"Austere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in black, with a very elegant and graceful figure, she had attracted him from the first. She had an air of great dignity and a grave and thoughtful face which made it impossible to penetrate the secret of her soul, and which would have seemed austere had it not been framed in a cloud of fair curls, resisting all attempts at discipline and setting a halo of light ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... of the dead in desert places, Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor, Hills of sheep, and the homes of the silent vanished races, And winds austere and pure. ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... a greater impression at Paris than the Turkish ambassador. He was generous and more gallant, paid his court with more address, and conformed more readily to French customs and manners. The Turk was irascible, austere, and irritable, while the Persian was fond of and well understood a joke. One day, however, he became red with anger, and it must be admitted not ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... applause. Get what you want, set England fairly in sight of the crowd, and you are a mighty-minded man." Now the first and last comment upon such a doctrine must be that, if a God exist, it is false. It sets up a part to override the whole: it flaunts a local success against the austere majesty of Divine law. In brief, it foolishly derides the universal, saying that it chooses to consider the particular as more important. But it is not. Poetry's concern is with the universal: and what makes the Celts ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Arctic regions" as Marshall would say. Cold? There may be in the vast, dead planets of space places much colder than the North pole; but these would have been warm and comfortable compared with the atmosphere of Judge Woodworth-Granger's austere office when he turned his eyes on the person of Mr. James Gollop. Here before him, grinning and sticking out a plump, friendly hand, was the man to whose personal similarity he strongly objected, and of whose personal ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... face took on an austere look. It was an insult to the divine powers to assert that they had taken the part of a race horse. But he turned the point to his own ends. "It's quite wrong to abuse the noble animal; and that's one reason why ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... fact, had fallen between two stools. It had fallen between that austere old three-legged stool which was the tripod of the cold priestess of Apollo; and that other mystical and mediaeval stool that may well be called the Stool of Repentance. It kept neither of the two values as intensely valuable. It could ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... literary man of our grandfathers' time. Anybody who has read Thomas Poole and his Friends must have seen how not merely Coleridge, of whose known liability to the weakness the book furnished new proofs, but even, to some extent and vicariously, the austere Wordsworth, cherished the idea. But for the most part, men kept it to themselves. Leigh Hunt never could keep anything to himself, and he has left record on record of the easy manner in which he acted on ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... over ten cities. 18 And the second came, saying, Thy pound, Lord, hath made five pounds. 19 And he said unto him also, Be thou also over five cities. 20 And another came, saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I kept laid up in a napkin: 21 for I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that which thou layedst not down, and reapest that which thou didst not sow. 22 He saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I am an austere man, taking up that which I laid not ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... thus rigid and austere, I never heard that she was at all disinclined to being courted: especially if it gave her any prospect of being able to make herself useful as a wife, either to herself, her husband, or her country. She understood the art of rearing and managing children, in her capacity as ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... out the next morning into the little garden to a fresh silver day, his long face looking more austere than ever in that cold light, his eyelids a little heavy. He carried one of the swords. Turnbull was in the little house behind him, demolishing the end of an early breakfast and humming a tune to himself, which could be heard through the open window. A moment or two later ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... without cowardice of any kind, and without hypocrisy. I believe he had no vanity. He had the pride of a noble man and lived as generously toward the world as I have ever known man to live. This might be said of one who was austere, but the dear, old Commodore was to me, and to us all, the very symbol of warmth. The one thing I criticised in him was his unwillingness that people should discover him for the fanciful, humorous, wise, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... in here, will you?" "Here" was the unused "salon" of the house, and in its austere ugliness would have attracted the girl's attention at any other time. But she had now before her something she had never seen, a perfectly sober Pontefract. And though red, a little puffy, and watery as to eye, the man looked what he was, ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... enchanted with the pleader; and Rienzi returned to Rome, loaded with honours, and clothed with the dignity of high and responsible office. No longer the inactive scholar, the gay companion, he rose at once to pre-eminence above all his fellow-citizens. Never before had authority been borne with so austere an integrity, so uncorrupt a zeal. He had sought to impregnate his colleagues with the same loftiness of principle—he had failed. Now secure in his footing, he had begun openly to appeal to the people; and already a new spirit seemed to animate ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to these, there were certain old men, of austere life, who dwelt in the temples, and wore their hair in plaited strands around their heads (trenzado en circulo), who were consulted on ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... 1472, and Vicenza in 1478. A folio edition, adorned, with most graceful wood- engravings, was published at Venice in 1492. Notwithstanding the freedom with which in divers passages Boccaccio reflected on the morals of the clergy, the Roman Curia spared the book, which the austere Savonarola condemned to the flames. The tradition that the Decameron was among the pile of "vanities" burned by Savonarola in the Piazza della Signoria on the last day of the Carnival of 1497, little more than a year before he was himself burned there, is so intrinsically probable—and accords ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... The autumn-evening. The field Strewn with its dank yellow drifts Of wither'd leaves, and the elms, Fade into dimness apace, 5 Silent;—hardly a shout From a few boys late at their play! The lights come out in the street, In the school-room windows;—but cold, Solemn, unlighted, austere, 10 Through the gathering darkness, arise The chapel-walls, in whose bound Thou, my father! ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... mighty King, I was his disciple so long as I believed in him; but he is not holy. I have abandoned him. He is not austere; his disciples do not practise self-mortifications, and he speaks kindly and dines with sinners. My disciples do not dress in worldly garments; they would not accept the invitation of women; they would ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... ago it was the fashion at Harvard, as well as at other colleges, for professors to cultivate an austere dignity of manner for the purpose of preserving order and decorum in the recitation-room; but this frequently resulted in having the opposite effect and served as a temptation to the students to play practical jokes on their instructors. The habitual dryness of the college ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... hitherto assumed, he caught the outstretched hands and drew her a step nearer. That was his undoing. Strong man though he unquestionably was, like many another strong man his strength seemed to fall from him at a woman's touch. He had led so austere and stern a life during the past four years; of women he had but had the most passing of glances, and intercourse with none save an old female who acted as his housekeeper in Paris. And here was a woman who was not only beautiful, but ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... constructed armour has a flaw somewhere. Noel was assailable by means of Juliette, and through her was at the mercy of everything and every one. In four years, this model young man, this advocate of immaculate reputation, this austere moralist, had squandered not only his own fortune on her, but Madame Gerdy's also. He loved her madly, without reflection, without measure, with his eyes shut. At her side, he forgot all prudence, and thought out loud. In her boudoir, he dropped his mask of habitual dissimulation, ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... full length; and on her calm white face was a look of unholy joy. Beside her, as flat as if glued to the inlaid floor, were Mrs. Hunter, Mrs. Thornton, Coralie Geary, Mrs. Brannan, another old friend of Maria, and—yes—Tom's sister, Susan Delling, austere in her virtues, kind to all, conscientiously smart, and with a fine mahogany complexion that made even a merely powdered woman feel not so much a ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... work of Christ as the true Creator, through the Christian Church, of living morality, what is peculiar and impressive is the way in which sympathy with Christianity in its antique and original form, in its most austere, unearthly, exacting aspects, is combined with sympathy with the practical realities of modern life, with its boldness, its freedom, its love of improvement, its love of truth. It is no common grasp which ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... or other in this 'chiaro fondo di Sorga,' as Carlyle describes, that Jourdain, the hangman-hero of the Glaciere, stuck fast upon his pony when flying from his foes, and had his accursed life, by some diabolical providence, spared for future butcheries. On we go across the austere plain, between fields of madder, the red roots of the 'garance' lying in swathes along the furrows. In front rise ash-grey hills of barren rock, here and there crimsoned with the leaves of the dwarf sumach. A huge cliff stands up and seems to bar all passage. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... mountains hold communion; They are priests, silent and austere, They have come together In a ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... far northern branch of the Saskatchewan River, revered for his gifts, feared for his power, and always approached with something of reluctance by the Indians, who firmly believed the spirit of the gods to dwell within him. He was an austere and taciturn man, difficult of access, and as vain and ambitious as he was haughty and contemptuous. Those who professed to have witnessed the scene told of a trial of power between this man—the Black Snake, as he was called—and a renowned medicine-man of a neighboring ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... account of Cochin (J.R.A.S. April, 1896, p. 343): "Here also is another class of men, called Chokis (Yogi), who lead austere lives like the Taoists of China, but who, however, are married. These men from the time they are born do not have their heads shaved or combed, but plait their hair into several tails, which hang over their shoulders; they wear no clothes, but round their ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... "Order of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Jesus Christ and of the Temple of Solomon," were revised by the first Abbot of Clairvaux, St. Bernard himself. Extremely austere and earnest, they were divided into seventy-two heads, and enjoined severe and constant devotional exercises, self-mortification, fasting, prayer, and regular attendance at matins, vespers, and all the services of the Church. Dining in one common ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... humanity. You will see that its fate has been ever to choose between the least of two evils, and ever to commit great faults in order to avoid others still greater. You will see.... on one side, the heathen mythology, that debased the spirit, in its efforts to deify the flesh; on the other, the austere Christian principle, that debased the flesh too much, in order to raise the worship of the spirit. You will see, afterwards, how the religion of Christ embodies itself in a church, and raises itself a generous democratic power against the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... heaven broke upon my vision, that breadth of mere white which is indeed almost the definition of Paradise, since it means purity and also means freedom. But alas! like all heavens, now that it is seen it is found to be unattainable; it looks more austere and more distant than the blue sky outside the window. For my proposal to paint on it with the bristly end of a broom has been discouraged—never mind by whom; by a person debarred from all political rights—and even my minor proposal ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... passion month after month, neither betraying his secret to the other; for the austere orders which they were about to assume precluded the idea of love and marriage. Until then they had dwelt in the calm air of religious meditations, unmoved except by that pious fervor which in other ages taught men to brave the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the lovers, once so tender, now all at once so cold and hardened; once so coy and familiar now suddenly so reserved, distant, hard and austere, is always a sure case of jealousy. A jealous person is first talkative, very affectionate, and then all at once changes and becomes cold, reserved and repulsive, apparently without cause. If a person is jealous before ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... doth a leaping fish Send through the tarn a lonely cheer; The crags repeat the raven's croak, In symphony austere; Thither the rainbow comes—the cloud— And mists that spread the flying shroud; And sunbeams; and the sounding blast, That, if it could, would hurry past, But that enormous ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... is not, perhaps, so small as my imagination presents it to me; but I cannot see it save with the desert as a background—the desert austere and illimitable. You reach the prim little front door by climbing a street which runs parallel with the Rio Grande, and the church is almost the last structure you will pass before you set forth into a No-Man's ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... recommend or dissuade the practice. But I must speak out. The question is this—whether we ought to let the lovers of our boys associate and be with them, or on the contrary, debar them from their company and scare them off. For when I look at fathers self-opinionated sour and austere, who think their sons having lovers a disgrace not to be borne, I am rather afraid of recommending the practice. But when, on the other hand, I think of Socrates, Xenophon, AEschines, Cebes, and all the company of those men who have approved of male loves, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... and a silver collar, on which the Viscountess's arms were engraven, preceded her and bore her cushion; then came her gentlewoman; a little pack of spaniels barking and frisking about preceded the austere huntress—then, behold, the Viscountess herself "dropping odors." Esmond recollected from his childhood that rich aroma of musk which his mother-in-law (for she may be called so) exhaled. As the sky grows redder and redder towards ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... Jersey—who could have expected that the Commons would again make friendly overtures to his Majesty? Yet such was the fact. The tergiversation, however, was gradual. Through the rest of February, the whole of March and most of April, the Commons were still in their austere fit, utterly ignoring the King, and prosecuting punctiliously such pieces of business as the Reply to the recent Declarations and Protests of the Scots, and the Revision of the Westminster Assembly's Confession of Faith and Larger Catechism. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... reading to the congregated children of Hellas, to the whole representative family of civilisation, that loveliest of earthly narratives, which, in nine musical cantos, unfolded the whole luxury of human romance as at the bar of some austere historic Areopagus, and, inversely again, which crowded the total abstract of human records, sealed[11] as with the seal of Delphi in the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... him we find a rare combination of genius, culture, and refinement, blended with a tender concern for all earth's unfortunates. He is at once artist, philosopher, and philanthropist; but he is more than these; there is much of the austere religious reformer, giving a serious gravity to all the utterances of the glad-souled artist, a mingling of the spirit of a Savonarola with the ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... this was that, so long as Lorenzo lived in riches, happiness, and magnificence, Savonarola had never been willing, whatever entreaties were made, to sanction by his presence a power which he considered illegitimate. But Lorenzo on his deathbed sent for him, and that was another matter. The austere preacher set forth at once, bareheaded and barefoot, hoping to save not only the soul of the dying man but also ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... these lines knew Morny. Morny and Walewsky held in the quasi-reigning family the positions, one of Royal bastard, the other of Imperial bastard. Who was Morny? We will say, "A noted wit, an intriguer, but in no way austere, a friend of Romieu, and a supporter of Guizot possessing the manners of the world, and the habits of the roulette table, self-satisfied, clever, combining a certain liberality of ideas with a readiness to accept useful crimes, finding means to wear a gracious smile with bad teeth, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... seed and seedling. Then he was a god, to the red man's dreaming; Then the chiefs brought treasures grotesque and fair,— Magical trinkets and pipes and guns, Beads and furs from their medicine-lair,— Stuck holy feathers in his hair, Hailed him with austere delight. The orchard god was their ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... Kettle, it must be confessed, felt none of the artist's pride in finding his art appreciated. He had always the South Shields chapel at the back of his mind, with its austere code and creed, and he felt keenly the degradation of lowering himself to the level of the play-actor; even though he was earning his bare existence—and had been doing all through the heart of barbarous Africa—by mumming ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... bring his quiet chair out, turned To Brunelleschi's church, and pour alone The lava of his spirit when it burned: It is not cold to-day. O passionate Poor Dante who, a banished Florentine, Didst sit austere at banquets of the great And muse upon this far-off stone of thine And think how oft some passer used to wait A moment, in the golden day's decline, With "Good night, dearest Dante!"—well, good night! I muse now, Dante, and think verily, Though chapelled ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Miss Romeyn by going to ruin. With alluring seductiveness the thought insinuated itself into his mind that one of the first steps in the tragedy might be a game and wine supper, and his growing hunger made this mode of revenge more attractive than cold and austere ambition. ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... doth a leaping fish Send through the tarn a lonely cheer; The crags repeat the raven's croak In symphony austere; Thither the rainbow comes—the cloud, And mists that spread the flying shroud, And sunbeams, and the sounding blast, That, if it could, would hurry past, But that ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... Holt's conduct was faultless. Pollexfen, an older man than Holt or Somers, retained a little,—and a little was too much,—of the tone of that bad school in which he had been bred. But, though he once or twice forgot the austere decorum of his place, he cannot be accused of any violation of substantial justice. The prisoners themselves seem to have been surprised by the fairness and gentleness with which they were treated. "I would not mislead the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to mind him," responded the child. She passed rapidly and apprehensively through the kitchen, but paused on the doorstep to make some overtures to Mrs. Wiggins. If that austere dame was not to be propitiated, a line of retreat was open to the barn. "Say," ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... daughter, the queen dowager went, before leaving France, to see her own mother, who was a widow, and who was living at a considerable distance from Paris in seclusion, and in a state of austere and melancholy grief, on account of the loss of her husband. Instead of forgetting her sorrows, as she ought to have done, and returning calmly and peacefully to the duties and enjoyments of life, she had given herself ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... his long black cloak and travelling cap. His fingers shaded a lamp, and reddened against the fitful darkness that ever and anon went leaping up the wall. She could hardly believe her senses to see the austere gentleman, dead silent, dropping tear upon tear before her eyes. She lay stone-still in a trance of terror and mournfulness, mechanically counting the tears as they fell, one by one. The hidden face, the fall and flash of those heavy drops in the light of the lamp he held, the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... calm reflection which was her habit. She opened the book upon her lap and glanced down a page or two, but without interest. At length external things were wholly lost to her, and she gazed across the water with continuance of solemn vision. Her face was almost austere in this mood which ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... had preceded her. The Merle twin lingered back of them, shocked, austere, deprecating, and yet somehow bland withal, as if these little affairs were not ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... so thoroughly infected that it was a pity that he was going where there would be no exercise in ecclesiology—rather the reverse. Embarrassment on his side, and hostility on ours, may be said to have vanished under the influence of Sir Guy de Warrenne's austere countenance. The youth seemed to regard 'Mr. Winslow' in the light of a father, and to accept us as kindly beings. He ceased to contort his limbs in our awful presence, looked at me like as an ordinary person, and even ventured on giving me an ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he had held slipped from his disinterested hands. So it was, too, in this unintended sense; he loved life. How should he not have loved a life that his living made honourable? How should he not have loved all arts, in which his choice was delicate, liberal, instructed, studious, docile, austere? An amateur man he might have been called, too, because he was not discomposed by his own experiences, or shaken by the discovery which life brings to us-that the negative quality of which Buddhism seems to accuse ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... distance were almost completely obliterated from our consciousness. I say distance, for we would walk together. Tenderness suits the amiable and gentle in disposition, but it comes with a peculiar charm from the austere nature. It is one of the stalwart virtues, and is often concealed behind a crusty exterior. Severity and tenderness adorn ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... where he had a biscuit and a glass of sherry in the commandant's little parlour, and forth the two cronies sallied mysteriously side by side; the commandant, Colonel Bligh, being remarkably tall, slim, and straight, with an austere, mulberry-coloured face; the general stout and stumpy, and smiling plentifully, short of breath, and double chinned, they got into the sanctum ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... young ladies in all, daughters of the superior families of Bunkers and the surrounding district. Miss Arnott, their teacher, was a tall, bony spinster, with austere glasses and sharp elbows that looked like ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... the sunshine of public observation. Perhaps it is not going too far to say, that her least guarded moments would, in others, have been marked for circumspection. At the same time her vigilance had nothing austere, gloomy, constrained, or censorious—nothing to repress the cheerfulness of social intercourse, or to excite in others, even the thoughtless, a dread of merciless criticism after they should retire. It was sanctified nature moving gracefully in its own element. And with respect to the character ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... far less often false than untamed passion supposes; and the creed of religion, by providing a reason for proving that it is never false, has been the means of purifying our hopes by the discovery of many austere truths. ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... Samaria, his capital, he raised a temple to Baal, where four hundred and fifty of his priests ministered. The priests of Jehovah who withstood these measures were driven out of the land, or into hiding-places. The austere and intrepid prophet Elijah found refuge in Mount Carmel. The people, on the occasion of a famine, which he declared to be a divine judgment, rose in their wrath, and slew the priests of Baal. In a war—the third of a series—which Ahab waged against Syria, he still ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... is almost obliterated; and it proves that Leonardo, when he chose, could withdraw himself from the delight of hand-to-mouth experience into a vision of his own, that he had the reserve and the creative power of the earlier masters and of that austere, laborious youth who taunted him. If it were not for "The Last Supper" we might doubt whether he could go further in art than the vivid sketch of "The Magi"; but "The Last Supper" tells us how great his passion for reality must have ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... very grateful to those who can teach us to turn our eyes to the charm which surrounds us, and a life which is lived without such perception is apt to be a rough and hurrying thing, even though it may also be both high and austere. Like most of life, the true success lies in not choosing one force and neglecting another, but in an expectant kind of compromise. The great affairs and facts of life flash upon us, whether we will or no; and even the man whose mind is bent upon the greatest hopes and ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a spectacle at once so austere and lascivious. His spirit quailed at the sight of a visage in which appeared to be concentrated the infamy of many centuries. His soul revolted at the sinister and ferocious expression pervading every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... with a little break in her usual austere voice, "I'm kinder ashamed of accusing the Lord of forgetting me this morning when I look at all these remembers of me here that my neighbors have given me. I found friends when I came here eighty-two years ago to-day and as they have died ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... The austere schoolmaster, with his dread insignia of birchen rod, steel-bowed spectacles, and swallow-tailed coat, was bad enough; the grinning, mischief-loving, and at times, belligerent, boys were worse. But the girls! ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... A string of massive amethysts completed a discord as elaborate as a harmony of Richard Strauss. Her whole impression was almost as inviting as it was grotesque. One could not chat with her without liking her, and it is to be suspected that only a very guileless or austere male could like her ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... essence of the manner which one chooses to maintain throughout is one of the fine touches of diplomacy. People fail to do this when their effusively gracious condescension subsequently develops into snobbishness, or when an austere stiffness of demeanor belies the friendliness which they really intend to manifest. The latter fault is often due to diffidence or awkward self-consciousness; the former is usually traceable to the caprice of an undisciplined nature, and is a ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... Rand, then the rich Jews on the Rand would appear in print forthwith, whether or not Dickens had ever depicted a rich Jew or the Rand, or the two in conjunction. Chesterton's first critical work of importance was Robert Browning in the "English Men of Letters Series." It might be imagined that the austere editorship of Lord Morley might have a dejournalizing effect upon the style of the author. Far otherwise. The t's are crossed and the i's are dotted, so to speak, more carefully in Robert Browning than in works less fastidiously edited, but that is all. The book contains ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... very solemn and austere, and so ponderous, and egotistical, and calm—yes, you are hatefully calm and ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... us and we ventured into the garden. Coming down a pathway we saw an austere, swarthy, obese man of the middle height. He was white-gloved, and wore a red fez, a sort of Zouave upper garment of blue, with burnous, baggy trousers, white stockings, and Turkish slippers. It was the Shereef. I had agreed to open the interview, but when it came to the trial my ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... highly meritable to abstain from the reading of poetry! A good father, in his account of the last hours of Madame Racine, the lady of the celebrated tragic poet, pays high compliments to her religious disposition, which, he says, was so austere, that she would not allow herself to read poetry, as she considered it to be a dangerous pleasure; and he highly commends her for never having read the tragedies of her husband! Arnauld, though so intimately connected with Racine for many years, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... does not write seemingly in her own person, the subjects are such disguises as 'The Prisoner,' 'Honour's Martyr,' 'The Outcast Mother,' echoes of all the miseries and useless rebellions of the earth. She spells over the fading characters in dying faces, unflinchingly, with an austere curiosity; and looks closely into the eyes of shame, not dreading what she may find there. She is always arguing with herself, and the answers are inflexible, the answers of a clear intellect which rebels but accepts defeat. Her doubt is itself an affirmation, her defiance would be an entreaty but ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... not made to an insensible audience. There were few among them who did not feel that their fortunes were indissolubly connected with those of their commander; and while they had little to expect from the austere character of the governor, they were warmly attached to the person of their young chief, who, with all the popular qualities of his father, excited additional sympathy from the circumstances of his ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... lonely tour through his province, found this cabin of Crawford's and passed a night there, tendering many compliments to the austere graces of the lady of the house and drinking himself into the favor of the husband, who proclaimed him the prince of good fellows. On leaving, the guest exacted of Crawford a visit to Wolfeborough, where he was to inquire for "Old Wentworth." ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... himself at full length on the sofa, a position exceedingly rare with him; and about his whole air and manner, as Levy entered, there was something singularly different from that stateliness of port common to the austere legislator. The very tone of his voice was different. It was as if the statesman—the man of business—had vanished; it was rather the man of fashion and the idler, who, nodding languidly to his visitor, said, "Levy, what money can I have ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... would be held back until the older sister was settled. It was her opinion that Gheta was very silly to show such indifference to Cesare Orsi.... Suddenly she longed to have men—not fat and good-natured like the Neapolitan banker, but austere and romantic—in love with her. She clasped her hands to her fine young breast and a delicate color stained her cheeks. She stood very straight and her breathing ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... shall I vnderstand you? Poet. I will vnboult to you. You see how all Conditions, how all Mindes, As well of glib and slipp'ry Creatures, as Of Graue and austere qualitie, tender downe Their seruices to Lord Timon: his large Fortune, Vpon his good and gracious Nature hanging, Subdues and properties to his loue and tendance All sorts of hearts; yea, from the glasse-fac'd Flatterer To Apemantus, that few ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... severe in its appearance than other parts; for while the walls elsewhere showed the unfinished faces of the rude blocks of stone, here there was an effort after something like ornament; yet this was so slight that even here the general air was still one of severe and austere graudeur, as if there had been wrought out in this stone-work the mind of the stern Goth who reared it, who held it, not for a home, but rather for a fortress, whence he ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... called at the time and was seated with him. My heart went pit-a-pat as I entered the great Pandit's study, packed full of books; nor did his austere visage assist in reviving my courage. Nevertheless, as this was the first time I had had such a distinguished audience, my desire to win renown was strong within me. I returned home, I believe, with some reason for an access of enthusiasm. As for Rajkrishna ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... world was safe enough. He was a civil servant and she his good and faithful wife. But when it comes to dealing with human beings anything, anything may be expected. So even my astonishment did not last very long. How far she developed and illustrated that conscienceless and austere doctrine to the girl-friends, who were mere transient shadows to her husband, I could not tell. Any length I supposed. And he looked on, acquiesced, approved, just for that very reason—because these pretty girls were but shadows ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... work, and after six months she dressed about as well as them prominent society ladies that drift round the corridors of this hotel waiting for parties that never seem on time, and looking none too austere while they wait. ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... lost his somewhat austere expression; and as Anstice obeyed his invitation to enter his sitting-room the latter felt that he had come to the right person with whom to discuss the problem of ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... course of Spinoza's life was almost completely untroubled, though it was unmitigatingly austere. He took up the trade of polishing lenses as a means of earning his simple bread. He was somewhat influenced in his decision by the advice in the Ethics of the Fathers that every one should do some manual work. But it was also quite the ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... lends To feeling change that never ends; And duties which the many irk, Are made all wages and no work. How sing of such things save to her, Love's self, so love's interpreter? How the supreme rewards confess Which crown the austere voluptuousness Of heart, that earns, in midst of wealth, The appetite of want and health, Relinquishes the pomp of life And beauty to the pleasant Wife At home, and does all joy despise As out of place but in her eyes? How praise the years and gravity That ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... give hard outline to its facts, it must be able to display its secret to any sensible man in the language used by all sensible men. Milton's prophetic genius furnished the eighteenth century, out of the depth of the passionate age before it, with the theological tone it was to need. In spite of the austere magnificence of his devotion, he gives to smaller souls a dangerous lead. The rigidity of Scripture exegesis belonged to this stately but imperfectly sensitive mode of thought. It passed away with the influence of the older rationalists whose precise denials matched the precise and limited ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... Four of them belong to that group of ideal figure paintings which almost constitute a genre in themselves: Biondina, Catarina, Amarilla, and Neruccia, a girl with a red flower in her hair, in white dress, against a dark background. The finely austere Elijah in the Wilderness was an addition to the notable group of Scriptural paintings. In this picture the nude figure of the prophet is seen reclining on a rock, with head and arms thrown back, while beside him stands an angel holding bread and water. The striking and powerful ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... American production to the latter. For the sake of gifted singers and accomplished actors merely, the opera was not created, and will not be kept alive. It rests for its success on the kind of argument which Phryne, of classic story, presented to her austere judges. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... glittering stretches that vanished in the cold, blue horizon. The moon soared radiant and calm, the white stars shone serene. The vault of heaven seemed illimitable and divine. The desert surrounded him, silver-streaked and black-mantled, a chaos of rock and sand, silent, austere, ancient, always waiting. It spoke to Cameron. It was a naked corpse, but it had a soul. In that wild solitude the white stars looked down upon him pitilessly and pityingly. They had shone upon a desert that might once have ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... broken to pieces, but determined that he would not weakly "go to pieces," he performed the greatest service to the community, as well as to himself, by resolutely, at any sacrifice, paying his debts when they became due. It is a pity that such austere Luthers of commerce, trade-militant instead of church-militant, who meet hard times with a harder will, had not a little beauty in their toughness, so that grit, lifted to heroism, would allure affection as well as enforce respect. But their sense is so rigid, their integrity so gruff, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... husband was much talked about, for her affection towards Pompeius was not what might have been expected considering his age; but the reason appears to have been the chaste conduct of her husband who knew only his married wife, and the dignity of his manners which were not austere but agreeable and particularly attractive to women, if we must not disbelieve the testimony even of Flora the courtezan. It happened that at the election of aediles some men came to blows and no small number ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... Rothiemurchus, in Scotland, and the ruins of their castle may still be seen on the island of Loch-an-Eilan, in the northern Highlands. It was never the picturesque castle of song and story, this home of the fighting Shaws, but an austere fortress, probably built in Roman times; and even to-day the crumbling walls which alone are left of it show traces of the relentless assaults upon them. Of these the last and the most successful were made in the seventeenth century by the Grants and Rob Roy; and it was ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... of its perfect rest. A convent, even a hermit's cell Would break the silence of this Dell; It is not quiet, is not ease, But something deeper far than these; The separation that is here Is of the grave; and of austere And happy feelings of the dead: And therefore was it rightly said That Ossian, last of all his race, Lies buried ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... looks out on a churchyard paved with graves. Her father was a kindly man, but essentially moody and solitary. He took all his meals alone, walked alone, sate alone. Her mother died of cancer, when she was but a child. Then she was sent to an ill-managed austere school, and here when she was nine years old her two elder sisters died. She took service two or three times as a governess, and endured agonies of misunderstanding, suspicious of her employers, afraid of ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "nash," but everywhere was the same depressing desolation. Only in the centre of the table towered in awful intact majesty the great Bar-mitzvah cake, like some mighty sphinx of stone surveying the ruins of empires, and the least reverent shrank before its austere gaze. But at last the Shalotten Shammos shook off his awe and stretched out his hand leisurely towards the cake, as became the master of ceremonies. But when Sugarman the Shadchan beheld his hand moving like a creeping flame forward, he sprang towards him, as the tigress ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... busy knife and idle fork to gaze on his chief with amazement. Buck Johnson, the austere, the aloof, the grimly taciturn, the dangerous, to be thus ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... little women! You who know just when to give those who love you a friendly pressure of the hand, or the gift of your lips if needs be, even in the presence of so austere a personage as Monsieur le Cure. You who understand. You who are tender or merry with the mood, or contrary to the verge of exasperation—only to caress with the subtle light of your ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... of them:—"Their behaviour," he says, "is serious, austere, and melancholy; they rarely laugh, and the gaiety of the French appears to them a fit of delirium. When they speak, it is with deliberation, without gestures and without passion; they listen without interrupting you; they are silent for whole days ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... small and austere, but privacy was nice. The lab crew ate in a common refectory. Beyond the edge of their territory, great bulkheads blocked off three-fourths of the space station. Lancaster was sure that many people ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... grown to man's stature. He was now full six feet in height, black-haired and dark of eye, and with a grave manner which the exciting experiences he had passed through had intensified. Many people found the young officer too cold and austere for their liking, but the haughty demeanour which characterised him in reality covered a warm and sympathetic nature, of which those who were admitted into his intimacy were fully aware. By this ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... even, as it was hinted, as a pirate, he had left an evil name behind him in the Bight of Benin. Finally he had returned to Jamaica with a considerable fortune, and had settled down to a life of sombre dissipation. This was the man, gaunt, austere, and dangerous, who now waited upon the Governor with a plan for the extirpation of Sharkey. Sir Edward received him with little enthusiasm, for in spite of some rumours of conversion and reformation, he had always regarded him as an infected sheep who might taint ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with scarcely a glance, but her voice as she addressed Lennox Tudor sounded a trifle austere. "I heard you speaking," she said, "and ran down to fetch you upstairs. Will you come up at once, please? The ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... attempted, by the most delicate flattery, to propitiate the King of Prussia; but her messages had drawn from him only dry and sarcastic replies. The Empress Queen took a very different course. Though the haughtiest of princesses, though the most austere of matrons, she forgot in her thirst for revenge both the dignity of her race and the purity of her character, and condescended to flatter the low-born and low-minded concubine, who, having acquired influence by prostituting ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... opening this great matter, I am not insensible to the austere demands of the occasion; but the dependence of the crime against Kansas upon the slave power is so peculiar and important, that I trust to be pardoned while I impress it with an illustration, which to some may seem trivial. It is related in Northern mythology that the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... of the men associated with Waterman prove that he was ranked among the chief citizens of the town. The austere manners of the age, among communities like that established here; the exclusion, at that time, by inexorable laws, of many forms of amusement; and the general sombre aspect of society, kept down the natural exhilaration ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... men, and, most of all when I see the God-like possibilities in every human being, I cannot resist the conviction that every soul of man is from God, and that, sometime and somehow, it may be by the hard path of retribution, possibly through great agonies and by means of austere chastisements and severe discipline as well as by loving entreaty, after suffering shall have accomplished all its ministries it will reach a blissful goal and the ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... onslaught Baretti forgot that he was strengthening her case against Johnson, of whom he says: "His austere reprimand, and unrestrained upbraidings, when face to face with her, always delighted Mr. Thrale and were approved even by her children. 'Harry,' said his father to her son, 'are you listening to what the doctor and mamma are talking about?' 'Yes, papa.' And quoth ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... with the people was brief, and marked by a tone of severe contemptuous misanthropy. He seldom stirred abroad except during morning, or in the evening twilight, when he might be seen gliding amidst the coming darkness, like a dissatisfied spirit. His life was an austere one, and his devotional practices were said to be of the most remorseful character. Such a man, in fact, was calculated to hold a powerful sway over the prejudices and superstitions of the people. This was ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... shy smile, she gave him a package. "I drew this before leaving," she said. "I thought, well, your life is so austere—" ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... of Preble Key on recognizing the gateway into which the mysterious lady had vanished was so great that he was at first inclined to believe her entry THERE a mere trick of his fancy. That the confederate of a gang of robbers should be admitted to the austere recesses of the convent, with a celerity that bespoke familiarity, was incredible. He again glanced up and down the length of the shadowed but still visible wall. There was no one there. The wall itself contained no break or recess in which ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... austere principles look upon mirth as too wanton and dissolute for a state of probation, and as filled with a certain triumph and insolence of heart that is inconsistent with a life which is every moment obnoxious to the greatest dangers. Writers ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... spiritual guide. Laying aside their armor and weapons, they went to Clonard, where all the people, dreading them and knowing their wickedness, fled for their lives, except the saint himself, who came forward to meet them. With him the three brothers undertook the most austere religious exercises, and after a year they came to St. Finnen and asked his punishment for their former crimes. "You cannot," he said, "restore to life those you have slain, but you can at least restore the buildings you have devastated and ruined." So ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... with all this indecision of exterior the expression is rather acute than soft; and the conversation in its principal characteristics, analytical and examinative; throwing out no thought which is not as clear as glass—critical, in fact, in somewhat of an austere sense. I use 'austere,' of course, in its intellectual relation, for nothing in the world could be kinder, or more graciously kind, than her whole manner and words were to me. She is coming again in two or three days, she says. Yes, and she said of Miss Martineau's ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... had the best of it. Sylvia possessed what she considered an almost guilty weakness for peppermints. She never bought them herself, or asked him to buy them, without feeling humiliated. Her austere and dictatorial manner vanished at the moment she preferred the request ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... watches, divides the times of our earnest and sports, shares in our country recesses and recreations; insomuch as the wisest and best learned have thought her the absolute mistress of manners and nearest of kin to virtue. And whereas they entitle philosophy to be a rigid and austere poesy, they have, on the contrary, styled poesy a dulcet and gentle philosophy, which leads on and guides us by the hand to action with a ravishing delight and incredible sweetness. But before we handle the kinds of poems, with their special differences, ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... logic, abstract and arid, and Alexandrian esoteric mysticism, quietistic, nay, nihilistic; and the Church had ceased to answer to any spiritual wants of the people. Meanwhile, on all sides everywhere, heresies were teeming, austere and equivocal, pure and unclean according to individuals, but all of them anarchical, and therefore destructive at a moment when, above all, order and discipline were wanted. The belief in the world's end, in the ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... here In stone austere, To both was dear, and did not guess at all: Yet with her new-wed lord Walking the sward Paused, and for two dead ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... not well off enough to keep a servant, and each had their work to attend to, the husband as an employee in a public office and his wife as cashier in a milliner's shop, and did not dream of any evil, and were further reassured by the charitable, unctuous and austere looks of the doctor, they allowed their daughter to go and consult ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... ever, and there was no sign of diminution of his strength. But he had aged none the less. The yellow tangle of hair was gone, worn down by the ever-pressing helmet. The fresh young face was drawn and hardened, with austere lines wrought by trouble and privation. The nose was more hawk-like, the eyes more cunning, the expression more cynical and more sinister. In his youth, a child would have run to his arms. Now it would shrink ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... one of the most recondite mysteries of human nature. Love, which is debauch of reason, the strong and austere joy of a lofty soul, and pleasure, the vulgar counterfeit sold in the market-place, are two aspects of the same thing. The woman who can satisfy both these devouring appetites is as rare in her sex as a great general, a great writer, a great artist, a great ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... avaricious and vulgar and in their weariness of things as they are, have our women grown base. They know that their lives miss something, they know that their fierce rivalry and feverish straining for precedence bring them no nearer the Mecca that closes its austere gates to their aching eyes. And for the dignity and pride their lives have lacked, they give their fortunes and sell their bodies and exchange, for a title, the name of which they have grown ashamed. They perhaps shrink, in physical ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... imperceptible, that his mouth seemed cut in his face; when he smiled in a wicked and sinister manner, the ends of his teeth could be seen, black and decayed. Closely shaved to his temples, this man's countenance had an expression austere, sanctified, impassible, rigid, cold and reflecting; his little black eyes—quick, piercing, restless,—were ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... would be more on his guard against pharisaic censoriousness, and that desire to be ever judging one another, which Milton well called the stronghold of our hypocrisy. The disapproval of such a person would have an austere colour, a gravity, a self-respecting reserve, which could never belong to an equal degree of disapproval in a person who had started from the officious principle, that if we are sure we are right, it is straightway our business to make the person ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... friends are things generally grievous, [3863] Omnium quae in humana vita contingunt, luctus atque mors sunt acerbissima, the most austere and bitter accidents that can happen to a man in this life, in aeternum valedicere, to part for ever, to forsake the world and all our friends, 'tis ultimum terribilium, the last and the greatest terror, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior |
