"Penance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inclined to inquire into the motives that draw so many people out of their beds, to shiver through the streets and in the cold church at such an early hour. Is it religion? Is it superstition? Is it penance? Is it devotion? No doubt many of these silly creatures really believe that the act is pleasing to God; that these genuflexions and orisons, mechanically repeated, will give them grace in His eyes. But it is ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... another tribe. He lived a year or two with the Pawnees, acquiring perfectly their difficult language, and attaining a great influence over them, which he never lost. After several years of such penance, I-e-tan revisited the villages of his nation, and, in 1830, on the death of La Criniere, his elder brother, succeeded ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... deliver it; discover to myself and to this gentleman all that you know about your son's late conduct. Speak, or you shall have your closed lips forced apart, or there shall be found and set you such tormenting penance, that you shall sue with speed to make confession. What! still silent? Bathe no longer that face with tears. Out on thee, crocodile! Oh, that those trite tears were scales, falling, to leave you bare and vulnerable to arrows of adjurement; then, with patience ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... distinctly under the fostering care of the former element, the deaconesses are manifestly favored by the latter. Sisterhoods, again, differ among themselves, some being strongly conventual in their life and practice, adopting the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and a few even advocating penance and confession. The vows are taken for life, and, in connection with the view of the sacred obligation to life-long service, great stress is laid upon the position of the sister as the "bride of Christ"—the same thought of the mysterious union with the heavenly ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... and Mrs. Aalbom sat gossiping on the sofa; and Fanny, who in the course of the day had received more than one reproving look from her mother-in-law for flirting with Delphin, was now doing penance with the old ladies, to whom Pastor Martens had ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... having made confession, he swore, still upon his knees, to accomplish all the requirements of penitence. 'It is well,' said the abbot: 'now rise from thy knees, seat thyself, and listen. You must first do penance for seven years in the neighboring island of Tirce, after which I will see you again.' 'But,' said the penitent, still agitated by remorse, 'how can I expiate a perjury of which I have not yet spoken? Before I left my country I killed ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... chained him to a post. Rosader, amazed at this strange chance, began to reason with his brother about the cause of this sudden extremity, wherein he had wronged, and what fault he had committed worthy so sharp a penance. Saladyne answered him only with a look of disdain, and went his way, leaving poor Rosader in a deep perplexity; who, thus abused, fell into sundry passions, but no means of relief could be had: whereupon for anger he grew into a discontented ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... leave it, and pray out an expiation, dear Henry. Had we houses of religion as there were once, and many divines of our Church would have them again, I often think I would retire to one and pass my life in penance. But I would love you still—yes, there is no sin in such a love as mine now; and my dear lord in heaven may see my heart; and knows the tears that have washed my sin away—and now—now my duty is here, by my children whilst they need me, and by ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... sacred dwelling thou hast so profaned. The western sea a wreath of islands holds, Where Angantyr, the earl, is governor. As long as Bele lived the earl each year His tribute paid, but ceased when Bele died. Go o'er the sea and drive this tribute in; This penance thy audacity demands. 'Tis said," sneered he, with meanest mockery, "That Angantyr hard-fisted is, and broods Like dragon Fafner o'er his gold: but who Can stand 'gainst our new Sigurd, Fafner's bane? Exploits more manly must thou undertake Than ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... here and now. And in the present she finds for her immense and brilliant talent a tale as dramatic and enthralling as any of the storied past. The career of the Rev. Harry Sanderson, known as "Satan" in his college days, who sowed the wind to reap the whirlwind and won at last through strangest penance the prize of love, seizes the reader in the strait grip of its feverish interest. Miss Rives has outdone herself in the invention of a love story that rings with lyric feeling and touches every fiber of the heart with strength ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... just beginning to ponder over the meaning of things, he was so won to enthusiastic admiration of the heroes and heroines of the Catholic Church that he decided he would probe for himself the Catholic claims, and the child would say to the father, 'Father, if there be such a sacrament as Penance, can I go?' And the good Archbishop, being evasive in his answers, the young boy found himself emerging more and more in a woeful Nemesis of faith." It would be literally impossible, I think, to construct a story less characteristic both of Hugh's own attitude of ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of these hulks to tell— These prison ships where Pain and Penance dwell, Where Death in ten-fold vengeance holds his reign, And injured ghosts, yet unavenged, complain: This be my task—ungenerous Britons, you Conspire to murder whom ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... Maria, ora pro nobis! Mater Christi, ora, ora!" "Cursed be my lot, but useless is repining, Here must I stay till dreary day is gone, Living only in the pale moon's shining; To-night my hated penance though is done. Gaily, gaily, gaily I'll live Though I be but a spirit of air; Every pleasure the world can give Shall be mine while ...
— A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters • Charles A. Gunnison
... super gorgiasitate muliercularum ad placitum. The Apparition of Sancte Geltrude to a Nun of Poissy, being in travail at the bringing forth of a child. Ars honeste fartandi in societate, per Marcum Corvinum (Ortuinum). The Mustard-pot of Penance. The Gamashes, alias the Boots of Patience. Formicarium artium. De brodiorum usu, et honestate quartandi, per Sylvestrem Prioratem Jacobinum. The Cosened or Gulled in Court. The Frail of the Scriveners. The Marriage-packet. The Cruizy or Crucible of Contemplation. The ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... remorseless hearts. Their plea for additional rigor, being plausibly urged, was favorably received by a community darkened by prejudice. Few regarded with pity, and most with stoical indifference, this barbarous correction for crimes anticipated, and rigorous penance for offences existing only in the diabolical fancies of their tormentors. The truth is, it was the love these poor wretches bore their wives, children, and native soil, for which they were punished. They were commonly bound two and two by chains, riveted to iron collars fastened around their necks, ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... from his chair with every indication of relief on his face." Nothing could be better," he said. "That will be just right—every one will be satisfied. And I'll just say for the sake of discipline that little Judith shan't come back to school till she has done her penance. Of course she can get it all done before supper-time tonight. All our families live in the vicinity of the school." He was shaking Professor Marshall's hand again and edging him towards the door, his mind once more on his paper, hoping that he might really finish it before ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... O wit ill-spent! So study thousands not to mend their lives, But to maintain the sin they most affect, To be hell's advocates 'gainst their own souls. Ver, since thou giv'st such praise to beggary, And hast defended it so valiantly, This be thy penance: thou shalt ne'er appear Or come abroad, but Lent shall wait on thee: His scarcity may countervail thy waste. Riot may flourish, but finds want at last. Take him away that knoweth no good way, And lead him the next way to woe and want. [Exit VER. Thus in the paths of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... week in Schleppenheim. "However," he said to himself with a sigh, "it is all part of the story, I suppose." In his inmost soul he felt the conviction that he was altogether, in his strange progress through the joyous crowd with that pale, anxious companion, going through a sufficient penance to make amends for the misfortune of which he was the ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... devil overthrown, sin and its curse were taken away, heaven was opened and made accessible". It was then becoming that christians should consecrate these days of mercy, of grace and salvation to exercises of penance, devotion, and thanksgiving. The imposing liturgy of the Roman church is at this season more than usually solemn; and it is our task to describe, and endeavour to trace to their origin, ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... day, should your hand forget, Your guardian eyes stray otherwhere, Your cheeks shall all in vain be wet, Vain all your penance and ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... blushing and laughing. "It would be light penance, in any case; to spend a day here, after a fortnight down yonder. What I mean is, I might improve the time ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... figure us in a set of pleasures, which, believe me, we do not find; cards and eating are so universal, that they absorb all variation of pleasures. The operas, indeed, are much frequented three times a week; but to me they would be a greater penance than eating maigre: their music resembles a gooseberry tart as much as it does harmony. We have not yet been at the Italian playhouse; scarce any one goes there. Their best amusement, and which in some parts, beats ours, is the comedy three or four of the actors ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... made to interest and hold him were somewhat strained. But if this was so, it escaped the notice of the one person concerned; for it was long after tea had been served, long after Eve had offered to do penance for her monopoly of him by driving him to Chilcote's club, that Loder realized with any degree of distinctness that it was she and not he who had taken the lead in their interview; that it was she and not he who had bridged the difficult silences and given a fresh direction ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Heliobas decisively. "His life on earth is assured for many years yet,—inasmuch as his penance is not finished, his recompense not won. Thus far my knowledge of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... metaphorically speaking: and then, by-and-bye, the Church might open her arms to him, and listen to the voice of his prayer. But now—Father Cristoforo declined even to hear any formal confession: his pupil must wait and prepare himself, before he was fit for the sacrament of penance. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... jam. He is a small, puny-built man, with gold rings in his ears, and a face of genteel ugliness, but touchingly lugubrious in its expression. With his violin at his shoulder, he has the air of a husband undergoing the nocturnal penance of walking the room with 'the child'—and performing it, too, with unaffected pity. He plays with the purest and coldest perfection of art, and is doubtless more learned on the violin than either of the rival performers ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... won't you take this pillow from my head, and put another blanket on my feet, and fix the fire, and give me some water, or something? Oh, dear, dear!—" groaned poor Rose Lincoln, as with aching head and lungs, she did penance for her imprudence in crossing the wet, slippery street in thin ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... serious than those which went before. The Africans, very practical folk, clearly foresaw that they would sin again even after baptism, but they wanted to sin at a better rate, and lessen the inflictions of penance. This penance in Augustin's time was far from being as hard as in the century before. Nevertheless, the remembrance of the old severity always remained, and the habit was taken to put off baptism so as ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... long, nearly. Every now and then one comes across a friar of orders gray, with shaven head, long, coarse robe, rope girdle and beads, and with feet cased in sandals or entirely bare. These worthies suffer in the flesh and do penance all their lives, I suppose, but they look like consummate famine-breeders. They are all fat ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... vast intrigue. As regards generalities it was simply known that Boccanera represented absolutism—the Church freed from all compromises with modern society, and waiting in immobility for the Deity to triumph over Satan, for Rome to be restored to the Holy Father, and for repentant Italy to perform penance for its sacrilege; whereas Sanguinetti, extremely politic and supple, was reported to harbour bold and novel ideas: permission to vote to be granted to all true Catholics,* a majority to be gained by this means ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... teller Anna knew was really bad. That had to be told to the father just as it was and penance had then to ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... shall conquer that immortal grace? Thus my own model I was born to be— The model of that nobler self, whereto Schooled by your pity, lady, I shall grow. Each overplus and each deficiency You will make good. What penance then is due For my fierce heat, chastened ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... chimera; I defy it to take possession of me again. I propose to put myself under discipline in order to expiate my extravagance. So soon as my cure is entirely finished I will set out for Paris, where I will do penance." ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... Sancho was asked by the Duchess how many lashes he had given himself; and he replied meekly that he had commenced with five. After a moment's inquisition, however, the squire admitted that it had not been with lashes but slaps that he had done penance. The Duchess said she was certain that the sage Merlin would not tolerate any such false pretense. She suggested that he make a scourge with claws or knotted cords so that he would be sure to feel ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... murder if the police were to learn of it. But the fate of some thousands of widows is worse than death, because among the superstitious Hindus they are held responsible for the death of their husbands, and the sin must be expiated by a life of suffering and penance. As long as a widow lives she must serve as a slave to the remainder of the family, she must wear mourning, be tabooed from society, be deprived of all pleasures and comforts, and practice never-ending austerities, so that after death she may escape transmigration into the body ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... was caused on reaching camp by the appearance of a fakir seated under a tree close to where our tents were pitched. The man was evidently under a vow of silence, which Hindu devotees often make as a penance for sin, or to earn a title to more than a fair share of happiness in a future life. On our addressing him, the fakir pointed to a small wooden platter, making signs for us to examine it. The platter had been quite recently used for mixing food in, and at first there seemed ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... necessary that I should take some critical step in African diplomacy; so, after ordering all the seizures to be given up to Maula on behalf of the king, and threatening to discharge any of my men who dared retain one item of the property, I shut the door of my hut to do penance for two days, giving orders that nobody but my cook Ilmas, not even Bombay, should come near me; for the king had caused my men to sin—had disgraced their red cloth—and had inflicted on me a greater insult ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... creed, no profession of faith, no incense, no prayer, no penance, no sacrifice. Its whole duty consists in comforting the afflicted, assisting the unfortunate, protecting the helpless, and in honestly fulfilling our duties to our fellow mortals. In the language of Confucius, the ancient Chinese Sage, it is ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... on 'the sly,' you know," she observed with an arch smile. "I have a good, quiet aunt who lives down at Richmond, and I do penance there for a time, whenever I have been more than usually wicked; but to-day I could not resist the fine weather and the crowd and the fun, and above all the bad company, which amuses me more than all the rest put together, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... with delation, Bruno replied, first, that he did not believe he would betray his confidence by making private conversation the groundwork of criminal charges; secondly, that the utmost the Inquisition could do, would be to inflict some penance and force him to resume the cowl. These, which are important assertions, bearing the mark of truth, throw light on his want of caution in dealing with Mocenigo, and explain the attitude he afterwards ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... with counsel to his power; till at last Sir Raoul told him all as ye have heard afore. And he prayed him for God's sake give him counsel, so great as was his misdoing. "Sir," said he, "be nought dismayed, for if thou wilt do the penance which I enjoin thee, I will take thy transgression on me and on my soul, so that thou shalt be quit." "Yea, tell me then," said the knight. "Sir," said he, "thou shalt take the cross far over sea, and thou shalt get thee thereto within the year ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... be spurned by her instincts and her traditional habits of thought. The terrible voice of the Psalmist would hush every other sound. Her sweet soul would pine under the blazing fire of a curse, real or imaginary; her life would be henceforth but a bitter penance. Like the girl in Coleridge's poem of 'The Three Graves,' her very flesh would waste before the fires of her imagination. 'No,' said I, 'such a calamity as this which I dread Heaven would not permit. So cruel a joke as this Hell itself ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... spirits and baffling wind, She was always before or just behind, One day too soon, or one day too late, And the sun, meanwhile, would never wait: She had two eighths, as she idly lay, Two tenths, but never a ninth of May; And there she rides through two hundred years Of dreary penance and anxious fears: Yet through the grace of the saint she served, Captain and crew ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... bloody rites were kept Within the quiet of the convent cell: The well-fed inmates pattered prayer, and slept, And sinned, and liked their easy penance well. Where pleasant was the spot for men to dwell, Amid its fair broad lands the abbey lay, Sheltering dark orgies that were shame to tell, And cowled and barefoot beggars swarmed the way, All in their convent weeds, of black, and ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... some it has been reckoned as a "deadly sin," punishable by eternal hell fire, if not duly absolved before death; by others it has been held to be only a "venial sin," one that must always be confessed to the priest when coitus is engaged in, and which can be pardoned by the practice of due penance. But, always, it ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... repent of them," she said with a mocking smile; "in making Louise happy you will perform the rudest penance ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... cars to J. Panel, an' las'ly, I caused money ter be loaned to said J. Panel so's to git him completely under my heel. Also I built a church in San Lorenzy, an' I write these yere lines in the vestry of it as a sorter penance. I swear solemn that this is the first time in my life that I ever tole the truth, an' I'll never do it agen, if I ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... their desecrated graves he poured forth a flood of repentant tears. With the dawn of day he quitted the castle of Rheineck. It is said that he traversed the land in the garb of a lowly mendicant, subsisting on the alms of the charitable, and it is likewise told that he did penance at every holy shrine from Cologne to Rome, whither he was bound to obtain absolution for his sins. Years afterwards he was found dead at the foot of the ancient altar in the ruined chapel. The castle went to ruin, and for centuries nought ever ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... committed since those vows, will need a world of tears to wash away: it is I will weep for both; it is I will go and be a sacrifice to atone for all our sins: it is I will be the pressing penitent, and watch, and pray, and weep, until heaven have mercy; and may my penance be accepted for thee;—farewell—I have but one request to make thee, which is, that thou wilt, for Octavio's sake, forgive the faithful slave that brings ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... larger towns, more or less secretly, away from the sight of white men. Especially is it prevalent during Holy Week. Although the Philippine flagellants are called "penitentes" the flagellation is not done in penance, but as the result of a vow or promise made to the diety in return for the occurrence of some wished-for event, and the "penitentes" are frequently from the most knavish class. The fulfillment of the vow ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... a church in the village—St. Pantelei, if I remember rightly. There lived there a priest, Father Athanasii of blessed memory. Observing that Basavriuk did not come to church, even at Easter, he determined to reprove him and impose penance upon him. Well, he hardly escaped with his life. "Hark ye, sir!" he thundered in reply, "learn to mind your own business instead of meddling in other people's, if you don't want that throat of yours stuck with boiling kutya (1)." What was to be done with this unrepentant ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... their own gizzard, Cross Captain X. and rough old General Izzard! Letter to Letter spreads the dire alarms, Till half the Alphabet is up in arms. Nor with less lustre have Initials shone, To grace the gentler annals of Crim. Con. Where the dispensers of the public lash Soft penance give; a letter and a dash— Where Vice reduced in size shrinks to a failing, And loses half her grossness by curtailing. Faux pas are told in such a modest way,— "The affair of Colonel B—— with Mrs. A——" You must forgive ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... gave it up, but if the New Home Sewing Machine Co. will communicate with me, I will some time, for penance, make a journey to La Breita, and reinstate myself in the good graces of the kindly inhabitants thereof, by solving the mystery ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... now to be directed with new accuracy and ardour upon the fabric and behaviour of the world of sense. Our debt to the great masters in physical science who overtook and almost out-stripped the task cannot be measured; and, under the honourable leadership of Ruskin, we may all well do penance if we have failed "in the respect due to their great powers of thought, or in the admiration due to the far scope of their discovery." ("Queen of the Air", Preface, page vii. London, 1906.) With what miraculous ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... discovered he was perfectly sane. It appeared that he was a Greek about forty-five years of age, who was a native of Kyrenia, and for some offence twenty years ago he had been ordered by the priests to do penance in this extraordinary manner. His body, originally white, had become quite as brown as that of an Arab of the desert; he possessed no clothing nor property of any kind, not even a blanket during winter; but he wandered about the mountains and visited monasteries and certain villages, ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... repentant Claudio implored forgiveness of the old man Leonato for the injury he had done his child; and promised, that whatever penance Leonato would lay upon him for his fault in believing the false accusation against his betrothed wife, for her dear sake he ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... them all is that of a man wedding a supernatural maiden and unable to retain her. She must return to her own country and her own kin; and if he desire to recover her he must pursue her thither and conquer his right to her by undergoing superhuman penance or performing superhuman tasks,—neither of which it is given to ordinary men to do. It follows that only when the story is told of men who can be conceived as released from the limitations we have been gradually learning during ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... every Friday throughout the year, in our church. There is a great concourse of people at that time to hear the fiftieth psalm, Miserere, by the melancholy harmony of which they are most moved to devotion and to doing penance. Not infrequently the royal auditors and the governor himself have been present, as well ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... egress toward the river-bank, and a boat close thereto, which conveyed him without any disturbance as far and as quietly as he chose, it not unfrequently happened that the courtiers uselessly waited to see the prelate, who availed himself of the pretext of a serious indisposition, or a rigid penance, to postpone his reception for the day. For him it was a realization of Italy in the bosom of the capital of the king of France, it was Venice embraced by the ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... smith. "You are always making some new saint in this godly city of St. Johnston. Pray, who, for a devil's drubber, may he be? One of your hermits that is trained for the work like a wrestler for the ring, and brings himself to trim by fasting and penance, is he not?" ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... Byzantine or Saracen, it did not matter which. Naturally the sovereign princes who took the Cross do not fall into this category. For them an expedition might be either an adventure, or the grudging fulfilment of a penance, or a bid for the esteem of their subjects; but it was often a conscious sacrifice of self-interest and national interests to a higher duty. However low their motives, it would not have paid them to turn aside from the task enjoined upon them by European opinion. Even Frederic ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... imagination. And now he could hear the maiden singing a sad song beneath the waves, lamenting her sad fate, and yet more the evil lot of her brother, who had slain the son of his father's old friend.[46] The blood from the sword reddened the cheeks of the maiden, and a long and terrible penance lay ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... judicium,[183] etc.; and the property of mercy is to combat sloth by exhorting to good works, according to that passage: "The goodness of God leadeth to repentance,"[184] and that other of the Ninevites: "Let us do penance to see if peradventure He will pity us."[185] And thus mercy is so far from authorising slackness, that it is on the contrary the quality which formally attacks it; so that instead of saying, "If there were no mercy in God ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... I know. But what is the use? You are a priest, I am a soldier. Yours is penance, mine is fighting; yours is praying, mine is singing,—every man to his own. And when you priests have got your pagans converted, we soldiers will clean up the mess with our muskets. And now, Father, good day, and may God ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... articulate so long, In penance of some mouldered crime Whose ghost still flies the Furies' thong Down the waste solitudes ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... sat, Abroad our mothers ne'er would let us stir. Then with her lover she must chat, Or on the bench, or in the dusky walk, Thinking the hours too brief for their sweet talk; Her proud head she will have to bow, And in white sheet do penance now! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... discoursing their travels, and of their tedious captivity in the Turks' galleys, when, indeed, were the truth known, they were the Christians' galleys, where very temperately they eat bread, and drunk water, as a wholesome penance, enjoined them by their ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... character. We shall find them not only encouraging the good by exhortation, but terrifying the wicked by reproof and denunciation. In the earliest ages of the Church, while religion was yet pure from secular advantages, the punishment of sinners was publick censure, and open penance; penalties inflicted merely by ecclesiastical authority, at a time while the church had yet no help from the civil power; while the hand of the magistrate lifted only the rod of persecution; and when governours were ready to afford ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... shore that has received him. Thus it was with me, at least. I dreaded to look one of my townsmen in the face,—they knew all: and many years after, when the harsh judgments which would have received me were softened by my lonely penance and sadness, and proffers came from society, my solitude had become sacred to me; and that old star which the daguerrotypist ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... even staying awake may not be too dear a price to pay for that attention. Strange to say, there are other times when the insomnia is chosen by the primitive subconscious mind with the idea of doing penance for supposed sins whose evil effects might possibly be avoided by this kind of expiation. Analysis shows that motives like this are not so uncommon as might be supposed. In other cases insomnia is chosen for the chance it gives for phantasy-building. ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... inasmuch as they illustrated the major's taste for the profession of which he was so illustrious a member. I had almost forgotten to mention, while enumerating the portraits of these great generals, that there was hanging over the tea-table (as if to do penance for some grievous wrong committed against that venerable institutution) a picture of General Webb, who had distinguished himself in several great battles, fought in the columns of an almost pious newspaper, published ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... her it wanted the zest and animation of Lady Kilcoran's ball. Besides, she knew she had been as idle as Guy, or still more so, and she thought it wrong she should have pleasure while he was doing penance. It was on her mind, and damped her spirits, and though she smiled, and talked, and admired, and danced lightly and gaily, there was a sensation of weariness throughout, and no one but Eveleen was sorry when Mrs. Edmonstone sent Maurice to see ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... think, too, that these locutions have done your soul good, and in particular that they have made you see your own wretchedness and your faults more clearly, and amend them. They have lasted long, and always with spiritual profit. They move you to love God, and to despise yourself, and to do penance. I see no reasons for condemning them, I incline rather to regard them as good, provided you are careful not to rely altogether on them, especially if they are unusual, or bid you do something out of the way, or are not very ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... this to the baker's daughter, and then when I am sure it is gone, I will confess it all, and whatever penance Reverend Mother puts upon me, I shall be only glad. It may be I shall be cut off from Our Blessed Lord longer than I can bear, and then I shall die, but I think I shall be forgiven finally, for something tells me so, and until ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... the show languished. Nothing but the happy acquisition of a Chinese giant nearly eight feet high, with slanting eyes and a long pigtail,—a man who did penance in his height for the undue brevity of his undersized nation,—would have saved ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the praises of agriculture, injunctions as to the care and pity due to the dog, the guardian of the home and flock, the hunter and the scavenger. It includes an elaborate code of ceremonial purification, resembling on this point the Leviticus of the Bible, and it prescribes also the gradations of penance for sins of various degrees ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... in their mourning than the civilized people of the present day. They sat upon the ground and fasted, with rent garments, and ashes strewn upon their heads. This mortification of the flesh was a sort of penance inflicted by the self-tortured mourner for his own sins, and those of the dead. If this grief were not of a deep or lasting nature, the mourner found relief for his mental agonies in humiliation and ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... had many troubles. His own sons rebelled against him, his barons were unfriendly, and conspiracies were formed. Henry thought that God was punishing him for the murder of Becket and so determined to do penance at ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... sin it was, I do repent, And take the penance on myself alone; Yet after I have borne the punishment, I shall not fear to stand before the throne Of Love with open heart, and make this plea: "At least I have not lied to her ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... and in France, and in England by a great outbreak of heretical error; and, while the Society of Jesus and the Secret Inquisition were established to cope with all such heresy, Teresa set herself to counteract it by a widespread combination of unceasing penance and intercessory prayer. It was a zeal without knowledge; but there can be no doubt about the sincerity, the single-mindedness, and the strength of the zeal. For forty as hard-working years as ever any woman spent in this ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... me, The day is not yet o'er, And I still may make atonement Ere leaving life's last shore: One act of meek oblation, A tear of penance bright, Will be counted as rare treasures ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... the Ballyshannon folks are religious. They go to mass regularly, and confess themselves at frequent intervals. The confessional box is their only place to spend a happy day, and the act of confession, with the following penance, their pleasantest mode of passing away the time. They are mostly Home Rulers, and are deferring special effort to better themselves until the Irish Parliament does away with the necessity. That blessed institution once fairly settled at College Green will spare ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Archbishop without reading his homily,—pass by a folio in twenty grenadier volumes to greet a little black-coated, yellow-faced duodecimo,—speak to the forlorn and forsaken, who have been doing dusty penance upon cloistered shelves in silent alcoves for a century, with none so poor to do them reverence,—read here one little catch which came from lips long ago as silent as the clod which they are kissing, and there some forgotten fragment ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... which grow in their inherited grounds. Those who have charge of the temples are learned men, and eat nothing which suffers death, neither flesh nor fish, nor anything which makes broth red, for they say that it is blood. Some of the other Brahmans whom I mentioned, who seek to serve God, and to do penance, and to live a life like that of the priests, do not eat flesh or fish or any other thing that suffers death, but only vegetables[394] and butter and other things which they make of fruit,[395] with their ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... had secured the means of living modestly, realizing more deeply each month how dreadful had been her fate and how she had been cut off from the lot of other girls. She felt that her life must be a perpetual penance for what had befallen her through her ignorance and inexperience. She told Gambetta that her name was Leonie Leon. As is the custom of Frenchwomen who live alone, she styled herself madame. It is doubtful ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... fervent were now the monk's prayers to heaven; he implored forgiveness for his brother, and offered penance for him. Poor man! he thought if he could but see him and talk to him, he would redeem him from his apostacy; but, alas! his duty was in Hurdwar, he was bound there and could not move. One day (it was during the fair) he ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... times such grave offenders as by their deeds had brought scandal upon the Christian name were excluded from Christian fellowship until reconciled by penance; and many whose sins, being secret, might otherwise have escaped detection, preferred to make open confession of them in the Christian assembly. "Confess your faults one to another," writes S. James, "and pray one for another, that ye may be healed." The ancient system of ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... reckon it as nothing. The condolence of a friend or fellow-sufferer may soothe, though it cannot cure; and for such a solace the heart intuitively seeks. Confidence and sympathy are consolatory virtues—even penance has its purpose. I longed, therefore, for a friend—one to whom I could confide my secret, and unbosom my sorrow; and I sought that friend in the young backwoodsman. I had a claim upon him: he had made me the confidant of his care—the ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... cadentis ecclesiae—"the hinge of a standing or falling church." By the defence and propagation of this doctrine especially, the priestly office of Christ was vindicated against the dogmas of penance, indulgence and supererogation, inculcated by the "Man of Sin;" and by consequence, one of the bulwarks of mystical Babylon effectually demolished. At the famous Diet of Worms, which, like the Council of Constance, ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... ill-used and contemned, and, though perfectly innocent, ere he left the oasis he was condemned to the severest penance. As soon as the bishop had heard from Petrus of all that had happened in his house, he had sent for Paulus, and as he could answer nothing to the accusation, he had expelled him from his flock—to which the anchorites ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... meetings. But she's given it all up. She blames herself for leaving father so much and not going out to the country with him. He never asked her to leave the city but I know he wanted to. When he died she just came out here to do penance. She thought there wasn't anything for her to do in a place like this. But just wait till I tell her about Jim Tumley. Oh, she'll know what to do. Why, mother's wonderful in her way, David! Why, I just know she can do ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... current in the steerages about his antecedents. Some said he was a Nihilist escaping; others set him down for a harmless spendthrift, who had squandered fifty thousand roubles, and whose father had now despatched him to America by way of penance. Either tale might flourish in security; there was no contradiction to be feared, for the hero spoke not one word of English. I got on with him lumberingly enough in broken German, and learned from his own lips that he had been an apothecary. He carried the ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... asked. "It is the command of the Lady Superior, and you are bound by your vow of obedience to obey her orders—break them at the peril of your soul, Sister Clare," was the answer. "Go in, and let me be able to report that you have exhibited sorrow for your fault by performing the penance which your spiritual superior in her wisdom has thought ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... myrrh between my aching breasts. Some greatly pangful penance would I brave. Sharpness me save From being slain by sweet!' 'In your dell'd bosom's double peace Let all care cease! Custom's joy-killing breath Shall bid you sigh full soon for custom-killing death. So clasp your childish arms again around my heart: ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... having given away all his corn in time of famine, he caused the fields to be sown with sand for lack of grain, and was rewarded by a plentiful harvest. Having given way to murmuring in a moment of impatience he imposed upon himself the penance of making a pilgrimage to Rome, wearing on his leg a heavy chain; this he fastened by a padlock and threw the key into the Dee at a place now known as "The Pool of the Key." He is said to have bought ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... special personal care. The Dean received his confession with kindness seeing him so penitent, and gave him "good counsel and comfort," and remained his friend and spiritual adviser as he grew into manhood; but we are not told whether it was by his ordinance as a penance and constant reminder of his sin, or by a voluntary mortification of his own, that James assumed the iron belt which he wore always round him "and eikit it from time to time," that is, increased its size and weight ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... The Mayas did not maintain a severe form of sex taboo and they had festivals at which that taboo was entirely suspended.[1947] Pederasty also existed under the sanction of religion. Young men in the training house, which was a house of lamentation and penance, were allowed license which was contrary to the current mores of the society, but was an old privilege of soldiers. The dances which they performed daily were obscene. The persons in the dance represented vegetation demons, and the dances ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... supped at six, and went to bed at ten? Would a man die who worked in the garden an hour every afternoon, with half a day Saturday; that being the task most disagreeable to him and most appropriate therefore for penance? ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... scripture says, "Confess your faults one to another[309]," and the priests confess as well as the laity. Then it must be considered that their absolution is only upon repentance, and often upon penance also. You think your sins may be forgiven without penance, upon ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... with a foot-like depression 5 ft. long and 21/2 broad atop, ascribed to Adam by the Mohammedans, and to Buddha by the Buddhists; it was here, the Arabs say, that Adam alighted on his expulsion from Eden and stood doing penance on one ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... was far from being well-looked; and Sedley, who was so ugly, that Charles II. said, his brother had her by way of penance[141].' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... were thrust into the straps of the runner-like skees, Alwin stamped with exasperation. "You need not tell me that again. I know as well as you that it is a sin. But will not penance make ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... upbraiding look. Never—though the old man's troubles had been over so many years—had he forgiven himself for inflicting such a pang upon his heart. And now, in his old age, he had come hither to do penance, by standing at noon-day in the market-place of Uttoxeter, on the very spot where Michael Johnson had once kept his bookstall. The aged and illustrious man had done what the poor boy refused to do. By thus expressing his deep repentance and humiliation of ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... no salt in him i' the earth, man; he looks like a fresh salmon kept in a tub; he'll be spent shortly. His brain's lighter than his feather already, and his tongue more subject to lye, than that is to wag; he sleeps with a musk-cat every night, and walks all day hang'd in pomander chains for penance; he has his skin tann'd in civet, to make his complexion strong, and the sweetness of his youth lasting in the sense of his sweet lady; a good empty puff, ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... he had written three hundred sonnets against the abbe, who would burst with rage if they were ever printed. As I could not restrain a smile at the good opinion the poet had of his works, he offered to read me a few sonnets. He had the manuscript about him, and I could not escape the penance. He read a dozen or so, which I thought mediocre, and a mediocre sonnet is necessarily a bad sonnet, as this form of poetry demands sublimity; and thus amongst the myriads of sonnets to which Italy gives birth very ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the plight of our anchorite,— An endless penance condemned to dree,— When it chanced one day there came his way A Mystical Book with ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... continued fasts, severe flagellations, labours and meditations of those anchorites make the regulations governing this order exceedingly strict, and recall the times when kings and emperors, in the same monkish garb, walked barefoot to knock humbly in penance ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... her face grown grave enough in anticipation of the coming disclosures. She knew that the first plunge into them would be keenly painful to her, but there was a feeling at her heart that, this penance over, a great relief would be at hand. She trusted this man as she would have trusted her own father. She knew that there was nothing on earth he would not attempt if he fancied it would help her. And she knew, too, that having experienced so much of his great unselfishness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... after year, to young and to old alike, the same monotony of action and the same monotony of repose—the turning door in the wall (sole indication to those within, that there is a world without), moved in silence, ever at the same stated hour, by invisible hands—the prayer and penance in the chapel choir, always a solitude to its occupants, however many of their fellow-creatures may be standing beneath it—the short hours of exercise amid high garden walls, which shut out everything but the distant sky. Beyond this, what remains but that utter vacancy where even thought ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... if not formally and by written precept, that marriage was honorable, and that celibacy was an invention of the priests not warranted by primitive Buddhism. Penance, fasting, prescribed diet, pilgrimages, isolation from society whether as hermits or in the cloister, and generally amulets and charms, are all tabooed by this sect. Monasteries imposing life-vows are unknown within ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... knelt before Turpin, who blessed and absolved them all, bidding them, as penance, to strike hard ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... prudently considering that a divorce would in all probability be followed by war between the Flemings and Normans, determined to have recourse to a more pacific expedient; and consented to grant them absolution, upon condition of their performing penance. The penance enjoined upon the occasion was the erection of two monasteries; one for the religious of either sex.—Gratefully, we are told, did the noble pair accept the proffered terms; and instantly did they apply themselves to ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... articulate so long In penance of some mouldered crime, Whose ghost still flies the furies' thong Down ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... that life is altered now, I have done penance for contemning love; * * * * * For in revenge of my contempt of love Love hath chased sleep from my enthralled eyes And made them watchers of my own heart's sorrow. O gentle Proteus, Love's ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... King of England and an Archbishop of Canterbury, one standing up for the laws of his land, and the other for the honour (as he called it) of God's Church, which ended in the murder of the prelate, and in the whipping of his majesty from post to pillar for his penance. The learned and ingenious Dr. Drake has saved me the labour of inquiring into the esteem and reverence which the priests have had of old; and I would rather extend than diminish any part of it: yet I must needs say, that when a priest ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... sepulchres and funeral due; The boatman, Charon; those, the buried host, He ferries over to the further coast; Nor dares his transport vessel cross the waves With such whose bones are not composed in graves. A hundred years they wander on the shore; At length, their penance done, are wafted ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... be just at present much more comfortable for all parties you should square round a little, and take your punch. Come, Thady, are you going to be a martyr, too? it's a heathenish kind of penance, though, to be holding your tongue so long. Come, my boy, you were to bring the ticket about ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... others, always the knowing and spiritual one, always the priest or wise one. Into being a priest, into this arrogance, into this spirituality, his self had retreated, there it sat firmly and grew, while he thought he would kill it by fasting and penance. Now he saw it and saw that the secret voice had been right, that no teacher would ever have been able to bring about his salvation. Therefore, he had to go out into the world, lose himself to lust and power, to woman and money, had ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... Andrews was probably, like that of Iona, constructed with wattles and turf and roofed with thatch. It was customary to have caves or places of retirement for the hermits; they were used, too, as oratories or places of penance, and one such there is at St. Andrews, known ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... centuries deeper and deeper into the rock, and in new freshets receiving the aid of fresh stones, which are drawn into this trap and doomed to revolve there for an indefinite period, doing Sisyphus-like penance for stony sins, until they either wear out, or wear through the bottom of their prison, or else are released by some revolution of nature. There lie the stones of various sizes, from a pebble to a foot or two in diameter, some of which have rested from their labor only since the spring, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... tried every means, both of mildness and coercion, to break me of this evil habit. I was sure, however, to escape from him, and to conceal myself in some hole or corner, where I slept out the remainder of the watch; and the next morning, I was, as regularly, mast-headed, to do penance during the greater part of the day for my deeds of darkness. I believe that of the first two years of my servitude, one-half of my waking hours, at least, were ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... needful opportunity, and, indeed, its events, in many instances, tend rather to increase than to diminish the stain, the season of purification is prolonged by perpetuating a connexion of the sinful spirit with other forms, and permitting its transmigration to other bodies, in which, by the penance it undergoes, and the trials to which it is exposed, its iniquity may be washed away, and satisfactory preparation be made for its absorption in the ocean of infinite purity. Considering thus the relation in which all animated nature stands ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... of plotting for your father's murder. The evidence still holds, and some men who rode with you to-day to seize this gentle girl and drag her back to a marriage with your son—and save your ill-gotten gold thereby—some of these men who will confess to me and do penance to-morrow night, are the same men who long ago confessed to other crimes—you ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... difficulty in pointing out the passage of M. Renan's writings, by which he feels justified in making his statement, I shall wait for further enlightenment, contenting myself, for the present, with remarking that if M. Renan were to retract and do penance in Notre-Dame to-morrow for any contributions to Biblical criticism that may be specially his property, the main results of that criticism, as they are set forth in the works of Strauss, Baur, Reuss, and Volkmar, for example, could not be ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... veil, she afterwards endeavoured to conceal her shame, but the precaution only tended to render her more culpable. Her behaviour, indeed, had long afforded ample food for the sarcasms of the Jews and Pagans. Saint Ambrose compelled her to perform public penance, and after having declaimed on her double crime, gave her hopes of pardon, if, like "Soeur Jeanne," this early nun would sincerely repent: to complete her chastisement, he ordered her every day to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... this order we commenced the ascent. Each person was provided with a bamboo, which was found indispensable; and thus, like a party of pilgrims, we proceeded on our way; and before we had gone very far, we discovered that we were subjected to severe penance. The mountain was nearly perpendicular. In some places we had to ascend by a single piece of wood, with rough notches for the feet, resting against a rock twenty or thirty feet above our heads; and on either side was a precipice, ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... of May a day of solemn prayer and fasting was, by command of Maurice, celebrated throughout the besieging camp. In order that the day should be strictly kept in penance, mortification, and thanksgiving, it was ordered, on severe penalties, that neither the commissaries nor sutlers should dispense any food whatever, throughout the twenty-four hours. Thus the commander-in-chief of the republic prepared his troops ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... all, old chap, I was talking at random. Very well. I'll do penance in sackcloth and ashes by remaining here, and applauding your poetic efforts. I'll even help. I'm a dab ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... church the next day. I acquiesced, but remarked that my piety would not require the carriage, and that I preferred to walk. Besides, it would be well for William and James to attend divine service. She could not spare James, and thought William had better clean the harness, by way of penance. ...
— Lemorne Versus Huell • Elizabeth Drew Stoddard
... In ghostly penance, sounds of fiendish laughter Smote on the tempest's lull with sudden jar, That sent the gibbering echoes shrilling after, O'er ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... as it is still called, had been for a century previous of infamous repute. In Beaumont and Fletcher's play, the Knight of the Burning Pestle, one of the ladies who is undergoing penance at the barber's, has her character sufficiently pointed out to the audience, in her declaration, that she had been "stolen from her ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the king, "too high of heart To stand before a king thou art; Yet irks it me to bid thee part And take thy penance for thy part, That God may put upon thy pride." Then Balen took the severed head And toward his hostry turned and sped As one that knew not quick from dead Nor good from ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... aunt against a board, To make her straight and tall; They laced her up, they starved her down, To make her light and small; They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, They screwed it up with pins— O never mortal suffered more In penance for her sins. ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... tales are told of the nightingale, as to their great memory, and facility in imitating the human voice. Sitting in thorns is more for protection than penance. See Goldsmith's Animated Nature. It was a generally received opinion that the nightingale, to keep himself awake in the night, sat on a tree of thorn, so that if he nodded he would be pricked in the breast. The learned and witty Dr. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... forget what is due to my position, let him be set to stand in the old stocks at the doors of the Cathedral on a given day, for a given number of hours; let it be announced in the Court Circular that he is there to do penance for my sins, and let it be my privilege, if penitent, to come in person after the first hour and release him before the eyes of all. What more effective form of control could you devise for me than this? How could I remain impenitent and unsubmissive when for ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... Mr. Leverett, "a considerable time at Boston, in a state of penance. He presented his confession to Mr. Pemberton, who thereupon became his intercessor, and in his letter to the President expresses himself thus: 'This comes by Larnel, who brings a confession as good as Austin's, and I am charitably disposed to hope ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... representation of the hour-glass in a country church is to be seen in front of the precentor's desk, or pulpit, in a very scarce humorsome print, entitled "Presbyterian Penance," by the famous David Allan. It also figures in the engraving of the painting by Wilkie, of John Knox preaching before Mary Queen of Scots. About twenty years ago it was either in the Cathedral of Stirling or ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... shared with Rock, its severed end now padlocked to a ring bolt; and the apartment he occupied had as much of the prison aspect as any cell in the Acordada. No doubt, in days gone by, many a refractory brother had pined and done penance therein for breach ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... utter seclusion and hopeless separation from living man, and appear formed at once to court and gratify the sternest austerities of devotion—to nurse the fanaticism of diseased imaginations—to humour the wildest fancies—and promote the gloomiest schemes of penance and privation! ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... was a yearly tribute brought by himself and twelve of his elders barefoot, resembling in part such submissions as occur in the Angevin family history, the case of the Calais burgesses, and of such criminals as the Corporation of Oxford, whose penance was only finally renounced by the local patriots ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the room. The others joined them, and it was a group in which Anne found herself also necessarily included. She was divided from Captain Wentworth. Their interesting, almost too interesting conversation must be broken up for a time, but slight was the penance compared with the happiness which brought it on! She had learnt, in the last ten minutes, more of his feelings towards Louisa, more of all his feelings than she dared to think of; and she gave herself up to the demands of the party, to the needful civilities of the moment, with exquisite, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... some one. The Halma people are kind and gentle. You will not find them hard to love. And when the Great Sloth loves his work and the Halma people are so fond of you that they feel they cannot bear to lose you, your penance will be over and you can go ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... accordingly took a great stride under him towards its ultimate goal of bureaucracy. He would probably have carried the business still farther, since in his contest with the Church, in spite of the canonization of Beckett and the king's formal penance at his tomb, he had in fact gained a victory for the Crown which it never really lost again; but in his days England was only a part of the vast dominion of his House, which included more than half of France, and his struggle ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... been those who kept in view the professional service of auricular confession. Their purpose was—to assist the reverend confessor in appraising the quality of doubtful actions, in order that he might properly adjust his scale of counsel, of warning, of reproof, and of penance. Some, therefore, in pure simplicity and conscientious discharge of the duty they had assumed, but others, from lubricity of morals or the irritations of curiosity, pushed their investigations into unhallowed paths of speculation. They held aloft a torch for exploring guilty recesses-of human ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... you suppose.' And thereupon I related what passed, exhibiting at the same time the cuts intended to be inflicted upon me which had penetrated the bed-clothes; upon which the monk fell prostrate at my feet, weeping and sobbing, and imploring to know what act of penance I should sentence him to undergo. 'None; none!' I exclaimed. 'I would not punish you for an involuntary act; but I will dispense with your performing in the holy offices at night for the future; and I give ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... at the vehement boy, and would willingly have shaken him by the hand and stroked his curly head, but the penance he proposed for Rameri was to serve a great end, and Ameni would not allow any overflow of emotion to hinder him in the execution of a well considered design. So he answered ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... been very wicked, she was beginning to think, and deserved punishment; and if it had not been for a vague and adventurous faith in the great future that was in store for her son, she would have been content to return home, do penance for her folly, and beg her husband's forgiveness. But, in the first place, she had no money to pay for a return ticket; and, secondly, it would be a great pity to deprive little Hans of the Presidency and all the grandeur that his lucky star ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the dishes, Amanda," Blue Bonnet offered, when at last that night-mare of a dinner was over. "I ought to walk over red-hot plowshares, or wear a hair-shirt or something as a penance for my sins of this day. Lacking both plowshares and shirt, I'll substitute dish-washing. And you may bear me witness—I'd take the hair-shirt ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... happened, first to provoke her against Mr. Arbuton, and then to reconcile her to him. Had he said or done anything about her favorite painting (which she hated now), or the Marches, to offend her? Or if it had been his tone and manner, was his after-conduct at the old church sufficient penance? What was it he had done that common humanity did not require? Was he so very superior to common humanity, that she should meekly rejoice at his kindness to the afflicted mother? Why need she have cared for his forbearance toward the rapt devotee? She became aware that she was ridiculous. ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... old man. You know I'd let you pommel my head off any time if it could help you anyhow. Besides it was my fault as I told you. I didn't mean to be mean. I'll do any penance you say." ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... Captains and the Kings depart— It may be so, but not lieutenants; Dawn after weary dawn I start The never-ending round of penance; One rock amid the welter stands On which my gaze is fixed intently— An after-life in quiet lands Lived very ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... reasoned with in this wise. Perhaps it was the shipwreck in Gay's eyes that would not let him rest. Druro could not see that; but it was part of Dick Tryon's penance to witness it every day when he fetched Gay and her father in his car to visit the hospital. She always came laden with flowers and cheery words, and left an odour of happiness and hope behind her. But Tryon had seen what was in her eyes ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... AEschylean dramas of Agamemnon, and divide them into, or call them, as many acts, and they together would be one play. The first act would comprise the usurpation of AEgisthus, and the murder of Agamemnon; the second, the revenge of Orestes, and the murder of his mother; and the third, the penance and absolution of Orestes;—occupying a period of ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... no longer retain the charge of thee. Thou shalt go and do penance at the priory of thy sainted namesake, till thou dost come to a better mind. I will send thee after supper, and give fitting ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake |
