"Tonsure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... restore the old worship within the city was often met with scornful mockery, sometimes attended with violence. A dead cat, for instance, was one day found hanging in Cheapside, its head shorn in imitation of a priest's tonsure, and its body clothed in a mock ecclesiastical vestment, with cross before and behind, whilst a piece of white paper to represent a singing-cake was placed between its forefeet, which had been tied together. Bonner was very angry at this travesty of religion, and caused the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... came to a hill that rose out of green meadows. It was covered with dingy pine trees except the top that was bared like a tonsure. A trail ran through the woods; a trail singularly morose and unattractive. The pines looked shabby and black in comparison to the sun on the spring meadows. This was Break-Neck Hill. Perhaps Cuddy felt his ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... more. Ordericus crossed the sea, and arrived in Normandy, an exile, as he describes himself, and "hearing, like Joseph in Egypt, a language which he understood not." In the eleventh year of his age, he received the tonsure from the hands of Mainerius, the abbot of St. Evroul. In the thirty-third year of his age, he was ordained a priest; and thenceforward his life wore away in study and tranquillity. Aged and infirm, he completed his Ecclesiastical History, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... advice of his friends, who told him that he could never make a soldier of such a boy, he allowed me to enter a seminary. I was very happy, and my love of books and my earnest desire to be a priest continued to increase. I was made a deacon and received the tonsure. Then I fell ill. It was the will of Heaven, for I never was ill before that, nor have been since. It was a long illness, a dangerous fever. Just before that time, while I was in the seminary, my father had ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... kidney; Sorbonne students and fierce-eyed priests, with three or four mounted archers, the nucleus that, moving through the streets, had drawn together this concourse. And these with threats and curse and gleaming eyes stood fast, even Tavannes' dare-devils recoiling before the tonsure. The check thus caused allowed those who had budged a breathing space. They rallied behind the black robes, and began to stone the pikes; who in their turn withdrew until they formed two groups, standing on their defence, the one before the window, ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... right anything whatever. On entering there, each one who was rich makes himself poor. What he has, he gives to all. He who was what is called noble, a gentleman and a lord, is the equal of him who was a peasant. The cell is identical for all. All undergo the same tonsure, wear the same frock, eat the same black bread, sleep on the same straw, die on the same ashes. The same sack on their backs, the same rope around their loins. If the decision has been to go barefoot, all go barefoot. There may be a prince among them; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... "our foeman is under the stole and the vestment as much as under the helmet and plate of proof. We have as much to fear from the tonsure as from the hauberk. Strike at the noble and the priest shrieks, strike at priest and the noble lays his hand upon glaive. They are twin thieves who ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... year, but the beauty of his features, the elevation of his stature, and the freshness of his colour, made him appear much younger. His dress, from its colour and make, befitted his sacred profession, and his hair was so cut as to show the tonsure of the priest, so long covered by the red bonnet ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... Maldon, but they lived at Beeleigh. They appear to have been admirable priests; the official Visitor (for they were free from Episcopal control) could on one occasion find nothing amiss save that the Canons wore more luxuriant hair than befitted those who bear the chastening sign of the tonsure, and their abbots seem to have been exceptionally wise and prudent. This sweet pastoral scenery, these slow streams with luxuriant banks and pleasant, sheltered walks, were altogether to their taste. Here were their fish-ponds and their mills. ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... the University in expert tonsure is now well understood, but the craving for the subjugation of falsifying hair must have been quite secondary to that for the sustenance of the bodily powers, and accordingly the cooks stood very near ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... you think not, nor the worry Of meals e'er taken in a flurry, 70 And sleeping with my head so low My tonsure touched the ground, and no Comfort nor pillow for my head, And early mass, and late to bed. And I, your favour for to win, Served out-of-doors as well as in, Bought shell-fish in the market-place, To many an errand set my face —You know, sir, it is as I say— ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... footprint! not a trace that a blood-hound would nose at! But Stephen shall be acknowledged good dog and true. If I had him within stick-length—mind thy head, brother Julian! Thou hast not hair enough to protect it, and thy tonsure shall not. Neither shalt thou tarry at Jericho.—It is a poor man that leaves no trail; and if thou wert poor, I would ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... quietude is equal to that of the fatalist; his resignation does truly enable him to bear all. The true priest, such a one as the Abbe de Veze, lives like a child with its mother; for the Church, my dear Monsieur Godefroid, is a good mother. Well, a man can be a priest without the tonsure; all priests are not in orders. To vow one's self to good, that is imitating a true priest; it is obedience to God. I am not preaching to you; I am not trying to convert you; I am ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... the chapter house, then goes over to the crucifix and stops in front of it. The last strophe of the choral service can be heard from across the courtyard. The CONFESSOR enters from the back; he is dressed in black and white; he has long hair and along beard and a very small tonsure ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... and prettiest Faces for trading Girls; these are remarkable by their Hair, having a particular Tonsure by which they are known, and distinguish'd from those engag'd to Husbands. They are mercenary, and whoever makes Use of them, first hires them, the greatest Share of the Gain going to the King's Purse, who ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... him where to begin; and when he had made a circular tonsure on the top of the head, had ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... were no longer thought enough without a good life; and, as the Greeks said, that beard and cloak did not make a philosopher, so the Egyptians said that white linen and a tonsure would not make a follower of Isis. All the sacrifices to the gods had a secondary meaning, or, at least, they tried to join a moral aim to the outward act; as on the twentieth day of the month, when they ate honey and figs in honour of Thot, they sang "Sweet is truth." ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... not a priestly robe; his black coat, and his waistcoat, tightly gathered in at the waist, set off to great advantage the elegance of his figure: his black cassimere pantaloons disguised his feet, exactly fitted with lace boots, brilliantly polished. And all traces of his tonsure disappeared in the midst of the slight baldness which whitened slightly the back part of his head. There was nothing in his entire costume, or aspect, that revealed the priest, except, perhaps, the entire absence of beard, the more remarkable upon so manly a countenance. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... a man—was very tall, or, rather, he had been very tall. Now he was much bent with age and rheumatism. His long white hair hung low upon his neck, and fell back from a prominent brow. The top of the head was quite bald, like the tonsure of a priest, and shone and glistened in the lamplight, and round this oasis the thin white locks fell down. The face was shrivelled like the surface of a well-kept apple, and, like an apple, rosy red. The features were aquiline and strongly marked; the eyebrows still black and very bushy, and ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... caused him to leave the interrogatory unfinished was a recognition. The countenance he saw was a familiar one, as might be expected after having been so close to his own—within a few feet of it—for days past. No disguise of dress, nor changed tonsure, could hinder identification of the man who had partaken of his chain in the ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... of all the Christian churches were accustomed to shave part of their head; but the form given to this tonsure was different in the former from what was practised in the latter. The Scots and Britons pleaded the antiquity of their usages; the Romans and their disciples, the Saxons, insisted on the universality of theirs. That Easter must ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... that it is a fashion, and nothing more, is unhappily fully established on ample and high authority within the medical prescriptive pale. And, in fact, even as "The Tonsure" or shaving of the crown, became by fashion and mendicity a feature of priesthood and monastic piety, so has the slaughter of the Tonsils come to be regarded by fashion and mendacity as a feature of childhood and ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... night I took fourteen new-comers and set them apart as they came in a room in which they spent the night. On the morrow, profiting by their diurnal immobility, I removed a little of the hair from the centre of the corselet or neck. This slight tonsure did not inconvenience the insects, so easily was the silky fur removed, nor did it deprive them of any organ which might later on be necessary in the search for the female. To them it was nothing; for me it was the unmistakable sign ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... by tonsure does an undisciplined man who speaks falsehood become a Samana; can a man be a Samana who is still held captive ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... were like a woman's, and so was his delicate mouth. The cheeks, shading inward from their natural oval, testified to a life of hardship. His full and broad forehead, bordered by a fringe of hair left around his tonsure, must have overbalanced his lower face, had that not been covered by a short beard, parted on the upper lip and peaked at the end. His eyebrows were well marked, and the large-orbed eyes seemed so full of smiling meditation that Marie said to herself, "This lovely, woman-looking ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... as thou," answered the old man looking from him. "I could forgive this," he touched his battered tonsure, "and all thou hast done against me and mine. That is not little, for when I was a lad, a youth, before I took the priestly yoke upon me, I loved Maria Zerega—but that is nothing. What suffering comes upon me I can bear, but thou hast filled the cup of iniquity ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... itself from the rest and came forward. Dalaber found himself gazing at a small, wiry-looking man in the frock of a priest, whose head was slightly bald in addition to the tonsure, and whose face was thin and lined, as though with vigils and fasting and prayer. It was the face of an ascetic—thin featured and thin lipped, pale almost to cadaverousness, but lighted as though with a ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... on the strength of his personal charms, for Larry had a hanging lip, a snub nose, a low forehead, a large ugly head, whose scrubby grizzled hair grew round the crown somewhat in the form of a priest's tonsure. Not on the strength of his gallantry, for Larry was always talking morality and making sage reflections, while he supplied the womankind with bits of lace, rolls of ribbon, and now and then silk stockings. He always had some plausible story of how they happened ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... their monasteries and the recluses of both systems should be enumerated as Buddhists and Taoists; but I was in the end constrained to widen that judgment, and to admit a considerable following of both among the people, who have neither received the tonsure nor assumed the yellow top. Dr. Eitel, in concluding his discussion of this point in his "Lecture on Buddhism, an Event in History," says: "It is not too much to say that most Chinese are theoretically Confucianists, but emotionally Buddhists ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... remuneration they had obtained from the law-courts proved too strong a temptation to evade the new law. They continued therefore to practise in the Courts, and to hide their clerical identity they concealed the tonsure by covering the upper part of their heads with a black cap or coif. When ultimately clerical barristers were driven from the law-courts, the "coif" or black patch on the crown of a barrister's wig became the symbol of the rank of serjeant-at-law. That this distinguishing ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... time would have been out of sight. But then, in that instant, I saw something happen. The Vidame's hand flashed up above the priest's head, and the cross-hilt of his sheathed sword crashed down with awful force, and still more awful passion, on the other's tonsure! The wretch went down like a log, without a word, without a cry! Amid a roar of rage from a thousand throats, a roar that might have shaken the stoutest heart, and blanched the swarthiest cheek, Bezers ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... evidently of like mind with him in their desire to avoid the press. He lifted his hat in apology, and recognized one of them as the occupant of the proscenium box, the gentleman who had given the roses to the little singer. The other, although in citizen's dress, he saw by the tonsure was a priest. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... priestly garments, that these, piece by piece, and each with an appropriate insult malediction, may be stripped from him again. The sacred vessels are placed in his hands, that from him, "accursed Judas that he is," they may be taken again. There is some difficulty in erasing his tonsure; but this difficulty with a little violence and cruelty is overcome. A tall paper cap, painted over with flames and devils, and inscribed "Heresiarch," is placed upon his head. This done, and his soul having been duly delivered to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... eighteen rondeaux, intended, perhaps, as a design for a stained-glass window in honour of the saint at Croyland. They quaintly describe, in exquisite delicacy of form and colour, how the young Guthlac, after taking leave of his parents, renounces the profession of arms, and receives the tonsure at the hands of Bishop Hedda. Then, sailing away in a boat to Croyland, he builds an oratory with the help of two companions, Becelin and Tatwin, and an angel converses with him. No sooner is he launched on his new career of prayer, good works, and bodily mortification, than demons assail him, carry ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... uniting my prayers with his, and all good souls, for the repose of his sainted lady. I accept your invitation thankfully; and, considering it a call from Heaven to give me rest, I welcome the day that marks the poor harper of Ellerslie with the sacred tonsure." ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... is dead and gone from the earth, for she pined from famine after the years of the great sickness; and my brother was slain in the French wars, and none thanked him for dying save he that stripped him of his gear; and my unwedded wife with whom I dwelt in love after I had taken the tonsure, and all men said she was good and fair, and true she was and lovely; she also is dead and gone from the earth; and why should I abide save for the deeds of the flesh which must be done? Truly, friend, this is but an old tale that men must die; and I will tell ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... passengers on board, and among others a monk, in a long brown frock of woollen cloth, with an immense cape, and a little black covering over his tonsure. He was a tall figure, with a gray beard, and might have walked, just as he stood, out of a picture by one of the old masters. This holy person addressed me very affably in Italian; but we found it impossible to hold ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... grew to admire him. He resolved to eliminate the tonsure and dress in citizens' clothes. His resolution stuck, and as soon as his hair had grown out, he went home and told his father and patron that he had abandoned theology and wished to study law. And so he was sent to Orleans and placed in the office of the eminent judge, Peter ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... were held to be a prerogative of gentle blood, extra intelligence in the lower classes being almost an impertinence. The only exception to this rule lay with the Church. She was allowed to develop a brain in whom she would. The sacredness of her tonsure protected the man who wore it, permitting him to exhibit as much (or as little) of manners, intellect, and morals, as ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... remaining hope is to go home to those native mountains, if it may be, with the dead body of his boy, dead "the very morning on which he should have received the tonsure from the hands of Mgr. l'Archeveque," and buried now temporarily at ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... hand over his tonsure in sign of impatience. "One word," he began in the most conciliatory tone, though fuming with irritation, "here we're not dealing with the instruction in Castilian alone. Here there is an underhand fight between the students and the University of Santo Tomas. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... grow magniloquent. My object is attained if I can but show that when my friend took me under his wing at the Institute long years agone, when the innocent-looking lad with the fair hair, that might have had an incipient tonsure superimposed without incongruity, drifted away from text-books of mechanics, and sat down with Schiller, Ducoudray, and Carlyle, he little imagined how adventurous a spirit there boiled under that demure disguise of retiring scholarship—a spirit fired with an ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee |
