"Penitential" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sometimes at the rising of a particular constellation—as, for instance, that of the Great Bear, or that of the sons of Ishtar; sometimes at the moment when the moon "raised above the earth her luminous crown." On such a date a penitential psalm or a litany was to be recited; at another time it was forbidden to eat of meat either cooked or smoked, to change the body-linen, to wear white garments, to drink medicine, to sacrifice, to put forth an edict, or to drive out in ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... supposed that social questions were neglected, even in the darkest days of the war, however meagre the legislative fruits may appear. Session after session, Romilly pressed forward reforms of the criminal law, the institution of penitential houses in the nature of reformatories, and the abolition of state lotteries. Others laboured, and with greater success, to remedy the delays and reduce the arrears in the court of chancery. Constant efforts were made to expose defalcations in the revenue, to curtail ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... not consider ourselves adequate to the task of exposure and condemnation; but, though we do not approve a life of ease and comfort accorded to condemned felons, we unhesitatingly affirm, that in most, if not all cases, the cruel treatment which the convicts underwent, instead of having a penitential influence, only served to harden them in their iniquities; and while they frequently became perfectly callous to the infliction of punishment, they were debased to the incarnation of fiends, merely wanting in the opportunity to perpetrate the ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... under the sod. Only a little bunch of withered brown flowers, tied with a faded blue ribbon, that a poor girl bought with her hard earned pennies, and carried to a sick mother, to brighten a dreary attic; only a dead nosegay, which that mother requested should be laid as a penitential tribute on the tomb of the mother whom she had disobeyed; and this faithful young heart made the pilgrimage, and left the offering—and in consequence thereof, missed the train that would have carried ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... desk at which the Litany is usually said. In the rubric before the penitential psalm in the Commination Service a special place is mentioned for the saying of the Litany, and this we know from the Injunctions of 1549 was to be "in the midst of the Church," thus marking the congregational ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... and gray with mist, suddenly a gleam of sunshine passing over reveals to you, in that flat surface, valleys and dells and spots of sunny happiness, which slept before unsuspected in the fog, so in the gloom of penitential life there will be times when God's deep peace and love will be felt shining into the soul with supernatural refreshment. Let the penitent be content with the servant's lot at first. Liberty and peace, and the bounding sensations of a Father's arms ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... station in this sense differs from a station made to any peculiar spot remarkable for local sanctity. There, a station means the performance of a pilgrimage to a certain place, under peculiar circumstances, and the going through a stated number of prayers and other penitential ceremonies, for the purpose of wiping out sin in this life, or of relieving the soul of some relation from the pains of purgatory in the other; here, it simply means the coming of the parish priest and his curate to some house in the town-land, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... utterances of love, and shed many tears during those moments. After the passion was finished—which lasted until near dawn, on account of so many pauses—he begged pardon of all for his omissions and neglect. He asked them to remember him in their masses and prayers. They recited the penitential psalms and other prayers, at the end of which, the sick man, very happy, conversed with his brethren with great affability. He charged them to keep their vows and the observance of the rules of the order. He persuaded them to persevere steadfastly in their purpose, and to be mindful ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... here!" lifting her hand to his breast. Wild creatures, once his loved companions, shun him as he, in turn, shuns the face of man. He disappears from the story, hand-in-hand with Miriam, bound, it would seem, upon a penitential pilgrimage, or to begin a new life in another hemisphere.—Nathaniel Hawthorne, The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... nothing gloomy. Even in her penitential tears, there are rainbows," cried May, "She is the mother of all that is lovely, cheerful, amiable, and perfect. Even our tribulations must be borne with joy, because the divine hope which sanctifies them leads the soul up to ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... friends the cup, 'tis time of roses now; Midst roses let us break each penitential vow; With shout and antic bound we'll in the garden stray; When nightingales are heard, we'll rove where roses blow; Here in this open spot fill, fill, and quaff away; Midst roses here we stand a troop with hearts that glow; The rose our ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... anything but gurly now; it lay idle and shining in an August holiday. It seemed as if we could sit all day and watch the suggestive shore and dream about it. But we could not. No man, and few women, can sit all day on those little round penitential stools that the company provide for the discomfort of their passengers. There is no scenery in the world that can be enjoyed from one of those stools. And when the traveler is at sea, with the land failing away in his horizon, and has to create his own scenery by an effort of the imagination, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Penitential Psalms, etc., by Hans Mielich. Vienna, too, can show a magnificent Missal by Georg Hoefnagel, bearing the dates 1582 to 1590. Venice is represented in the work of Benedetto Bordone and the Ducali. Florence in the splendid Missals, etc., of Attavante ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... for reasons of her own, upon her good behaviour, did penance, as she said, for her former imprudence, by abstaining even from whispered sarcasms. She looked on with penitential gravity, said nothing herself, and endeavoured to keep Mrs. Dareville in order; but that was no easy task. Mrs. Dareville had no daughters, had nothing to gain from the acquaintance of my Lady Clonbrony; and conscious that her ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... and dangers, we next find her carrying on her shoulders the different articles of furniture and utensils necessary for housekeeping, that were needed by Sister Assumption in the House of Providence, already described. Here was truly a mortified, humble, and penitential spirit, such as this fallen world seldom sees. We have before remarked that the House of Providence lasted but one year, after which it was changed into a mission. It was at first situated in the upper town, between ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... those are written who are Atheists or very wicked; and a third book, of those whose judgment is suspended till the day of expiation, and whose names are not written in the book of life or death before that day. The first ten days of this month they call the penitential days; and all these days they fast and pray very much, and are very devout, that on the tenth day their sins may be remitted, and their names may be written in the book of life; which day is therefore called ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... their hearts. They knelt and bowed their faces upon the cold sod that covered the sacred dust of their dead. They stretched forth their hands across the little grave, each to the other, and the Angel of God washed all the bitterness of the years from their hearts with a rain of penitential tears, and sent them down life's pathway hand-in-hand, as in the old days when Love was lord of their two lives and the lost babe was ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... sort of balance and compensation of emotions. The sorrow and the beauty, the hopelessness and the consolation, mingle and merge into a kind of joy which has its poignancy, indeed, but which is far too passive and penitential to contain the louder and sublimer of our tragic moods. In these there is a wholeness, a strength, and a rapture, which ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... turning in their sockets the little bobbins which form a balustrade around the top of the pew; but being diverted from this very suddenly by a sharp squeak that calls the attention of his Aunt Joanna, he assumes the penitential air of listener for full five minutes; afterward he relieves himself by constructing a small meeting-house out of the psalm-books and Bible, his Aunt Joanna's spectacle-case serving for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... captured colours to the Nuncio at Limerick, by whom they were solemnly placed in the choir of St. Mary's Cathedral, and afterwards, at the request of Pope Innocent, sent to Rome. The Te Deum was chanted in the confederate capital; penitential psalms were sung in the northern fortresses. 'The Lord of Hosts,' wrote Monroe, 'has rubbed shame on our faces till once we are humbled.' O'Neill emblazoned the cross and keys on his banner with the Red Hand of Ulster, and openly resumed the title originally chosen by his adherents ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... which I think wholly unwarranted by the facts in the case. The views of modern philosophers, attacking the sanctity of Christian marriage, are to me perfectly abhorrent. Deprive marriage of its mystical, sacramental, penitential character, and it ceases to be the bulwark of a well-ordered society. I must again call upon St. John Chrysostom to speak for me. He says: 'Marriage is one of the most surprising mysteries, by reason of the sublime character which belongs to it, of representing ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... enjoined. It was no proof of magnanimity in Burns to use his talent in reviling the minister, who had done nothing more than his duty. One can hardly doubt but that in his inmost heart he must have been visited with other and more penitential feelings than those unseemly verses express. But, as Lockhart has well observed, "his false pride recoiled from letting his jovial associates know (p. 017) how little he was able to drown the whispers of the still small voice; and the fermenting bitterness of a mind ill at ease within himself ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... like a criminal at the hour of execution.—Letting the pistol drop from his hand, the base dissembler fell on his knees before me.—Nobody hearing my cries,—nobody coming to my assistance, I was oblig'd to hear, and pretend to credit his penitential protestations. God knows how my ears might have been farther shock'd with his odious passion;—what indignities I might have suffer'd,—had I not heard some person passing by the door of my apartment:—on which I ventur'd to give ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... prayers; But even as one who, followed unawares, Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand Thrill with its touch his own, and his cheek fanned By odors subtly sweet, and whispers near Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose but hear, So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting low The wail of David's penitential woe, Before him still the old temptation came, And mocked him with the motion and the shame Of such desires that, shuddering, he abhorred Himself; and, crying mightily to the Lord To free his soul and cast the demon out, Smote with his staff the blackness ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... to the woods, and Rolf started into the potatoes with a hoe, but he was stopped by a sudden outcry of poultry. Alas! It was Skookum on an ill-judged partridge hunt. A minute later he was ignominiously chained to a penitential post, nor left it during ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Robinette, as she tucked her shoeless foot beneath her mud-stained skirt and made herself as comfortable as possible. "I'll even offer a return of confidence upon my own weaknesses, if I can find them, but at present only miles of virtue stretch behind me. Ugh! How the mud smells; quite penitential! Now:— ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... almost no wrong, and she clung to the modifying almost with a passionate fervour born of her clerical ancestry and her consequent belief in the inherent viciousness of unconverted man. Moreover, her inherited notions of conversion included spiritual writhings and physical night-sweats and penitential tears by way of its accomplishment. According to the creed of all the Parson Wheelers since the Puritan migration, one became a Christian rather violently, and not by leisurely unfolding. It had been to her the greatest of all reliefs since the unconfessed one born ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... events which were a part of it, he quickly aroused himself, and carefully packing up all the bundles of straw in the shed, exactly as he had found them, he again went forth upon what he was disposed to consider now a penitential pilgrimage. ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... persons, and the sacrifice of their lives,—"not loving their lives unto the death." All these tribulations, however, could not separate them from the love of God. (Rom. viii. 37-39.) They had "washed their robes,"—not in penitential tears, their own martyr-blood, their doing or suffering in the cause of Christ; but their robes were "made white in the blood of the Lamb," who was "made of God unto them ... justification and sanctification." (1 ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... "Don't go and spoil my coffee with salt water! All very well for David, in a penitential psalm, to drink tears, but in the ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... state; and whose claims to religious authority the writer defends by precedents unnecessary to enumerate here. On the first Sunday in Lent, 1819, its proceedings were commenced at Avignon, by a solemn procession, which made the circuit of the principal streets of the town, singing penitential psalms, and halted on the hill of Notre Dame; where an inaugural sermon was delivered on a spot called Calvary, and supposed to represent that sacred place. The multitude, assembled by curiosity or a better feeling, was so great, that two of the missionaries found it expedient to address ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... In selecting from Mrs. Pilkington, I regret that you omitted (look at p. 255) 'Sorrow,' or at least that you did not abridge it. The first and third paragraph are very affecting. See also 'Expostulation,' p. 258: it reminds me strongly of one of the Penitential Hymns of Burns. The few lines upon St. John the Baptist, by Mrs. Killigrew (vol. ii. p. 6), are pleasing. A beautiful Elegy of Miss Warton (sister to the poets of that name) upon the death of her father, has escaped your notice; nor can I refer you to it. Has the Duchess ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... an unmuzzled misogynist. But nobody would have suspected it from his answers to Rachel's questions, or from any portion of their animated conversation. Certainly the aquiline lady whom Langholm had taken in, and to whom he was only attentive by remorseful fits and penitential starts, had not that satisfaction; for her right-hand neighbor did not speak to her at all. There was thus one close and critical follower of a conversation which without warning took the one dramatic turn for which Rachel was forever on her guard; only this ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... monumental, and given over to puddles and to shabby cafes. I recall with tenderness the tortuous and featureless streets, which looked like the streets of a village, and were paved with villanous little sharp stones, making all exercise penitential. Consecrated by association is even a tiresome walk that I took the evening I arrived, with the purpose of obtaining a view of the Rhone. I had been to Arles before, years ago, and it seemed to me ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... But let me only lay hands on that infernal quill-driver! I'll make him skip—be it in this world or the next; if I don't pound him to a jelly, body and soul; if I don't write all the Ten Commandments, the seven Penitential Psalms, the five books of Moses, and the whole of the Prophets upon his rascally hide so distinctly that the blue hieroglyphics shall be legible at the day of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... had been brought in already, and placed on the penitential stool before the altar, after which the organ struck ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... For the moment she was unable to speak. This man was very fierce and just as suddenly as it had been gripped (making her think incongruously in the midst of her agitation that there would be certainly a bruise there in the morning) she felt her arm released and a penitential tone ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... heart; Like fell disease, it breeds within the veins The living agents of a living death; And as in gardens overgrown with weeds, Nothing but patient labor, day by day, Uprooting cherished evils one by one, Watering its soil with penitential tears, Can fit the soul to grow that precious seed, Which taking root, spreads out a grateful shade Where gentle thoughts like singing birds may lodge, Where pure desires like fragrant flowers may bloom, And loving acts like ripened fruits may hang. Then, chiding not, with earnest words he urged ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... experience, but for purposes of valuation it is of little moment to us whether the dynamic flash came to him in his cell at Wittenberg as he was studying the Epistle to the Romans, or whether it came while he was climbing the penitential stairway in Rome.[7] When all legendary coverings are stripped away we have left an inner event of the first importance, a live idea bursting into consciousness like a new star on the field of vision. By processes much deeper and richer ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... whose present aim was to throw the virtue of Wallace off its guard, and to take that by sap, which she found resisted open attack, with a penitential air disappeared by another passage. Edwin's gentle mother was followed by the same youth who had brought Helen's packet to Berwick. It was Walter Hay, anxious to be recognized by his benefactor, to whom his recovered health had ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... winds and rain prevailed almost constantly. The two ladies never ventured out without umbrellas, and even then usually returned in a drenched condition. Imprisoned by the weather, the sick man was compelled to spend all his waking time in the sitting-room, where his confinement was made the more penitential by the absence of books. It happened that the only books in the house were two volumes of Voltaire, and these were taken from the younger pair one dreary Sunday by their stern parents ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... have only to be penitent for being audacious," laughed Christy; and he was laughing very earnestly, as though the extra cachinnation was assumed for a purpose. "I suppose I ought to dress myself in ash cloth and sashes, shut myself up in my state room always when off duty, and shed penitential tears from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, and during the lone watches of the night, and in fortifying my soul against the monstrous sin of audacity. I will think ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... Father in Christ; and that, 'even as a father pitieth his own children, so is the Lord merciful to them that fear him?' Had they, by faith, taken this blessed truth to their souls, they might and would, not in hopelessness and dread, but in trust and penitential love, make their wants known as a child to its parent; they would arise, and in humble compunctions, and not desponding trust, say, 'Father, I have sinned.' They would carry each trouble to him, and say, 'Lord, thou knowest me to be set in this ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... come today In penitential form, And hypocritically say The country needs "Reform!" Out on reformers such as these; By Freedom's sacred powers, We'll run the country as we please; We saved it, and ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... is honest; Beside, the whole proceeding is so like The hair-brained rout, I guessed as much before. Know then, it is resolved to seize the king, When next he goes in penitential weeds Among the friars, without his usual guards; Then, under shew of popular sedition, For safety, shut him in a monastery, And sacrifice his ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... something attractive. Of course, as a matter of prejudice he attended its ceremonials from time to time and found them comfortable and satisfying. Comfortable also were the dogmas of forgiveness to be obtained by an act of penitential confession, and the sense of a great supporting force whose whole weight was at the ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... not imply any love for holiness, or any hatred of sin. Nay, it may exist without any sorrow for sin, as in the instance of the hardened transgressor who writhes under its awful power, but never sheds a penitential tear, or sends up a sigh for mercy. The distinction between the human conscience, and the human heart, is as wide as between the human intellect, and the human heart.[2] We never think of confounding the functions ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... where priests, 'mid tapers dim, Breathed the warm prayer, or tuned the midnight hymn To scenes like these the fainting soul retired; Revenge and Anger in these cells expired: By Pity soothed, Remorse lost half her fears, And softened Pride dropped penitential tears. Crabbe's Borough. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... sinners. Their Master rebuked the unkind suggestion. Peter, the trusted but treacherous disciple, expected nothing but harsh and merited reproof for faithlessness. He who knew well how that heart would be bowed with penitential sorrow, sends first the kindest of messages, and then the gentlest of rebukes, "Lovest thou me?" The watchmen in the Canticles smote the bride, tore off her veil, and loaded her with reproaches. When she found her lost Lord, there was ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... blithe Of early day, the hissing scythe Across the dew drawn and withdrawn, The noisy peacock on the lawn, These, and the sun's eye-gladding gleam, This morning, chased the sweetest dream That e'er shed penitential grace On life's forgetful commonplace; Yet 'twas no sweeter than the spell To which I woke to say farewell. Noon finds me many a mile removed From her who must not be beloved; And us the waste sea soon shall part, Heaving for aye, without a heart! Mother, what need to warn me so? I love Miss ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... at the self-inflicted tortures. Each bed consists of a wooden plank raised in the middle, and on days of penitence crossed by wooden bars. The pillow is wooden, with a cross lying on it, which they hold in their hands when they lie down. The nun lies on this penitential couch, embracing the cross, and her feet hanging out, as the bed is made too short for her upon principle. Round her waist she occasionally wears a band with iron points turning inwards; on her breast a cross with nails, of which the points enter the flesh, of the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... practical neighbors seriously to doubt the young girl's commercial wisdom. But she was firm. Whether she thought her parents a necessity of respectable domesticity, or whether she regarded their presence in the light of a penitential atonement for some previous disregard of them, no one knew. Public ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... of the two cousins breathed a penitential sigh, dropped her bare, jewelled arms out of her cloak, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... decline the stew, yet, had starvation depended on it, I could not have touched a morsel. Accordingly, I forbore the mess and made free with the rice, seasoning it well with salt and peppers. But my amiable landlord was resolved that I should not go to rest with such penitential fare, and ordered one of his wives to bring her supper to my lodge. A taste of the dish satisfied me that it was edible, though intensely peppered. I ate with the appetite of an alderman, nor was it till two days after that my trader informed me I had supped so heartily on the spareribs ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Lincoln, President of the 'United States, cordially concurring with the Congress of the United States, in the penitential and pious sentiments expressed in the aforesaid resolutions, and heartily approving of the devotional design and purpose thereof, do hereby appoint the first Thursday of August next to be observed by the people of the United States as a day ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... races is celebrated socially, but not among those in which polygamy prevails. The formula observed on the occasion differs in different tribes; in some the union is effected under painful ceremonies to the bride, in others with fasting and penitential torments to the bridegroom. In general the Indian selects a wife for himself. In the greater number of tribes a maiden is set up as a prize, and the young men commence a life or death contest for her. The oldest warriors are arbitrators, and from their hands the conqueror receives ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... was already moving away, with a slight consciousness that its zeal about the head-gear had been superabundant enough to afford a dispensation from any further demand for penitential offerings. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... poorhouse on his music-paper had been the solace of those long, dark penitential hours. His alternations between deep depression and dawning hope, and at last his full, deep conviction that there was pardon for all in the abundant mercy of God through Christ, had been expressed in the musical compositions that had made their way ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... those days. People brought their dinners and had a general penitential gorge. Instrumental music was proscribed, as per Amos fifth chapter and twenty-third verse, and the length of prayer was measured by the ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... exception of Salviatus, who expounds the views of the author himself, represent two of Galileo's early friends. For the "Dialogues" he was sentenced by the Inquisition to incarceration at its pleasure, and enjoined to recite penitential psalms once a week for three years. His life thereafter was full of sorrow, and in 1637 blindness added to his woes; but the fire of his genius still burnt on till his death on January ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... sooner become rational enough to hear his daughter's story, than he was eager to make me the amende by all the means in his power. Perhaps he would have even lent me money, if I had met him in the penitential mood; but I was not to be found. The sight of my corded trunk convinced him that I had taken mortal offence, and he grew more uneasy still. As the night fell, a general enquiry was made amongst the fisherman's cabins; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... warning to others. It was accordingly decreed that he should be condemned to imprisonment in the Holy Office during the pleasure of the Papal authorities, and that he should recite once a week for three years the seven Penitential Psalms. ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... Louvre since. He amuses himself by spending millions on building, and making passionate love to Mademoiselle la Valliere, who encourages him by pretending an excessive modesty, and exaggerates every favour by penitential tears. I doubt his attachment to so melancholy a mistress will hardly last a lifetime. She is not beautiful; she has a halting gait; and she is no more virtuous than any other young woman who makes a show of resistance to enhance the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... rather die than continue so. But if they may be taken off, and if I may hear mass, and be removed to a penitential prison, and have a woman about me, I will be good, and will do what shall seem good ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... receipts for calming the conscience; the priests in every country possess sovereign secrets for disarming the wrath of Heaven. However true it may be that the anger of Deity is appeased by prayers, by offerings, by sacrifices, by penitential tears, we have no right to say that religion holds in check the irregularities of men; they will first sin, and afterward seek the means to reconcile God. Every religion which expiates, and which promises the remission of crimes, if it restrains any, it encourages ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... sin without being burdened with the obligation of repairing it, but it is only a soul well steeped in malice that will take seriously such a contention. Neither is restitution a penance imposed upon us in order to atone for our faults; it is no more penitential in its nature than are the efforts we make to avoid the faults we have fallen into in the past. It atones for nothing; it is simply a desisting from evil. When this is done and forgiveness obtained, then, and not till ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... voice of chanticleer Fulfilled what Christ had prophesied; And oh, that pitying look sincere From him whom thou hadst just denied! Thy burst of penitential grief! Heaven those tears did surely send. Tears give the burdened heart relief; Dry ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass
... we have to import it because our moist, cold climate is not favourable for its growth. Nevertheless, it closely resembles the small purple vetch of our summer hedgerows at home. In France its pulse is much eaten during Lent—which season takes its name, as some authors suppose, from this penitential plant. Men become under its subduing dietary influence, "lenti et lenes." The plant is cultivated freely in Egypt for the sake of the seeds, which are flat on both sides, growing ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... went to church in Crocusville. The back of the pine bench on which she sat had a penitential forward tilt that would have brought St. Simeon down, in jealousy, from his pillar. The preacher singled her out, and thundered upon her vicarious head the damnation of the world. At each side of her an adamant parent held her ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... hundreds of other offences, which are purely ceremonial, and which probably took a long time to reach the luxuriant growth they have attained in the tablets. For ceremonial offences a ceremonial purification was felt to suffice. But there were others which, as the Babylonian Penitential Psalms testify, were felt to go deeper and to be sins, personal sins of the worshipper against ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... true, sure enough," he said. "Sam Learoyd's a changed man. It were t' local preacher that done it. He gat him on to his knees anent t' penitential forms at after t' sarvice, an' there were a two-three more wi' him; an' t' preacher an' me wrastled wi' t' devil for their souls. I've niver seen sich tewin' o' t' spirit sin I becom a Methody. 'Twere a hot neight, and ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... into Teneriffe or Atlas when he sees before him an antagonist worthy of his powers, is probably the one man in Europe that has adequately conceived the situation, the stern self-dependency, and the monumental misery of Count Julian. That sublimity of penitential grief, which cannot accept consolation from man, cannot bear external reproach, cannot condescend to notice insult, cannot so much as SEE the curiosity of bystanders; that awful carelessness of all but the troubled deeps within his own heart, and of God's ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... of penance, and through the door of reconciliation to admit to the communion of the sacraments those who have been cleansed by a salutary satisfaction." Brose says: "The amount of the penance must be adapted to the trouble of the conscience." Hence divere penitential canons were appointed in the holy Synod of Nice, in accordance with The diversity of satisfactions, Jovinian the heretic, thought, however, that all sins are equal and accordingly did not admit a diversity of satisfactions. Moreover, satisfactions should not ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous
... Whose roots are in Egyptian sands, On either bank huge water-wheels, Belted with jars and dripping weeds, Send forth their melancholy moans, As if, in their gray mantles hid, Dead anchorites of the Thebaid Knelt on the shore and told their beads, Beating their breasts with loud appeals And penitential tears and groans. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... sobbed fitfully a moment, little sad remorseful penitential sobs, and died away softly across the prairie as a breath ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... given all the clothes he had to his mother, but being informed that he was to be hung in chains, he desired his mother might return them to prevent his being put up in his shirt. He then desired the executioner to tie him up so that he might be as soon out of his pain as possible; then he said the Penitential Psalm, and repeated the words of it to the other criminals. Then they all kissed one another, and after some private devotions the cart drew away and they were turned off. Dickenson died very hard, kicking off one of his shoes, and loosing ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... you. But of this and other such things we will converse hereafter. Listen now, son Basil, to my bidding. You have abstained from the Table of the Lord, and it is well. Today, and every day until I again summon you, you will read aloud in privacy the Seven Penitential Psalms, slowly and with meditation; and may they grave themselves in your heart, to remain there, a purification and a ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... disaster-sent a wail through all Scotland. The grief was great and the penitential searchings deep. The pious and prayerful inquired of the Lord to know the cause of His wrath and the way of deliverance. The eyes of many were opened to see the shadow of greater calamities approaching. Argyle, Johnston, ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... it will be when, after feeding on it in its purity, the bodies of each of us are transfigured after its likeness. Here was the secret of the spirit which set St. Simeon on his pillar and sent St. Anthony to the tombs—of the night watches, the weary fasts, the penitential scourgings, the life-long austerities which have been alternately the glory and the reproach of the mediaeval saints. They desired to overcome their animal bodies, and anticipate in life the work of death in uniting themselves more completely to Christ by the destruction ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... does not converse with serious subjects, or necessarily include reference to Deity; why do we find no trace of this among the Jews? We may remember, that all festivals, in very ancient time, of every description, the grave and the gay, the penitential and the jubilant, had a religious design, and were suggested by a religious feeling. We think the peculiar cast of the Judaic faith would hardly embody itself in such a mode of expression. Moreover, tragedy was the parent of comedy,—and since the Jews ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... have regarded the situation it illustrates as more significant than others of man's relation to Deity in his sense of sin and need for mercy, and as requiring, therefore, peculiar prominence in the total impression the oratorio should convey. If this was his aim, it is all accomplished. The penitential feeling embodied in the song is that which will longest linger in a remembrance of the work. The soft tone of the contralto voice, and the keenness of that of the violin, are accessories to the effect which the master well knew how to handle; but these judicious means are little to be considered ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... places subsides; yet how often, as our horses' hoofs rang on the slippery stones, my thoughts went suddenly back to the scene when Saint Gregory passed over, chanting litanies, at the head of the whole populace, who formed one vast penitential procession, and saw the avenging angel alight on the mausoleum of Adrian and sheath his sword in sign that the plague was stayed; or to that terrible day when the ferocious mercenaries of the Constable de Bourbon and the wretched inhabitants given over to sack ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... fortress had triple inclosures; Henry was conducted into the second; his retinue remained outside the first. He had laid aside the insignia of royalty; nothing announced his rank. All day long, Henry, bareheaded, clad in penitential garb, and fasting from morning till night, awaited the sentence of the sovereign pontiff. He thus waited during a second and a third day. During the intervening time he had not ceased to negotiate. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... Henry the Fifth, crossed the Channel to conquer France, just at the very, the only time, when the Ottoman reverses gave a fair hope of the success of Christendom. When premature death overtook him, and he had but two hours to live,[64] he ordered his confessor to recite the Seven Penitential Psalms; and, when the verse was read about building the walls of Jerusalem, the word caught his ear; he stopped the reader, and observed that he had proposed to conquer Jerusalem, and to have rebuilt it, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... cornice, whence no rim Engarlands its steep fall, did Virgil come; On the' other side me were the spirits, their cheeks Bathing devout with penitential tears, That through the dread impalement forc'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... worshiping alike, to the overthrow of their worldly interests, and at the imminent peril of their lives. How brightly and tenderly the moonlight shone upon the altar and the people before it! how solemnly and divinely the deep harmonies, as they chanted the penitential Psalms, mingled with the hoarse singing of the freshening night breeze in the rigging of the ship! how sweetly the still rushing murmur of many voices, as they uttered the responses together, now died away, and now rose again softly into ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... whom belongs the margin of the sea, machine-bathing at eleven o'clock will hardly furnish them with a magical early memory. Time was when this was made penitential to them, like the rest of life, upon a principle that no longer prevails. It was vulgarized for them and made violent. A bathing woman, type of all ugliness in their sensitive eyes, came striding, shapeless, through the unfriendly sea, seized them if they were very young, ducked them, ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... inside, came up in due time, and I took my box-seat again, and arrived in London safe,—but not sound, for my heart was gone. As soon as I arrived, I sent a penitential codfish and barrel of oysters to Joe (as reparation for not having gone myself), and then went on ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Jurand remained alone in the darkness and silence. In the snow before him the penitential robe and rope showed black while he stood long, feeling something in his soul dissolving, breaking, agonizing, dying, and that shortly he would be a knight no more, Jurand of Spychow no more, but a beggar, a slave without a name, without fame, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... mercy of mankind; Through the wide world, like Savage, forced to stray, And find, like him, one long and stormy day; Objects less noble might thy soul have swayed, Or crimes around thee cast a deeper shade. While poring o'er another's mad career, Drop for thyself the penitential tear; Though prized by friends, and nurs'd in innocence, How oft has folly wrong'd thy better sense: But if some virtues in thy breast there be, Ask, if they sprang from circumstance, or thee! And ever to thy heart the precept bear, When thine own conscience ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... whole church was rich beyond expression. All that opulent devotion and inventive ingenuity could devise, in wood, bronze, marble, silver, gold, precious jewelry, or blazing sacramental furniture, had been profusely lavished. The penitential tears of centuries had incrusted the whole interior with their glittering stalactites. Divided into five naves, with external rows of chapels, but separated by no screens or partitions, the great temple forming an imposing whole, the effect was the more impressive, the vistas almost ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... widowhood at Waverley. Then appears Sir Eustace Dabrieschescourt, and she being young, in spite of her vow, marries him. And having repented and confessed she devoted her life to penance, being condemned daily to repeat the Gradual and the Penitential Psalms, and every year to go on pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas. This penance, with others, she performed during fifty-one years. She was married to Dabrieschescourt in the church of Wingham in Kent, and died here in Bedhampton, and was buried in the church of St Thomas, for the manor ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... standing before him with my head on his breast, wiping the tears from my eyes. Really a spiritually sick preacher is about the most depressing thing a woman can have in the house. And when I looked at William, pale, hollow-eyed, with his mouth puckered into a penitential angle I longed to lay Horace Pendleton across my knees and give him what he deserved for disturbing ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... wonderfully gifted in prayer. Here all his intellectual, imaginative, and spiritual powers were fused into one and poured themselves forth in an unbroken stream of penitential and adoring affection. When he said, "Let us pray," a divine influence seemed to rest upon all present. His prayers were not mere pious mental exercises, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... [Footnote 114: The penitential jurisprudence was continually improved by the canons of the councils. But as many cases were still left to the discretion of the bishops, they occasionally published, after the example of the Roman Praetor, the rules ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... grace of God from his evil ways was moved with a desire to do penance for his sins. Accordingly he sought the counsel of a certain Irish priest, to whom he made a general confession and confided his desire of entering upon a penitential life. So deep was his sorrow that he expressed himself ready to accept any penance his director might impose, even to spending whole nights in prayer, or fasting for a week continuously. The priest having imposed upon him the penance of taking ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... This psalm is David's penitential psalm. It may be fitly so called, because it is a psalm by which is manifest the unfeigned sorrow which he had for his horrible sin, in defiling of Bathsheba, and slaying Uriah her husband; a relation at large of which you have in the 11th and 12th of the Second of Samuel. Many workings ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Boke" ends at p. 57., with the imprint of R. Tottell, and the date of 1557. "Ecclesiastes and Certain Psalms by by Henry Earl of Surrey," which are "from ancient MSS. never before imprinted," close at p. 81. "Certayne Psalmes chosen out of the Psalter of David," consisting of the seven penitential psalms, with the imprint of Thomas Raynald and John Harrington," fill thirty pages; and to them is added "Sir Thomas Wyat's Defence," from the Strawberry Hill edition; which, with a few appended notes, carries the work ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... she was brought into connection, as daughter, wife, or other relation, with any god that the particular conditions suggested. As the Assyrians grew morally she was endowed with all the highest virtues (so in the Penitential Psalms), and occupied so preeminent a position that under favorable circumstances she might perhaps have become the only ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... here and there for a few minutes, but finally broke down completely and retired in to the granary, where be fell upon his knees, and with penitential tears besought the Lord to forgive him if he had done wrong, and to help him, in his last years, to keep the devil out of his heart and life. He prayed for the boy too, and asked the God in whom ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... felicity as erudition; and great must have been that erudition which could form a pretended language and its grammar, and fertile the genius which could invent the history of an unknown people: it is said that the deception was only satisfactorily ascertained by his own penitential confession; he had defied and baffled the most learned.[45] The literary impostor Lauder had much more audacity than ingenuity, and he died contemned by all the world.[46] Ireland's "Shakspeare" served to show that commentators are not blessed, necessarily, with an ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... having been discovered, as it were, feasting in the house of mourning. "At the present sad juncture, to drink sherry-wine with all its untamed richness might, I feel, smack of callousness. Therefore I tell the man to dash it with bitters, which, whilst it has a penitential sound, adds a not untoothsome flavour in anticipation ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... the Dies Irae, whiles," was all the information she could give on that point. One would think it scarcely possible that so penitential a chant could form the usual musical accompaniment to Sunday Mass! A teacher of music from a neighboring glen used to come over from time to ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... ignorant and superstitious crew cast lots as to who should perform pilgrimages to their respective saints, in which the Admiral, no less superstitious than his men, joined. Two of the lots fell on him. Each man also made his private vow to perform some pilgrimage, or other penitential rite. ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... chilling effect on the feelings. None of the party understood this result, and yet all were, in their way, affected by the sudden fall of mental temperature. Mr. Denning went to his library and took out his private ledger, a penitential sort of reading which he relished after moods of any kind of enjoyment. Mrs. Denning selected Ethel Rawdon for her text of disillusion. She "thought Ethel had been a little jealous of Dora's dress," ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... pulsations visible through the unaccustomed poetic garb, the cloak of learned allusions drops of itself, and emotion is revealed under the strata of labored expressions. All the poems by Rashi belong under the literary form called Selihot, penitential psalms, recited ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... felt throughout Europe, especially in France and Italy. His zeal for the interests of God was unbounded, and this was the secret of his immense power. Some of his writings have come down to us, and comprise his Rule for Monks, his Penitential, sixteen short sermons, six letters, and several poems, all in Latin. His letters are of much value as evidence of Ireland's ancient belief ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... ringed about with conquering foes— See you, in penitential robe (with taper), Invited to assume a bending pose And eat ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... with the penitential aspect of the prodigal son; and, faith, he would have not made a bad representation of the fatted calf about to be killed on my return,—so corpulent looked he, and so dejected! 'Graceless reprobate!' he began, 'your poor father is dead!' I was exceedingly ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... across Gray carpet aisles of moss Unto the chantry stalls, The sumach candelabra are alight; Along the cloister walls, Like chorister and acolyte, The shrubs are vested white; The dutiful monastic oak In his gray-friar cloak Keeps penitential ways And solemn orisons of praise; For beads upon the cincture-vine Red berries warm with color shine, And to their constant rosary The bedesmen firs incline; And fair as frescoes be Among the shrines of Italy, These lights ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... was responsible for that blunder, which in most countries would certainly have evoked a cry of betrayal, the mainsheet of Nelson's Victory would be all too inadequate as a penitential white sheet and far too illustrious as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... submit unconditionally to the rule in the matter of austerities, as of all else. But those who knew her well could have predicted, that as attachment to her own will and judgment had never mingled, however slightly, with her penitential works, she would renounce them, in compliance with the Divine will, as readily as she had embraced them from the ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... And go no farther in your cruelty: Send her a penitential garment to put on Next to her delicate skin, and furnish her With ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... founded a ribat or Moslem monastery, from which as a centre his influence spread. There was no element of heresy in his creed, which was mainly distinguished by a rigid formalism and strict obedience to the letter of the Koran and the orthodox tradition or Sunna. 'Abd-Allah imposed a penitential scourging on all converts as a purification, and enforced a regular system of discipline for every breach of the law, even on the chiefs. Under such directions the Murabtis were brought to excellent order. Their first military leader, Yahya ibn Omar, gave them a good military organization. Their ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... if not you? You are my first remembrance. It was you who told me that was my name. It was you who told me that on every twentieth of December my life had a penitential anniversary in it called a birthday. I suppose the last communication was ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... abundant authority both in the Scriptures and in the Talmud, that ascetic practices tending both as a sacrifice and as a castigation of the flesh, making relapse impossible, become a regular feature of the penitential course in the medieval Rabbinic literature" ("Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology," ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... my father's affairs, and, by my exertions in his favour, made my brother my sworn foe, I returned to London. My husband's conduct was now changed; I had during my absence, received several affectionate, penitential letters from him; and he seemed on my arrival, to wish by his behaviour to prove his sincerity. I could not then conceive why he acted thus; and, when the suspicion darted into my head, that it might arise from observing my increasing ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft |
