"Nakedness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... considers that "Natural Selection" alone could not have produced so large a brain in the savage, in possessing which he is furnished with an organ beyond his needs. Also that it could not have produced that peculiar distribution of hair, especially the nakedness of the back, which is common to all races of men, nor the peculiar construction of the feet and hands. He says,[300] after speaking of the prehensile foot, common without a single exception to all the apes and lemurs, "It is difficult to see why the prehensile power should have been ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... when the average man or woman—as in some of the Central African tribes to-day—wore simply nothing at all; and like all religious ceremonies they tended to preserve their forms long after surrounding customs and conditions had altered. Consequently nakedness lingered on in sacrificial and other rites into periods when in ordinary life it had come to be abandoned or thought indecent and shameful. This comes out very clearly in both instances above—quoted ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... sleep is of Death. After admission to the former, the Initiate was taught lessons of morality, and the rudiments of the sacred science, the most sublime and secret part of which was reserved for the Epopt, who saw the Truth in its nakedness, while the Mystes only viewed it through a veil and under emblems fitter to excite than ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... to settle with us; they are a very simple and inoffensive people, of a low stature, flat- nos'd, with their eyes sunk very deep in their heads; they live continually in smoak, and are never without a fire, even in their canoes; they have nothing to cover their nakedness, but a piece of an old blanket, which they throw over their shoulders: We always see 'em in this manner, notwithstanding we cloath 'em whenever they come to us. By the crosses set up in many parts of the land, one would think ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... found it many months agone in a village of the Chaymas. I was nigh to nakedness, and it has served me well. It is only a gown. This"—he touched the knotted girdle—"but ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... a blacker pit, for whom Grimy nakedness, dragging his trucks And laying his trams, in a poisoned gloom Wrought, till he crept from a gutted mine Master of half a servile shire, And left his coal all turned into gold To a grandson, first of ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... manuscript to copy. "The time for which he had promised it to me expired, and as my man did not appear, I became uneasy, and started in search of him. I found him in a hole about as big as my fist, almost pitch-dark, without the smallest scrap of curtain or hanging to cover the nakedness of his walls, a couple of straw-bottomed chairs, a truckle-bed with a quilt riddled by the moths, a box in the corner of the chimney and rags of every sort stuck upon it, a small tin lamp to which a bottle served as support, and on a shelf some dozen first-rate books. I sat talking there for three-quarters ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... had nothing for thirty-six hours. She then offered me the leggings, as they call them, which the Indians wear, and the other portions of the Indian dress, which probably belonged to her late husband. I put them on, as I was glad to cover my nakedness, and, worn out with walking and exertion, I first thanked God for my miraculous preservation, and then lay down and fell into ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... Abbott returned. He could not meet the eyes of this man he had once highly venerated—it was like beholding an ideal divested of imagined beauty, shivering in the shame of its nakedness. ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... government; they had kingly rule; nobility; policy in war; navigation, and all, or the most of needful trades. To speak therefore of these (seeing in a general history we should have left a great deal of nakedness, by their omission) it cannot properly be called a digression. True it is, that I have made also many others: which if they shall be laid to my charge, I must cast the fault into the great heap of human error. For seeing we digress in all the ways of ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... golden-green light of afternoon the Square was looking peaceful and lovely. For the hour a magic veil had dropped over the nakedness of its outlines, and the bare buildings and bare walks were touched with the glamour of spring. Soft, pale shadows of waving branches moved back and forth, like the ghosts of dreams, over the grassy ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... Nature made our own; All our advantages are those of Fortune; 340 Birth, wealth, health, beauty, are her accidents, And when we cry out against Fate, 'twere well We should remember Fortune can take nought Save what she gave—the rest was nakedness, And lusts, and appetites, and vanities, The universal heritage, to battle With as we may, and least in humblest stations,[bg] Where Hunger swallows all in one low want,[bh] And the original ordinance, that man Must sweat for ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... of the disintegration until the end came. The meagre resources of the lax confederacy were already strained to the utmost, and the capture of a ship laden as this one was reported to be, would be of incalculable service. Clothes and shoes to cover the nakedness of the soldiery and protect them from the inclemency of the winter, now fast approaching, and arms to put in their hands, by means of which they could assume the offensive and attack the enemy, or at least ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Colonel no longer felt vigorous enough to leap the ditch. He had seen the truth in all its nakedness. The Countess' speech and Delbecq's reply had revealed the conspiracy of which he was to be the victim. The care taken of him was but a bait to entrap him in a snare. That speech was like a drop of subtle poison, bringing on ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... copious rains, we learn to measure the productive capacity of the soil by its natural vegetation. But this rule is almost wholly inapplicable here, for, notwithstanding its savage nakedness, scarce at all veiled by a sparse growth of sage and linosyris [16], the desert soil of the Great Basin is as rich in the elements that in rainy regions rise and ripen into food as that of any other State in the Union. ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... one of the most senceless and ridiculous things in the world, that a man should be proud of that which is given him on purpose to cover the shame of his nakedness with. ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... with his gun stalking curlew, oyster diggers, or some other of the numerous birds that frequented the marshes and shores. Barefooted, until the weather grew too cold in autumn, and wearing barely enough clothing to cover his nakedness, he would set out in early morning and not return ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... route. In this view he treated them with extraordinary attention, and seemed to pay particular deference to the remarks of the painter, who, with great intrepidity, pronounced judgment upon every picture in the palace, or, in other words, exposed his own nakedness in every sentence that ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... since the forgotten days of the Jameses, had borne no other crop than rugged bent or stubborn heather, were subjected to the discipline of the plough, and produced a golden harvest of grain. Woods sprang up as if by magic, from the roots of the old Caledonian forest, to hide the nakedness of the land and redeem the national reproach. The towns and boroughs—which had never recovered from the terrible blow inflicted upon them by the failure of the Darien scheme, in which nearly the whole capital of Scotland was embarked, and which had lost the greater and more valuable portion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... killed a dozen with a firelock, a sabre, a bayonet, or any accepted weapon, and been visited by no such sickness of remorse. And to this feeling every unusual circumstance of our rencounter, the darkness in which we had fought, our nakedness, even the resin on the twine, appeared to contribute. I ran to my fallen adversary, kneeled by him, and could only sob ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the distaste I had for such oppressive deliveries of a mind apparently as little capable of being seated as a bladder charged with gas. I thanked him for getting rid of Edbury, and a touch of remorse pricked me, it is true, on his turning abruptly and saying: 'You see me in my nakedness, Richie. To you and my valet, the heart, the body!' He was too sympathetic not to have a keen apprehension of a state of hostility in one whom he loved. If I had inclined to melt, however, his next remark would have been enough to harden me: 'I have fought as many battles, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... nor would a single porter lift his load. Speke would not enter the village, and his party remained, therefore, in the open all night. The next morning, as he expected, Myonga sent his prime minister, who declared that the ladies of his court had nothing to cover their nakedness, and that something more must be paid. This caused fresh difficulties, the drums beat, and at length, much against his inclination, Speke paid some more yards of cloth for the sake of Grant, who might otherwise have been ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... Thrown about the woman's shoulders was an old quilt. Her shoes were tied with strings, which were wrapped around the soles to keep from leaving her feet. Her skirt, tattered and torn, hung dejectedly about her scant form. The child, barefooted and with only one piece to hide its nakedness, dodged behind its mother as it walked to keep the wind from striking with its full force its emaciated body. The woman, though young in years, was old and haggard in face. Her woolly hair, unkempt and sprinkled with gray, the result ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... examination without comparing notes subsequently with one's rivals, is like playing golf against a bogey. The imaginary rival against whom one pits oneself never makes a mistake. Our own "howlers" stand out in all their horrid nakedness; but we do not realise that our rivals have probably made others far worse. In this way Sheen plumbed the depths of depression. The Gotford was a purely Classical examination, with the exception of one ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... faintly behind them; and we looked at Olivet for the last time from our terrace, where we were awaiting the arrival of the horses that were to carry us to Jaffa. A yellow moon was still blazing in the midst of countless brilliant stars overhead; the nakedness and misery of the surrounding city were hidden in that beautiful rosy atmosphere of mingling night and dawn. The city never looked so noble; the mosques, domes, and minarets rising up ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... separation is between the two orders of artists,[H]—how exclusively we may follow out the history of all the 'goffi nell' arte,' and write our Florentine Dunciad, and Laus Stultitiae, in peace; and never trench upon the thoughts or ways of these proud ones, who showed their fathers' nakedness, and snatched ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... forlorn oneness. It needs a long time before the heart can companion only with memories. About its own centre it wraps such warm folds of kindred life. Tear these away, how the poor heart shivers in its nakedness. ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... any of the Islands, the traveler hourly comes upon parties of dusky maidens bathing in the streams or in the sea without any clothing on and exhibiting no very intemperate zeal in the matter of hiding their nakedness. When the missionaries first took up their residence in Honolulu, the native women would pay their families frequent friendly visits, day by day, not even clothed with a blush. It was found a hard matter to convince them that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... glad to relieve my wants. I immediately answered that letter. I said to Mrs. Howard that her information was only too true, which I very much regretted. From that time my hunger was appeased and my nakedness clad. Thirty-five years have elapsed since Mrs. Mary Howard wrote that letter, and to-day it is as much of a mystery to me as it was on the day I received it—by whom or by what means or device Mrs. Howard ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... loss of Don Luis, and nothing else is known of it. Don Luis is continually sending from there for assistance in ships, men, arms, and munitions, of which there is a great scarcity. Although he has endured so many hardships, and hunger, and nakedness, when I consider on my side the straits in which I find myself, and the little assistance that I have had from Nueva Espana this year for the great dangers which confront us, and the number of affairs which it is necessary to attend to and provide, not only do I not think ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... stars have left the skies, At morning in the dark I rise; And shivering in my nakedness, By the cold candle, ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... cliffs, strips of earth-beach extend downward, and trees and large shrubs root themselves in that earth, thus further contrasting the nakedness of the stone with their green foliage. But the immediate part where the stream forces its winding passage through the rock is ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... step at a time, and get your foot on the step so it will stay, then go up another step. If you attempt to step from the ground to the top of the ladder, you are going to split your pants from Genesis to Revelations, and come down on your neck, and show your nakedness to those who have watched you try to climb too fast, and they will laugh at you. Now, go on with your condum ticking, but tick out something besides d—a—m, dam," and the old man went out to see if there had ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... men wholly naked with every garment cast off. At which he was displeased, and went away quickly, abhorring such nudity as a great offence, and not unmindful of that sentence of Francis Petrarch 'the nakedness of a beast is in men unpleasing, but the decency of raiment makes ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... swore like any layman, but as his swearing mended nothing and the landlord could not aid him, and as, moreover, he was forced to be at Emmet Priory that very morning upon matters of business, he was fain either to don the cobbler's clothes or travel the road in nakedness. So he put on the clothes, and, still raging and swearing vengeance against all the cobblers in Derbyshire, he set forth upon his way afoot; but his ills had not yet done with him, for he had not ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... and in you is fulfilled the prophecy: Because thou servest not the Lord with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, by reason of abundance of all things, therefore shalt thou serve thy enemies, which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger and in thirst and in nakedness and in want of ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... Was not this alone sufficient to explain the deplorable state of the economy of the Spanish Peninsula, the paucity of its inhabitants, the backwardness of its agriculture, its want of capital, and the nakedness and poverty of its fields and its towns? Indolence being, so to speak, thus sanctified, what stimulus could there be for productive labour? Why should men have fatigued themselves by arduous employments, when the convent offered ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... before been in the Divorce Court. As the cross-examination of Mrs. Clarke lengthened out he felt as if his clothes, and the clothes of all the human beings who crowded about him, were being ruthlessly stripped off, as if an ugly and abominable nakedness were gradually appearing. The shame of it all was very hateful to him; and yet—yes, he couldn't deny it—there was a sort of dreadful fascination in ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Sutton realized his nakedness like another Adam, and his confusion confused Marie Louise. She nodded. He nodded. Perhaps he made ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... and more upon this majestic cataract, to set off which the wonderful mountain walls seem to have been specially created. The trail from Glacier Point, beginning at an altitude above the top of the fall opposite, reveals it in its whole nakedness—shows its rise in the vast watershed of upland mountain valleys, and then by degrees leads you closer and closer to it until, at Union Point, its glory ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... birds have numerous bare patches which the adjacent feathered tracts cover perfectly while in the flesh, but which a too generous filling will exhibit in all their nakedness. I had not discovered this until some of my first attempts at mounting birds nonplussed me by showing numerous patches of bare skin in spite of the fact that but a few feathers had become loosened in ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... king and queen differ in little or nothing from the other idolaters, all going naked, barefooted, and bareheaded, except a small piece of silk or cotton to cover their nakedness; but the Mahometans wear single garments in a more seemly manner, their women being dressed like the men except that their hair is very long. The king and nobles eat no kind of flesh, except having first got permission ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... genuinely been at his last francs. He had not lied when she thought he had lied. The nakedness of his character showed now. Instantly upon the final and definite cessation of the lawful supply of money, he had set his wits to obtain money unlawfully. He had, in fact, simply stolen it from Chirac, with the ornamental addition ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the garments that the Lord had given them in Genesis 3:21 were burned off so that Adam and Eve were again naked. Reference chapter L whereby Adam and Eve seek garments with which to cover their nakedness.. ...
— First Book of Adam and Eve • Rutherford Platt
... anonymous Chinese author, gives a quaint legend as to the nakedness of these islanders. Sakya Muni, having arrived from Ceylon, stopped at the islands to bathe. Whilst he was in the water the natives stole his clothes, upon which the Buddha cursed them; and they have never since been able to wear any clothing without ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... recognized the guernsey as the property of the boatswain. Ichi was clad in shirt and trousers belonging to Little Billy—not a bad fit. The ju-jitsu man sported a complete outfit of his, Martin's. Obviously, the belongings of the Cohasset's crew had been looted to cover the scarecrow nakedness of ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... of his naval rank. He wore a richly decorated admiral's frock-coat, a laced chapeau bras, and upon his breast were a variety of ribbons and orders; while the simple islander, with the exception of a slight cincture about his loins, appeared in all the nakedness ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... stands apart from habitations, in a still solitude upon a blackened mound. From far off I saw the facade, large, bare, and sober, rising, in a nakedness as complete as that of Aphrodite rising from the wave, out of the plain of brown, alluvial soil that was broken here and there by a sharp green of growing things. There was something of sadness in the scene, ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... than 300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean. It lay unruffled in the bottom of the basin, reflecting the peaks of the bare red mountains beyond it. Tiberias was at our very feet, a few palm trees alone relieving the nakedness of its dull walls. After taking a welcome drink at the Fountain of Fig-trees, we descended to the town, which has a desolate and forlorn air. Its walls have been partly thrown down by earthquakes, and never repaired. We found our tents already pitched on the bank above the lake, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... obtain no tidings of a single farthing on the Atlantic side of that continent; but he learned one thing most thoroughly and satisfactorily, as thousands have done besides him, that if he had gone there in the first place, and seen the nakedness of the land, and the deplorable and remediless ignorance and superstition of the people, his fifty thousand pounds would have snugly remained in the three per cents. and India bonds. He was determined, however, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... reeked of the drainage of uncounted generations. Whence they passed through long, brilliant, silent streets lined with open hovels wherein Vice and Crime bred cheek-by-jowl, the haunts of Shame, painted and unabashed, sickening in the very crudity of its nakedness.... There is no bottom to the Pit wherein the native sinks.... And on, panting, with labouring chests and aching limbs, into the abandoned desolation of the Chinese quarter, and back through the still, deadly ways which Amber had threaded in the footsteps of ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... built on all the old French Revolution traditions, or perhaps it is that every Revolution produces of necessity the same clothing with which to cover its nakedness. A strange mixture of farce and terror were those detachments of so-called justice. At their head there was, as a rule, a student, often smiling and bespectacled. The soldiers themselves, from one of the Petrograd ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... spurned his euthanasia. By your own devious path, you come at last To where all facts are vain, all visions fade, And your old wager is a laughing-stock, So valueless your will, so vain your power To shape one end of hope. Life crumbles, falls, Around you; and your kind with horror see Your utter nakedness. But I have brought A little present for you: not so nice As two the Devil once offered in its place; Yet 'twill suffice. Men who would cheat the Devil Come, with a curious unanimity, To where the lump of lead becomes a boon Unto the soul rejecting ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... light play 'Mid tumbled flowers shall match the death of day. I love that virginal fury—ah, the wild Thrill when a maiden body shrinks, defiled, Shuddering like arctic light, from lips that sear Its nakedness ... the flesh in secret fear! Contagiously through my linked pair it flies Where innocence in either, struggling, dies, Wet with fond tears or some less piteous dew. Gay in the conquest of these fears, I grew So rash ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... Nature than to be cleared up in such a way as to expose to view all its unsightly objects. Whenever the roadside cannot be covered by greensward, the native shrubs and wild vines ought to be allowed to hide its nakedness with green foliage and beautiful flowers. They give beauty to wayside scenery, and increase the interest and pleasure of those travelling along ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... lay along the streets, and watched the little upper room where the precious records of the Committee were burning brightly. The front wall gone, the small office stood open to the world, a bright and shameless thing, flaunting its nakedness ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... meant body without any particular shape or figure, there being no one shape or figure common to all animals, without covering, either of hair, or feathers, or scales, &c., nor yet naked: hair, feathers, scales, and nakedness being the distinguishing properties of particular animals, and for that reason left out of the ABSTRACT IDEA. Upon the same account the spontaneous motion must be neither walking, nor flying, nor creeping; it is nevertheless ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... almost naked; their clothing was a seal-skin; some had two or three sewed together, so as to make a cloak which reached to the knees; but the most of them had only one skin, hardly large enough to cover their shoulders, and all their lower parts were quite naked. The women, I was told, cover their nakedness with the flap of a seal-skin, but in other respects are clothed like the men. They, as well as the children, remained in the canoes. I saw two young children at the breast entirely naked; thus they are inured from ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... them had any conception of the significance of liberty, thinking that it meant idleness and freedom from restraint. In consequence of this ignorance there developed such undesirable habits as deceit, theft and licentiousness to aggravate the afflictions of nakedness, famine and disease.[11] ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... with horror, when we saw first an arm, then a leg, then a trunk, then a head appear, forming a human body, not in a state of nakedness, but ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... embracing both most affectionately, and squeezed Frank so ardently against her that his prick stood immediately. Finding this to be the case she took his hand and placed it beneath her dressing gown; he shuddered on discovering that it was the only article that concealed her nakedness. ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... last year some woods in a newly settled township, the township of Seymour West, in the Newcastle district of Upper Canada, with a view to see the nakedness of the land, which had been represented to me as flowing with milk and honey, as all new settlements of course are said to do. I wandered into the lonely but beautiful forest, with a companion who owned the soil, and who had told me that the lumberers were robbing him and every ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... above measure to have you for a little while here—no visitants shall blow on the nakedness of your feelings—you shall be quiet, and your spirit may be healed. I see no possible objection, unless your father's helplessness prevent you, and unless you are necessary to him. If this be not the case, I charge you write me that you ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... and bury him in the ruins. A huge column of these rocks was, some years ago, torn with lightning, and lies in very large blocks near the road. Where there is any soil, their sides are covered with aged weeping birches, which hang down their venerable locks in waving ringlets, as if to cover the nakedness of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... truth, Which strips the distance of its phantasies, And brings life near in utter nakedness, Making the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... give such an one more than he ever keeps for himself. [13] And now," he added, "I know that our friends here pride themselves upon their breeding and what it has done for them. They have been brought up to endure hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness, and yet they are aware that we too have been trained in the self-same school and by a better master than they: we were taught by Necessity, and there is no teacher so good, and none so strict. [14] How did our friends here learn their endurance? ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... there remained to him no conviction, no trust, no hope of any kind. Intellectually, morally, he had no support; shams, insincerities, downright dishonesties, had clothed him about, and these were now all stripped away, leaving the thing he called his soul to quiver in shamed nakedness. He knew nothing; he believed nothing. But death ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... would seem unlawful to steal through stress of need. For penance is not imposed except on one who has sinned. Now it is stated (Extra, De furtis, Cap. Si quis): "If anyone, through stress of hunger or nakedness, steal food, clothing or beast, he shall do penance for three weeks." Therefore it is not lawful to steal through ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... rolled darkly between that and Bellevue. She threaded her way through the enclosures which we have mentioned. The light was just sufficient to reveal a few spring flowers, starting up from the soil, and the soft foliage of an old vine or two that covered the nakedness ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... landscape on every side is seen to be composed of hills covered with dark forest and separated by narrow valleys. Here and there the white rock stands out from the enveloping woods of oak, ilex, and chestnut, or the arid slope shows its waste of stones, whose nakedness the dry lavender vainly tries to cover with a light mantle of blue-gray tufts. It is these sterile places which yield the best truffles of Prigord. Sometimes trained dogs are used to hunt for the cryptogams, but, as in the Quercy, the pig is much more frequently employed ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... who hast The fatal gift of beauty, which became A funeral dower of present woes and past, On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame, And annals graved in characters of flame. Oh God! that thou wert in thy nakedness Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press To shed thy blood, and drink ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... fearing the attacks these women were now making on Mary Underwood. The moon coming up, threw its light on the fields that lay beside the road and brought out their early spring nakedness and he thought them dreary and hideous, like the faces of the women that had been marching through his mind. He drew his overcoat about him and shivered as he went on, the mud splashing him and the raw night air aggravating the dreariness of his thoughts. He tried to revert to ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... sicken at the recital. The summer passed away in marches and counter-marches, in assassinations, and skirmishes, and battles. The fields of the husbandmen were trampled under the hoofs of horses. Villages were burned to the ground, and their wretched inhabitants driven out in nakedness and starvation to meet the storms of merciless winter. Noble ladies and refined and beautiful maidens fled shrieking from the pursuit of brutal and licentious soldiers. Still neither party gained any decisive victory. ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... behold such Pictures of human Misery as must move the Compassion of every Heart that deserves the Name of human. What indeed must be his Composition who could see whole Families in Want of every Necessary of Life, oppressed with Hunger, Cold, Nakedness, and Filth, and with Diseases, the certain Consequence of all these; what, I say, must be his Composition, who could look into such a Scene as this, and be affected only in his Nostrils?" As an instance of Fielding's personal knowledge of the London slums of his day, a reference made by Mr ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... went on, the whole country became transformed. The deserts were suddenly peopled, palaces awaited the train in the trackless wild, temporary villages hid the nakedness of the plain, and fireworks at night testified to the seeming joy of the populace. Wide roads were opened by the army in advance of the cortege, the mountains were illuminated as it passed, howling wildernesses were made to appear like fertile gardens, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... to grow. Boer and Briton may differ in speech, habit, and outlook, but both agree that there is an impassable frontier between them and the native races of Africa and Asia. They do not even camouflage the racial barricade which they have erected; they purposely expose it in its nakedness to full view, so that none may fail to see it. The dark natives maintain their tribal and racial frontiers by their inherited organizations, but the surveillance of the social barrier between them and the ...
— Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View • Arthur Keith
... glory,— Upon her pride and power had fall'n no blight; And Tyre, the ancient mariner's delight, Whose merchantmen were princes, and whose name Was theme of praise to all, has left her site To utter barren nakedness and shame,— Yet thou, amid all change, ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... scene of the tragedy. Half way down a rocky slope where thar ain't grass enough to cover the brown nakedness of the ground lies the bones of Tom an' Jerry. This latter, who's that obstinate an' resentful he won't go back to camp when I wallops him on that gray mare mornin', allows he'll secrete himse'f an' Tom off to one side an' worrit me up. While he's manooverin' about he gets the half-inch rope ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... which, for fruit alone, are worth all the pear-trees in the country many times over. (I can give you a list of the three best kinds, if you want it.) At this rate, we shall all be obliged to let our beards grow at least, if only to hide the nakedness of the land and make a sylvan appearance. The farmer sometimes talks of "brushing up," simply as if bare ground looked better than clothed ground, than that which wears its natural vesture,—as if the wild hedges, which, perhaps, are more to his children than his whole farm beside, were dirt. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... to pass; but while it lasted it was black indeed. The implacable reality, obscured at first by the emotion and excitement of farewells, and then by a brief spring of hope and returning vigour, showed itself now in all its stern nakedness—sat down, as it were, eye to eye with Elsmere—immovable, ineluctable. There were certain features of the disease itself which were specially trying to such a nature. The long silences it enforced were so unlike him, seemed already to withdraw him so ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... climbing, with her mare oblique beneath her weight, and Beth felt an awe in her being. It was wonderful; it was almost terrible, the fathomless silence, the altitudes, this heretofore unexperienced intimacy with the mountains' very nakedness! It was strange altogether, and impressive, the vast unfolding of the world below, the frequency with which the pathway skirted some dark precipice—and the apparent unconcern of the man ahead, now so absolutely master. And still that soul-inviting exhilaration of ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... crept out from under the coppice, having broken with his strong hand a leafy bough from the thick wood, to hold athwart his body, that it might hide his nakedness withal. And forth he sallied like a lion mountain-bred, trusting in his strength, who fares out blown and rained upon, with flaming eyes; amid the kine he goes or amid the sheep or in the track of the wild deer; yea, his belly bids him go even to the good ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... been the custom in romance to present young ladies, especially if they be handsome and interesting, as being entirely oblivious of matter-of-fact cares and necessities, supremely indifferent to future prospects of poverty—poverty that brings hunger and thirst and cold and nakedness; but, be assured, this apathy never existed in real life. Isabel Vane's grief for her father—whom, whatever may have been the aspect he wore for others, she had deeply loved and reverenced—was sharply poignant; but in the midst of that grief, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... pulse-beat of the people. And so, throughout the Netherlands, at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, we find the allegorical drama giving way to more definite and direct personations. Those cold representations of vices and virtues, of vice in its nakedness, such as to render the reading, when not absolutely tedious, distasteful, to say the least, to our modern ideas,—all such aimless productions were giving way to the conscious expression of satire. Diatribes against prevalent abuses, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Civilisation, and in my humble way helping to maintain the Peace of Europe. For in all ages there have been, and in all to come there must be, sober and discreet Persons to act as Emissaries, to inquire into the conditions of the People, and bring back Tidings of the Nakedness or Fertility of the Land. It would never have been known that there was Corn in Egypt, but for the sagacious Investigations of Messengers sent to quest about in the interest of a Famished Community. Nevertheless I admit that, although I spread much such Balsam upon my galled and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... extraordinary effort of the Puritan, "the heathen hath already resumed his skin leggings and painted waist-cloth, notwithstanding the Captain has strove to pin better garments on his back, by virtue of a prayer that might have clothed the nakedness of a whole tribe." In short, the result proved, in the case of this lad, as similar experiments have since proved in so many other instances, the difficulty of tempting one trained in the freedom and ease of a savage, to consent to admit of the restraints of a state ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the things we have longed for are after all but dead sea fruit. Sorrow is the veiled Isis of the world, and once we penetrate her mystery and see her deeply-furrowed face and mournful eyes, the magic light of romance dies all away, and we realise the hard bitter fact of life in all its nakedness. ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... head-keeper of Bethlem Hospital was asked, "Was it not the practice in old Bethlem—not in the late gallery, but in the gallery pulled down—for eight, ten, or more patients to be fastened to the tables, almost in a state of perfect nakedness?" he replied, "Yes; they used to think they tore their clothes all to pieces; some of them would do that." "In point of fact, were they not fastened to the tables, sitting in a state of perfect nudity?" Answer: "They used to be so at the table; they were chained all round." In regard to the apparatus, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... Boxer bubble had been pricked and the Court had sought safety in flight, there was a certain dignity and majesty left. Then an immense misfortune had fallen across the capital; but that misfortune was like a cloak which hid the nakedness of the victim; and there was at least no pretence at authority. In the Summer of 1916, had it not been for the fact that an admirable police and gendarmerie system, comprising 16,000 men, secured the safety of the ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... the three days we spent in this town. Men and women for instance! That nakedness of the body, that free and public mingling, going about work and adventure and play together, worked, thought Juan Lepe no harm. Later on in this vast adventure of a new world, some of our churchmen were given to asserting ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... looking for something; and she came round by the prostrate trees that would have been invisible but for the white nakedness which enabled her to avoid them easily. Thus she approached the heap of ashes, and acting upon what was suggested by a still shining ember or two, she took a stick and stirred the heap, which thereupon ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... rejoices in the grass and the grain, but when these fail to cover her nakedness she resorts to weeds. It is in her plan or a part of her economy to keep the ground constantly covered with vegetation of some sort, and she has layer upon layer of seeds in the soil for this purpose, and the wonder is that each kind lies dormant until it is wanted. If I uncover the earth in any ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... against it. In the first place, I should tell all my secrets, and I maintain that verse is the proper medium for such revelations. Rhythm and rhyme and the harmonies of musical language, the play of fancy, the fire of imagination, the flashes of passion, so hide the nakedness of a heart laid open, that hardly any confession, transfigured in the luminous halo of poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. A beauty shows herself under the chandeliers, protected by the glitter of her ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... not in itself but in the circumstances that had quickened its intelligence, dispelled its vanities, and emancipated it from traditional ambitions and antagonisms. It was stripped of the accumulation of centuries, a naked government with all that freedom of action that nakedness affords. And its problems were set before it with a plainness that was out of all comparison with the complicated and perplexing intimations of the ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... alas! whither have we drifted? whither has the tide of civilisation borne us? It has passed over a land unprepared for it—it has left nakedness behind it; we have lost our forests, but our marauders remain; we have destroyed all that is picturesque, while we have retained everything that is revolting in barbarism. Through the midst of this woodland ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... threads of gold with which to weave a garment to cover her nakedness, the plutocrat melts the threads into sovereigns for ...
— Wise or Otherwise • Lydia Leavitt
... poor brethren saw such a large company approaching, they hid themselves each in his island, even as Adam did when he perceived his nakedness in the presence of God.(2) Shame set their sin clearly before them, and the fear of punishment made them tremble so that they were half dead. Nevertheless, they were taken prisoners amid the mockings and ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... letter dated September 10, 1712, addressed to Mr. Prior, while he was the Queen's minister, and plenipotentiary at the court of France, pays him the following compliment; 'For God's sake, Matt. hide the nakedness of thy country, and give the best turn thy fertile brain will furnish thee with, to the blunders of thy countrymen, who are not much better politicians, than the French are poets.' His lordship thus concludes his epistle; 'It is near three o'clock in ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... followed her husband's example: she did even more, for she took all his clothes, even to his shoes, stockings, and small clothes, nay, everything he had, along with her! Thus situated, he was under the necessity of doing something to cover his nakedness; and this, he himself acknowledged, was the first cause of his seriously applying himself to the profession which has since ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... end? His braveries have been hawked in the street; his prowess has sold a Special Edition; he is the first of his race, until a luckier rival eclipses him. Thus, also, his dandyism is inevitable: it is not enough for him to cover his nakedness—he must dress; and though his taste is sometimes unbridled, it is never insignificant. Indeed, his biographers have recorded the expression of his fancy in coats and small-clothes as patiently and enthusiastically as they have applauded his courage. And truly the love of magnificence, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... subjected to a violent downpour, accompanied by lurid lightning flashes. Tremendous hailstones came down, smashing through the few remaining flimsy blanket shelters that were still standing, so that we were left in our nakedness to bear the full fury of the storm. We felt that God's spectacular display on the mountains for Elijah's benefit had been at least emulated, but it was the still, small voice that was best appreciated again, when it remarked that it was a good job the cooks had just ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... He had been seized with cramps. Still, he had sense enough to cling to the door, and, when the first spasm of the cramp had passed, to sprawl himself upon it. There he lay for a while, lapped by the water that came over the door, and writhing in his fat nakedness. ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... broke in Betton, the moisture drying out of his voice. He withdrew his hand from Vyse's shoulder. "What is it, then? The joy of uncovering my nakedness? An eye for an eye? ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... that his reign would only terminate with his life, they would rise up against him, strip him bare of his royal robes, lead him in triumph up and down the city, and thence dispatch him beyond their borders into a distant great island; there, for lack of food and raiment, in hunger and nakedness he would waste miserably away, the luxury and pleasure so unexpectedly showered upon him changed as unexpectedly into woe. In accordance therefore with the unbroken custom of these citizens, a certain ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... purification, let him wash his ulcers white as snow in the water, let him get rid of his scabs, and let the sea bear them away so that at length his body may appear healthy. He will then change the fillet which binds his brows, and the loin-cloth which hides his nakedness: until he returns to his country, until he reaches the end of his journey, let him by no means put off the loin-cloth, however ragged; then only shall he have always a clean one.' Then Arad-Ea took him and conducted him to the place of purification: ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero |
