"Litany" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be of any use to him, when he could not make it heard outside the deck-house? In his desperate straits he took a piece of chalk and began to write it; so when at last he opened the door of his cabin, the four seamen observed that he had nearly covered the boards with writing. It looked like a litany, but it was a litany of only three words—"Lord, have mercy"—which were repeated in ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... upon us, and that soon, for we are come to great misery. Help us, oh God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name. Oh, be merciful unto our sins for thy name's sake. Wherefore do the heathen say, Where is now their God?' Ye shall say this Psalm," repeated the abbot, "every Friday, after the litany, prostrate, when ye lie upon the high altar, and undoubtedly God will cease this extreme scourge." And so,' continues Salford, significantly, 'the convent did say this aforesaid Psalm until there were certain that did murmur at the saying of it, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... A Dalesman's Litany Cambodunum Telling the Bees The Two Lamplighters Our Beck Lord George Jenny Storm The New Englishman The Bells of Kirkby Overblow The gardener and the Robin Lile Doad His last Sail One Year Older The Hungry Forties The Flowers of Knaresborough ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... the litany. And here again MARGARET betrays her rural habits, by repeating audibly the first response, thus encroaching on the province of the choir-boys, who have now united, and form a fine and powerful chorus, less picturesque perhaps than the Druidical chorus in the first act of Norma, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... I waited idly, thinking of my father, and, as I before said, vexed and sorry and ashamed by turns. Often now I pause before I enter this sacred edifice, and think of that hour of tribulation. I could hear the fine, full voice of the Rev. Dr. Duche as he intoned the Litany. He lies now where I stood, and under the arms on his tomb is no record of the political foolishness and instability of a life otherwise free from blame. As I stood, Mrs. Ferguson came out, she who in days to come helped to get the unlucky parson into trouble. ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... blood-red— so there is as great preparation for a triumph as for war. A great number of English priests come to Antwerp from all places. The commandment is given to all the churches to read the Litany daily for the prosperity of the Prince in his enterprise." John Giles to Walsingham, 4 Dec. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... inspect the property, which they had seen only once—and that a mere passing glance. Maitre Gouy and his wife escorted them, and then began a litany ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... dissecting-room; curious cases that had puzzled him; drawing-rooms, beautiful women; he sang airs from the operas, sad, broken little snatches, in a deep, mellow voice, finely trained,—fragments of a litany to the Virgin. Birkenshead's love of beauty was a hungry monomania; his brain was filled with memories of the pictures of the Ideal Mother and her Son. One by one they came to him now, the holy woman-type ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... and to keep up with Miss Alicia's bending of head and knee. But the creed, with its sudden turn toward the altar, caught him unawares, he lost himself wholly in the psalms, the collects left him in deep water, hopeless of ever finding his place again, and the litany baffled him, when he was beginning to feel safe, by changing from "miserable sinners" to "Spare us Good Lord" and "We beseech thee to hear us." If he could just have found the place he would have been all right, but an honest anxiety to be right excited him, and the fear of embarrassing Miss ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and Donna Laura sat shivering and lamenting on one side of the hearth, while the old Marchioness, on the other, strained her eyes over an embroidery in which the pattern repeated itself like the invocations of a litany, and Don Gervaso, near the smoking oil-lamp, read aloud from the Glories of Mary or the Way of Perfection ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... he believed to be a stern reproach, the page frightened ran away, leaving the books, the task, and all. Thereupon, the seneschal's better half added this prayer to the litany—"Holy Virgin, how difficult children ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... wonderful earthly situation and prospect that speaks to him loudly, rather than the religion of the far-off Power whose hands he believes to hold the threads of his destinies? Even the tonsure is a psalm to some, and the robe and cowl a litany. The knotted cord is a mass ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... thing book writers do in their Prefaces, which is to introduce a mass of nincompoops of whom no one ever heard, and to say 'my thanks are due to such and such' all in a litany, as though any one cared a farthing for the rats! If I omit this believe me it is but on account of the multitude and splendour of those who have attended at the production of this volume. For the stories in it are copied straight from the best authors of the Renaissance, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... multitudes kneeled down and began to pray for her, and many wept; and when the solemn ceremony of the communion began in Joan's cell, out of the distance a moving sound was borne moaning to our ears—it was those invisible multitudes chanting the litany for a departing soul. ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... heard much of Dr. Richards from the young girls of Snowdon. She had heard his voice in the Psalter, his responses in the Litany, and accepted it as a sign of marked improvement. He could not be as irreverent and thoughtless as he had been represented by those who did not like him; he must have changed during his absence, and she frankly offered him her ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... sudden a retracting impulse, fling back into his lair—and, after a cooling lapse of some minutes (during which all but the culprit had totally forgotten the context) drive headlong out again, piecing out his imperfect sense, as if it had been some Devil's Litany, with the expletory yell—"and I WILL, too."—In his gentler moods, when the rabidus furor was assuaged, he had resort to an ingenious method, peculiar, for what I have heard, to himself, of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... wheat and oats, drawn by huge white oxen, who in turn were led by what seemed to me to be very small boys. The latter, stick in hand, walked in front of their beasts, and swelling their youthful voices would intone a kind of litany which the animals apparently understood ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... cast a favourable eye on a handsome man, spins away by the handful, and bestows years and years upon Nero out of her own pocket. As for Claudius, they tell everybody to speed him on his way With cries of joy and solemn litany. ...
— Apocolocyntosis • Lucius Seneca
... well to pray for peace! With suppliant palms outstretched to the pitying God, they do well to cry, as in the ancient litany, 'Give peace in our time, O Lord!' Let the husbandman go forth in the furrow. Let the cattle come lowing to the stalls at evening. Let bleating flocks whiten all the uplands. Let harvest hymns be sung, while groaning wagons drag to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... aisle the pews came together in twos, so that when Beth sat at the end of theirs, as she always did, the person in the next pew sat beside her with only the wooden partition between. One Sunday, when she was on her knees, drowsing through the Litany with her cheek on her prayer-book, she became aware of a boy in the next pew with his face turned to her in exactly the same attitude. He had bright fair hair curling crisply, a ruddy fair fat face, and round blue eyes, clear as glass marbles. Beth ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... him. Dizzy with horror at the scene he realized, Lilias's cries and shrieks of entreaty were ringing in his ear, when suddenly a sweet full low voice seemed to come through them, 'I am bound ever to pray for you and your sister.' Mingled with the cry came ever the sweet soft Litany cadences—'For all that are desolate and oppressed: we beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord.' Gradually the cries seemed to be swallowed up, both voices blended in Kyrie eleison and then in the Gloria, and at that moment he became aware of Patrick crying, 'I will ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Finding the poor fellow, though almost too far gone to articulate, constantly murmuring words of prayer, I took his prayer-book and read aloud the "Recommendation of a soul departing," also some of the preceding prayers of the "Litany for the dying." He faintly responded, and seemed to die comforted and satisfied. Afterwards I never hesitated to use the same service in ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... her head. "Married!" she cried. "Oh when shall I hear the end of that litany! I suppose you want me to marry anybody, it doesn't matter whom, so ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... conveyance, but stifled her sobs with her pocket handkerchief, muttered a few incoherent words, and occasionally trembled from head to foot. Her lover's name rose to her lips as if it had been a response in a litany, and I thought that she was praying to the Virgin that she might not arrive too late to see Ladislas Ferkoz again in the possession of his faculties, and keep him alive for a few hours. Suddenly, as if in reply to herself, she said: 'I will not cry any more; ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... dried gourd; they shouted periodically together strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were like the response of some satanic litany. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... be the most appropriate use of the bell at funerals. But chiming the bells is an art that is not recognised in the older rules respecting their use. For instance, the Fifteenth Canon orders that on Wednesdays and Fridays weekly, warning shall be given to the people that litany will be said, by tolling of a bell. And, on the other hand, though we toll at a funeral, the Sixty-seventh ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... afternoon of a day on which they had held a solemn service before a statue erected to the Virgin Mary on the shore opposite to the ships. All who were fit to walk went in procession from the fort to the statue, singing penitential psalms and the Litany and celebrating Mass. ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... a blind unreasoned instinct. In the Bible which he read Sunday afternoons, because his father gave him a quarter for doing so, he came across a great many things that filled him with vague and strange ideas; and one Sunday at church, when the minister was intoning the Litany, he remarked for the first time the words, "all women in the perils ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... me the prayers for those in their last agony.' He did as requested, and she answered the Litany in a firm voice. After some little time, the bell for the agonising was heard, and a person came in to ask Anne Catherine's prayers for his sister, who was just dead. Anne Catherine asked for details concerning her illness and death, as if deeply interested ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... the Litany.[55] Slavery is a great evil wherever I have seen it. A poor old woman and child are among the captives, the boy about three years old seems a mother's pet. His feet are sore from walking in the sun. He was offered ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... her—the dumb woman threw off the mysterious and terrible disguise under which she deliberately isolated herself among her fellow-creatures in the hours of the day. Hester Dethridge spoke. In low, thick, smothered accents—in a wild litany of her own—she prayed. She called upon the mercy of God for deliverance from herself; for deliverance from the possession of the Devil; for blindness to fall on her, for death to strike her, so that she might never see that unnamed Horror more! Sobs shook the whole frame of the stony woman ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... at the Norman Conquest, he belonged to a humble rank in life, living at Ford Hays Farm. He was in early life educated by his mother, a godly woman, and while very young he learnt by heart the Te Deum, the Litany, and much of the prayers of the Church of England. He worked for his father, and an uncle who was a millwright, but found time to study hydrostatics, pneumatics, natural philosophy, as well as Hebrew, Greek and Latin. His mother's influence had given him a serious ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... recited the canonical hours, the office to our Lady, matins, and the prayers for the dead; in the afternoon at vespers, the same prayers, and the holy matins, and the prayers to the Virgin; in the early evening we had the Salve [i.e., "Hail, Mary"], with the public litany; and at night prayers for the souls in purgatory, usually relating some miracle, which was of great profit to many. Nor need your Reverence think that we lost any time because of the contrariety of the winds at Point Nasso that I mentioned; for orders were despatched to the Pintados Islands ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... building were all clothed in muslin shirts of different lengths, and that it was filled with men, all of whom had before them some sort of desk, from which they were reading, or rather wailing out their litany. Though this was the chief synagogue in Prague, and, as being the so-called oldest in Europe, is a building of some consequence in the Jewish world, it was very small. There was no ceiling, and the high-pitched roof, which had once probably been coloured, and the walls, which ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... windows overhead encircled the mighty vault of the lantern with a fiery crown, and played around the walls of its cage in rays which, growing fainter as they fell, flooded the floor with their expiring flames, a mysterious dayspring, a diffused glory, through which litany and sacred chant winged their way up ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... into the dining-room, expectant, defiant, fire in all his veins, and in his heart a sea of agitated bliss that had to get an outlet somewhere; not in a litany to her, for which there was no place, but at least in defence of her and of himself. It was Minnie, as usual, who stood ready to throw down the glove; Chatty being no more than a deeply interested spectator, and the ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... celebrated. Not more than a dozen devotees at most were present. These gathered modestly in the rear of the nave and put us to shame with their reverent gravity. Strange chants were chanted; it was a weird music, like a litany of bumblebees. Dense clouds of incense issued from gilded recesses that were screened ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... lover's litany until even the afterglow had died out of the sky. Edith released herself from his clinging arms. "We must go," she sighed. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... identified with the great gods of Heliopolis and Memphis, where shrines of the Sun-god existed in almost pre-dynastic times, and finally is himself declared to be "eternity and everlastingness"; thus the ideas of resurrection and immortality are united in the same divine being. In the following Litany the process of identification with the ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... facility of meeting European Socialists and unionists on a recent tour, made some observations which are by no means without a certain foundation.[95] He says that he talked to these people about Socialism and, though they all knew "the litany, service, and invocation" and the Socialist text for the coming revolution, they preserved this knowledge for their speech making, while in conversation it all faded away into the misty realms of the imagination. "Positively," writes Mr. Gompers, "I never found one man in my trip ready to go further ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... wants to, and likewise a knowledge of many things mechanical, which had heretofore been between closed covers, is in the daily litany of many who had previously never known a clutch from a cam-shaft, or a sparking plug from ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... seized her; she turned from the table, called for her rosary, and said to Nencia: 'The fine weather has made me neglect my devotions. I must say a litany before I dine.' ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... Quixote; "squeeze, tack, and string your proverbs together; here are none to oppose you. My mother whips me, and I whip the top. Here am I exhorting thee to suppress thy proverbs, and in an instant thou hast spewed forth a whole litany of them, which are as foreign from the subject as an old ballad. Remember, Sancho, I do not say that a proverb properly applied is amiss; but, to throw in, and string together old saws helter-skelter, renders conversation altogether mean ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... letter of warning and denunciation. Sixtus the Fourth fitted out a fleet against them. Innocent the Eighth made them his mark from the beginning of his Pontificate to the end. St. Pius the Fifth added the "Auxilium Christianorum" to our Lady's Litany in thankfulness for his victory over them. Gregory the Thirteenth with the same purpose appointed the Festival of the Rosary. Clement the Ninth died of grief on account of their successes. The venerable Innocent the Eleventh appointed the Festival of the Holy Name ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... pulpit, and the service-books and singing-books that could be had, were carried to the fire in the public marketplace; a lewd wretch walking along in the train in his cope, trailing in the dirt, with his service-book in his hand, imitating in impious scorn the time, and usurping the words of the Litany used formerly in the church. Near the public cross all these monuments of idolatry must be sacrificed to the fire, not without much ostentation of a zealous joy in discharging ordnance, to the cost ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... court. The sentries on duty ceased their walk; magistrates and reporters stood aside, and a dead silence prevailed for a few moments, as a signal was given from the corner of the Roundhouse. At three minutes past eight o'clock the solemn voice of a minister repeating the litany of the Catholic Church was heard, and the head of the procession became visible through a thick fog, about thirty yards from the foot of the staircase. The Rev. Canon Cantwell walked first by the side of Allen. The convict was deadly pale; his eyes wandered ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... fellowship may come to us in another way. The special service of the nave is the Litany. This solemn service has been said from very early times from the Litany-desk, placed {23} at the head of the nave, before the entrance to the chancel. "Its position there refers to a Litany, and a place for it to be said, of God's own appointing. ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... vests, and pantaloons, all of white. All were serious in their demeanor, and although the services continued more than two hours, they gave a wakeful attention to the end. Their responses in the litany ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Litany Lane. There are sixteen houses in it, and they're all mine. Half way down, on the left, runs off Elm Court, where there are fourteen houses, and those are all ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... absurd; for example, a soldier may be at once prudent and bold, for these are opposites; he could not be at once prudent and rash, for these are contraries. We may love and fear at the same time and the same person; we pray in the Litany that we may love and dread God, the two being opposites, and thus the complements of one another; but to pray that we might love and hate would be as illogical as it would be impious, for these are contraries, and could no more co-exist together than white and black, hot and cold, in the same subject ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... trouble about me," said Alexey Alexeitch, frowning. "I know my business. If only my enemy intones the litany in the right key. He may . . . out of ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... shrill enough to pierce God's ear and touch His heart, than to the formal petitions of well-ordered worship? A single ejaculation flung heavenward in a moment of despair or agony is more precious in God's sight than a whole litany of half-hearted devotions. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... him—some," conceded Flame. In her bright cheeks suddenly an even brighter color glowed. "I like him when he leaves out the Litany," she said. "I've told him I like him when he leaves out the Litany.—He's leaving it out more and more I notice.—Yes, I like him ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... decided preference to the Church of England, generally attending the service of that Church when anywhere from home, and constantly when at Peterhead. He spoke with enthusiasm of the beauty, simplicity, and energy of the English Liturgy, especially of the Litany, which he declared to be the finest piece of uninspired composition in any language." Life of Dr. Beattie, by Sir W. Forbes, Bart., vol. iii. p. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... Catholic Church" and describe its doctrine as "the Catholic Religion," or the "Catholic Faith". The Te Deum, Litany, and Ember Collect explain this word "Catholic" to mean "the holy Church throughout all the {3} world," "an universal Church," "thy holy Church universal"; and the Collect for the King in the Liturgy defines ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... it," she said, nodding with an air of childish triumph. "Shall I tell you why? I have hidden it!" Here she fell back on her old litany. "He would kill me if he knew . . . I hid it—oh, years ago! But come, and I will show you; and you shall take a great deal—yes, as much as you can carry—if only you will go away, ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... which voices of lonely children and forgotten women broke. To the solitary farmer's wife such a wind brings tears or madness. I am tense with desire to escape. This bare little town on the ridge is appalling to me. Think of living here with the litany of this ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... An ancient Litany-hymn of the German churches, much used in Passion-week and in the processions before Ascension-day by Luther "gebessert ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... if this were a signal for the breaking of the constrained silence, a mighty shout rose from the whole vast assembly. Again and again it was repeated, and then broke out the solemn chant of the litany, sung by hundreds of voices, while Charlemagne stood in dignified and patient silence. Whether or not this act of the pope was a surprise to him we have no assurance. Eginhard tells us that he declared ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... gold and silver (a vague exaggeration) from the smoking ruins of their country. In these annual excursions from the Alps to the neighborhood of Rome and Capua, the churches, that yet escaped, resounded with a fearful litany: "O, save and deliver us from the arrows of the Hungarians!" But the saints were deaf or inexorable; and the torrent rolled forwards, till it was stopped by the extreme land of Calabria. [33] A composition was offered and accepted for the head of each Italian ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... was so absorbed in his litany that he heard nothing. So our old man spoke louder. The hermit did not stir, but made him a sign with his crutch to move aside. The old man stood aloof till the hermit had finished his prayer. When it was over, he raised his eyebrows ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... should say not," her niece replied, perking the quivering aigrette still more obliquely upon her aunt's head. Carolyn used par exemple as a good cook uses onion—a hint of it in everything. There were those who said that she interpolated it in the Litany; but Carolyn, who was born Caroline and a Baptist, was too much impressed by the liturgy of what she called The Church to insert even ...
— Julia The Apostate • Josephine Daskam
... fly; the eyes may see Only the glancing needle which they hold; But all my life is blossoming inwardly, And every breath is like a litany; While through each labor, like a thread of gold, Is woven the ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... Eamman and of Zirbanit; sometimes at the rising of a particular constellation—as, for instance, that of the Great Bear, or that of the sons of Ishtar; sometimes at the moment when the moon "raised above the earth her luminous crown." On such a date a penitential psalm or a litany was to be recited; at another time it was forbidden to eat of meat either cooked or smoked, to change the body-linen, to wear white garments, to drink medicine, to sacrifice, to put forth an edict, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... this Book, and the debates and disturbances attending its preparation, one instructive fact that should not be forgotten. The English Prayer Book provided for responses by the people and included the Litany, to both of which the French Reformed Church objected, in accordance with the well-known opinions of their great leader Calvin, who held, as did also his disciple Knox, that in praise alone should the congregation audibly join in public worship. Among the English refugees ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston
... years ago I could repeat the whole Litany in Greek, standing on one foot. I still remember that the last ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... and gave up all active operations, contenting himself with leaving a body of troops on the mainland, over against the city, to cut off the Tyrians from the supplies of water which they were in the habit of drawing from the river Litany, and from certain aqueducts which conducted the precious fluid from springs in the mountains. The Tyrians, it is said, held out against this pressure for five years, satisfying their thirst with rain water, which they collected in reservoirs. Whether ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... them address themselves to God in their own behalf; caused them to recite the litany on their knees, at the foot of a large crucifix; and then ordered them to retire, but to have confidence in Jesus Christ. He himself withdrew also into a chamber; from whence coming out some time after, he went down into the chalop with a little child, and having caused him to taste of the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... critical moment did the tractor lurch drunkenly across our bows; and three times did Pong fall back discomfited. The dust, the reek, the vibration, the pandemonium, were combining to create an atmosphere worthy of a place in the Litany. One's senses were cuffed and buffeted almost to a standstill. I remember vaguely that Daphne was clinging to my arm, wailing that "it was no good." I know I was shouting. Berry was howling ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... heaven";[95] its foundation is already laid upon earth, its capital is Jerusalem, and it is the mission of his people to extend its borders till it embraces all nations[96]—an idea which permeates the Jewish litany. ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... eldest, opened her bundle, and took from among the folds of their slender stock of clothes two little books, which she showed us with modest pride. They contained catechisms, the Pater-noster, the Ave Maria, and a short litany to the Blessed Virgin. Poor girls! their trust was in Heaven! They had little else to trust in; but there was a “Mother of Mercy” to befriend her loving children. That was the most comfortable article in ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... their "Condoling Council" meets, commences with a verse referring to their league, which is literally rendered, "We come to greet and thank the PEACE" (kayanerenh). When the list of their ancient chiefs, the fifty original Councillors, is chanted in the closing litany of the meeting, there is heard from time to time, as the leaders of each clan are named, an outburst of ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... more vaguely with the characters of the other worshippers. But when he suddenly perceived Rachel, all these thoughts were driven out of his head, and he thought only of her. The psalms, the prayers, the Litany, and the sermon were all reduced to one chanting sound which paused, and then renewed itself, a little higher or a little lower. He stared alternately at Rachel and at the ceiling, but his expression was now produced not by what he saw but by something in his mind. He was almost as painfully ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... fain have confessed her sins to the Bishop of Lisieux, who said to her, "Daughter, be of good cheer; you are in the hands of God." At the same instant, the Comte do Brion and all the lackeys were upon their knees very devoutly singing the Litany ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... bishop of Valence, in the presence of 15,000 pilgrims. In the churches all over France and in many of those in Belgium are pictures representing N. D. de la Salette addressing the children. In the litany addressed to Mary of Salette she is appealed to as "the tower of David," "the gate of heaven," "the morning star," "the refuge of sinners," "the queen conceived without sin," "the healer of diseases," "thou by whose supplications ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... his confidential secretary, eyed him across the mahogany flat-topped desk. A soft purring sound floated in the open window and half-roused the aged manufacturer. It came from one of his own cars—six cylinders chanting in unison a litany of power to the great modern god ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... during sleep by any other eyes than those of Providence. In the same way, too, from the day I heard my old nurse snorting in her sleep "like a whale," to use a slang expression, I have added a petition to the special litany which I address to Saint-Honore, my patron saint, to the effect that he would save me from indulging in this ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... looked so splendid that the laughter of the street people sometimes died suddenly on their lips. For three times in the day the new sun-worshipper went out on his little balcony, in the face of all Westminster, to say some litany to his shining lord: once at daybreak, once at sunset, and once at the shock of noon. And it was while the shock of noon still shook faintly from the towers of Parliament and parish church that Father Brown, the friend of Flambeau, first looked ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... from the danger of further invasions. And, being a realist, he counted only on military safeguards. At the League of Nations he was wont to sneer until it dawned upon him that it might be forged into an effective weapon of national defense. And then he included it in the litany of abstract phrases about right, justice, and the self-determination of peoples which it became the fashion to raise to the inaccessible heights where those ideals are throned which are to be worshiped but not incarnated. The public somehow never took his conversion to Wilsonianism seriously, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the happy news he had just received had increased his appetite, he placed the letter before him, to read it once more, whilst he exercised his teeth, with a sort of joyous fury, on his hard bread and radish, chanting an old Litany. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... finished the Litany the deacon crossed the stole over his breast and said, "Let us commit ourselves and our whole ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... palace at midnight, surveying the havoc he has unintentionally wrought, the smoke of the burning cottage is wafted toward him and takes the form of four gray old women. One of them, Dame Care, slips into the rich man's palace by way of the keyhole and croons in his ear her dismal litany of care. Faust replies in a fine declaration ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the little cuss, now," he said to himself, "that I should have got myself treed like a coon, as I am, this yer way?" and Haley relieved himself by repeating over a not very select litany of imprecations on himself, which, though there was the best possible reason to consider them as true, we shall, as a matter ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had sat long enough to remember their great hour forever and had repeated the litany of love to each other till they sensed its wonder, David ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... had taken a prayer book from the rack, and kneeling upon a hassock was repeating the Litany to herself. ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... had taken charge of. His occupations, in short, both public and private, were overpowering, and he could not tell how he was to get through them; for, in addition to everything else, it was Friday, and there was a litany service at twelve o'clock at St Roque's. So the young priest had little time to lose as he hurried up once again to Mr ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... Morning Service and the Litany read in an ordinary manner, though somewhat more devoutly than usual. Then, from the communion-table, rose a voice vibrating with solemn emotion, like the voice of Abraham pleading for Sodom. It thrilled through Hugh's ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... lung, my liver is a swelling sponge, eating crowds my waistband like a balloon, I have a swimming in my head and a sinking at my heart, and I can not say litany for happy release from these for my knees creak with rheumatism. The devil has done his worst, Robert, for these are his—plague and pestilence, being final, are the will of God—and, upon my soul, it is an absurd comedy of ills!" At that he had a fit of coughing, and I gave ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a pretty brown head; and then up came a brown feathery body; and last of all came the slender legs on to the edge of the nest. There she turned, and, looking down into the nest, from which came a whole litany of chirpings for breakfast, said, 'Lie still, little ones.' Then she turned to the children. 'My husband is King ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... administered to Mazeroux's chin according to the most scientific rules of the noble art. And Mazeroux foresaw this contingency, for he prudently kept as far away as possible and, to appease the chief's anger, intended a whole litany of excuses: ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... supposed that, by this time, the theme of universal admiration was lifted to the very pinnacle of popularity. No such thing. The curate began to cough; four fits of coughing one morning between the Litany and the Epistle, and five in the afternoon service. Here was a discovery—the curate was consumptive. How interestingly melancholy! If the young ladies were energetic before, their sympathy and solicitude now knew no bounds. Such a man as the curate—such a dear—such a perfect ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... that the newly-ordained Deacon undertook were the ordinary Sunday ones, and Wednesday and Friday Matins and Litany, Saints'-day prayers and lecture, and an Advent and Lent Evensong and lecture on Wednesdays and Fridays. These last had that great popularity which attends late services. Dr. Cornish used to come on one ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wife, waked, as may happen, by an unaccustomed silence, was standing guard in the hall below, iron candlestick in hand, Harmony, having read the Litany through in the not particularly religious hope of getting to sleep, was dreaming placidly. It was Peter who tossed and turned almost all night. Truly there had been little sleep that night in the ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... peasants, but among them were a few who seemed to be of higher rank, and these, for the most part, though by no means all of them, wore their clothes reversed—as I have forgotten to say was done also by Mr. Balmy. Both men and women joined in singing a litany the words of which my father could not catch; the tune was one he had been used to play on his apology for a flute when he was in prison, being, in fact, none other than "Home, Sweet Home." There was no harmony; they never got beyond the first ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... prayers and litany of our Blessed Lady with such fervor and piety that Helen was touched in spite of herself, and responded with heartfelt earnestness; and at the De Profundis, she thought of her dead father, and ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... shouldn't want it if I were. To my mind marriage is only conceivable with a barbarian or a millionaire. From the sordid atmosphere of English conjugality upon an income of anything less than an assured 5,000 pounds a year, good Lord deliver me! And you know my reasons for adding another clause to my litany. Good Lord deliver me also from further experience of the exciting ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... endeavour to show our gratitude by making you comfortable," answered the Prince, resuming his former tone. "You shall have a mass in the morning and a litany in the evening. We are godless fellows up there, but we have ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... the mass-pennies and oblations at this very day. Some idea of the architecture of the building may be formed from the inclosed sketch of the western front. During the morning mass, the chapel was crowded with women, young and old, who were singing the litany of the Virgin in a low and plantive tone. A hymn of praise was also chaunted. It was composed by the learned Bishop Huet, and it is inscribed upon a black marble tablet, which was placed in the chapel ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... graves, tell a strange story of the residents of this island, who are content to leave the resting-place of their dead in so shocking a condition. In the tiny little chamber of a church, the grand old litany of the Episcopal Church of England was not a little shorn of its ceremonial stateliness; clerk there was none, nor choir, nor organ, and the clergyman did duty for all, giving out the hymn and then singing it himself, followed as best might be by the ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... who dashed at the mob wi' the roars of a bull-bison forcin' them to hear that the squaw was crazed from the death of her own bit bairn, and but tryin' to comfort her sore heart? Who, I'm askin' ye?" and from each man's lips came the murmur like a response to a litany: ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... the whole litany of the beating ceremonial and struck such blows as the law demanded, and spared those she honestly could spare, and when in doubt she quibbled—struck, but ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... "Don't speak of it, but I am tired to death of reformers," it was only the artist's impatience of the ploughman; it was Rupert and his men not only sneering at Praise God Bare-bones, and singing their mock prayer in the Lenten litany, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... reading or reciting the whole Koran, by one or more persons, usually in the house, not over the tomb. Like the "Zikr," Litany or Rogation, it is a pious ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... and the monastery, and the nunnery, and the mass, and the Virgin Mary, have grown to be a very great power indeed in English lanes. Between the Roman missal and the chapel hymn-book, the country curate with his good old-fashioned litany is ground very small indeed, and grows less and less between these millstones till he approaches the vanishing-point. The Roman has the broad acres, his patrons have given him the land; the chapel has the common people, and the farmers are banding together not to pay ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... was solemnly intoning this litany, all four marched out upon the landing pier, stepped into the boat tied there, and from the further end of it slowly lowered into the pond the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... staff consisted of the incumbent (who became a "Vicar" by Act of Parliament in 1868) and a curate. Our list of services was as follows: Sunday—11 a.m., Morning Prayer, Litany, Table-prayers, and Sermon; 6 p.m., Evening Prayer and Sermon. There was Evening Prayer with a sermon on Thursdays, and a prayer-meeting in the schoolroom on Tuesday evenings. There were no extra services in Lent or Advent, nor on any Holy Days ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... and temptations of the world they were going to face, but his only idea seemed to be that he must warn them of all the snares and temptations that were going to beset their paths. Mme. A. couldn't understand my ideas when I said I loved the Episcopal service—the prayers and litany I had always heard, the Easter and Christmas hymns I had always sung, the carols, the anthems, the great organ, the flowers at Easter, the greens at Christmas. All that seemed to her to be a false sentiment appealing to the senses and imagination. "But if it brings ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... What a litany of prayer poured from his heart! For Israel, that the chosen people should be delivered from their low estate; for the cause of religion, that it might be revived; for the crowds without, that God would hear the ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... with astonishment to this strange recital, asked her father and aunt how they had been able to learn by heart this bit of prose, and why they recited it as if it were a litany. ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France
... books in one. We have scarcely turned the title-page, for instance, before we come upon a ritual of daily worship, an order for Morning Prayer and an order for Evening Prayer, consisting in the main of Psalms, Scripture Lessons, Antiphonal Versicles, and Collects. Appended to this we find a Litany or General Supplication and a collection of ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... for the restoration, and some others, made gifts of special objects for the embellishment of the choir. By the end of May, 1892, the mosaic pavement was almost completed, and the bishop's throne, the pulpit, the litany desk, and eighteen stalls had been erected. These gifts were solemnly dedicated at a stately service held on June 2nd, when, after the litany and an anthem, the special service was taken by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the altar, and after that Te Deum was sung. A ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... force crossed the canal at Zalu, on the 9th of Payni in his Vth year, marched rapidly across Canaan till they reached the valley of the Litany, along which they took their way, and then followed up that of the Orontes. They encamped for a few days at Shabtuna, to the south-west of Qodshu,* in the midst of the Amorite country, sending out scouts and endeavouring to discover the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... apologize if I have been too lavish with my notes to this chapter in particular, which introduces to us, as in a sort of litany, a multitude of the insects studied by the author. For the rest, I have continued my system of references to the earlier Fabre books, whether translated by myself or others. Of the following essays, The Harmas has appeared, under another title, in The Daily Mail; The Pond, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... with a fleeting smile. "Change my views so that I can go back? Do you think that would satisfy John? Do you think I could? Why, uncle Archie, do you believe in eternal damnation? I know you pray to be delivered from it in the Litany, but do ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... such as either in their forehead or right-hand have the mark of the beast, and a portion of this mark are all these dregs of papistry, which are left in your great book of England (viz. crossing in baptism, kneeling at the Lord's table, mumbling or singing of the litany, &c. &c.) any one jot of which diabolical inventions will I never counsel any man ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... before noon he was conducted in great state from the palace to the church. He was received by a procession of bishops and monks, and conducted by them to the grand altar. The pavement before the altar was covered with rich tapestry. Here Richard kneeled while prayers were said and the Litany was sung by the priests. His barons and nobles, and the great officers of state, kneeled around him. After the prayers were over, he was conducted to an elevated seat, which was richly decorated with ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Catholic. She was a Bullard. Perhaps it is from her that I have this overwhelming impulse to confession. And lately I have been terrified. I must tell it, or I shall shriek it out some day, in the church, during the Litany. 'From battle and murder, and from sudden ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... little, and in a hoarse, excited voice he exclaimed, "You who hide your faces, perhaps because you are not good subjects, pay attention and listen to what I am about to say to you." The first to halt were those who were carrying the image, and one of the four ecclesiastics who were chanting the Litany, struck by the strange figure of Don Quixote, the leanness of Rocinante, and the other ludicrous peculiarities he observed, said in reply to him, "Brother, if you have anything to say to us say it quickly, for these brethren are whipping themselves, and we cannot stop, nor ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... written, yet could we not hope that either would have any new thing to tell us of the Tempest, the Winter's Tale, and Cymbeline. And for ourselves, what else could we do but only ring changes on the word beautiful as Celia on the word wonderful in her laughing litany of love? or what better or what more can we do than in the deepest and most heartfelt sense of an old conventional phrase, thank God and Shakespeare? for how to praise either for such a gift of gifts we know not, knowing only and surely that none ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... sound of an approaching shell. It grew louder, till at last a terrific crash told us that the monster had fallen not far off. At that moment a number of people crowded into an adjoining cellar, where they fell on their knees and began to say a litany. I stood at the door looking at them. It was a pitiful sight. There were one or two old men and some women, and some little children and a young girl who was in hysterics. They seemed so helpless, so defenceless against the ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... for this creative faculty. On Sunday mornings I was always taken to church. It was a church on the old and natural model of England, having aisles, galleries, organ, all things ancient and venerable, and the proportions majestic. Here, while the congregation knelt through the long Litany, as often as we came to that passage, so beautiful among the many that are so, where God is supplicated on behalf of 'all sick persons and young children,' and that He 'would show His pity upon all prisoners and captives', I wept in secret; and, raising my streaming eyes to the windows ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... wished that he might faint away, even for a moment, but his nerves were too sound for that. He was recalled to outer things by feeling a hand laid gently on his leg, and immediately afterwards he heard a man's voice, in a quietly gruff tone that scarcely rose or fell, reciting a whole litany of the most appalling blasphemies that ever fell from human lips. For an instant, in his suffering, Zorzi fancied that he had died and was in the clutches of ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... I might state that in conversation with me Bishop Wilmer, of the diocese of Alabama, (Episcopal), stated that to be his belief; that when I urged upon him the propriety of restoring to the litany of his church that prayer which includes the prayer for the President of the United States, the whole of which he had ordered his rectors to expunge, he refused, first, upon the ground that he could not pray for a continuance of martial law; and secondly, that he would stultify ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... would refuse to answer, or to tell the truth, at any rate; and Ford's muscles were very, very sore. He did not feel equal to a scuffle with Sandy, just then. He repeated something which sounded like an impromptu litany and had to do with the ultimate disposal ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... Town without a Market The Balled of Camden Town Mignon Felo de se Tenebris Interlucentem Invitation to a young but learned friend . . . Balled of the Londoner The First Sonnet of Bathrolaire The Second Sonnet of Bathrolaire The Masque of the Magi The Balled of Hampstead Heath Litany to Satan The Translator and the Children Opportunity Destroyer of Ships, Men, Cities War Song of the Saracens Joseph and Mary No Coward's Song A Western Voyage Fountains The Welsh Sea Oxford Canal Hialmar speaks to the Raven The Ballad of the Student ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... pressure of language and sentiment, only checked, I thought, by sense of embarrassment how to begin. To spare him this embarrassment was my best, indeed my sole use. I had but to utter the idol's name, and love's tender litany would flow out. I had just found a fitting phrase, "You know that Miss Fanshawe is gone on a tour with the Cholmondeleys," and was opening my lips to speak to it, when he scattered my ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... know also why the Church hath appointed Ember-weeks; and to know the reason why the Commandments, and the Epistles and Gospels, were to be read at the Altar or Communion Table: why the Priest was to pray the Litany kneeling; and why to pray some Collects standing: and he gave them many other observations, fit for his plain congregation, but not fit for me now to mention; for I must set limits to my pen, and not make that a treatise, which I intended to be a much shorter account than I have made ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... of their mystic deity's voice the savages, bending lower still till their foreheads touched the ground, repeated in chorus, to the clapping of hands, like some solemn litany: "Tu-Kila-Kila speaks true. Our lord is merciful. He sends down his showers upon our crops and fields. He causes his sun to shine brightly over us. He makes our pigs and our slaves bring forth their increase. Tu-Kila-Kila is good. His ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... but many of them were young men." "Poor Dorothy," exclaimed Nora. "One of them was the minor canon who chants the service every morning. He is a bachelor—" "Then there is a hope for her," said Nora—"and he always talks a little as though he were singing the Litany." "That's very bad," said Nora; "fancy having a husband to sing the Litany to you always." "Better that, perhaps, than having him always singing something else," said ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... in her sister, coming up to shake hands; "we do so! and I am sure in church, yesterday, when we came to that part of the litany in which we pray for 'all who travel by land or by water,' I thought of you and bore you up on that prayer. And I shall continue to do it until ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... or a troubadour to select a certain lady, celebrate her in his songs, call on her name in the hour of danger, and wear her color in battle. The adored or the adorer might be either of them married—that made no difference; and the tender litany would sometimes run on for years, long after the idol's hair was silvered and her form more remarkable for plumpness ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... entering into the heart of the country by means of the rivers. At first they were mere marauders, and showed everywhere such ferocity and cruelty that they came to be regarded as something akin to plagues and famines, and the faithful added a new petition to the Litany, "From the wrath and malice of the Normans, O Lord, deliver us!" But towards the middle of the century the movement changed its character. The raids became military invasions, and the invaders sought to conquer the lands which they had ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... full of solemn emotion, read through the grand periods of the Church Litany, and when he had finished, Clarian, with a thrilling "Let us pray," offered up such a thanksgiving as I had never heard, praying to the kind Father who had so mercifully extricated him, that our paths might still be enlightened, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... horrid that I could call to mind except the mumps—he had been an exile working in chains. I remember rousing up with a start from the realization of this one Sunday to find myself still standing in the middle of the Litany. My mother was behaving too well herself to find me out, and though Jem was giggling he dared not move, because he was kneeling next my father, whose back was turned to me. I knelt down, and started to hear the parson say—"show Thy ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... I love you!" Glenn repeated it like a litany. "Nancy! Does it make you as happy because I love you as it makes ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... vestiges of the Athanasian heresy. The principal changes were in the Doxology, which was altered into what he declares was its original form, in the prayer of St. Chrysostom, in the first four petitions of the Litany, and one or two others, and in the collect for Trinity Sunday. The Established Church was, however, so blind to the truth that she declined to adopt the proposed alterations, and Whiston was obliged to leave her communion. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton |
