"Monastic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... already a subject of care to her. Such being her disposition, it was by no means matter of joy to her when she found that Madeline was laying out for herself little ways of life, tending in some slight degree to the monastic. Nothing was said about it, but she fancied that Madeline had doffed a ribbon or two in her usual evening attire. That she read during certain fixed hours in the morning was very manifest. As to that daily afternoon service at four o'clock—she had very often attended that, and it was hardly worthy ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... in England, nuns were by no means so strictly secluded as now. They were present at all manner of festivities; the higher class travelled about the country very much as they chose, and all of them, while retaining the peculiar shape and colour of the prescribed monastic costume, contrived to spend a fortune on the accessories and details of their dress. The Prioress of Kennington, as I have just described her, is a specimen of nearly all the prioresses and other ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... spiritual pride. Even the multitude of Pagans were inclined to estimate the merit of the sacrifice by its apparent difficulty; and it was in the praise of these chaste spouses of Christ that the fathers have poured forth the troubled stream of their eloquence. [98] Such are the early traces of monastic principles and institutions, which, in a subsequent age, have counterbalanced all the temporal advantages of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... house—no cottage roof, no white canvas shed, to point out the tents of the wandering tribe whose abode they were seeking. The only circumstance betokening that it had once been the haunt of man were a few gray monastic ruins, scarce distinguishable from the stony barrier by which they were surrounded; and the sole evidence that it was still frequented by human beings was a thin column of pale blue smoke, that arose in curling wreaths from out the brake, the light-colored vapor beautifully contrasting ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of Studenica, which he had built, and afterwards to the promontory of Mt. Athos, where his younger son, who called himself Sava and was to become the great St. Sava, had from his seventeenth year embraced the monastic life. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... the other monks and became silent. There was a tradition that the ghost of Walgierz appeared when the morals of the monastic lives became corrupted, and when the monks thought more about worldly riches ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of its requisitions, necessarily revolted the tempers of men, already half-won with the promise of a better light, and favourably disposed them towards the new doctrines. The charm of independence, the rich plunder of monastic institutions, made the Reformation attractive in the eyes of princes, and tended not a little to strengthen their inward convictions. Nothing, however, but political considerations could have driven them to espouse ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... faith by Erkenwald, Bishop of London, in the year of Christ 677. A man much devoted to God, greatly occupied in religious acts, frequent prayers, and pious fruits of almsgiving, preferring a private and monastic life to all the riches and honours of the kingdom, who, when he had reigned 30 years, received the religious habit at the hands of Walther, Bishop of London, who succeeded the aforesaid Erkenwald, of whom the Venerable Bede makes mention in his ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... hallow with its beauteous and enduring structures. Even the stranger therefore when he had left the town about two miles behind him, and had heard the farm and mill which he had since passed, called the Abbey farm and the Abbey mill, might have been prepared for the grateful vision of some monastic remains. As for Egremont, he had been almost born amid the ruins of Marney Abbey; its solemn relics were associated with his first and freshest fancies; every footstep was as familiar to him as it could have been to one of the old monks; yet never without emotion could he behold ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... artists of genius who, like those of Greece, knew how to speak to the populace without being common, were for the most part humble workmen; they found their inspiration not in the formulas of the masters of monastic art, but in constant communion with the very soul of the nation. Therefore this renascence, in its most profound features, concerns less the archaeology or the architecture than the history of ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... semi-ascetic quality of getting your gratification by doing without things—especially pleased Comte. He lived in a garret on two meals a day, and was happy in the thought that he could endure and yet think and study. The old monastic impulse was upon him, minus the religious features—or stay! why may not science become a religion? And surely science can become dogmatic, and even tyrannically build a hierarchy on a hypothesis no less ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... devil's guise than thine own," she retorted, eyeing his semi-monastic garb with scant favour. "Can a poor maid not practise her steps in the heart of a forest, but a cloister-bred youngster must ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... in a total population of about 42,000.[1345] Not less than one-sixth of the inhabitants of Ladak are in religious houses as monks and nuns.[1346] Families in Tibet are small, yet each devotes one or more children to convent or monastic life.[1347] In western Tibet, especially about Taklakot in the Himalayan border, one boy in every family is invariably devoted to the priesthood, and one or more daughters must become nuns. But the nun generally resides with her family or lives in ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... is as usual clear. We are in fifteenth-century Florence at night. There is no set description, but the slight touches are enough to make us see the silent lonely streets, the churches, the high walls of the monastic gardens, the fortress-palaces. The sound of the fountains is in our ears; the little crowds of revelling men and girls appear and disappear like ghosts; the surly watch with their weapons and torches bustle round the corner. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... pleasant face and manners of the young father mentioned, who shows the place to English-speaking travelers, and will care to know that Padre Giacomo was born at Smyrna, and dwelt there in the family of an English lady, till he came to Venice, and entered on his monastic ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... luxuries of life and most of the comforts which belong to social existence. To the Anchorites succeeded the Caenobites, societies of monks who dwelt in a common habitation under fixed rules; and these were naturally followed by confederacies of such communities under one organization. The monastic vows were poverty, or the renunciation of property; celibacy, or abstinence from marriage; and obedience to the conventual superior. Sometimes in the early centuries great evils and abuses sprang up in connection with monastic life. For example, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... of the sound, and looking upon a little bay, a cluster of monastic cells marked the northern limits of the Christian church. From this outpost it had for the time receded, and all save two of the rude stone dwellings looked deserted and forlorn. A thin thread of smoke rose straight heavenward ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... hold that Christianity and war are incompatible would seem to be committed to a monastic and passively anarchist view of life, inconsistent with membership in a political society. But whatever the relation between Christianity and war, there can be no question of the relation between Christianity and hatred. Hatred (which is not the ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... Eleventh or the Twelfth Centuries. Entirely regardless of its age, it has for us the charm of the craft of hands long vanished, and of primitive art in all its simplicity of artifice. The subject is religious—could hardly have been otherwise in those monastic days—and for church decoration, and to fit the space they were woven to occupy, each of the two parts was but three and a half feet high although ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... house that revealed itself stood with an impressive dignity among its stern and blackish woods. The long, plain front suggested a monastic origin; and there was indeed what looked like a ruined chapel at one end. Its whole aspect was dilapidated and forlorn; and yet it seemed to have grown into the landscape, and to be so deeply rooted in it that one could ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... character with mine. If in certain passages it is believed that I wished to identify my hero with myself, believe that is only in certain parts, and even then I shall not allow it. As for the manor of Childe Harold being an old monastic residence, I thought I might better describe what I have seen than what I invent. I would not for worlds be ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... to regard this re-birth only as the privilege of the truly great. It is of interest to note the curious persistence of similar ideas as to death and the other-world in literature written even in Christian times and by monastic scribes. In Welsh, in addition to Annwfn, a term which seems to mean the 'Not-world,' we have other names for the world below, such as 'anghar,' the loveless place; 'difant,' the unrimmed place ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... which these Universities work may be a sound and logical one so far as it goes, and more up-to-date than the English residential system, which its enemies deride as mediaeval and monastic; but it is a cast iron system, designed with the object of preparing men for examinations, and one which does nothing to discover promising scholars or to encourage original work and research among those who have taken their ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... composed, while the smooth-shaven lawn, with an old, quaintly carved sundial in the centre, and, above all, the absence of any living creature whatsoever, imparted an air of severe formality to the scene, which, as the eye rested upon it, seemed to realise all one had read of monastic discipline and seclusion; and one half expected to see a train of dark-veiled nuns or sandalled friars winding slowly forth from ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Man." What Christ did for Humanity was done by Humanity, because in the name of Humanity. For a truly vicarious act does not supersede the principal's duty of performance, but rather implies and acknowledges it. Take the case from which this very word of vicar has received its origin. In the old monastic times, when the revenues of a cathedral or a cure fell to the lot of a monastery, it became the duty of that monastery to perform the religious services of the cure. But inasmuch as the monastery was a corporate body, they appointed one of their number, whom they denominated ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... give sketches of London, its appearance, its life and manners, at various stages of its history. We have tried to describe its historic buildings, its fortress, its churches, the Exchange, and other houses noted in its annals. Monastic London is represented by the Charterhouse. Legal London finds expression in the histories of the Temple and the Inns of Court. Royal London is described by the story of its Palaces; and the old city life of the famous merchants and ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... same idea, and the idea once expressed, there was no desire to extend the circle of figures or to alter their wretched appearance. The same uncouth forms return with a killing monotony. Centuries do not change them. The uniformity of monastic life by no means tended to relax the inflexibility of invention. Religion, not art, was the sculptor's or the painter's object; his production was a creation of faith, not of beauty. Such is the character of almost all the carvings in wood and stone ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... which they speak of the natural world one of dissatisfaction, distrust, almost contempt. "Change and decay in all around I see," is their key- note, rather than "O all ye works of the Lord, bless Him, praise Him, and magnify Him for ever." There lingers about them a savour of the old monastic theory, that this earth is the devil's planet, fallen, accursed, goblin-haunted, needing to be exorcised at every turn before it is useful or even safe for man. An age which has adopted as its most popular hymn a paraphrase of the mediaeval monk's "Hic breve vivitur," ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... devoted friends and adherents was Giovanni Belzoni, who, born at Padua in 1778, had, when a young man at Rome, intended to devote himself to the monastic life, but the French invasion of the city altered his purpose, and, instead of being a monk, he became an athlete. He was a man of gigantic physical power, and went from place to place, gaining his living in England, as elsewhere, as a posture-master, ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... concentrated definition of monastic life is of course to be understood only of its ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... black-and-white (or half-timbered) building that forms the hospital encloses a spacious open quadrangle in the style common to hostelries. The carvings are very fine and varied, and add greatly to the beauty of the galleries and covered stair. The monastic charities founded by men of the old religion are now in the hands of the corporation for distribution among the poor of the town, and besides the old grammar-school founded by Henry VIII., with a yearly exhibition to each of the universities, and open to all boys, rich and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... ourselves to this place and room, imagine the extreme moral repose which reigns in such a monastic dining-hall, and marvel at the strong emotion and impassioned action that the painter has put into his picture whilst he has kept his work of art close to nature, bringing it immediately in contrast with ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... that punishment for the duty to which he had been appointed, and which would scarcely have seemed an amelioration of destiny to any one save a man who had for years been deprived of the light of the sun and the scent of the free air. Some deed there had been in that life which had called for such monastic discipline; some outcome of human passion when the blood, that now crept slowly, while the aged monk passed the hours in waiting for visions before the altar of St. Apollinare, was running in his veins too rapidly for ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... heart. The fact is that the mother attempted to prepare her daughter for a conventual life, a profession at that period of the highest honor, and one that led to preferment, not only in religious circles, but in the world of society. At that time, conventual and monastic dignitaries occupied a prominent place in the formation of public and private manners and customs, and if not regarded impeccable, their opinions were always considered valuable in state matters of the greatest moment, even the security of thrones, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... coast. There are cliffs more terrible, and winds more wild, on other shores; but nowhere else do so many white sails lean against the bleak wind, and glide across the cliff shadows. Nor do I know many other memorials of monastic life so striking as the abbey on that dark headland. We are apt in our journeys through lowland England, to watch with some secret contempt the general pleasantness of the vales in which our abbeys were founded, without taking any pains to inquire into the particular circumstances which ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... exercises everywhere without attempting to do so, and in ignorance of the fact which increases her power. Her conversation this morning confirmed my doubts. She has not found in the solitude of the cloister, and in the severe practice of monastic duties, repose and forgetfulness. She congratulated herself, however, upon her resolution, which she considers the accomplishment of an imperious duty; but she suffers continually, for she is not formed for those mystical contemplations, in the midst of ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... sky was a tall figure dressed from head to foot in a black garment such as a monk might wear, but almost instantly Varr recognized that there was something in this costume that was out of keeping with the orthodox monastic habit. What the discrepancy might be he could not determine in those seconds of bewilderment, but he knew it existed. The outline against the light was clearcut; there were the flowing line of the robe, and the conical shape of the hood, plain to ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... this group of artizans with the merchants, as now forming in each town an important Tiers Etat, or Third State of the people, occupied in service, first, of the ecclesiastics, who in monastic bodies inhabited the cloisters round each church; and, secondly, of the knights, who, with their retainers, occupied, each family their own fort, in allied defence ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... of Hursley having been given to St. Elizabeth's College, and apparently some rights over Merdon, the Chancellor Wriothesley obtained that, on the confiscation of monastic property, the manor should be granted to him. Stephen Gardiner had been bishop since 1531, a man who, though he had consented to the king's assumption of the royal supremacy, grieved over the fact as an error all his life. He appeared at the bar of the House of Commons and pleaded the rights ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... pertinacity to the old common law; both of them reciprocally jealous of what they were unacquainted with, and neither of them perhaps allowing the opposite system that real merit which is abundantly to be found in each. This appears on the one hand from the spleen with which the monastic writers[e] speak of our municipal laws upon all occasions; and, on the other, from the firm temper which the nobility shewed at the famous parliament of Merton; when the prelates endeavoured to procure an act, to declare all bastards legitimate ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... represents the original mansion, or, we should rather say, city of mansions, with its monastic chapel, and geometrical gardens, laid out in the trim style of our forefathers. The suite of state apartments in the principal front was very splendid, and previously to their being dismantled by Sir William Chambers, they exhibited a sorry scene ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... the strictly literal is perhaps nothing much to be marvelled at in the case of the supernatural minded Celt with religion for his theme. Did the scribe believe what he wrote when he recounted the multiplied marvels of his holy patron's life? Doubtless he did—and why not! To the unsophisticated monastic and mediaeval mind, as to the mind of primitive man, the marvellous and supernatural is almost as real and near as the commonplace and natural. If anyone doubts this let him study the mind of the modern Irish peasant; let him ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... any foundation in fact? Why not? Through his numberless works we may easily divine the soul of the artist, and can well understand, how the calm and serene atmosphere of the monastic cell, the church perfumed with incense, and the cloister vibrating with psalms, would develop the mystic sentiment in ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... they talked to a shaven monk in his 'dreary white flannel dress,' bound with a black strap. They moralised as they returned, and Fitzjames thought on the whole that his own life was wholesomer than the monastic. He hopes, however, that the monk and his companions may 'come right,' as 'no doubt they will if they are honest and true.' 'I suppose one may say that God is in convents and churches as well as in law courts or chambers—though not to ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... contribution to the social history of the thirteenth century, is the next work; and for which the Camden Members are indebted to the learned Vicar of Holbeach, The Rev. James Morton. The Ancren Riwle; a Treatise on the Rules and Duties of Monastic Life, which he has edited and translated from a Semi-Saxon MS. of the thirteenth century, is a work which many of our best scholars have long desired to see in print,—we believe we may add, that many have thought seriously of editing. The information to be ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... do not know whether it is perverseness of state, or old associations, but an excellent and very handsome modern house, which Mr. Howard has lately built at Corby, does not, in my mind, assimilate so well with the scenery as the old irregular monastic hall, with its weather-beaten and antique appearance, which I remember there ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... retire, they submitted to the constraint of no laws except those enforced within the jurisdiction of the university, and hesitated at no means of enriching themselves at the expense of their neighbors. Hence the frequent warfare waged between them and the brethren of Saint-Germain des Pres, whose monastic domains adjoined their territories, and whose meadows were the constant battleground of their skirmishes; according to Dulaure—"presque toujours un theatre de tumulte, de galanterie, de combats, de duels, de debauches et de sedition." Hence their sanguinary conflicts with the good citizens ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... was reassured a moment later by the appearance of the levatrice, who announced that she had transferred the blessed man to her own apartment, where he could have the sunlight and a good bed to lie in. There in fact he lay, weak but smiling, in a setting which contrasted oddly enough with his own monastic surroundings: a cheerful grimy room, hung with anecdotic chromos, photographs of lady-patients proudly presenting their offspring to the camera, and innumerable Neapolitan santolini decked out with ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... ancient Catalogue of a monastic library equally curious, and even more important from its magnitude, and the numerous works it contains on English history, early romances, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various
... special tenderness. Lily, who was sitting next to Mrs Dale, put her hand out secretly and got hold of her mother's, thereby indicating that she did not intend to occupy the cell offered to her by her uncle; or to look to him as the companion of her monastic seclusion. After that there was nothing more then said ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Ringfield suddenly yearned towards the cloister, the cross, the strange, hooded, cloaked men, the pale and grave, or red-cheeked merry nuns, the rich symbolism of even the simplest service, and he longed to hurl himself from the outside world to that beckoning world of monks and monastic quiet. As a Methodist, there was then no possible opening of the kind he wished for, whatever there may be at a later day, when hardly any religious body keeps itself to itself but is daily invaded by efforts and struggles, apings after something coveted and ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... my eloquence, opens his coffers to the poor and needy, and dispenses the accumulated store with a liberal hand! The voluptuary, too, is snatched from the pleasures of the table; ambition flies at my command to the wholesome discipline of the monastic cell; while female frailty, tottering on the brink of ruin, with one ear open to the siren voice of the seducer and the other to my saintly correctives, is restored to domestic happiness and the approving smile of heaven, by the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... there sweetening the ever-springing 'issues of life,' will make them flow out in glad obedience to any commandment of His. That love of Jesus Christ, received into our hearts, and responded to by our answering love, will work, as love always does, a magical transformation. A great monastic teacher wrote his precious book about The Imitation of Christ. 'Imitation' is a great word, 'Transformation' is a greater. 'We all,' receiving on the mirror of our loving hearts the love of Jesus Christ, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... title which ought to accrue to him upon such creation: for if so, he ought to restrain and change the course of inheritance by the law of the land; and that he cannot do, no more than if the King wished to (p. 044) give or grant to a man that he should hold his lands after he has entered upon a monastic life, and professed; for such grant would be contrary to the common law of the land, and therefore would be altogether void. So also in this case." To this argument Horton replied, among other points, "I take it that the Apostle may grant to a man to hold three ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... the earthquake came—the shock, that hurled To dust, in many fragments dashed and strown, The throne, whose roots were in another world, And whose far-stretching shadow awed our own. From many a proud monastic pile, o'erthrown, Fear-struck, the hooded inmates rushed and fled; The web, that for a thousand years had grown O'er prostrate Europe, in that day of dread Crumbled and fell, as fire dissolves the ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... Monastic life was one of the features of Mexico at that time. Most cities, large and small, were full of churches, monasteries, and convents; and Madame Calderon (who became a Catholic three years later) was not then well acquainted with the ceremonies and liturgy of the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... is simple and even austere, the discipline rigorous, the diet of the plainest, and a great deal of time is given to physical training. As the chelas after 16 years of this monastic training at the hands of their gurus are to be sent out as missionaries to propagate the Arya doctrines throughout India, the influence of these institutions in the moulding of Indian character and Indian opinion in the future cannot fail to be considerable. Some five years more ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... mourn with me: that hole was—so to speak in regard to that matter—a monastery, without doors, windows, or holes; and a wall around it, so high, it shut out—hope! I wish you could have seen the camel who was my monastic jailer.' ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... cover for the real onslaught. With the Romans, although perhaps he did not know it himself, he had certain sympathies, for instance, in the matter of celibacy. Nor did he entirely disapprove of the monastic orders. Then he found nothing shocking in the tenets and methods of the Jesuits working for what they conceived to be a good end. The real targets of his animosity were his high-church brethren of the Church of England, wretches who, whilst retaining all the privileges ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... broken Gothic arches, deep entrance-ways, remnants of pinnacles and spires, massive walls of ruined towers, gave a wildly romantic and yet not unpicturesque aspect to the remains of what was evidently once a vast monastic institution. The muffled stranger led the way amongst the ruins, and at last stopped at a gate opening into a small square inclosure formed by strong iron railings, seven feet high and shaped at the points like javelins. Passing through the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... and the brazen bowl of suds, he entered a convent, and became a Capuchin. The leisure of the cloister was employed by him in the study of hydraulics; and he was busy in constructing an Artesian well within the monastic precincts when the French army under Napoleon took possession of Rome. The monks of every order were expelled and dispersed; and our poor Capuchin, obliged to cut his own beard, purchased once more the implements of his despised calling, and traveled ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... significant. Sometimes when we met him, we exchanged glances full of meaning on both sides, but they never led to any advances. Insensibly this man became the object of our secret admiration, though we knew no reason for it. Did it lie in his secretly simple habits, his monastic regularity, his hermit-like frugality, his idiotically mechanical labor, allowing his mind to remain neuter or to work on his own lines, seeming to us to hint at an expectation of some stroke of good luck, or at some foregone conclusion as to ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... is not without beauty, but it is the tower that is the truly remarkable feature. It was raised in the eleventh century, and although the architect—probably a monastic one—observed the prevailing principle of Romanesque taste, he showed so much originality in the design that it served as a model, which was much imitated in the Middle Ages. It is not only one of the oldest church towers in France, but its position is one of the most peculiar, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... sure that there is no chance for anything to be concealed. In fact, I had the floor taken up once, soon after I came here, knowing the room was that of the mysterious Sister, and thinking that there, if anywhere, the monastic crime would have taken place; still, we will go in, if ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... wholly founded on four or five authors, who wrote when the struggle of the Empire against the barbarians was almost over, and who represented the last efforts of a learning which was ready to vanish. The monastic libraries show how narrow was the range of reading. The great monastery of Bec had about fifty books. At Canterbury the library of Christ Church, which a century later possessed seven hundred volumes, had at this time but a hundred and fifty. Its single Greek work ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... from the Concordia Regularis, a tenth-century appendix to the monastic "rule" of St. Benedict, describes this ceremony. "While the third respond is chanted, let the remaining three follow [one of the brethren, vested in an alb, had before this quietly taken his place at the sepulcher], and let them ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... chapters, and these general assemblies were the supreme governing body in the Order. Thus unity was established; the organisation was close, but not monarchical; the Order was a great federation. This is the highest point reached in monastic development. ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... this time a deeper interest in their national history began to be awakened. This department indeed had never been entirely neglected; and more than 10,000 manuscripts, unopened and unexamined, lay scattered throughout the imperial and monastic libraries. ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... that the essential ills of man are incurable, that all the remedies proposed are as bad as the disease, that it is almost a waste of time to bother about humanity in general. This agnostic attitude, of course, is very far from merely academic, monastic. Baroja, though his career has not been as dramatic as Blasco's, has at all events taken a hand in the life of his time and country and served his day in the trenches of the new enlightenment. He is anything but a theorist. But there is surely no little significance in his final retreat to his ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... The monastic work inquired after is noticed by another Correspondent at p. 569. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... pilgrimage was to the famous Kievo-Petcherskaya Lavra, that is, the First-Class Monastery of the Kieff Catacombs, the chief monastic institution and goal of pilgrims in all the country, of which we had caught a glimpse from the opposite shore of the river, as we approached the town. Buildings have not extended so densely in this direction but that a semblance of ascetic retirement is still preserved. ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... forever wandering among mankind, alluring, by more than human charms, the unwary to their destruction, and laying plots, which were too often successful, against the virtue of the saints. Sometimes the witches kindled in the monastic priest a more terrestrial fire. People told, with bated breath, how, under the spell of a vindictive woman, four successive abbots in a German monastery had been wasted away by ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... zealous Correspondent, P.Q., whose contribution appears in the next page, describes this gateway as resembling St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, which Mr. Malcom thinks "one of the most perfect remains of monastic buildings in London." It consists of one capacious arch, with an arched mullioned window in the centre above it; and is flanked by two square towers. From this place issued the early numbers of the Gentleman's Magazine; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... consolations of the monastic life," says a Jesuit authority, "is the assurance we have that in obeying we can commit no fault. The Superior may commit a fault in commanding you to do this thing or that, but you are certain that you commit no fault so long as you obey, because God will only ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... "lie-boots," means, in its primitive sense, rather sandals; and Caius Caesar, the nephew and successor of Caius Tiberius, received the agnomen of Caligula, a caligulis sine caligis levioribus, quibus adolescentior usus fuerat in exercitu Germanici patris sui. And the caligce were also proper to the monastic bodies; for we read in an ancient glossarium upon the rule of Saint Benedict, in the Abbey of Saint Amand, that caligae were ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... and the lira, and the number of florins coined yearly. In describing the condition of Florence at this period, he computes the number of citizens capable of bearing arms, between the ages fifteen and seventy, at 25,000; the population of the city at 90,000, not counting the monastic communities, nor including the strangers, who are estimated at about 15,000. The country districts belonging to Florence add 80,000 to this calculation. It is further noticed that the excess of male births over female was between ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... scarlet-skirted maiden standing near, A monk, a beggar, and a muleteer, And lo! it is no longer now a dream. These are the Alps, and there the Apennines; The fertile plains of Lombardy between; Beyond Val d'Arno with its flocks and vines, These granite crags are gray monastic shrines Perched on the cliffs like old dismantled forts; And far to seaward can be dimly seen The marble splendor of Venetian courts; While one can all but hear the mournful rhythmic beat Of white-lipped ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... shorn, her graceful limbs draped in forlorn russet, her merry meetings with girlish spirits like herself exchanged for the tears of the confessional, the lengthened prayers of the cloister, the frequent fastings and sometimes scourgings of monastic life. The cause of this contemporaneous disappearance was known only to the most intimate friends of two celebrated but no longer wealthy families, who deemed the sacrifice necessary, and so recked not of the wounds it might make, the perjuries it might tempt, the life-struggle ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... so he picked the numeral letters from LEODECIMVS, and by taking in X from LEO X. and striking out M as standing for mysterium, he hit the number exactly. This discovery completed his conversion to Luther, and his determination to throw off his monastic vows. Luther dealt with him as straight-forwardly as with Melanchthon about his astrology: he accepted the conclusions, but told him to clear his mind of all the premises about the Beast. Stifelius {374} did not take the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... beautiful church so like a palace, Or San Michele, built by the merchants, the Church of the Guilds of the city. Passing thence into Piazza Signoria, and so into Via de' Gondi, in the Proconsolo you find the Church of the great monastic Order the Badia of the Benedictines, having passed on your way Palazza Vecchio, the Palace of the Republic, afterwards of the Medici; and the Bargello, the Palace of the Podesta, afterwards a prison; coming later through Borgo de' Greci to the Church ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... the Temple of Longevity, a large Buddhist temple, with a monastic establishment of about ninety priests attached to it. It contains three shrines with large figures, but nothing specially interesting. There is a large pond in the midst of the garden, covered with duckweed, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Christianity, as it came from Christ, with the same religion after it fell into other hands—with the extravagant merit very soon ascribed to celibacy, solitude, voluntary poverty; with the rigours of an ascetic, and the vows of a monastic life; the hair-shirt, the watchings, the midnight prayers, the obmutescence, the gloom and mortification of religious orders, and of those who aspired to ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... advantages of the monastic life, created by vows, is that it is wholly in keeping with human nature such as God created it. Men differ in their spiritual complexion more widely even than they do in mental caliber and physical make-up. All are not fitted by character and general condition ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... another son of this extraordinary woman, and he bought the Welbeck estate, towards the end of the sixteenth century, from two or three men of obscurity to whom it had passed, after Henry the Eighth had ordered the monastic establishment at the Abbey to be dissolved. His son became Baron Ogle and Viscount Mansfield, and subsequently Earl, Marquis and ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... inhabitants left, and some of the soldiers we had seen about the village, had entered the church and stood together between the rows of cots; and the service began. It was a sunless afternoon, and the picture was all in monastic shades of black and white and ashen grey: the sick under their earth-coloured blankets, their livid faces against the pillows, the black dresses of the women (they seemed all to be in mourning) and the silver haze floating out from the little acolyte's censer. The only light in the scene—the ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... and monastic origin of all systems of education has had a very injurious influence, on that of women especially, because the conventual spirit has ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... holding out his hand, all unable to believe his eyes. It was a woman, grave, dignified, composed, who advanced to meet him. Hilma was dressed in black, the cut and fashion of the gown severe, almost monastic. All the little feminine and contradictory daintinesses were nowhere to be seen. Her statuesque calm evenness of contour yet remained, but it was the calmness of great sorrow, of infinite resignation. Beautiful she still remained, but she was older. The seriousness of one who has gained the knowledge ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... presenting in a creditable manner our intellectual heritage for the benefit of the majority otherwise occupied, have no means of their own, and yet are not ready (as it should not be expected of them that they should be) to take the vow of poverty and celibacy and form a Jewish monastic order of St. Haninah. Accordingly not a few of these choose the Rabbinic career as the most likely profession to enable them to keep in touch with Jewish learning—more or less a disappointed hope to the real ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... behind him, and rolled all day through the prosaic plains of France; startling the pale little towns, down whose treeless streets the sun shone, oh! so drearily, and taking up boors and market-folks at every monastic station. There was a pretty young girl sitting beside Ralph in the afternoon, but he refused to talk to her, for he was schooling himself, and preferred to scan the features of an odd old couple who got ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... claiming, however, that the cloisters of Salisbury are on the whole the most beautiful in England, it is merely re-asserting what many critics of Gothic architecture have already decided to be true. The cloisters of Gloucester are far richer, the space they cover at Wells (like Salisbury, not a monastic establishment) is greater, and in other details these may not be the finest. But, as a whole, their beautiful proportion and the general symmetry of their design make them worthy adjuncts to a building which is pre-eminent ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... well repaid. Mont St. Michel is one of the most astonishing and beautiful monuments of the Catholic and feudal age. Its fortifications, and the halls, church, and cloisters of the chivalrous and monastic fraternities of which it was the seat, rise like an efflorescence from the solitary cone of granite, surrounded at low tide by the vast flat of sand, at high tide by the sea. Gothic architecture, to which we are apt to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... constitution, a collation is allowed in addition. The greatest error of all, however, appears to us to exist in the estimate formed of the abbot, who, judging by his correspondence, is evidently as informed and intelligent a person as is usually met with out of the monastic circle. ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... by the ancients, although it was cultivated in the monastic gardens of the continent in the middle of the 14th century. Some say, that it was originally brought from Spain; but there is a wild species growing in England, and cultivated in Lincolnshire, in preference to the other. There are three varieties in use; the round-leaved, the triangular-leaved, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... her father before his retirement from the world, and which she and Salinguerra conspire to break, the one from love of Sordello, the other in the interests of her House. Eccelino's real assumption of the monastic habit after Adelaide's death is represented as in part caused by remorse—for Salinguerra is his old and faithful ally, and he has connived at the wrong done to him in the concealment of his son; and his return to the Guelph connexion from which ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... a history of their own. On the rough suppression of monastic institutions, Henry VIII., gorged with plunder, granted to the Mercers' Company for L969 17s. 6d. the church of the college of St. Thomas Acon, the parsonage of St. Mary Colechurch, and sundry premises in the parishes of St. Paul, Old Jewry, St. Stephen, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... think that it was not merely accident, because we often come upon descriptions of sites in mediaeval writers which seem to show that the men of those times were capable of appreciating the picturesque position of this or that castle or abbey, as well as its direct suitableness for military or monastic purposes. Giraldus, for instance, evidently admired the site of Llanthony, and, if he expressed himself about it in rather exaggerated language, that is no more than what naturally happens when any man, especially when Giraldus, expresses himself in Latin, especially in ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... has for its object, the putting an end to the order of the Jesuits and other monastic orders in this country. If your Lordships will look at the act passed in the year 1791, you will probably see that at that time, as well as in this, it was possible for one person to make laws through ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... which an innumerable number of churches and monastic edifices were originally built or entirely reconstructed, continued without any striking alteration till about the latter part of the twelfth century, when a singular change began to take place: this was no other than the introduction of the pointed arch, the origin of which ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... falling back from vows made in the time of danger. No one else was aware of it, but John Lucas Brownlow was not of a character to treat a promise or a resolution lightly. If he could have got out of his head the continual echo of the two lines about the monastic intentions of a certain personage when sick, he would have been ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this ruin was the remains of some one of those half monastic, half military buildings which, during the middle ages, were so common in almost every commanding situation in ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... great majority of these poor creatures were already ruined by such competition, and Amru, seeing the Arab leather-workers, weavers, ropemakers, and the rest, threatened with the same fate, had determined to set himself firmly to restrict all this monastic work. The patriarch had resisted stoutly and held out long, but at last he had been forced to sacrifice almost half the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... friar, with his curious moralising on life and death, and Isabella in her first mood of renunciation, a thing "ensky'd and sainted," come with the quiet of the cloister as a relief to this lust and pride of life: like some grey monastic picture hung on the wall of a gaudy room, their presence cools the heated air of the piece. For a moment we [176] are within the placid conventual walls, whither they fancy at first that the Duke has come as a man crossed ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... like a church; I like a cowl; I love a prophet of the soul; And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowled churchman be. Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... appointed to entertain the strangers. He led them to points on the mountain where the view was most enchanting; skilled in ancient monastic lore, he entertained them with anecdotes and histories from which he drew the most instructive morals. One cheerful afternoon, when seated on the rocks viewing a magnificent sunset, the aged monk told them his own history. He had been a soldier of fortune. In youth his ambition was as boundless ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... are traces of Danish occupation that a "Finkle Street" is found; at least many of the northern towns which have a street so designated were inhabited by the Danish people, and some of those streets are winding or angular. Finchale, a place, as you know, of fame in monastic annals, is a green secluded spot, half insulated by a bend of the river Wear; and Godric's Garth, the adjacent locality of the hermitage of its famous saint, is of an angular form. But then the place is mentioned, by the name of Finchale, as the scene of occurrences that long ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... have hitherto indicated, may be as deliberate as you choose; there is no immediate fear of the extinction of many species of flowers or animals; and the Alps, and valley of Sparta, will wait your leisure, I fear too long. But the feudal and monastic buildings of Europe, and still more the streets of her ancient cities, are vanishing like dreams: and it is difficult to imagine the mingled envy and contempt with which future generations will look back to us, who still possessed such things, yet made no effort ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... his large acquaintance with English literature. It comprises twelve descriptive essays on as many different topics, closely connected with his previous studies. Among the best of these are the papers entitled "Monks and Mendicant Friars," which give a brief and interesting account of monastic institutions in England; "The Hanseatic Steel-Yard in London," comprising a history of that famous company of merchant-adventurers, with a description of the buildings occupied by them, and a sketch of their domestic life; and "London in the Middle Ages," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the change in her appearance. Pale, heavy-browed, almost haggard with a sort of monastic rigidity in her dress, she had little but her pure features in common with the woman whose radiant good grace he had hitherto admired. She let her eyes rest on his own, and she let him take her hand; but her eyes looked like two rainy autumn moons, and her touch ...
— The American • Henry James
... aspects, revealing or consoling—religion in connection with any of its affinities, ethics or metaphysics, when self-evoked by a person of earnest nature, not imposed from without by the necessities of monastic life, not caught as a contagion from the example of friends that surround you, argues some 'vast volcanic agency' moving at subterraneous depths below the ordinary working mind of daily life, and entitled by its own intrinsic grandeur to ennoble the curiosity ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... to walk directly into his patient's room: but he found it impossible to resist the impulses of pride, in showing Assunta his rigid and stately frock, and shoes rather of the equestrian order than the monastic. So he went into the kitchen where the girl was at work, having just taken away ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... to the chair of the divinity professor: and now fully convinced of the errors of the Romish church, and the vileness of its monastic agents, he determined to expose them. In public lectures he lashed their vices and opposed their follies. He unfolded a variety of abuses covered by the darkness of superstition. At first he began to loosen the prejudices of the vulgar, and proceeded by slow advances; with the metaphysical ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... which his grandfather built, and which nothing will induce him to improve, but toward the venerable ruins of the old castle that overlooks his village he has no piety at all, and carries off its stones to make a fence for his garden, or tears down the gothic carving of the old monastic church, which is "nothing to him," to mark off a foot-path through his field. It is the same with historical traditions. The peasant has them fresh in his memory, so far as they relate to himself. In districts where the peasantry are unadulterated, you can discern the remnants of the feudal ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... in this only followed the footsteps of the Essenes, or Therapeutae, and of the Jewish sects founded on the monastic life. A communistic element entered into all these sects, which were equally disliked by Pharisees and Sadducees. The Messianic doctrine, which was entirely political among the orthodox Jews, was entirely social amongst them. By means of a gentle, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... podestat had died in exile, worn out with grief, and that his children, who had been brought up under monastic rules, and were accustomed to nothing so much as to praying, thought only of their own salvation, there was nobody who could take ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... to the goal than his impeccable rival. The poet might almost have sung "'Tis better to have erred and learned than never to have erred at all." The intellectual monopoly of England is, perhaps, even more dangerous than the material. The monastic societies of Oxford and Cambridge are too apt to insist on certain forms of knowledge, and to think that real wisdom is the prerogative of the few. And we undoubtedly owe many of the healthy breezes of rebellion and scepticism in such matters to the example of America. The keen-eyed Yankees ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... actual world to that of fiction, history, and art, except where preserved as memorials of antiquity; but the civil importance which from the dawn of civilization attached to the bridge is as patent to-day as when a Roman emperor, a feudal lord, or a monastic procession went forth to celebrate or consecrate its advent or completion; in evidence whereof, we have the appropriate function which made permanently memorable the late visit of Victoria's son to her American realms, in his inauguration of the magnificent bridge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... go to wreck and ruin, or just clears it off for farm purposes.... The butter factor's dogs came out barking and biting as we left the garden. Henry made a timely retreat; the professor showed fight, and came off second best, with his mantle torn. Then to the Church of Santa Cruz and to the monastic buildings attached....] ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... archaeological or controversial tendencies, who never pass a dingy cover without going as far as the title-page—visitors, perhaps, at houses in the neighbourhood wandering round to look at an ancient gateway or sun-dial left from monastic days. Villagers beginning to read do not care for this class of work; like children, they look for something more amusing, and want something to wonder ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... by the Church proves, again, that the power of certain illusions is sufficiently great to create, at least momentarily, sentiments as contrary to the interests of the individual as they are to that of society—such as the love of the monastic life, the desire for martyrdom, the ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... descended from an illustrious Polish family. The piety of his parents was equal to their opulence, and the latter they rendered subservient to all the purposes of charity and benevolence. Stanislaus remained for some time undetermined, whether he should embrace a monastic life, or engage among the secular clergy. He was at length persuaded to the latter by Lambert Zula, bishop of Cracow, who gave him holy orders, and made him a canon of his cathedral. Lambert died on November 25, 1071, when all concerned in the choice of ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... man lived on the opposite side of the lake, in a quiet household, of which he was the idol. His life had been one of almost monastic purity and repose; his tastes were accomplished, his character seemed soft and gentle; but beneath that calm exterior, flashes of passion—the nature of the poet, ardent and sensitive—would break forth at times. He had scarcely ever, since his earliest childhood, quitted ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... revived the monastic customs at St. Genevieve,' said the young man, blushing. 'There is an ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... universities in the country, but since one of these is only an examining board let us begin by considering the status of the other. Trinity College, Dublin, was founded by Queen Elizabeth with the proceeds of confiscated Catholic lands, both monastic and lay, with the avowed intention of propagating the principles of the Protestant religion. During Grattan's Parliament, at the end of the eighteenth century, it threw open its gates to others than ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... the loss of his son, but still more the fact that he was cut off so suddenly in the full flush of careless and not altogether blameless youth. So poignant, indeed, were the old man's feelings that he cast off his knightly armour and joined one of the great monastic orders, vowing to devote all the remainder of his life to prayer, first for the soul of his son, and secondly that henceforward no descendant of his might ever again encounter what seemed to his simple and pious ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... of an old Saxon fox appear, With brotherly rufts and beards, and a strange sight Of high, monumental hats, ta'en at the fight Of Eighty-eight; while every burgess foots The mortal pavement in eternal boots. Hadst thou been bachelor, I had soon divined Thy close retirements, and monastic mind; Perhaps some nymph had been to visit; or The beauteous churl was to be waited for, And, like the Greek, ere you the sport would miss, You stayed and stroked the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... however, that Buddhism has grown logically out of ancient Hinduism. In its monastic feature—one of its most striking characteristics—we see only the concentration and reduction to system, of the old life of the ascetics and religious mendicants recognized and respected by Hinduism. For centuries the Buddhist monks and nuns were regarded in India as ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... escape from a like fanatical warfare; and, in this, many of our cathedrals suffered most. But this was not enough: our sacred edifices were profaned and polluted in the most irreverent and disgraceful manner; and with the exception of the destruction which took place on the dissolution of the monastic establishments in the previous century, more devastation was committed at this time by the party hostile to the Anglican church than had ever before been effected since the ravages ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... me. This repeated apparition of the gentle sex (though by no means under its loveliest guise) had still an agreeable effect in modifying my ideas of an institution which I had supposed to be of a stern and monastic character. She asked whether I wished to see the hospital, and said that the porter, whose office it was to attend to visitors, was dead, and would be buried that very day, so that the whole establishment could not conveniently be shown me. She ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... features beaming with tenderness and enthusiasm, and yet overcast with a peculiar expression of self-consciousness and restraint, well known to those who have studied the physiognomies of 'saints,' she seemed to want only the dress of some monastic order to make her the ideal of a mediaeval abbess, watching with a half-pitying, half-complacent smile, the gambols of a group of innocent young worldlings. I saw Claude gazing at her full of admiration and surprise, which latter ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... men devote to monastic life are not uniform. Some spend between a month and a year, others their entire lives. Some enter the monastery in their youth, others in middle age or when old men. But they all shave their heads and don the coarse yellow robe and lead practically ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... only by an avenue, is a heavy, monastic-looking building, used as a bridewell, and called the City Penitentiary. Having remained a considerable time in the hall where the trial was going on, the agonized state of the prisoner and sickening details of ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... white horses with harness covered with yellow ribbon—so dainty, so cool. Is it better than the other? And here is a Roman chariot, a Spanish market-wagon, a phaeton covered with yellow mustard, a hermit in monastic garb; then Robin Hood and his merry men, and Maid Marian in yellow-green habit, Will Scarlet and Friar Tuck in green doublets, yellow facings, bright green felt hats, bows and quivers flower-trimmed, even the tiny arrows winged ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... is an application of the old monastic system to the treatment of criminals. The first cellular prison was built in Rome by Pope Clement XI. at the commencement of the eighteenth century; its design was taken from a monastery. The idea passed from Rome to the Puritans of Pennsylvania; and it has now taken root in all parts of the ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... would doubt or deny the statements which Maria Monk has given of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery at Montreal. The delineations, if true, are so loathsome and revolting, that they exhibit the principles of the Roman priesthood, and the corruption of the monastic system, as combining a social curse, which must be extinguished for ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... departed from his father's hall; It was a vast and venerable pile; So old, it seemed only not to fall, Yet strength was pillared in each massy aisle. Monastic dome! condemned to uses vile! Where superstition once had made her den, Now Paphian girls were known to sing and smile; And monks might deem their time was come agen, If ancient tales say true, nor ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron |
