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Nunnery   Listen
noun
Nunnery  n.  (pl. nunneries)  A house in which nuns reside; a cloister or convent in which women reside for life, under religious vows. See Cloister, and Convent.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nunnery" Quotes from Famous Books



... hanged if I don't think it's a nunnery," he said. By and by he let his gaze wander back to the town, in which he detected an appearance of liveliness and bustle not usual in New England villages, large or small. The main street was dotted with groups of men and women; and isolated figures, to which perhaps the ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... and while he abides here, I will never consent to leave his feet. When he goes hence, if it be to bless mankind again, I shall find the longest life too short to pour forth all my gratitude; and for that purpose I will dedicate myself in some nunnery of my native land. But should he be taken from a world so unworthy of him, soon, very soon, I shall cease to feel its aspersions in ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... and her husband were honoured as founders of the Benedictine monastery at Coventry, which rose upon the ruins of an earlier house of Benedictine nuns founded by Osburg, a lady of the royal house, nearly two hundred years before. This nunnery had been destroyed in the Danish wars about the year 1016. Consequently, if any legend, or ceremony, was known or practised at Coventry in connection with some traditional patroness, the name of Godgifu was ready to hand to be identified with it. Through the monastery Coventry first rose ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... Grushenka. "Give him a present, he's poor, you know. Ah, the poor, the insulted!... Do you know, Mitya, I shall go into a nunnery. No, I really shall one day, Alyosha said something to me to-day that I shall remember all my life.... Yes.... But to-day let us dance. To-morrow to the nunnery, but to-day we'll dance. I want to play ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Episcopalian, one Roman Catholic, one Methodist mission, one Congregational mission, one nunnery school, Sisters of St. Ann's, one private educational institute (by the author) for both sexes, ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... the declaration of independence, and enjoy their freedom with republican zest, but the young matrons usually abdicate with the first heir to the throne and go into a seclusion almost as close as a French nunnery, though by no means as quiet. Whether they like it or not, they are virtually put upon the shelf as soon as the wedding excitement is over, and most of them might exclaim, as did a very pretty woman the other ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... young women, of ages varying in the main from nineteen to one-and-twenty, though several were older, who at this date filled the species of nunnery known as the Training-School at Melchester, formed a very mixed community, which included the daughters of mechanics, curates, surgeons, shopkeepers, farmers, dairy-men, soldiers, sailors, and villagers. They sat in the large school-room of the establishment on the evening ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... gentlemen children and others both of man kind and woman kind, be brought up in virtue, learning and in the English tongue and behaviour, to the great charge of the said houses; that is to say, the woman kind of the whole Englishry of this land, for the more part, in the said nunnery, and the man kind in the other said houses."[35] This petition received but scant consideration, and no wonder; because, although the Archbishop of Dublin had agreed to it, he wrote on the same day to ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... appeared. He found a suitable tool in Gabriel de Spinosa, a native of Toledo. This man resembled Sebastian, was naturally bold and unscrupulous, and was easily persuaded to undertake the task of personating the missing monarch. The monk, Dos Santos, who was confessor to the nunnery of Madrigal, introduced this person to one of the nuns, Donna Anna of Austria, a niece of King Philip, and informed her that he was the unfortunate King of Portugal. The lady, believing her father-confessor, loaded the pretender with valuable gifts; presented ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... necessary expenses. It was too late that night to go out with the child, so I prepared some food for its nourishment and kept it till the next day, resolved to go after dusk and see the Lady Superior at one of the nunneries, but to my chagrin I discovered that the nunnery was closed, and I was obliged to return home with the babe, which, by-the-by, continued to roar lustily all the way, and so attracted public attention to me (its presumptive mother) that I wept as bitterly as the child itself, and was heartily sorry ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer

... civic buildings (guildhalls); fortifications (castle, city walls, bars); religious buildings (Minster; St. William's College; St. Mary's Abbey; Friaries; St. Clement's Nunnery; ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson

... to lend her tongue to the language—or something like it—of a besotted fish-wife; so! very well, and just as it is the case with that particular old Hock you youngsters would disapprove of, and we cunning oldsters know to contain more virtues in maturity than a nunnery of May-blooming virgins, just so the very faults of a royal lady-royal by birth and in temper a termagant—impart a perfume! a flavour! You must age; you must live in Courts, you must sound the human bosom, rightly to appreciate ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... certain. Its ruins are situated on a high rocky point; and, doubtless, many a vow was made to the shrine by the distressed mariners, who drove towards the iron-bound coast of Northumberland in stormy weather. It was anciently a nunnery; for Virca, abbess of Tynemouth, presented St. Cuthbert (yet alive) with a rare winding- sheet, in emulation of a holy lady called Tuda, who had sent him a coffin: but, as in the case of Whitby, and of Holy Island, the introduction of nuns at Tynemouth, in the reign of Henry VIII, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... convent—and no one could prevent her taking possession of the child; but she feared lest an overwhelming natural affection might drag her back to the carnal world, which she had for ever renounced, so she would have Mary brought up in a neighboring nunnery, and led to Heavenly joys, not to earthly misery—to be the wife of no sinful husband, but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... old to perform the office of a bailiff, and had retired to the parent abbey. The brothers therefore renounced their first scheme of taking Silkstede in their way, and made for Romsey. There, under the shadow of the magnificent nunnery, they dined pleasantly by the waterside at the sign of Bishop Blaise, patron of the woolcombers of the town, and halted long enough to refresh Ambrose, who was equal to very little fatigue. It amused Stephen to recollect how mighty a place he had once thought ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... is an island in Lochlomond, where the clan of MacGregor were wont to be interred, and where their sepulchres may still be seen. It formerly contained a nunnery: hence the name of Inch-Cailleach, or the island of ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... at a short distance from Torquemada, she ordered the corpse to be carried into the court-yard of a convent, occupied, as she supposed, by monks. She was filled with horror, however, on finding it a nunnery, and immediately commanded the body to be removed into the open fields. Here she encamped with her whole party at dead of night; not, however, until she had caused the coffins to be unsealed, that she might satisfy herself of the safety of her husband's relics; although it was very difficult ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... of a controversial character; the author was a stout Huguenot, fond of denouncing the Pope; oftentimes alarmed at plots against himself on account of his religion, and now publishing a letter of remonstrance to his three daughters who, in opposition to his will, had entered a nunnery in Paris. Other works relate to architecture and fortifications, the languages, arts, and noble exercises taught in his Academy, or contain advice to travellers, or deal with political affairs. Mr. Pepys records in his diary, under date the 28th May ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... he go to the devil and learn sense, and added that if the famous magic steed, or ring of invisibility were to be found in the desert regions of these Indian provinces, he would use them for a peep into the palace of the Viceroy, or the nunnery of the Dona of the Lily. No ambassador would he trust. For himself he would see how much or how little of madness was back of the message of the blossom, or the guerdon of the ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan

... journey which the Queen had undertaken under a vow for the recovery of her husband's health, and which she had been encouraged to carry into effect by the Archbishop of Tyre for a political purpose. It was then, and in the chapel at that holy place, connected from above with a Carmelite nunnery, from beneath with the cell of the anchorite, that one of the Queen's attendants remarked that secret sign of intelligence which Edith had made to her lover, and failed not instantly to communicate it to her Majesty. The Queen returned from her pilgrimage ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... old, from the limb! The catbird croons in the lilac bush! 25 Through the dim arbor, himself more dim, Silently hops the hermit-thrush, The withered leaves keep dumb for him; The irreverent buccaneering bee Hath stormed and rifled the nunnery 30 Of the lily, and scattered the sacred floor With haste-dropt gold from shrine to door; There, as of yore, The rich, milk-tingeing buttercup Its tiny polished urn holds up, 35 Filled with ripe summer to the edge, The sun in his own wine to pledge; And our tall elm, this hundredth ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... recluse, bird of the cloister, Margot of the Nunnery, sable-frocked Abbess, Church fowl of the lustrous coat, ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France

... I said, "that I have the effrontery to go to that nunnery—for it is no more nor less than that—and ask the Lady Abbess to lend me one of her nuns to write at my dictation, you ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton

... thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... miracles.—(Hist. lib. xiv. p. 41.) The Chapel dedicated to our Lady of Loretto, (sometimes called Alareit,) stood beyond the eastern gate of Musselburgh, near the Links; and the name for the locality is still retained. It was connected with the Nunnery of the Sciennes, and became one of the most noted shrines in Scotland, during the reign of James the Fifth. Lesley says, that the King, previously to his marriage, having sailed for France, (24th July 1536,) the vessel in which he had embarked, after sailing by the north of Scotland, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... brain, but knows what he likes, and usually does it without wasting time on pros and cons. Consequently, I'm just as likely to end in prison as anywhere else, and take it without much concern as all in the day's work. You are more likely to end in a nunnery, as the most devout ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... favored city of Romanism. Tell me why these learned professors do not teach their own people? Florry, papal institutions in America are but branches of the Propaganda. They but come to proselyte. I have heard it repeatedly averred of a certain nunnery, 'that no efforts were made to affect the religious views of the pupils.' Yet I know that such is not the case. They are far too politic openly to attack the religion; yet secretly it is undermined. I will ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... nobles of every rank, from the Prince who is the heir of the last of the Shoguns down to democratic Barons who prefer to be called "Mr.", I chatted with farmers' wives and daughters, I interrogated landladies and mill girls, and I paid a memorable visit to a Buddhist nunnery. I walked, talked, rode, ate and bathed with common folk and with dignitaries. I discussed the situation of Japan with the new countryman in college agricultural laboratories and classrooms, and, in a remote region, beheld what is ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... known as "the Nunnery," or Abbots Salford), not far from Evesham, is another mansion remarkable for its picturesqueness as well as for its capacity for hiding. It not only has its Roman Catholic chapel, but a resident priest holds services there to this day. Up in the garret is the "priest's hole," ready, it would ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea

... fishermen took the eldest Antipholis and Dromio away from her, she entered a nunnery, and by her wise and virtuous conduct she was at length made lady abbess of this convent, and in discharging the rites of hospitality to an unhappy stranger she had ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... there was a little Incident in Life, which gave me great Diversion. The Earl, who had always maintain'd a good Correspondence with the fair Sex, hearing from one of the Priests of the Place, That on the Alarm of burning the Town, one of the finest Ladies in all Spain had taken Refuge in the Nunnery, was desirous ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe

... been ordered to marry the Duc de Carolan on the 15th. Unless she consents, she is on the 14th to be sent to the nunnery of Saint Marie, the strictest in France, where they will somehow or other wring consent from her before many weeks are over. They have done so in scores of cases like hers. I promised to tell you, and I have done so. But I don't see that ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... sound argument for the celibacy of the clergy); the old Colonel and his sweet unselfish wife, with affection; and Sylvia, John's betrothed, with a strange passion, defend the old faith, Sylvia to the point of breaking with her lover and getting her to a nunnery—a business which will in the end, I should guess, lay a heavier burden upon the nuns than upon John. The indecisive battle sways hither and thither. It is the Doctor who sums up in a compromise which would shock the metaphysical theologian, but may suffice for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various

... is a little case containing a curiously fashioned and exquisitely worked ring, and a large gold cross and chain, that I found while searching among the ruins of the nunnery at Louisburg. I have no doubt they belonged to the superior of the convent. These baubles answered her purpose by withdrawing the eyes of the profane from her care-worn and cold features; they will serve mine also, by showing how little you require the aid of art ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... you been secretly converted to the Church of Rome, and are you going into a nunnery? ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard

... innocence, you say, you will not, upon any account, hazard. But would you consent that your daughter should, by universal acclamation, be proclaimed the most accomplished woman in Europe, upon the simple condition, that she should pass her days in a nunnery?" ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... stained glass to a former vicar (d. 1858); to General Miles (d. 1860), and, in the tower, to one Robert Archer, for thirty-six years parish clerk. N. from the main street, near the river Lea, stood a small Benedictine nunnery. It originally belonged to the Canons of Cathele, but Henry III. turned them out and gave the property and rights to the "Prioress and Nuns of Cesthont". The college, a famous institution, stands near the church; it was founded in 1768 by ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins

... though the retribution were beginning already; I began crying and trembling with terror. I felt as though the ceiling would fall upon me, that I should be dragged off to the police-station at once, that you would grow cold to me—all sorts of things, in fact! I thought I would go into a nunnery or become a nurse, and give up all thought of happiness, but then I remembered that you loved me, and that I had no right to dispose of myself without your knowledge; and everything in my mind was in a tangle—I was in despair and did not know what to do or think. But the sun rose and ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... the line turned my way inquiringly. He did not have to wait long for what was to come, nor did I. Another gate farther along in the nunnery wall opened and out came six more soldiers, bearing another of these narrow-shouldered coffins, and accompanied by a couple of nurses, an officer and an assistant surgeon. At sight of them the soldiers brought ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... has done me the favour of allowing me to build a nunnery for ladies here at the foot of Monte Cavallo, by the broken portico, where it is said that Nero saw Rome burning, so that the wicked footprints of such a man may be trodden out by others more honest of holy women. I do not know, M. Angelo, what shape and proportions to give to the house, where ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... risen, the sunshine of pardon breaks through the clouds. If only it were all over! Such excitement is infectious! (To IDA.) You see you do not yet have to think of entering a nunnery. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... advance. Near and parallel to Offa's is the shorter and mysterious Watt's dike. Chirk is the only Denbighshire castle comparatively untouched by time and still occupied. Ruthin has cloisters; Wrexham, the Brynffynnon "nunnery"; and at both are collegiate churches. Llanrwst, Gresford and Derwen boast rood lofts and screens; Whitchurch and Llanrwst, portrait brasses and monuments; Derwen, a churchyard cross; Gresford and Llanrhaiadr (Dyffryn Clwyd), stained glass. Near ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... at last. "The Countess, to her aunt in a nunnery and relating to wool knitting. See, is this the sort ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... said scornfully to Katharine, 'it were better thou hadst never been born than have meddled between kings and ministers and faiths and nuns. You are not made for this world. You talk too much. Get you across the seas to a nunnery.' ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... But I must say to the Muse of fiction, as the Earl of Pembroke said to the ejected nuns of Wilton, "Go spin, you jades, go spin!" Perhaps she has no tow on her rock.[160] When I was at Kilkenny last year we went to see a nunnery, but could not converse with the sisters because they were in strict retreat. I was delighted with the red-nosed Padre, who showed us the place with a sort of proud, unctuous humiliation, and apparent dereliction of the world, that had to me the air of a ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... not, (sweet,) I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind To war ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... Perilous. At last, one vigil of the great feast, a lady came to Arthur's court at Camelot and asked Sir Launcelot to ride with her into the forest hard by, for a purpose not then to be revealed. Launcelot consenting, they rode together until they came to a nunnery hidden deep in the forest; and there the lady bade Launcelot dismount, and led him into a great and stately room. Presently there entered twelve nuns, and with them a youth, the fairest that Launcelot had ever seen. "Sir," said the nuns, "we have brought ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... ring the lady-bells Of the nunnery by the Fosse:— Say the hinds their silver music swells 'Like the blessed angels' syllables, At His ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... person sending shall forfeit 100l. which[y] shall go to the sole use and benefit of him that shall discover the offence. And[z] if any parent, or other, shall send or convey any person beyond sea, to enter into, or be resident in, or trained up in, any priory, abbey, nunnery, popish university, college, or school, or house of jesuits, or priests, or in any private popish family, in order to be instructed, persuaded, or confirmed in the popish religion; or shall contribute any thing towards their maintenance ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... sweet, I am unkind,— That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind To war and ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... the boundary with Norfolk. Of the two parish churches that of St Mary has a fine Perpendicular tower, and that of Holy Trinity a round tower of which the lower part is Norman. St Mary's was attached to a Benedictine nunnery founded in 1160. The ruins of the castle date from 1281. They are fragmentary though massive; and there are traces of earth-works of much earlier date. The castle was a stronghold of the powerful family of Bigod, being granted to Roger Bigod, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... which was finished by him with unremitting diligence, and therefore held to be a very beautiful painting. Not long after this, he undertook to execute for the men of the Company of S. Maria della Neve, situated behind the Nunnery of S. Ambrogio, a little panel with three figures—Our Lady, S. John the Baptist, and S. Ambrogio; which work, when finished, was placed in due time on ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... with a class of persons devoted to the service of a god, as vestals or hierodules. The vestals were vowed to chastity, lived together in a great nunnery, were forbidden to open or enter a tavern, and together with other votaries ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... by Signor Jouanny. On his arrival he falls in love with Jouanny's daughter, Lucretia, runs away with her, and secretly marries her. Galeas' mother, angered at the match, practises to convey Lucretia to a nunnery and get her son married to an earl's daughter; but Galeas defeats his mother's machinations by killing himself and Lucretia. There is a second plot to this odd play, but enough has been said. The meeting between Galeas and Jouanny is the ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... all over Europe, and found that she was really more appreciated than her sisters. The castle, the abbey, the inn, the lone ale-house on the Berkshire moors, all made her welcome. Finally she settled in Ireland, where, according to a protestant libel, she took the black veil in a nunnery. ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... invalidate his proposed marriage with the duchess. Having established her right, she takes the only step that can with certainty free both herself and Bertoldo from the bond they had created, by retiring into a nunnery. ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... in two days, he and the faithful seven accomplish the thirty miles that lay between; so utterly is that unearthly strength, before which lance-shafts were as reeds, and iron bars as silken threads (remember the May night in Meliagraunce's castle), enfeebled and broken down. He stands in the nunnery-church at Almesbury; he hears from the queen's maidens of the prayer that was ever on her lips through those two days when she lay a dying, how "she besought God that she might never have power to see Sir Launcelot ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... beside me; I from whom the Moorish pirates tore her, on the beach beside Tetuan; I who, centuries after, drew those obscene figures on the wall of your church—the devil, the nun, and the barred convent—when Julia, another Julia but the same soul, was denied to me and forced into a nunnery. For the frescoes, too, tell my history. I was that figure in the dark habit, standing a little back from the cross. Tell me, sir, did you never hear of ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... Minster. Although nothing now exists except the church, a few broken walls, and a modernised house, formed out of one of the principal entrances to what was once an extensive range of monastic buildings; yet at the time of which we treat, the ruins of the nunnery, founded by Sexburga, the widow of Ercombert, King of Kent, extended down the rising ground, presenting many picturesque points of view from the small but highly-cultivated pleasure grounds of Cecil Place. Nothing could be more beautiful than the prospect from a rude terrace ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... they returned, by the underground way, a passage over a mile in length, leading from the Nunnery of the White Ladies at Whytstone in Claines, to the Church of St. Mary and St. Peter, the noble Cathedral within the walls ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... with royal blood, the very least disaster being poor Lady Mary Grey's! Kept in ward for life! It is a cruel matter. I would that I had known the cipher at first. Then she might either have been disposed of at the Queen's will, or have been sent safe to this nunnery at Soissons." ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Make a nunnery out of me if you must; clutch at me for sanctuary, if you want to; I'll stand for it! But if you'll listen to me you'll give up romantic martyrdom and sackcloth, put on your best frock, smile on Hamil, and go and ask your mother for a bright, shiny, ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... O'Connor, fooling with a nunnery either here or in Spain. The Portuguese are not so bigoted as the Spaniards across the frontier, but there is not much difference, and if anyone is caught meddling with a nunnery they would tear him to pieces, especially in Oporto, ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty

... is a friar of a neighbouring convent is my friend; you have already been diverted by the manners of a nunnery; let us see whether there is less hypocrisy among the ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... the religious Orders. So insistent did the problem become to his mind that he found himself continually leading the conversation round to it from one side or another. Mary O'Dwyer told him that she also had a sister in a nunnery. ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... Ambitious, with more offences at my becke, then I haue thoughts to put them in imagination, to giue them shape, or time to acte them in. What should such Fellowes as I do, crawling betweene Heauen and Earth. We are arrant Knaues all, beleeue none of vs. Goe thy wayes to a Nunnery. Where's your Father? Ophe. At ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... when that they had supp-ed well, Certain withouten lease, Cloudeslie said: "We will to our King, To get us a charter of peace; Al-ice shall be at our sojourning, In a nunnery here beside, And my two sons shall with her go, And ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various

... of association of ideas in the same matter. One Sunday night I left Noumea in the carriage of Dr. F...... who was going to visit a nunnery five leagues from there. At the moment of our arrival the doctor asked what time it was. 'Half-past two,' I said, looking at my watch. As we stopped in the convent court in front of the chapel I heard the lusty conclusion ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... were—almost too happy—though as pure and guiltless as if they had been hours spent within a nunnery of the strictest rule, and in the presence of a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... 'Just a nunnery, then—no more nor less than that. The "Sacred Heart" at Namur, or the Sisters of Mercy here at home in Bagot Street, I believe, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... Government. Priors Akefield and Drax are historical, and as the latter really did commission a body of moss- troopers to divert an instalment of King James's ransom into his own private coffers, I do not think I can have done him much injustice. As the nunnery of St. Abbs has gone bodily into the sea, I have been the less constrained by the inconvenient action of fact upon fiction. And for the Hospital of St. Katharine's-by-the-Tower, its history is to be found in Stowe's ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... fighting of champions, moving of cattle, flying of birds, and swimming of fish, which were so artfully represented, as if they had been alive. She died 23rd Henry II. anno 1176, by poison (as was suspected) given her by Queen Eleanor, and was buried in the Chapter-house of the Nunnery of Godstow." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various

... Lancelot fled to his castle in the north, where the King in vain besieged him. Meanwhile Modred had stirred up a revolt, and leaguing himself with the Saxon invaders, had usurped Arthur's throne. On his march southward to resist his nephew, Arthur halts at the nunnery of Almesbury, and in the Guinevere idyll the moving story of their last farewell is told. Then the King advanced to meet Modred. The description of that "last weird battle in the west" is given in The Passing of Arthur, and leads up to the impressive line with ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... upper park of Windsor, and sold some part to his people. The wine made in England was sweetened with honey, and probably flavoured and coloured with blackberries.[328] At the dissolution of the monasteries there was a vineyard at Barking Nunnery. 'We might have a reasonable good wine growing in many places of this realme', says Barnaby Googe, about 1577, 'as doubtless we had immediately after the Conquest, tyll, partly by slothfulnesse, partly by civil discord long continued, ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... of Aloysia, do you wish to know? She joined her sister Bridget in the nunnery, and after atoning by her tears and repentance for the material heresy of her youth, she lately fell a victim to fever, contracted by her in caring for the poor negro slaves of New Orleans. She preferred to die a saint ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... see it on any child's face fresh out of the convent; it does not last a month!' was the still displeased, rather jealous answer. 'That little thing—I believe they call her Nid-de-Merle—she has only just been brought from her nunnery to wait on the young Queen. Ah! your gaze was perilous, it is bringing on you one of the jests ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the middle of a flat country, and as we approached it the great wall of the cathedral rose above dirty and broken cottages, and great masses of masonry extended from the cathedral into the town; and these were the nunnery, its schools and laundry; altogether they seemed like one ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... But I don't mind dropping in as I come home, to tell you about it. One of them Catholic Nunnery schools, I expect, which it's sudden death to a man but to set his ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... so practical men or physicians. The physician Wyer tells some plain stories to show what did come of it from the sixteenth century onwards. In his Fourth Book he quotes a number of nuns who went mad for love. And in Book III. he talks of an estimable Spanish priest who, going by chance into a nunnery, came out mad, declaring that the brides of Jesus were his also, brides of the priest, who was a vicar of Jesus. He had masses said in return for the favour which God had granted him in this speedy ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... he may be said to have endured his life rather than to have lived it. His father assassinated by night in the Rue Barbette in Paris by order of Duke John; his mother a perennial fount of tears, dying of anger and of grief in a Franciscan nunnery; the two S's, standing for Soupirs (sighs) and Souci (care), the emblems and devices of her mourning, revealing her ingenious mind fancifully elegant even in despair; the Armagnacs, the Burgundians, the Cabochiens, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... by the plague, and with difficulty dragged himself in to Ravensburg. For three months he lay ill, and death came very close. As its unearthly glow irradiated the world around him, reversing its light and shade, the visions of the nunnery recurred. He vowed that if his life were still his to give, it should be given to God's service; and on recovering he ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... doleful meal, while the faded Cristine sat like a sphinx staring into vacancy. I spoke of England and of her friends, of Paris and Versailles, of Avignon where she had spent some years, and of the amenities of Florence, which she considered her home. But it was like talking to a nunnery door. I got nothing but "It is indeed true, sir," or "Do you say so, sir!" till my energy began to sink. Madame perceived my discomfort, and, as she rose, murmured an apology. "Pray forgive my distraction, but I am poor company when my father is ill. I ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... villains; and he was told that Monsieur Cournal had engaged them. To the question what was to be done with Madame Cournal, another answered that she was to be waylaid as she was coming from the Intendance, kidnapped, and hurried to a nunnery ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... thanks; Major B—— has just given me a new writing block. A cake and mincepies are, however, always most welcome. How greedy one does become after a time! Such a horrid blustery day, and heavy rain coming down this morning. We had Holy Communion at 8 a.m. in a ruined nunnery with our Cowley Father officiating. Only 3 turned up from the whole Battalion. Our General has had to go away this morning into hospital with fever. Mr. Laing, whom your cousin M—— D—— asked about, is now in bed with the same ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie

... Vesta—'Sancta Maria, libera nos a poenis inferni'—Montfanon always added when he spoke of it, and he pointed out the Arch of Titus, which tells of the fulfilment of the prophecies of Our Lord against Jerusalem, while, opposite, the groves reveal the out lines of a nunnery upon the ruins of the dwellings of the Caesars. And, at the extreme end, the Coliseum recalls to mind the ninety thousand spectators come to see ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... can I,' returned the Countess. 'There is such a choice! Suicide, gambling, a nunnery, a volume of memoirs, or politics - the ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... outbursts can be traced even in these books. When an officer finds the Sisters of a nunnery in want, his ready help is accompanied by the words: "This little kindness is the act of German barbarians, who refuse all thanks. As long as we are here, each barbarian soldier will give up a little, so that you may have their savings every three days, and ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... Phyllis matter-of-factly. "In fact, Clarence remarked the last time I saw him that you had the most unusual kind of charm he had ever seen. He said you were like a sorceress brought up in a nunnery. While I think of it, Joy dear, Clarence and Gail are two of the most confirmed head-hunters I know. They ought to marry each other and keep it in the family, but they won't. I'm not worried about anything Gail can do, but do please keep your fingers crossed when ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer

... A nunnery was spied ashore, We lowered away the cutter, And, landing, seized the youngest nun Ere she a cry could utter; Beside the creek, deaf to our oars, She slumbered in green alley, As, eighty strong, we sent along ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... appears to have belonged to a palace of the Cippico, with two contemplative lions and half-length angels in roundels with scrolls. The caps have the same kind of foliage as is seen at Curzoia and Sebenico. The Austrian-Lloyd office is on the ground floor of a tower of the Venetian period, now a nunnery. It has a trefoiled ogee-window and a great balcony above it, with trellises behind which the nuns can take the air without being seen, recalling those of Sicilian nunneries. All the ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... lost all hopes of ever returning to that capital, advised his wife to retire with his daughter into a nunnery, and to send Torquato to Rome. Our young poet suffered much in parting from his mother and sister; but, fulfilling the command of his parents, he joined his father in October, 1554. On this occasion he composed a canzone, in which he compared himself to Ascanius escaping from Troy ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... am sure. We have never liked one another. But I have something on my conscience, and I may not have another opportunity of speaking to you. I don't suppose you have heard that very shortly I intend to enter a nunnery at Roehampton." ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... of a venerable abbess, who threw the light of Christian goodness over that benighted land about a century ago, and must have impressed the heathens in the neighbourhood with an exalted notion of the virtues of a nunnery:— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... the nunnery gate, As the darkness fell over the village, Would a swart savage crouch and await, With the patience of devilish hate, A chance to kill ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir

... best she might. The quarrel to her had been as the disruption of the heavens. She had declared to herself that she would bear it; but the misfortune to be borne was a broken world falling about her own ears. She had thought of a nunnery, of Ophelia among the water-lilies, and of an early death-bed. Then she had pictured to herself the somewhat ascetic and very laborious life of an old maiden lady whose only recreation fifty years hence should consist in looking at the portrait of him ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... "means the head of the wood. I suppose that in the old time the mountain looked over some extensive forest, even as the nunnery of Pengwern looked originally over an alder-swamp, for Pengwern means ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... that's their casuistry; which arguments you may imagine to refer, as your fancy pleases, to the village curate, or the tonsured priest of the monastery over the hill. For the tonsured priest, and the monastery, and the nunnery, and the mass, and the Virgin Mary, have grown to be a very great power indeed in English lanes. Between the Roman missal and the chapel hymn-book, the country curate with his good old-fashioned litany is ground very small indeed, and grows ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... Deare loving sweet lady, i hope you are well. Do not go to london, for they will put you in the nunnery; and heed not Mrs. Lucy what she saith to you, for she will ly and ceat you. go from to another Place, and we will gate wed so with speed, mind what i write to you, for if they gate you to london they will keep you there; and so let us gate wed, and we will both go. so ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... for a great nosegay dropped into her lap and a voice, bold and gay as usual, said lightly: "Here she is, as pretty and pensive as you please. Is the world hollow, our doll stuffed with sawdust, and do we want to go into a nunnery today, Cousin?" ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... met Gabrielle Hewish. I suppose I should really call her by that name, for her marriage took the colour out of it as surely as if she had entered a nunnery, and adopted the frigid and sisterly label of some female saint. Nobody had ever heard of her husband before she married him, and nobody ever heard of Gabrielle afterwards, except those who were acquainted with the story of Arthur Payne, as I was, and, ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young

... Omer's, Miss Sophia Francis's Nun of Misericordia (1807) and Miss Wilkinson's Apostate Nun, would have sufficed to people a convent. Perhaps The Convent of the Grey Penitents would have been a suitable abode for them; but most of them were, to quote Crabbe, "girls no nunnery can tame." Lewis's Venetian bravo was boldly transported to other climes. We find him in Scotland in The Mysterious Bravo, or The Shrine of St. Alstice, A Caledonian Legend, and in Austria in The Bravo of Bohemia or The Black Forest. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... arrived to that part of the letter which named the Count of Clarinau, but he stopped, and was scarce able to proceed, for the charming Calista was his sister, the only one he had, who having been bred in a nunnery, was taken then to be married to this old rich count, who had a great fortune: before he proceeded, his soul divined this was the new amour that had engaged the heart of his friend; he was afraid to be farther convinced, and yet a curiosity to know how far he had proceeded, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... inflicted during a combat with Mandricardo; and she had been thrown by the loss into such anguish of mind that she would have died on his sword but for the intervention of the hermit now with her, who persuaded her to devote the rest of her days to God in a nunnery. She had now come into Provence with the good man for that purpose, and to bury the corpse of her husband in the chapel ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... they lived for her. She seemed to need things kindling in her imagination or in her soul before she felt she had them. And she was cut off from ordinary life by her religious intensity which made the world for her either a nunnery garden or a paradise, where sin and knowledge were not, or else an ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... their rescue. "Ah, Mr. Engineer, have mercy on my poor Lazarists! The good souls are given to prayer and meditation; and your locomotives do make such a hideous din!" So Mr. Engineer is fain to try the neighbouring convent. New difficulties there. The next attack is made upon a little nunnery founded by the Princess de Bauffremont. But I have neither time nor space for episodical details. It suffices for our purpose to state that the construction of railways will be a terribly long-winded affair, and that in the meantime trade ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... O Nicias, that, with the aid of God, I will snatch this woman Thais from the unclean affections of the world, and give her as a spouse to Jesus Christ. If the Holy Spirit does not forsake me, Thais will leave this city and enter a nunnery." ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... 'tis so my dearest dear Papa, We one and all seem quite to be upset, 'Tis hotter than last summer was by far, At least so everybody says, but yet Much hotter than last June it could not be, And that's what I think, what do you think, pet? To sit indoors 'tis like a nunnery, With nought to do but tamely sit and knit, In fact I never ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... could not leave their cells were able to join in the service. St. Mary's Hospital, at Chichester, is an excellent example, as it retains its wooden cells, which are still used by the inmates. It was formerly a nunnery, but in 1229 the nuns departed and the almswomen took their place. It is of wide span with low side-walls, and the roof is borne by wooden pillars. There are eight cells of two rooms each, and beyond the screen ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... wife, he was quartered in Ireland, at Clonmel, where was a nunnery, in which, as pensioner, resided Miss O'Neill, or as she was called in the country, Peg O'Neill—the heiress of whom ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu

... the period for mourning was over, the relations of the marquise and Sainte-Croix were as open and public as before: the two brothers d'Aubray expostulated with her by the medium of an older sister who was in a Carmelite nunnery, and the marquise perceived that her father had on his death bequeathed the care and supervision of her to her brothers. Thus her first crime had been all but in vain: she had wanted to get rid of her father's rebukes and to gain his fortune; as a fact the fortune was diminished by reason of her ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... a quiet modest mansion, and, though white-washed, being an old building, and no other house near it, or in connexion with it, and standing upon the level field, which belonged to it, its own domain, the whole scene together brought to our minds an image of the retiredness and sober elegance of a nunnery; but this might be owing to the greyness of the afternoon, and our having come immediately from Glasgow, and through a country which, till now, had either had a townish taint, or at best little of rural beauty. While we were looking at the ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... be brought from Carlisle he will assuredly slay us. Let us go at once, leaving my dear wife and my two youngest sons in a convent here; but I would fain take my eldest boy with me. If all goes well he can bring good news to Alice in her nunnery, and if all goes ill he shall bring her my last wishes. But I am sure I am not meant to die by the law." His brethren approved the plan, and they took fair Alice and her two youngest children to the nunnery, and then the three famous archers with the little ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt



Words linked to "Nunnery" :   convent



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