"Sackcloth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... willow, cypress, crape, deep mourning; sackcloth and ashes; lachrymatory[obs3]; knell &c. 363; deep death song, dirge, coronach[obs3], nenia[obs3], requiem, elegy, epicedium[obs3]; threne[obs3]; monody, threnody; jeremiad, jeremiade|!; ullalulla[obs3]. mourner; grumbler &c. (discontent) 832; Noobe; Heraclitus. V. lament, mourn, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to think that, after having so long anticapated that party, I am now here in sackcloth and ashes, which is a figure of speech for the Peter Thompson uniform of the school, with plain white for evenings ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... peculiar injury, I condescend to offer. Fling down thy heading staff—renounce thy command—unbind thy prisoners—restore thy spoil—distribute what else thou hast of goods, to relieve those whom thou hast made orphans and widows—array thyself in sackcloth and ashes—take a palmer's staff in thy hand, and go barefooted on pilgrimage to Rome, and we will ourselves be intercessors for thee with the Imperial Chamber at Ratisbon for thy life, With our Holy Father the Pope for ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... them in such a case to kill the presumptuous prophet, or at least to shut him up as a madman. Yet they did nothing of the kind. On the contrary, "the people of Nineveh believed God." Even the king was converted. He covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. He also decreed that neither man nor beast in the city should eat or drink anything; but, said he, "let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... arm. It was the seal, he thought, of her unwritten bond that there should be no uprooting of the single flower he cherished; and he went back almost buoyantly because of it to the woman who had been sitting in the sackcloth and ashes of misfortune, turning over the expedients for which ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... banquet boards. Man had found her waist achievable and her lips desirable. The sudden and amatory Seeders had, as it were, performed for her a miraculous piece of one-day laundry work. He had taken the sackcloth of her uncomeliness, had washed, dried, starched and ironed it, and returned it to her sheer embroidered lawn—the robe of ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... your mother's touching dream of becoming a boor, and repenting your sins in sackcloth and ashes! That maternal idyl still troubles your poor, shallow brain, does it? For my part, I think no spectacle on earth is so ridiculous as that of the repentant sinner. It is the most humiliating character in which a man can appear before the world, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... ministers. Above all he must realise that he must be the first to humble himself at the Cross. If a new honesty with regard to sin is needed among his people, he must realise it must begin with himself. It was when the King of Nineveh arose from his throne and covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes as a sign of his repentance, ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... dream, But that is a pullet and clouted cream; Myself by denial I mortify— With a dainty bit of a warden-pie; I'm clothed in sackcloth for my sin— With old sack wine I'm lined within; A chirping cup is my matin song, And the vesper's bell is my bowl, ding-dong. What baron or squire, Or knight of the shire, Lives half so well ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... their stage curtain consists of a large piece of threadbare sackcloth pasted over with tricolored paper on which they have painted the national coat of arms. Their wardrobe too is of the very simplest description. When they play a piece in which kings and queens appear, they borrow the gold bespangled dresses of the rich Servian women of the district to serve ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... Wednesday got wedged in (as was concerted) betwixt Christmas and Lord Mayor's Days. Lord! how he laid about him! Nothing but barons of beef and turkeys would go down with him—to the great greasing and detriment of his new sackcloth bib and tucker. And still Christmas Day was at his elbow, plying him the wassail-bowl, till he roared, and hiccup'd, and protested there was no faith in dried ling, but commended it to the devil for a sour, windy, acrimonious, censorious, hy-po-crit-crit-cri-tical ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... its march, which is to be diverted only by the penitence of the oppressor. Awake, O monarch, from thy lethargy! Disdain the abuses thou hast received: pull down the statue which calls thee immortal: be truly great: tear thy purple, and put on sackcloth. ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... not long in appearing. Ali despatched his barge, which took on board a monk, the spiritual chief of the Suliots. He was clothed in sackcloth, and repeated the prayers for the dying, as one going to execution. Ali, however, received him with the utmost cordiality: He assured the priest of his repentance, his good intentions, his esteem for the Greek captains, and then gave him a paper which startled him ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Groups of men—not crowds, for there is plenty of elbow-room in Ecuador—in gay ponchos stand chatting in front of little shops, or lean against the wall to enjoy the sunshine; beggars in rags or sackcloth stretch forth their leprous hands for charity; monks in white, and canons in black, walk in the shade of immense hats; shoeless soldiers saunter to and fro; Indians from the mountains in every variety of costume cluster around heaps of vegetables for sale; ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... lasted a long while, because they wished to satiate themselves with the sight of the man whom they had previously dreaded, and who stood before them now with his head bowed upon his breast, and dressed like a penitent in sackcloth, and with a rope around his neck, upon which was suspended the ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... resolved to hold the balance himself.—He began by throwing in a pilgrimage to a miraculous virgin.—The devil pulled out an assignation with some fair mortal Madonna, who had ceased to be immaculate.—The saint laid in the scale the sackcloth and ashes of the penitent of Lenten-time.—Satan answered the deposit by the vizard and leafy robe of the masker of the carnival. Thus did they still continue equally interchanging the sorrows of godliness with the sweets of sin; and still the saint was distressed beyond ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... the beggar-maid—and the beggar was an impudent, ungrateful, idiotic little piece!" Margaret hissed, in her most shrewish manner. "She ought to be spanked. She ought to go down on her knees to him in sackcloth, and tears, and ashes, and all sorts of penitential things. She will, too. Oh, it's such a beautiful world—such a beautiful world! Billy loves me—really! Billy's a millionaire, and I'm a pauper. ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... performed tasks analogous to those of the lightning, since it has been put in harness and employed to carry the mail. When genius has its day of humiliation for the wasted water of life, Neal may put on sackcloth, for he never economized his power; but for the soul's fire quenched in idleness, or smothered in worldliness, certainly for these years, he need wear ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... unendurable to her. It was essential that a change should be made, and that speedily, for she was aware of the limitations to her own patience. Her temperament was not one to let her sit down in sackcloth and ashes to weep over the ruins of romance. Rather, she would bestir herself to create a new sphere of activity, wherein she might find happiness in some other guise. Yet, despite the ingenuity of her mind, ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... character with it; for Barney is by no means either stupid or weak. He is recklessly untidy as to his person; but the worst effects of his neglect are mitigated by a powdering of flour and mill dust; and his unbrushed clothes, made of a fashionable tailor's sackcloth, were evidently chosen regardless of expense for the ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... on the sackcloth and ashes, when the striped bug came at four o'clock A.M., and we watched the tender leaves, and watered night and morning the feeble plants. "I tell you, Polly," said I, uncorking the Bordeaux raspberry vinegar, "there is not a pea here that does not represent a drop of moisture wrung from ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... She had done all this, and he had been successful. She strove, therefore, to be triumphant on his behalf, but she knew that she was striving ineffectually. She had made a mistake, and the days were coming in which she would have to own to herself that she had done so in sackcloth, and to ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... following effect: It enacted, that no cambrics, French lawns, or linens of this kind usually entered under the denomination of cambrics, should be imported after the first day of next August, but in bales, cases, or boxes, covered with sackcloth or canvas, containing each one hundred whole pieces, or two hundred half pieces, on penalty of forfeiting the whole; that cambrics and French lawns should be imported for exportation only, lodged in the king's warehouses, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... absent. So, too, at the first meal in the new house, there was none of that desirable sense of setting up a family altar, but a calamitous impression of irretrievable upheaval, in honor of which sackcloth and ashes seemed the only wear. Yet even the next day the Lares and Penates had regained something of their wonted cheerfulness, and life had begun again with the first breakfast. In fact, I found myself already so firmly established that, meeting ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... through summer fields, By noisy villages and lonely lanes, Through glowing days, when all the landscape stretched Shimmering in the heat, a pilgrim fared Towards the cathedral town. Sir Tannhauser Had donned the mournful sackcloth, girt his loins With a coarse rope that ate into his flesh, Muffled a cowl about his shaven head, Hung a great leaden cross around his neck; And bearing in his hands a knotty staff, With swollen, sandaled feet he held his course. He snatched scant rest at twilight or at dawn, When his ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... allowing me to know even his whole name—Vivian only, this and nothing more; he, a British officer, in a mad impulse (I am like him) marries my mother, nobody's daughter, and a ballet dancer, during a run he made to New York city just thirty-five years ago; my sire repents in sackcloth and ashes, dragging us with him; sells out; living by his wits anyhow and anywhere, chiefly at gaming places abroad. At a German suburb once he had left us, my late husband came to our cottage to enquire his road; as he was an American, my mother nearly swallow'd him whole; I did, on seeing ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... of sheer happiness. At last, she thought, her hope was fulfilled—that hope which, although she had seldom remembered it in the joy of her constant triumphs, had been always lurking in her, lying near to her heart and chafing her, like the shift of sackcloth which that young brilliant girl, loved and lost of Giacopone di Todi, wore always in secret submission to her own soul, under the fair soft robes and the rubies men saw on her. At last, here was the youth who would not bow down to her; whom, looking ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... can congratulate you upon your marriage. But seriously, Herr Comrade, I ought to call you to account for your robbery of an artist from our midst. Please tell your wife that the whole city is in sackcloth and ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... accursed astronomy. Boccaccio and the Troubadours should have been burned instead, and if this had been done all the abominable modern literature which would persuade the faithful that this world is not all sackcloth and ashes would never have been written. Away with him who says that the earth is as beautiful as heaven," and Gautier's phrase, "Moi, je trouve la terre aussi belle que le ciel, et je pense que la correction de la forme est la vertu," has become the heresy more intolerable than ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... words, is, that redemption is a something not yet effected—that there is neither sense nor force in our baptism—and that instead of the Apostolic command, 'Rejoice, and again I say unto you, rejoice'; baptized Christians are to be put on sackcloth and ashes, and try, by torturing themselves and others, to procure a rescue from the devil. Again, let me thank you for your remembrance of me, and believe me from the hour we first met at ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... completed, I was put into clean linen of the stiffest character, like a young penitent into sackcloth, and was trussed up in my tightest and fearfullest suit. I was then delivered over to Mr. Pumblechook, who formally received me as if he were the Sheriff, and who let off upon me the speech that I knew he had been dying to make all along: "Boy, be forever grateful to all friends, but especially ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... chau{n}ged her chere & chylled at e hert. 368 e segge sesed not [gh]et, bot sayde eu{er} ilyche "e verray vengau{n}ce of god schal voyde is place." [Sidenote: The people mourn secretly, clothe themselves in sackcloth, and cast ashes upon their heads.] e{n}ne e peple pitosly pleyned ful stylle, & for e drede of dry[gh]tyn doured i{n} hert; 372 Het{er} hayre[gh] ay hent at asperly bited, & ose ay bou{n}den to her bak & to her bare syde[gh], Dropped dust on her hede & dy{m}ly biso[gh]ten, at at penau{n}ce ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... of whom chant "They have no wine!" while the others respond "Love ye those who have wrong'd you." These are those who, having sinned through envy, can be freed only by the exercise of charity. Then, bidding Dante gaze fixedly, Virgil points out this shadowy host, clothed in sackcloth, sitting back against the rocks, and Dante takes particular note of two figures supporting each other. He next discovers that one and all of these victims have their eyelids sewn so tightly together with wire that passage is left only ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... etc. And to all these things, which were so true and sensible, I could find only one word to say: his name, Gontran, Gontran, Gontran! Gontran or the convent, and the most rigorous one of all, the Carmel, in sackcloth and ashes! Oh, Aunt Louise, do look at him! He listens to all this with an ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... every good. You cannot diffuse education, but you diffuse the taste for rubbish and something worse, in the shape of books. No good thing but has its shadow of evil attendant upon it. And if we had only to estimate by visible or human forces, we might well sit down and wrap ourselves in the sackcloth of pessimism. 'We see not yet all things put under Him'; but 'we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour,' and the vision that cheered the first martyr—of Christ 'standing at the right hand of God'—is the rebuke of every fear and every gloomy anticipation for ourselves ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... abominable smells into our streets; and if that were to haunt us by day and night, a phantom from which there was no escape, to remain till the sins of Europe were expiated, we should soon forget politics and arguments, and be in sackcloth and ashes, positive no longer, but down on our knees before Heaven in awe at this revelation of social guilt, asking simply what we must ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until the water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest upon them by day, nor the beasts of the field by ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... But insatiate still, thou hast entered the dome Of thy neighbor, and stolen the wife from her home; Thou hast slaughtered the husband with treacherous wile, And the vengeance of Heaven rewardeth thy guile! The child of thy love from thy arms shall be torn— And in sackcloth and ashes thy proud head shall mourn— The wives of thy household thy rivals shall be— As thou didst unto others, so be it to thee! And the sword thou hast taken, with murderous art, From thy heaven-doomed ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... all in herself," laughed Jennie. "Why! if Grace had a chance to be class president I'd go into sackcloth and ashes during ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... difference where it may be, Nor the fortunes that years may alter, Be they simple or wise, the old home ties Make all of 'em often falter. Time may robe 'em in sackcloth coarse Or garb 'em in gorgeous splendor, But whatever their lot, they keep one spot Down deep that ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... repent, if not seven times a day as David did, yet at least three times, as Daniel? If not as Solomon, at length, yet shortly as the publican? If not like Christ, the whole night, at least for one hour? If not on the ground and in ashes, at least not in my bed? If not in sackcloth, at least not in purple and fine linen? If not altogether freed from all, at least from immoderate desires? Do I give, if not as Zaccheus did, fourfold, as the law commands, with the fifth part added? If not as ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... old professor could have bitten out his tongue for his unholy jest. His penitence was in no wise lessened by the quality of Scott's answering laugh. Best leave those fellows to their ministerial sackcloth, without questioning the quality of the flax from which it was spun. A man of Scott Brenton's calibre would do no harm by his preaching. What was the sense of seeking to upset any orthodox beliefs he might happen to have inherited? Besides, as long ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... was hard and stern as that of some hag from Hell; the sunlight had faded from her hair, the cestus of red roses become a poisonous serpent, her fragrant breath a consuming flame, her robe of glory, a sackcloth suit, begrimed with ashes, torn by thorns and stained with blood. "Thou hast changed, O Life!" he cried in horror. "Not so," she said; "the change is thine. In youth you saw me not, but only dreamed you saw. She you loved was ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... on his way back to the camp was he sensible of the murmurs of censure at his hypocrisy in joining the penitential procession at all. Dame Idonea, in a complete suit of sackcloth, was informing her friends that she had made a vow not to wash her face till the whole adder brood of Montfort had been crushed; and that she trusted to see the beginning of justice done to-morrow. She had offered a candle to St. James to that effect, hoping to induce him to ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that I do not know of a quicker way to hell than by the way of adultery. Let no one flatter himself that he is going into the kingdom of God who does not repent of this sin in sackcloth and ashes. My friend, do you think God will never bring you into judgment? Does not the Bible say that no adulterer shall inherit the kingdom ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... card, and when out among the people he was always figuratively clothed in sackcloth and ashes. A few extracts from his book may be ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... questions,—this is inexpressibly precious; and with the light thus given we must let our spirits sing a new song, for we are nigh to God, and it is still true that "none enter the king's gate clothed with sackcloth." Joy and praise have their dwelling ever within those boundaries; for He inhabiteth ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... Lenten forty-days fast—and the apostles followed, and all Christendom hath kept it—that these folk call now so foolish. King Achab was not disposed to be wanton in his flesh, when he fasted and went clothed in sackcloth and all besprent with ashes. No more was the king in Nineveh and all the city, but they wailed and did painful penance for their sin to procure God to pity them and withdraw his indignation. Anna, who in her widowhood abode so many ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... * *'s tragedy was last night damned. They may bring it on again, and probably will; but damned it was,—not a word of the last act audible. I went (malgre that I ought to have stayed at home in sackcloth for unc., but I could not resist the first night of any thing) to a private and quiet nook of my private box, and witnessed the whole process. The first three acts, with transient gushes of applause, oozed patiently ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... have more indignantly resented the process than did that small quadruped,—his Celtic feelings being so severely wounded by it, in fact, that he abstained from sustenance for three days, putting himself into moral sackcloth and ashes for that period by retiring into his penitential cell ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Lenten days begin, That penance which their holy rites prepare To shrive from Man his weight of mortal sin, By daily abstinence and nightly prayer; But ere his sackcloth garb Repentance wear, Some days of joyaunce are decreed to all, To take of pleasaunce each his secret share, In motley robe to dance at masking ball, And join the mimic train ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... to either. When at peace with the Lord, they are fighting with their neighbors; when at peace with them, worshiping their gods and giving them their daughters in marriage, then the Lord is angry, and vents His wrath on them. Thus, they are continually between two fires; now repenting in sackcloth and ashes, and now, with the help of the ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... her cruelty; that there was nothing left her but to die, and all that sort of thing; and for three days she was little better than a mad woman. At the end of that time, after the fashion of her people, she retired to her own room, covered herself with sackcloth and ashes, and remained hidden from all eyes for the space of a fortnight, weeping and wailing constantly and touching nothing but ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Lord: "The holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months. And I will give power unto My two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.... And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... and love one another. His words were a cry of the heart, an appeal to the consciences of all his fellow-citizens, almost recalling the passionate utterances of the prophets of Israel. Like those witnesses for Jehovah the "little poor man" of Assisi had put on sackcloth and ashes to denounce the iniquities of his people, like theirs was his courage and heroism, like theirs the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... and Tarquin strides, Subtle Grimalkin to his quarry glides— Grimalkin grim, that slew the fierce rodent Whose tooth insidious Johann's sackcloth rent. ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... the loss of friends, which forms the heaviest of trials, the deepest ground of soul sadness. We put on the sable attire as emblems of mourning; but if we saw it as a weeping Jesus sees it, there is more real cause for sackcloth and ashes in the heart at enmity with God, and despising His salvation, trampling under foot His Son, and enacting over again the sad ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... these rash statements," said the old gentleman, rising faintly from his seat. "You will repent them, sir, in sackcloth. I wish with all my heart that Mr. Weil was here, for he would at least try to help ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... against the returning penitent; but a severe and solemn form of discipline was instituted, which, while it served to expiate his crime, might powerfully deter the spectators from the imitation of his example. Humbled by a public confession, emaciated by fasting and clothed in sackcloth, the penitent lay prostrate at the door of the assembly, imploring with tears the pardon of his offences, and soliciting the prayers of the faithful. [147] If the fault was of a very heinous nature, whole years of penance were esteemed an inadequate satisfaction ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... subsequent events have shown to be temporary in the world's demand for iron and steel goods. Even were this decline permanent, it would not be the fault of our manufacturers, nor—except as a device for reducing their personal expenditure—is there any reason why these gentlemen should sit in sackcloth and ashes. ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... expedition a failure and the Grand Duke Nicholas sent off, and everyone knows the Czar of Rooshia is a pro-German and the Allies have no ammunition and Bulgaria is going against us. And the end is not yet, for England and France must be punished for their deadly sins until they repent in sackcloth and ashes.' 'I think myself,' I said, 'that they will do their repenting in khaki and trench mud, and it seems to me that the Huns should have a few sins to repent of also.' 'They are instruments in the hands of the Almighty, to purge the garner,' said Sophia. And ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... I was in the dumps. It was a dull world, and all the tigers I had ever shot were mounted on sackcloth, or stuffed with ashes. Sounds disgusting, doesn't it? But suddenly, the sun broke out, and dulness and tigers fled together. I suppose I must always have been a creature of moods, and didn't know it; for all it took to change gray Purgatorio to blue Paradiso was ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the strong and self-confident! There is no more reason in it than that. He shot Cynthia Ware, and what she suffered in secret Coniston never guessed. What parallels in history shall I quote to bring home the enormity of such a mesalliance? Orthodox Coniston would have gone into sackcloth and ashes,—was soon to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to guilty man to seek in him their strength; in this time when Religion should have restored sight to the blind, made the lame to walk, and bound up the broken-hearted, she was herself mourning in sackcloth. Out of her courts came the noise of warring sects; some contending against others with bitter warfare; and some, possessed of a demon, wallowed upon the ground foaming and rending themselves. In a time ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... and forms of woe, Are turn'd to joy and praises now; I throw my sackcloth on the ground, And ease and gladness ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... she ate.) Catering. (Kate. Her ring.) Hero. (He row.) Tennessee. (Ten, I see.) The following are also good charade words: Knighthood, penitent, looking-glass, hornpipe, necklace, indolent, lighthouse, Hamlet, pantry, phantom, windfall, sweepstake, sackcloth, antidote, antimony, pearl powder, kingfisher, football, housekeeping, infancy, snowball, definite, bowstring, carpet, Sunday, Shylock, earwig, matrimony, cowhiding, welcome, friendship, horsemanship, coltsfoot, bridegroom, ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... and drink the waters of the Arno. You shall wander over ancient battle-fields, encounter the fierce Apennine blast, and be rocked on the Mediterranean wave, which the sirocco heaps up, huge and dark, and pours in a foaming cataract upon the strand of Italy. Finally, we shall tread together the sackcloth plain on which Rome sits, with the leaves of her torn laurel and the fragments of her shivered sceptre strewn around her, waiting with discrowned and downcast head the bolt of doom. Entering the gates of the "seven-hilled city," we shall climb the Capitol, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... friend is in the glow of a summer sunset: and we call him unsympathetic and unfeeling. If we let him know the state of our world, we should see the rosehues fade from his, and our friend put off his singing robes, and sit down with us in sackcloth and ashes, to share ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... Had I but slain him, I had gone on high, Crowned with eternal glory! Heaven, forgive My feebleness of arm that reached him not, And take thy servant to thy mercy. 'Tis A glorious triumph still; proud Babylon's No more; the Harlot of the Seven Hills Hath changed her scarlet raiment for sackcloth ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... said, "This is their appearance when viewed in their own light; but if light from heaven flows in, their faces are changed, and so is their dress;" and so it came to pass: they then appeared with dark faces, and dressed in black sackcloth; but when this light was withdrawn, they appeared as before. I presently entered into conversation with some of them, and said, "I heard the shout of a crowd about you, 'O how learned!' may I be allowed therefore to have a little conversation ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... esquilador, reseating himself upon Paco's bed, from which he had risen to give admittance to the muleteer. The bed consisted of a wooden catre, or frame, supporting a large square bag of the coarsest sackcloth, half full of dried maize-leaves, and having a rent in the centre, through which to introduce the arm, and shake up the contents. The only other furniture of the room was a chair with a broken back. On the floor lay the gipsy's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... imaginary misdeeds, and none at all over real ones; there will be compensatory church-going, with delightful little monogram-covered prayer-books. But will the flesh be mortified by any real rough sackcloth and ashes? It is hardly to be hoped. Neither Lent, nor religion, nor judgment, nor anything but poverty and absolute impotence, will put a period to the wild pursuit of pleasure that a fashionable season begins. Ill for the next generation, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed fasting, and arrayed themselves in sackcloth, as well the great as the small ...
— The Story Of The Prophet Jonas • Anonymous
... penitent saints serve us as saving beacons to guide our course during the tempest. Many a feeble soul would have suffered shipwreck had it not taken refuge near those tutelary towers where are suspended the memorial deeds of the sainted heroes whose armor was sackcloth, whose watchword the sigh of repentance poured out in the ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... "Can sackcloth clothe a fault or hide a shame? Or do thy hands make Heaven a recompense, By strewing dust upon thy briny face? No! though thou pine thyself with willing want, Or face look thin, or carcass ne'er so gaunt; Such holy madness ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... never did, nor will do. The hapless generation that now reads these words ought to hold its peace when it has read them, and sink into unutterable reflections, not unmixed with tears, and some substitute for 'sackcloth and ashes,' if it liked. In its poor canting, sniffling, flimsy vocabulary, there is no word that can make any response to them. This man has a living God-inspired soul in him, not an enchanted artificial 'substitute for salt,' as our fashion is. They that have human eyes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... many months of this really annoying conduct, poor Campbell laid his case before the Presbyters, in 1655, thirty years before the date of publication. So a "solemn humiliation" was actually held all through the bounds of the synod. But to little purpose did Glenluce sit in sackcloth and ashes. The good wife's plate was snatched away before her very eyes, and then thrown back at her. In similar "stirs," described by a Catholic missionary in Peru soon after Pizarro's conquest, the cup of an Indian chief was lifted up by an invisible hand, and set ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... "We are all preparing to leave the Mediterranean, a measure which I cannot approve. They at home do not know what this fleet is capable of performing; anything, and everything. Much as I shall rejoice to see England, I lament our present orders in sackcloth and ashes, so dishonourable to the dignity of England." To the British minister at Naples his words were even stronger: "Till this time it has been usual for the allies of England to fall from her, but till now she never was known to desert her friends whilst ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the repentance stool. A very good specimen of this old-time relic may be seen in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries, at Edinburgh. It is from the church of Old Greyfriars, of Edinburgh. In the same museum is a sackcloth, or gown of repentance, formerly used at the parish church of ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... father— peace be with his ashes! I remembered thee at once, boy though thou wert when thy steps shook off the dust against Granada. I remembered thee, I say, at once, on thy return; but I have kept thy secret, trusting that, through thy soul and genius, thy fallen brethren might put off sackcloth and feast ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... him there was a great and ever increasing gathering of people—a mighty throng, in fact. Arriving at the fringe of the crowd which grew closer and closer, as well as greater, every moment, he was amazed to see two very striking looking Easterns, clothed in sackcloth, and standing high upon a mound of stone. The appearance of the two men was extraordinary. The face of the elder of the two was ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... Tristram took no joy in their joy because he was filled with such heavy melancholy that it was as though even the blue sky had turned to sackcloth to his eyes, so that he beheld nothing bright in all ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... a dirge accompanied by trumpets was sung, "And the King said to all the people that were with him, rend your clothes and gird you with sackcloth and mourn. And the King himself followed the bier. And they buried him; and the King lifted up his voice and wept at the grave, and all the people wept. And the King said unto his servants, Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... would. Beggars mustn't be choosers; but if they might, I should say it was the very thing. Sackcloth, you know; and then, perhaps, the ashes might be excused. I'm in solemn earnest, though. I'm reformed. You've done it; and you," she added, turning round short on Leslie Goldthwaite,—"you've been at it a long time, unbeknownst to yourself; and you, ma'am,—you finished it last night. ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... breast, so I flee to Thee. I know that Satan, the Old Lion, is hunting me; for he is the father of the gods of Egypt, and I have insulted them and destroyed their images. I have no hope but in Thee. See, I have cast off all my beautiful robes and ornaments; I sit here in sackcloth and ashes; I have fasted and wept these seven days, because I know that I have done wrong in worshipping dumb idols, and in speaking scornfully against Joseph. But, Lord, I did it in ignorance; save me, and above all watch over Joseph, whom I love more than ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James
... at all the art of the Middle Ages, nor its saints, whose vestment was sackcloth and whose body was a mere lay figure for a soul devoted entirely to purity, to simplicity, to mysticism, and to the other world. In the Sixteenth Century, however, people took the sackcloth from the saints and dressed them in flesh. Then was produced a kind of revival ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... you don't wish to get chafed at every turn, fold up your pride carefully, put it under lock and key, and only let it out to air upon grand occasions. Pride is a garment all stiff brocade outside, all grating sackcloth on the side next to the ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... be broken on the wheels of many woes. At white-heat, brand thyself; and count the scars, like old war-worn veterans, over camp-fires. Soft poet! brushing tears from lilies—this way! and howl in sackcloth and in ashes! Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow. Oh! there is a fierce, a cannibal delight, in the grief that shrieks to multiply itself. That grief is miserly of its own; it pities ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... King David into Queen Philippa's keeping. She came herself to the camp, just as the brave men of Calais had been starved out; and Edward had said he would only consent not to burn the town down, if six of the chief townsmen would bring him the keys of the gates, kneeling, with sackcloth on, and halters round their necks, ready to be hung. Queen Philippa wept when she saw them, and begged that they might be spared; and when the king granted them to her she had them led away, and gave each a good dinner and a fresh suit of clothes. The king, however, turned all the French ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about the good times she was having, and the parties she went to, and the new dresses she got. New dresses! When I read that letter of Anne's, I knew that all the purple and fine linen in the world was just like so much sackcloth and ashes to her as long as Gilbert was sulking out on ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... which thou hast given me, but I beseech thee of thy mercy that my soul may be brought to the light which hath no end. Having said thus, he stript himself of the royal robes adorned with gold in which he was arrayed, and took the crown from his head and placed it upon the altar; and he put sackcloth upon the carrion of his body, and prayed to God, confessing all the sins which he had committed against him, and took his acquittal from the Bishops, for they absolved him from his sins; and forthwith he there received extreme ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... salvation to mourning Jerusalem, in which the covenant-people appears to the Prophet as personified. (Jerusalem does not stand for "the carried away Zionites;" it is an ideal person, the afflicted and bowed down widow sitting on the ground in sackcloth; the distressed and mourning mother of the children partly carried away, and partly killed,—compare chap. iii. 26, where Jerusalem, desolate and emptied, sits upon the ground.) But this salvation can be granted to those ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... character turned it into disaster; and as he possessed but one line of defence, the failure of his tactics was the ruin of his cause. Although he despaired prematurely, and was vociferously repentant of his part in the great days of June, parading his sackcloth before Europe, he never faltered in the conviction that the interests of no class, of no family, of no man, can be preferred to those of the nation. Napoleon once said with a sneer: "You are still the man of 1789." Mounier replied: "Yes, sir. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Henry to approach him, to prove his penitence and atone for his contempt of the Holy See. The prince delayed not to avail himself of this grace; and the next morning presented himself at the inner gate of the castle, barefoot and in sackcloth, where he remained, fasting, from daybreak to sunset. This he repeated the second and ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... spirits who instruct also apply themselves to their left side, but more in front. They, too, reprove, but mildly, and then teach them how they ought to live. They also appear dark, yet not, like the former, as clouds, but as if clothed with sackcloth. These are called Instructors, but the former, Chastisers When these spirits are present, angelic spirits are also present, sitting at the head, which they fill in a peculiar manner: their presence there is also perceived as a gentle breathing, for they fear lest their approach and influx should ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... nation. Then Judith went to the House of the Lord and fell upon her face and called upon the Lord who breakest the battles to bless her purpose. She went thereafter to her house, put off the garments of widowhood and of sackcloth, and bathed, and anointed herself with precious ointment, and put on the garments of gladness, with bracelets and chains and rings and ornaments to lure the eyes of all the men that should see her. Then she went forth with her maid out of the city of Bethulia into the camp of the Assyrians, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... the skies. The infinite height above the firmament stretched its azure expanse, bespangled with unnumbered stars, and adorned with the moon 'walking in brightness;' while the transparent surface both received and returned her silver image. Here, instead of being covered with sackcloth,[A] she shone with resplendent lustre; or rather with a lustre multiplied in proportion to the ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... glee by declaring that I was now a partner in a prosperous undertaking establishment, and that written jokes might go hide their heads in sackcloth and ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... mother, and such a mother, the words of bitterness and passion, are unworthy to receive the pledge of love. My eyes are opened to the enormity of my offence, and I abhor myself in dust and ashes; my spirit shall clothe itself in garments of sackcloth and mourning, and drink of the bitter cup of humiliation. Hear, then, my solemn vow;—nay, my mother, nay, Gabriella,—I must, I will speak. My Saviour fasted forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, he, who knew not sin, and shall not I, vile ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... climates. From thence it commeth that the people of the East partes did breake and rent in peeces their garmentes when they had understanding of euil newes. Wherefore they did lye weltering and tumblinge upon the ground, put on sackcloth, put on ashes, or dust upon their heads, yea then, when they pretended to shew some repentance, and to manifest or set out an inward greefe: all which thinges would bee founde, and thought rediculous, foolish, ...
— A Treatise Of Daunses • Anonymous
... a space that I met her— Just for a day in the train! It began when she feared it would wet her, That tiniest spurtle of rain: So we tucked a great rug in the sashes, And carefully padded the pane; And I sorrow in sackcloth and ashes, Longing to ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... which gave its name to the pirate ship "Alabama" now votes for tariffs to exclude the iron, steel, and coal of England. Sheffield is in sackcloth and ashes because Pennsylvania has taken away from her the Russian order for armor plates, and countless millions of British dollars are invested in American factories, giving high wages to tariff-protected American workmen instead of sweaters' ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... the Bible needs any description of Oriental mourning for the dead. The rent garments and sackcloth (2 Sam. iii. 31), loud weeping and wailing (ver. 32), protracted lamentation as for Jacob (Gen. 1.10 and 11), and for Moses (Deut. xxxiv. 8), and the hired mourning women (Jer. ix. 17, and Matt. ix. 23), were to be found nowhere ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... waited on us looking like some old crazy loon out of the Bible. He'd made himself a prickly shirt of sackcloth and had smeared his black head and brown face with gray ashes. Big Bahut whimpered all night and trumpeted as ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... make such a pretty lover, John. If I could only paint you in your sackcloth and ashes, I should die in content. What is it like, mon ami, to feel like moralizing in a rose-garden by moonlight? What do they tell you—the roses? Of the dull earth from which they come? Don't they whisper of the kisses of the night winds, of the drinking of the dew—of the mad joy of living—the ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... eyelids lay The sweet lights of my childhood, one by one Did leave me dark before the natural sun, And I astonied fell, and could not pray, A thought within me to myself did say, "Is God less God that thou art left undone? Rise, worship, bless Him! in this sackcloth spun, As in that purple!"—But I answer, Nay! What child his filial heart in words can loose, If he behold his tender father raise The hand that chastens sorely? Can he choose But sob in silence with an upward gaze? And my great Father, thinking ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... has repented marrying me," added Mrs. Yorke, who liked occasionally to crack a dry jest against matrimony, even though it should be at her own expense. "He has repented it in sackcloth and ashes, Robert Moore, as you may well believe when you see his punishment" (here she pointed to her children). "Who would burden themselves with such a set of great, rough lads as those, if they could help it? It is not only bringing them into the world, though that is ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Army man ever passed St. Louis without leaving a heart, or taking one with him? What wonder that these gay young beauties emptied many an Army pocket for flowers and gems, and only filled many an Army heart with despondency in return? Sackcloth lay beyond, on the frontier. Ball followed ball, one packed reception another. Dinings and sendings of flowers, and evening love-makings—these for the time seemed the main business of Jefferson Barracks. Social exemptions are always ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... Jews of old) the fast which I have chosen? Is it a day for a man to afflict his soul, and bow down his head like a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him (playing at being sad, while God has not made him sad)? Wilt thou call this a fast, and an ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the undersigned, do regret in sackcloth and ashes our serious misconduct in going away at an improper time, and in an improper manner, on a sleigh-ride, without your ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... And shall cause their voice to be heard over thee, and shall cry bitterly, And shall cast up dust upon their heads, and wallow in the ashes; And they shall make themselves bald for thee, and gird them with sackcloth, And they shall weep for thee in bitterness of soul with bitter mourning. And in their wailing they shall take up a lamentation for thee, And lament over thee saying, Who is there like Tyre, Like her that is brought to silence in the midst of the sea? When thy wares went ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... high-priest, and with their hands mutually interfolded, one upon the other, he vowed to renounce, then and there, the world with all its cares and temptations, and to observe with obedience the doctrines of Buddha. This done, he was clad afresh in sackcloth, and led from the temple to the royal monastery, Watt Brahmanee Waid; with bare feet and eyes downcast he went, still chanting those ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... in Vice.—Are these lines perused by any one who has ever taught another this vice so vile, and so certainly followed by penalties so terrible—penalties not upon the instigator but upon the hapless victim? let such a person clothe himself in sackcloth and ashes, and do penance for the remainder of his life. The only way in which he can hope to atone even in some small degree for such a heinous crime, is by doing all in his power to warn those in danger against this sin. When all ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... fell upon a shop where were no jewels, nor gold, nor costly silks, nor pearls of great price; but all that was in it was coarse sackcloth, and rough and hairy garments, and heaps of ashes, and here and there a loaf of bitter bread, and bitter herbs, and bottles wherein tears were stored. As he gazed on this shop something seemed to whisper to his heart, "Go and buy." So he went with his sorrowful heart, ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... completely altered the whole manner of his life. He turned off all his brilliant followers, ate coarse food, drank bitter water, wore next his skin sackcloth covered with dirt and vermin (for it was then thought very religious to be very dirty), flogged his back to punish himself, lived chiefly in a little cell, washed the feet of thirteen poor people every day, and looked as miserable as he possibly ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... got fairly into the wine. The cura had thrown aside his sanctity and become human like the rest; the padres had forgotten their sackcloth and bead-roll, and the senior of them, Padre Joaquin, entertained the table with spicy adventures which had occurred to him before he became a monk. Echevarria related anecdotes of Paris, with many adventures he ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... man, with a leer, "sitting in sackcloth and ashes, more ashes than sackcloth. Have you ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... him as king of the great city of Nineveh, and after the lapse of many centuries, when Jonah came to Nineveh, and prophesied the overthrow of the city on account of the evil done by the people, it was Pharaoh who, seized by fear and terror, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes, and with his own mouth made proclamation and published this decree through Nineveh: "Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not feed nor drink water; for I know there is no god beside ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... instead of that I have given him cause to curse me till the day of his death. Though I still live, and eat, and sleep, I think of that always. The remembrance is never away from me. They bid those who repent put on sackcloth, and cover themselves with ashes. That is my sackcloth, and it is very sore. Those thoughts are ashes to me, and they are ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... notable scenes in this wide world of ours. Far as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid ashen gray; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of space in the warm sunset, oppressive, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... when they were sick, I put on sackcloth, and humbled my soul with fasting: and my prayer shall turn into ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... drove me forth with scorn; and then I coined the lying tale— O! forgive me, Uncle Roland! give me leave to weep and wail; Give me leave to sit in sackcloth, heaping ashes on my head; Mourning in some craggy cavern for the early ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... publick a Manner. It must be allowed, that any young Fellow that affects to dress and appear genteelly, might with artificial Management save ten Pound a Year; as instead of fine Holland he might mourn in Sackcloth, and in other Particulars be proportionably shabby: But of what great Service would this Sum be to avert any Misfortune, whilst it would leave him deserted by the little good Acquaintance he has, and prevent ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... deepening colours of the West. Her sisterly warmth surprised the woeful spotted beauty with a reflection that this martial Janey was after all a woman of feeling, one whom her husband, if he came to know it and the depth of it, the rich sound of it, would mourn in sackcloth to have lost. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... brought it to their father, and said, "We found this; see whether it is your son's coat or not." He recognized it and said, "It is my son's coat! A wild beast has devoured him! Joseph surely is torn in pieces." Then Jacob tore his clothes, put sackcloth about his waist, and mourned for his son many days. All his sons and his daughters tried to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted, saying, "I shall go down to the grave mourning for my son." Thus Joseph's ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... because they changed not their minds. [11:21]Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works which have been done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have changed their minds long ago in sackcloth and ashes. [11:22]But I tell you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in a day of judgment than for you. [11:23]And you, Capernaum, which are exalted even to heaven, shall go down even to hades; for if the mighty works which have been done in you had been done in Sodom, it ...
— The New Testament • Various
... men, Psal. cvii. 13. "when their heart was humbled with heaviness, they cried to the Lord in their troubles, and he delivered them from their distress." And they have found good success in so doing, as David confesseth, Psal. xxx. 12. "Thou hast turned my mourning into joy, thou hast loosed my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness." Therefore he adviseth all others to do the like, Psal. xxxi. 24. "All ye that trust in the Lord, be strong, and he shall establish your heart." It is reported by [2819]Suidas, speaking of Hezekiah, that there ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... stubbornness. ..... Wherefore confession is the discipline of a man's prostrating and humbling himself, enjoining such a conversation as invites mercy. It restrains a man even as to the matter of dress and food, requiring him to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to hide his body in filthy garments, to afflict his soul with sorrow, to exchange for severe treatment the sins in which he indulged; for the rest to use simple things for meat and drink, that is, for the sake of the soul, and not to please the appetite: for the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... much of her time had been occupied in doing the tasks of others? He knew well that she disliked the Carrolls. She would speak of her own dislike of them as of her great sin, of which it was necessary that she should repent in sackcloth and ashes. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... Cleo thoughtfully. "Oh, you mean sackcloth and ashes. That's in a different department—Con Grazia, also a different priced goods. But I don't believe we need worry about the laundry work. Mother thought we were perfectly heroic to undertake the task, and she was pleased to death to see the lines of sparkling linens ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... we must wear our sorrow upon our sleeve, why not return to the sackcloth and ashes, as the most consistent demonstration of that grief which, hidden ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the Morning, Fresh as a daisy dipt in the dew, Hearken to me and receive my warning: Though rents be heavy, and bunks be few And most of them troubled with rat or mouse, Never take rooms in a corner house; Or sackcloth and ashes and sad self-scorning Shall be for a ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... he was as unconscious of it as a baby is of its expression. But, once he entered his worldly mind, he became as naively unscrupulous as any other man of the world. Never, in all the years we lived together, did he repent of these particular deeds done in the body. He could be brought to the very sackcloth and ashes for a supposititious sin that he had not really committed; but no man could make him repent of a horse trade, and I never knew but one who had the best of him in one. In common with all circuit riders he had a passion for horses, and a knowledge of them that would have made his fortune ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... her neighbour, Colonel Grey, assented. "I am sure it wouldn't do us any good out there to feel that you were all sitting in sackcloth and ashes. Besides, think how pleasant this is to come home to," he added, looking around the little table. "Jove! What a good-looking girl ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... concentrate official vigilance upon it; there had been a scare about spies carrying explosives in small objects, and one of those experimental orders which pass like waves over bureaucracy had decreed first that all visitors should change their clothes for a sort of official sackcloth, and then (when this method caused some murmurs) that they should at least turn out their pockets. Colonel Morris, the officer in charge, was a short, active man with a grim and leathery face, but a lively and humorous eye—a contradiction ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... her little, close, dark cottage, redolent of smoke and confined air, but as tidy and clean as she could make it. She was seated beside her little fire (consisting of a few red cinders and a bit of stick), busily knitting, with a small sackcloth cushion at her feet, placed for the accommodation of her gentle friend the cat, who was seated thereon, with her long tail half encircling her velvet paws, and her half-closed eyes dreamily gazing ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... three crosses at the top of a sad little hill. It is a crucifixion infinitely more real, more intense than Dore's. Another scene—also engraved by Le Keux: On a stony platform, vast and crowded, the people kneel in sackcloth and ashes; the heavens thunder over the weeping millions of Nineveh, and the Lord of Hosts will not be appeased. Stretching to the clouds are black basaltic battlements, and above rear white-terraced palaces as swans that strain ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... dark places are bathed in the ray of unwonted light. These long lifeless books, once most dainty, but now become corrupt and loathesome, covered with litters of mice and pierced with the gnawings of the worms, and who were once clothed in purple and fine linen, now Iying in sackcloth and ashes, given up to oblivion, seemed to have become habitations of the moth.... Thus the sacred vessels of learning came into our control and stewardship; some by gift, others by purchase, and some lent to us for ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... persisted, feeding himself prodigiously, "is not the fact, but this savage glee over it. It's as though a lot of caged animals set up a howl of delight every time the cage door was opened and a new pair was introduced into the pen. They ought to perform the wedding ceremony in sackcloth and ashes, after duly fasting, accompanied by a few faithful friends garbed ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... unhappy young gentleman was one day walking with another, he met two Capuchin friars, and turning to his companion, when they had passed, "what fools," said he, "are these, to think they shall gain heaven by wearing sackcloth and going barefoot! Fools indeed, if they think so, or that there is any merit in tormenting one's self; they might as well live as we do, and they would get to heaven quite as soon." Who informed against him, whether the friars, his companion, or somebody else, I know not; for the ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... them are often bare: it appears from a passage of Jeremiah that the ancients wounded themselves in the same part, 'Every head shall be bald, and every beard clipt; upon all hands shall be cuttings and upon the loins sackcloth.' Chapter 48:37." Harmer volume ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell |
