguishly about Paul Ford's mouth, and he looked with a rapt expression on an advertisement above Mrs Clayton Vernon's head, which assured him that, with a certain soap, washing-day ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... faculties, or any conceivable hallowing of creatural natures, can make the creature able to gaze upon God. I know that it is often said that the joy of the future life for men is what the theologians call 'the beatific vision,' in which there shall be direct sight of God, using that word in its highest sense, as applied to the perceptions of the spirit, and not of the sense. But I do not think the Bible teaches us that. It does teach ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Mary in beatific tones, and the three four-legged creatures stood on their hind legs and, joining paws and wings with the chicken, went through a solemn Alice-in-Wonderland-like dance. This was always terminated abruptly by some animal or another's being overcome by mirth or suffocation, ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... very appalling in the form or manners of this rustic heroine; yet, whether from sheepish bashfulness, or from want of decision and imperfect knowledge of his own mind on the subject, the Laird of Dumbiedikes, with his old laced hat and empty tobacco-pipe, came and enjoyed the beatific vision of Jeanie Deans day after day, week after week, year after year, without proposing to accomplish any of the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... found both food and love in it. He had such a hunger for happiness and so great a power of enjoying it that the imperfections of the orchestra never worried him: he would stay for two or three hours, drowsy and beatific, and wrong notes or defective taste never provoked in him more than an indulgent smile: he left his critical faculty outside: he was there to love, not to judge. Around him the audience sat motionless, with eyes half closed, letting itself be borne on by the great torrent ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... country," and intimated not only a permanent suspension of tariff regulations in his favor, but a future statue of heroic size in the palace plaza. Whereat Mr. Howland turned swiftly to Dan at his side, and from behind his napkin momentarily altered an expression of beatific if humble ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... isolated and petty self, by a kind of practical lie in things; although through every incident of its hypothetic existence it had protested that its proper function was to die. Surely! those transient affections marred the freedom, the truth, the beatific calm, of the absolute selfishness, which could not, if it would, pass beyond the circumference of itself; to which, at times, with a fantastic sense of wellbeing, he was capable of a sort of fanatical devotion. And those, as he ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... Psychology tunnelled, and presently heard the voices of the exorcists and the echoes of Lourdes through the darkness. Human religions tunnelled—Hinduism with its idea of a Divine Incarnation, Buddhism with its coarse apprehension of the Eternal Peace of a Beatific Vision, North American Religion with its guesses at Sacramentalism, Savage Religion with its caricature of a Bloody Sacrifice; all from various points; and presently heard through the tumult the historical dogma of the Incarnation of Christ, the dogma of Eternal Life, the ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... attention, the further call of her musicians ushered by Eugenio, but personally and separately welcomed, and the supreme opportunity offered in the arrival of the great doctor, who came last of all, he felt her diffuse in wide warm waves the spell of a general, a beatific mildness. There was a deeper depth of it, doubtless, for some than for others; what he in particular knew of it was that he seemed to stand in it up to his neck. He moved about in it and it made no plash; he floated, he noiselessly swam in it, and they were all together, for that ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... she had looked woman-y, girl-y, even remotely, affectedly feminine, Barton would doubtless have floundered heroically through some protesting lie. But to the frank, blunt, little-boyishness of her he succumbed suddenly with a beatific grin of relief. "Yes, we certainly are!" ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... mediocrity they are always welcome; however little mind they bring, they want still less to exhaust the author's inspiration. They are relieved of the load of thought; and their nature can lull itself in beatific nothings on the soft pillow of platitude. In the temple of Thalia and Melpomene—at least, so it is with us—the stupid savant and the exhausted man of business are received on the broad bosom of the goddess, where their intelligence is wrapped in a magnetic sleep, while their sluggish ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... mun-ee, sees, sees-tee, see-cent francs. Jamais travaille, moi." Lulu smuggled Jean money; and not for some time did the woman who slept next Lulu miss it. Lulu also sent Jean a lace embroidered handkerchief, which Jean would squeeze and press to his lips with a beatific smile of perfect contentment. The affair with Lulu kept Mexique and Pete The Hollander busy writing letters; which Jean dictated, rolling his eyes and ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... such an exquisite thrill of pleasure? He did not stop to consider, for he was not in an analytical mood at that time. He was on the crest of the spiritual wave that was sweeping him heavenward, or towards some beatific state of which he had not dreamt before. His face glowed with ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... few days, but he was immensely busy in closing the term-work before the holidays; he also suggested that their affair—"their" affair!—be kept quiet for the present. Yet he had all too facile a vision of beatific meditations that were like enough to give the situation away to all the household; and he was nervously aware of Amy Leffingwell as continually on the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... happy as they are over saving their souls.' The teaching of social duty, the upholding of social righteousness, the building up of a true commonwealth—such would be among the aims of the Church of the future. Is the hope too fair for realisation? Is the winning of such beatific vision yet once more the dream of the enthusiast? But surely the one fact that persons so deeply differing in theological creeds as those who have been toiling for the last three months to aid and relieve the oppressed, can work in absolute harmony side by side for the one end—surely this proves ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... it was to read men, smiled upon Richard at this and went his satisfied way. He would stick to Storri; and he would notify Richard should aught unusual either promise or occur. Inspector Val saw that in Richard's present mood of beatific imbecility a conference with him would mean no more than would a conference with ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... guttural sounds of pleasure that only an animal of the feline species knows how to make expressive of supreme happiness. Its stiffened legs and arched back made it appear larger than usual, and the black visage wore a smile of beatific joy. Its eyes blazed magnificently; it was ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the Mother Church are agreed," replied the gracious father, "first, that infants dying unbaptised are excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven. Second, that they will not enjoy the beatific vision outside of heaven. Third, that they will arise with adults and be assembled for judgment on the last day. And, fourth, that after the last day there will be but two states, namely: a state of supernatural and supreme felicity ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... Sabrina, and every former flame, were merged in the rising glories of Clarinda—as by a classical apotheosis Miss Kitty was now known to his entranced imagination; and in every vision of future enjoyment Clarinda was the beatific angel. But when he decided in favor of Northampton, Miss Jennings showed a will of her own, and absolutely refused to go with him. To the romantic lover the disappointment was all the more severe, because he had made so sure of the young lady's affection; nor was it mitigated by the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... likewise, with most dying saints; They see e'en here the beatific sight; The spirit then breaks thro' this world's restraints, And enters into ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... sects, Jainism considers the world of transmigration as a bondage or journey which the wise long to terminate. But joyless as is its immediate outlook, its ultimate ideas are not pessimistic. Even in the body the soul can attain a beatific state of perfect knowledge[256] and above the highest heaven (where the greatest gods live in bliss for immense periods though ultimately subject to transmigration) is the paradise of blessed souls, freed from transmigration. They have no visible form but consist ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... &c. (exciting) 824; cheering &c. 836; bewitching; enchanting, entrancing, enravishing[obs3]. charming; delightful, felicitous, exquisite; lovely &c. (beautiful) 845; ravishing, rapturous; heartfelt, thrilling, ecstatic; beatic[obs3]; beatific; seraphic; empyrean; elysian &c. (heavenly) 981. palmy, halcyon, Saturnian. Phr. decies repetita placebit[Lat]; "charms strike the sight but merit wins the soul" [Pope]; "sweetness and light" [Swift]; beauty is only ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... A look of beatific relief overspread the other's face. He immediately began to swell. "That is most gratifying! most gratifying!" he said pompously. "I am really under obligations to you, Weir. We both ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... the first was now climacterically ripe. The beard of a David hid his redundancy of chin; he wore no watch chain out of refinements and his modest clerical garments were made by a West End tailor.... And he sat with a hand on either shin, blinking at his village in beatific approval. He waved a plump palm towards it. His burthen sang out again. What more could ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... heart—to keep back the tears that welled into her eyes. Perhaps what he had to tell her would make her cry. Jinnie hoped not, for she disliked to do that. It was so childlike, so like Blind Bobbie, who always had either a beatific smile on his pale lips, or a mist shining in his ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... person whose theology is sound, and who believes in all the five points of Calvinism. I am myself but an unworthy heretic, but I am of Puritan stock, of the seventh generation, and there is vouchsafed to me, also, some share of that ecstasy and a dim glimpse of that beatific vision. Be assured, my benighted Pennsylvania friend, that in that hour when the week begins, all the terrapin of Philadelphia or Baltimore and all the soft-shelled crabs of the Atlantic shore might pull at my trousers legs and thrust themselves on ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... spirits borne From Camlan's bloody banks; or as the groves Of earliest Eden, where, so legends say, Enoch abides, and he who rapt away By fiery steeds, and chariotted in fire, Past in his mortal form the eternal ways; And John, beloved of Christ, enjoying there The beatific vision, sometimes seen The distant dawning of eternal day, Till all things be fulfilled. "Survey this scene!" So Theodore address'd the Maid of Arc, "There is no evil here, no wretchedness, It is the Heaven of those who nurst on earth Their ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... florid gown, was concentrated, almost passionate; it came straight at him through a double eye-glass elevated on a tortoiseshell stem. The clergyman endeavoured to suggest by his attitude that he took no part in the staring or the talk; he smiled out to sea with an air of beatific union ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... enjoys it?—We just can't get him to give it up!' And now Julia is president of the Woman's Federation, has stomach trouble, has had two operations, and is suffering untold agonies with acute culturitis. And yet," Aunt Martha would say through a beatific smile, "she's a good-enough woman in many ways, and I wouldn't say anything against her ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... hearing of voices behind a wall! I, who had said that "God ordains nothing that is not for good"—was suddenly ready to believe that He had ordained the death of the lover to whom His laws had guided me! I, to whom had been vouchsafed the beatific vision of an Angel—an Angel who had said— "God thinks no evil of thee—desires no wrong towards thee—has no punishment in store for thee—give thyself into His Hand, and be at peace!" was already flinching and turning away from the Faith that should keep me strong! A sense of shame ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... Square, they parted again, and Frank and Richard took a walk, after a long hour with the child, who still so hungered for his sword that Frank disobeyed orders, and dragged Richard off to Oxford Street to get one. He was reduced to a beatific attitude of submission, for he knew that he had few odds with him now, and that he must live by virtue of new virtues. He was no longer proud of himself in any way, and he knew that no one else was, or rather he felt so, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... least erected spirit that fell From heaven; for even in heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, Than ought divine or holy else enjoyed In vision beatific. Paradise Lost, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... to the previous paradise and hell, and it opened heaven itself for the immediate entrance of a few spotless souls. Pope John XXII., as Gieseler shows, was accused of heresy by the theological doctors of Paris because he declared that no soul could enter heaven and enjoy the beatific vision until after the resurrection. Pope Benedict XII. drew up a list of one hundred and seventeen heretical opinions held by the Armenian Christians. One of these notions was that the souls of all deceased adults wander in the air until the Day of Judgment, neither hell, paradise, nor heaven being ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... chord, here and there thrown aloft by the pedal. Throughout the harmonies one always heard in great tones a wondrous melody, while once only, in the middle of the piece, besides that chief song, a tenor voice became prominent. After the etude a feeling came over one as of having seen in a dream a beatific picture which, when already half awake, one ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... of an Alp, the luminous pallor of a pearl. What other young man in London looked like that? Valentine was indeed an unique figure in the modern London world. Had he strayed into it from the fragrant pages of a missal, or condescended to it from the beatific vistas of some far-off Paradise? Julian had often wondered, as he looked into the clear, calm eyes of the friend who had been for so long the vigilant, yet unconscious guardian of ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... simply beats them. But, do you know on what grounds he and I came together and became friendly? On the magnificent details of the divine service of the prelate, on the canon of the honest Andrew, pastor of Crete, on the works of the most beatific father, John the Damascene. He is religious—unusually so! I used to lead him on, and he would sing to me with tears in his eyes: 'Come ye brethren, and we will give the last kiss to him who has gone to his rest...' ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... knowledge, and in the world of knowledge the idea of good is last seen and with difficulty, but when seen is inferred to be the author of good and right—parent of the lord of light in this world, and of truth and understanding in the other. He who attains to the beatific vision is always going upwards; he is unwilling to descend into political assemblies and courts of law; for his eyes are apt to blink at the images or shadows of images which they behold in them—he cannot enter ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Faust was singing through laryngitis and a cloud of fog in his throat. A critic who wrote in terms of elliptical rhythms and tonal arabesques tiptoed out for a smoke. One of those sympathetic fits of coughing swept the house. But Lilly sat hunched in her habitual beatific attitude against the chair back, the old opera flowing back to her in association that caught her ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Church holds on this point is that unregenerate children are deprived of the beatific vision, or the possession of God, which constitutes the essential happiness ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... these "Spiritual Franciscans," as they were called, or Fraticelli, were those curious mediaeval bodies of Beguins and Beghards. Hopelessly pantheistic in their notion of the Divine Being, and following most peculiar methods of reaching on earth the Beatific Vision, they took up with the same doctrine of the religious duty of the communistic life. They declared the practice of holding private property to be contrary to ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... above the mediocrity of the figure in his portrayal of the features of the Christ? The rector started, and stared again. There was no weakness in the face, no meekness, no suggestion of the conception of the sacrificed Lamb, no hint of a beatific vision of opening heavens—and yet no accusation, no despair. A knowing—that were nearer—a knowing of all things through the experiencing of all things, the suffering of all things. For suffering without revelation were vain, indeed! A perfected wisdom that blended ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... excitability of look had subsided, and had left nothing in their place but an expression of suave and meditative repose. All his troubles were now in the hands of his priest. There was a passive regularity in his bodily movements and a beatific serenity in ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... it was not concerning the Development matter that Thomas was writing, what was it? The beatific smile which had followed the sigh of relief faded from his face and he ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... should go sadly astray if we suffered our views of the institution to be tinged by the associations of a dingy shop in some back street in which hopeless penury plays its last shift. We should rather turn our eyes to the beatific vision of the Mons Pietatis as pictured by Botticelli—a hillock of florins, with the kneeling forms of worthy suppliants and the cloud-borne founder crowned by angelic hands. The poor scholar did not part definitely with his cherished possession; he might ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... raising her eyes, ran them over the music, and began. It commenced softly and somewhat sadly, but soon, becoming louder and richer, the tones swelled high and clear, until the pure voice of the Princess thrilled through all the perfumed air. Then it became more and more glorious, until its beatific beauty caused many of the older hearers to die, and go straight to paradise. The close was inconceivably sweet; and when the last notes died away, the people bowed their heads in tearful peace, and all evil left their hearts, and to many of them it ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... not, unless it appear that there might have been some desire of obtaining some of those which we called lower goods, or a fear of losing them. For they are beautiful and comely; although compared with those higher and beatific goods, they be abject and low. A man hath murdered another; why? he loved his wife or his estate; or would rob for his own livelihood; or feared to lose some such things by him; or, wronged, was on fire to be revenged. Would any commit murder upon no cause, delighted ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... Catarina, Monreale,—all were but parts of a dreamy vision, like the heavenly city of Sir Percivale, to attain which he passed across the golden bridge that burned after him as he vanished in the intolerable light of the Beatific Vision. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... zealous catholic, has embraced, in the fullest extent, the Talmudic doctrine of an earthly paradise, distinct from the celestial abode of the just, and serving as a place of initiation, preparatory to perfect bliss, and to the beatific vision.—See the Rabbi Menasse ben Israel, in a treatise called Nishmath Chajim, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... philosophers, Csar, Cicero, Livy, Seneca, and many others. He is so overcome by the honor of sitting among such great men that he finds no words to report what passed between them. He feels no horror for their paganism, and while he believes that they are not admitted to the beatific joys of heaven, he assigns them a comfortable abode, where they hold dignified converse with "faces ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... was suspended in his room, and scarce had time to pronounce the aspiration of his Order, "Sancta Trinitas, unus Deus, miserere nobis," ere his head was severed from his body, and he entered upon the beatific vision of the Three in One, for Whom he had ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... tone hurt me! How the words she uttered pierced me! How the contemptuous scorn in her voice and manner, tore to shreds the fabric of a beatific existence I had created in my imagination! A moment ago, confident of her love, her admiration, and her esteem, I saw now, when it was too late, that the very announcement of my profession had destroyed it, with a stroke ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... dealt, and having gone three in "no trumps" and found seven to the ace, king, queen in hearts lying before her in dummy, she wore a smile of beatific satisfaction. So also did Alice—for two reasons. The deal obviously spelled money, and Vere Millet could be trusted to get every trick out of it. There were four bridge tables fully occupied in the charming drawing-room, and as she caught the hostess' eye and smiled, she felt just a little bit ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... A beatific vision of himself took form in his mind—of himself growing grey and pleasurably tired, surrounded by opulence and the demonstrative respect of everybody, smiling with virtuous content as he strolled along between ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... feeling that as a boy I showed more poorly than girls. There was a difference meanwhile for such puzzlements before the porticos of the theatres; all questions melted for me there into the single depth of envy—envy of the equal, the beatific command of the evening hour, in the regime of Honorine's young train, who were fresh for the early sparrow and the chiffonier even after shedding buckets of tears the night before, and not so much as for the first or the second time, over the ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... Beatific Vision, our Will is also to be glorified, and then we shall be happy in ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... of Eden," said the scientist, with such a beatific smile that his face was less hideous. "We start immediately. I have arranged with Professor Michael for you ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... speak of many connections formed with people in other lands. She wrote to prisoners and outcasts; to great nobles and plain business men; to physicians, lawyers, soldiers of fortune; to kings and queens and cardinals and popes; to recluses pursuing the Beatific Vision, and to men and women of the world plunged in the lusts of the flesh and governed by the pride of life. The society of the fourteenth century passes in review ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... praying and seeking and knocking, until one day "he was translated into the holy Sabbath and glorious Day of Rest to the soul," and, according to his own words, was "enwrapt with the Divine Light for the space of seven days and stood possessed of the highest beatific wisdom of God, in the ecstatic joy of the Kingdom."[16] Boehme looked upon this "Sabbatic" experience as his spiritual call, and from this time on he increased his endeavours to live a pure life of godliness and virtue, refusing to listen to frivolous talk, reproving his fellows ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... reverence as to catch some sound of the tread in divine movement, we may apprehend that a genuine poem implies, for its conception, an illuminated plenitude of mind, and involves in its production a beatific visionariness. ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... that did not matter at all. Nothing mattered. In his young beatific vision he saw the bright wheel going round and round in a perfect storm of turkeys, and it was all his ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... present apparent result was the violent and yet triumphant death of him who had been chosen to utter it. [Sidenote: His blessed martyrdom.] Beneath the stoning of the enraged multitude, the First Martyr "fell asleep," blessed in his last moments with a foretaste of the Beatific Vision[49]. ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt |
