"Penitential" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blissful agony, the material drawing near, as it were, of the blessed Saturday evening; and when Saturday came and mademoiselle's dinner had been hastily served and her work done, she would make her escape and run to Notre-Dame de Lorette, hurrying to the penitential stool as to a lover's rendezvous. Her fingers dipped in holy water and a genuflexion duly made, she would glide over the flags, between the rows of chairs, as softly as a cat steals across a carpeted floor. With bent head, almost ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Don, listening to the waving branches, and falling into a dreamy state of mind, thought what if it were six hundred years ago! and we were pious simple hearted old abbots! What a fine place that would be to walk up and down at eventide or on a Sabbath morning, reciting the penitential psalms, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... tribunal than that of earthly friends. For this purpose, what I have written, and what I shall yet say to you, must close the account between you and me." "I have certainly no balance against you," said I. "In my breast you are fully acquitted. Your penitential tears have obliterated your guilt and blotted out your errors with your Julia. Henceforth, be they all forgotten. Live, and be happy." "Talk not," said she, "of life; it would be a vain hope, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... been drowned, while bathing, at Caen, about half-past two on July 31. The appearance was naked to the waist, his head bare, showing his beautiful yellow locks. He asked Bezuel to learn a school task that had been set him as a penalty, the seven penitential psalms: he described a tree at Caen, where he had cut some words; two years later Bezuel visited it and them; he gave other pieces of information, which were verified, but not a word would he say of heaven, hell, or purgatory; 'he seemed not to hear my questions'. ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... and to shabby cafes. I recall with tenderness the tortuous and featureless streets, which looked like the streets of a village, and were paved with villanous little sharp stones, making all exercise penitential. Consecrated by association is even a tiresome walk that I took the evening I arrived, with the purpose of obtaining a view of the Rhone. I had been to Arles before, years ago, and it seemed to me that I remembered finding on the banks of the stream some ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... felt so ashamed of myself in my life. I made up my mind to read a penitential passage of Scripture as soon as I closed the bargain with her, but, remembering the Book says to be reconciled to your brother before laying your gift on the altar, I says, quick as I could, for fear that if I thought over it again I ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... Churches. To give a few examples: the Apostles' Creed, the distinctive symbol of the Roman Church, was preserved by oral tradition only down to the fourth century, and was not imparted to any catechumen until the time of his baptism. The minute rules of penitential discipline were first committed to writing by Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, towards the close of the seventh century; and this innovation was sharply criticised by some ecclesiastical synods. ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... increased of late as one preparing for death; and with them were associated all her household of the Roman Catholic faith, leaving out Cicely and the two Mrs. Curlls. The long oft-repeated Latin orisons, such as the penitential Psalms, would certainly have been wearisome to the girl, but it gave her a pang to be pointedly excluded as one who had no part nor lot with her mother. Perhaps this was done by calculation, in order to incline her to embrace her mother's faith; and the time was not spent very pleasantly, as ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... away the fears that trouble brings— To bear unto the stricken solace sweet As water to the wounded, and to be A strength and an assurance to the weak. Ay! life, like matter, is atomic, and Man blows unto the winds what multiplied Makes up the universe. This radiant earth, Which, in its penitential moods the heart Feels were a paradise if guilt were not, Sprung from the womb of space, in perfectness Co-equal with the fairest orb that holds Vice-royalty in heaven for the sun; Form, substance, seeming, and that vivid charm Which is the soul of matter like in each. Mind differs only, ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... Fleet prison to St. Paul's Cathedral. The warden of the Fleet was there, and the knight marshal, and the tipstaffs, and "all the company they could make," "with bills and glaives;" and in the midst of these armed officials, six men marching in penitential dresses, one carrying a lighted taper five pounds' weight, the others with symbolic fagots, signifying to the lookers-on the fate which their crimes had earned for them, but which this time, in mercy, was remitted. One of these ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Domine! The words are utter'd, and they flee. Deep is their penitential moan, Mighty their pathos, but 'tis gone. They have declared the spirit's sore Sore load, and words can do no more. Beethoven takes them then—those two Poor, bounded words—and makes them new; Infinite makes them, makes them young; Transplants them ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... notice it, of course; I know it. My soul is burdened with a shapeless boot, Your heart is singing welcome to your poet. Here in the shadowy settle I can sit And sparkle with you, brightly confidential, But when into the lamp-bright zone you flit, I shrink into some corner penitential. A well-dressed crowd, their tailors all unpaid, Throng round you there, and cuffs and collars glisten; Of pity's blindness, as of scorn, afraid, I shun the merry fray, and darkling listen, For who could urge the timidest of suits, Conscious of such ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... in great sorrows, who conquer the savage pain of heart and desolation of spirit which arise from heroic human grief,—Oedipus and Antigone, Iphigenia, Perseus, Prometheus, King Lear, Samson Agonistes, Job, and David in his penitential psalm. And there are the Victors in the yet deeper strivings of the soul—in its inner battles and spiritual conquests—Milton's Adam, Paracelsus, Dante, the soul in The Palace of Art, Abt Vogler, Isaiah, Teufelsdroeckh, Paul. ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... spots where traces of them are found in traditions, in default of memorials. The University had also its own. On Mount Sainte-Genevieve a sort of Job of the Middle Ages, for the space of thirty years, chanted the seven penitential psalms on a dunghill at the bottom of a cistern, beginning anew when he had finished, singing loudest at night, magna voce per umbras, and to-day, the antiquary fancies that he hears his voice ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... uncommon for him to resign the best of the rude comforts he has, in the way of accommodation, to some belated one, and content himself with the scantest of those scant comforts, impressing, at the same time, with his native delicacy, the notion, that he courts, rather than shrinks from, the almost penitential regime. Though one would naturally think, that the scorn of material comforts, suggested here, and which many others of his acts evince, would scarcely breed indolence in the Indian, yet this is with him an almost unconquerable weakness. ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... way at having been discovered, as it were, feasting in the house of mourning. "At the present sad juncture, to drink sherry-wine with all its untamed richness might, I feel, smack of callousness. Therefore I tell the man to dash it with bitters, which, whilst it has a penitential sound, adds a not untoothsome flavour in anticipation ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... responsibility of sin without being burdened with the obligation of repairing it, but it is only a soul well steeped in malice that will take seriously such a contention. Neither is restitution a penance imposed upon us in order to atone for our faults; it is no more penitential in its nature than are the efforts we make to avoid the faults we have fallen into in the past. It atones for nothing; it is simply a desisting from evil. When this is done and forgiveness obtained, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... began to swell Polykarp felt that his father's visitor was something more than his poor clothing would seem to indicate and that he had hurt his feelings. He had certainly seen some old anchorites, who led a contemplative and penitential life up on the sacred mountain, but it had never occurred to him that a strong youth could be long to the brotherhood of hermits. So he said to him kindly: "Hermas—is that your name? We all use our hands here and labor is no ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... knelt down before his bed and said, "Sir, be thinking of your soul; it seemeth to us that, saving the divine mercy, you have not more than two hours." The king summoned his confessor with the priests, and asked to have recited to him the penitential psalms. When they came to the twentieth versicle of the Miserere,—Ut oedificentur muri Hierusalem (that the walls of Jerusalem may be built up),—He made them stop. "Ah!" said he, "if God had been pleased to let me live out my time, I would, after putting ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... choir—and halted before a monument of black marble. He paused for a few moments: then cried with a loud voice in Welch, English, and Latin, "Bastard of Walladmor!" to which summons the choir sang a penitential antiphony. Then he raised his spear and struck the outside of the tomb: to which again the organ muttered and the choir sang a response. Then a second time he raised the golden spear, and plunged it through an iron grating which occupied the place of heart in the stony figure of a ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... o'er sinners weep, And shall our cheeks be dry? Let floods of penitential grief Burst forth ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... the monastic pile, Did of this penitential aisle Some vague tradition go, Few only, save the Abbot, knew Where the place lay; and still more few Were those, who had from him the clue To that dread vault to go. Victim and executioner Were blindfold when transported there. In low dark rounds the arches hung, From the rude rock the side-walls ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... society of Madrid. A soiree in this circle is like an evening in the corresponding grade of position in Paris or Petersburg or New York in all external characteristics. The toilets are by Worth; the beauties are coiffed by the deft fingers of Parisian tiring-women; the men wear the penitential garb of Poole; the music is by Gounod and Verdi; Strauss inspires the rushing waltzes, and the married people walk through the quadrilles to the measures of Blue Beard and Fair Helen, so suggestive of conjugal rights and duties. As for the suppers, the trail of ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... to find one's self among the historic places subsides; yet how often, as our horses' hoofs rang on the slippery stones, my thoughts went suddenly back to the scene when Saint Gregory passed over, chanting litanies, at the head of the whole populace, who formed one vast penitential procession, and saw the avenging angel alight on the mausoleum of Adrian and sheath his sword in sign that the plague was stayed; or to that terrible day when the ferocious mercenaries of the Constable de Bourbon and the wretched inhabitants given over ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... kneel down and expiate Your crime with burning penitential tears— And if you 'scape the perils of the pass, And are not whelm'd beneath the drifted snows, That from the frozen peaks come sweeping down, You'll reach the bridge that's drench'd with drizzling spray. Then if it give ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... imprisonment was it coincided, much to his own surprise, with the Jewish Penitential period, and the Day of Atonement came in the middle. A wealthy Jewish philanthropist had organized a prison prayer-service, and Elkan eagerly grasped at the break in the monotony. Several of the prisoners who posed as Jews with this same motive were detected and ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... influence. The far east end was lost in obscurity, and we could barely trace the outlines of the splendid roof. Far down, near a confessional, knelt a small group of hooded women, motionless as carven images. Their heads were bowed, their whole attitude betrayed the penitential mood. There might have been eight or ten at most, and they never stirred. But every now and then a fair penitent issued from the confessional box; and, cloaked and hooded, glided back to the seat ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... White Fast, the judgment books were closed, to open no more for the rest of the year. Up till twilight there was yet time, but then what was written was finally sealed, and he who had not truly repented had missed his last chance of forgiveness. What wonder if early in the ten penitential days, the population of the Ghetto flocked towards the canal bridge to pray that its sins might be cast into the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the very, the only time, when the Ottoman reverses gave a fair hope of the success of Christendom. When premature death overtook him, and he had but two hours to live,[64] he ordered his confessor to recite the Seven Penitential Psalms; and, when the verse was read about building the walls of Jerusalem, the word caught his ear; he stopped the reader, and observed that he had proposed to conquer Jerusalem, and to have rebuilt it, had God granted him life. Indeed, he ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... dark and keen and terrible as life. Here first was truth in song made perfect: here Woke first the war of love and hate and fear. A man too vile for thought's or shame's control Holds empire on a woman's loftier soul, And withers it to wickedness: in vain Shame quickens thought with penitential pain: In vain dark chance's fitful providence Withholds the crime, and chills the spirit of sense: It wakes again in fire that burns away Repentance, weak as night devoured of day. Remorse, and ravenous thirst of sin and crime, Rend and consume the soul in strife sublime, ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... choked by sobs, Barbara pointed out the line. That, at least, was true. The old man raised it to his lips as a monk might raise his crucifix when kneeling in penitential prayer. ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... really taken to their hearts that God is their Father in Christ; and that, 'even as a father pitieth his own children, so is the Lord merciful to them that fear him?' Had they, by faith, taken this blessed truth to their souls, they might and would, not in hopelessness and dread, but in trust and penitential love, make their wants known as a child to its parent; they would arise, and in humble compunctions, and not desponding trust, say, 'Father, I have sinned.' They would carry each trouble to him, and say, ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... moving as if repeating to herself her lesson, and that afterwards, with a swift look around the room to assure herself that she was unobserved, she made a hurried sign of the cross. It occurred to him that this might have followed some penitential prayer of the child, and remembering her tuition by the padres it gave him an idea. He dismissed school a few moments earlier in order that he might speak to her alone before ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... invested, and was at last starved into surrender. But, taught by the experience of the past, Assur-bani-pal did not treat it severely. The leaders of the revolt, it is true, were punished, but the city and people were spared, and its shrines, like those of Kutha and Sippara, were purified, while penitential psalms were sung to appease the angry deities, and the daily sacrifices which had been interrupted were restored. A certain Kandalanu was made viceroy, perhaps ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... [Footnote 114: The penitential jurisprudence was continually improved by the canons of the councils. But as many cases were still left to the discretion of the bishops, they occasionally published, after the example of the Roman Praetor, the rules of discipline which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... But let me only lay hands on that infernal quill-driver! I'll make him skip—be it in this world or the next; if I don't pound him to a jelly, body and soul; if I don't write all the Ten Commandments, the seven Penitential Psalms, the five books of Moses, and the whole of the Prophets upon his rascally hide so distinctly that the blue hieroglyphics shall be legible at the day of judgment—if I don't, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and monastic punishment administered, while penitential chambers adjoined, to which offenders were taken after ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... Marks all the narrow field I own; Yet, patient husbandman, I till With faith and prayers, that precious hill, Sow it with penitential pains, And, hopeful, wait the latter rains; Content if, after all, the spot Yield barely one forget-me-not— Whether or figs or thistle make My crop content for ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... never have the pleasure of thanking you in person for your brotherly regard, I beg you will endeavour to meet me in the Kingdom of our Father, where distance of time and place is lost in the fulness of Him who is all in all. The way ye know—the penitential way of a heart-felt faith working ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... long-untouched chords. At the same moment that the aroused sense of pollution would overwhelm him, the reminder shines forth to him in the pilgrims' words of the possibility of forgiveness and regeneration through repentance and penitential practices. A very miracle of God's grace it seems to him, by which he sees the door of hope open to him anew. The weight of his emotion forces him to his knees; he makes his own the words of the pilgrims wending their way out of sight: "Ah, heavily oppresses me the burden of sin, no longer can ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... sacrifices, or even by human sacrifices, is repugnant to rather than conformable with natural reason. There exists no discernible connection between the one and the other. We may suppose that eucharistic, penitential, and even deprecatory sacrifices may have originated in the light of nature and reason, but we are unable to account for the practice of piacular sacrifices for substitutional atonement, on the same principle. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... include hundreds of other offences, which are purely ceremonial, and which probably took a long time to reach the luxuriant growth they have attained in the tablets. For ceremonial offences a ceremonial purification was felt to suffice. But there were others which, as the Babylonian Penitential Psalms testify, were felt to go deeper and to be sins, personal sins of the worshipper against his ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... now came forward with a black domino, which Mrs. Wilson slipped into gracefully, drawing up her glittering draperies. The big diamond on the toe of her slipper glowed fantastically, peeping from beneath the penitential robe. ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... illustrates as more significant than others of man's relation to Deity in his sense of sin and need for mercy, and as requiring, therefore, peculiar prominence in the total impression the oratorio should convey. If this was his aim, it is all accomplished. The penitential feeling embodied in the song is that which will longest linger in a remembrance of the work. The soft tone of the contralto voice, and the keenness of that of the violin, are accessories to the effect ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... every walk of life, and it is said that in family jars a husband sometimes has the last word of his wife by accusing her of blaspheming the sovereign, and so having her silenced for three months at least behind penitential bars. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... converted by the grace of God from his evil ways was moved with a desire to do penance for his sins. Accordingly he sought the counsel of a certain Irish priest, to whom he made a general confession and confided his desire of entering upon a penitential life. So deep was his sorrow that he expressed himself ready to accept any penance his director might impose, even to spending whole nights in prayer, or fasting for a week continuously. The priest ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... white, the men and women in sackcloth, and all were barefooted. They promenaded the streets of Milan, incessantly shouting Misericordia! and besieged the Duomo with the same dismal cry, the Bishop and the Municipal authorities of Milan taking part in the devotion.[4] These gusts of penitential piety were matters of real national importance. Writers imbued with the classic spirit of the Renaissance thought them worthy of a place in their philosophical histories. Thus we find Pitti, in the Storia Fiorentina (Arch. Stor. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... if not you? You are my first remembrance. It was you who told me that was my name. It was you who told me that on every twentieth of December my life had a penitential anniversary in it called a birthday. I suppose the last communication was truer ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... of one holy site atoned for by the preservation of another yet holier. This act of devotion, so worthy of the true Crusader, recalled from carnage those who had forgotten their vows in the thirst for vengeance, and the whole army, led by the clergy, followed him to the same church in penitential procession. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... house in England was founded by Henry II. at Witham, in Somersetshire, about the year 1178, in fulfilment of his penitential vow taken at the tomb of Thomas Becket. Another house was founded at Hinton, also in Somersetshire, in 1227. An attempt to found a house in Ireland did not succeed, the institution only lasting forty years. A third house was founded at Beauvale, in Nottinghamshire, in 1343. ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... those days. People brought their dinners and had a general penitential gorge. Instrumental music was proscribed, as per Amos fifth chapter and twenty-third verse, and the length of prayer was measured by the physical ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... two cousins breathed a penitential sigh, dropped her bare, jewelled arms out of her cloak, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... submit unconditionally to the rule in the matter of austerities, as of all else. But those who knew her well could have predicted, that as attachment to her own will and judgment had never mingled, however slightly, with her penitential works, she would renounce them, in compliance with the Divine will, as readily as she had embraced them from the ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... approaching God. 'Is not the Lord among us?' 'No evil shall come upon us.' Talk to them of God's glory, and they will answer by quoting some beautiful Psalm of David. Talk of man's sinfulness, and they will repeat Psalm 51st, with seeming penitential devotion. Speak of God's wrath against sin; they will assent readily, but add, that he is pitiful, remembering that we are dust. Thus the missionary is baffled. Let him search the Word of God to find expressions ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... commemoration service because John Wesley preached in this same graveyard when he made an evangelistic tour in Ireland. Although this is only a yearly service, and a commemoration service of one whom the people delight to honor, they made it pretty much a penitential service. There were no seats but what the damp earth afforded, no stand for the officiating minister but a grave; it was not, therefore, a very attentive congregation which he addressed. The speaker, a Mr. Pepper, had emigrated ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... gods. It was given out that prodigies and miracles were to be seen in certain places, as in the heathen times. The happy souls of departed Christians were invoked; it was believed that they were wandering about the world, or haunting their graves. There was a multiplication of temples, altars, and penitential garments. The festival of the purification of the Virgin was invented to remove the uneasiness of heathen converts on account of the loss of their Lupercalia, or feasts of Pan. The worship of images, of fragments of the cross, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... questions were neglected, even in the darkest days of the war, however meagre the legislative fruits may appear. Session after session, Romilly pressed forward reforms of the criminal law, the institution of penitential houses in the nature of reformatories, and the abolition of state lotteries. Others laboured, and with greater success, to remedy the delays and reduce the arrears in the court of chancery. Constant efforts were made to expose defalcations in the revenue, to curtail exorbitant salaries, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... troublesome than he had conceived. She nursed him, she read to him, she anticipated his wants, and was solicitous about his feelings; but there had entered into the husband's mind the certainty that she judged him, and that her wifely devotedness was like a penitential expiation of unbelieving thoughts—was accompanied with a power of comparison by which himself and his doings were seen too luminously as a part of things in general. His discontent passed vapor-like through all her gentle loving manifestations, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... which does not converse with serious subjects, or necessarily include reference to Deity; why do we find no trace of this among the Jews? We may remember, that all festivals, in very ancient time, of every description, the grave and the gay, the penitential and the jubilant, had a religious design, and were suggested by a religious feeling. We think the peculiar cast of the Judaic faith would hardly embody itself in such a mode of expression. Moreover, tragedy was the parent of comedy,—and since ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... some of the boys had those pretty red tufts on their caps?" You may imagine the chagrin and confusion of the culprits; scarlet faces and crimson tufts told their own tale! The boys, you may be sure, thought twice in future before risking another penitential week of branding and ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... had said she would so like to see the sea; and the morning after they arrived there—the morning after their wedding—Mary wrote an affectionate penitential letter to her father, telling him that she was married, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... hand sewed up the forepart thereof lest others might unwittingly look upon his body. Then after supper-time was ended, he, with the Infirmarius who was acting for him, read the Litanies and the seven penitential psalms for all his negligences; and as an act of gratitude for all the benefits that God had bestowed upon him, he added the Te Deum Laudamus. So at length, about the hour of Vespers, having made a good ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... legitimate family of her own! La Motte was also galled by a projected parody of his "Machabees"—where the hasty marriage of the young Machabeus, and the sudden conversion of the amorous Antigone, who, for her first penitential act, persuades a youth to marry her, without first deigning to consult her respectable mother, would have produced an excellent scene for the parody. But La Motte prefixed an angry preface to his Inez de Castro; he inveighs against all parodies, which he asserts to be merely ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... attempts, employed all the methods of attack that experience could suggest or courage execute, while the garrison of forty thousand Turks, who maintained the city for their master, the caliph of Egypt, resisted with determined obstinacy. At length, after a confession of sins by the whole army, and a penitential procession around the walls, a simultaneous attack was made with battering-rains, mangonels, and all manner of besieging engines. At one quarter a huge wooden tower was wheeled close to the walls, a movable ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... years since the youth Ivan, graduated from his four penitential years of military schooling, had taken his first long flight from Moscow, northward, into the joyous unknown: twelve years since he had put behind him all that half-comprehended blackness of evil and grim unhappiness that had weighted his boyhood with vague ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... she thought, with the not acutely painful kind of remorse we lay upon the penitential altar for our own shortcomings, "that he doesn't realize how I'm shirking and letting him do all the pulling." And to him she said, "If you could have seen into my mind while Janet was here, you'd ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... excited my envy, at first; and afterward, perhaps, a better passion. What damned accidents they were that made me what I have been I cannot tell. I know not what I shall be: but I know what I am. I disdain penitential promises. If you will be my friend, here is my hand. Good fortune or bad, we will share ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... might expect a warm welcome. Nevertheless he did not yet abandon his former superior. Placing a heavy wooden collar on his neck, clad in sackcloth and sprinkled with ashes, he again returned to his spiritual leader, and in this penitential guise implored pardon. He was ignominiously ejected. Nor did he venture to revisit the unforgiving Sheikh. But it happened that in a few weeks Sherif had occasion to journey to the island of Abba. His ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... disappointment it was to us to find how soon our appetite had forsaken us, and that we had lost the power of enjoying the delicacies which we had most anticipated. And over-indulgence often brought sad results and was followed by a period of penitential fasting. And the appetites for sense gratification must always lead to this result. They not only crave things which "perish with the using;" temporarily at least, often permanently, the appetite itself ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... Of early day, the hissing scythe Across the dew drawn and withdrawn, The noisy peacock on the lawn, These, and the sun's eye-gladding gleam, This morning, chased the sweetest dream That e'er shed penitential grace On life's forgetful commonplace; Yet 'twas no sweeter than the spell To which I woke to say farewell. Noon finds me many a mile removed From her who must not be beloved; And us the waste sea soon shall part, Heaving for aye, without a heart! Mother, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... smoke of battle cleared away, came South, and, with the spelling book in one hand and God's holy word in the other, set the millions of freedmen on the way toward reading, reasoning and righteousness. Around God's throne may their crowns of life eternal glitter with the penitential tears of a grateful people redeemed unto a common Father by their ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 49, No. 02, February, 1895 • Various
... heart, as well as your actions; and be reminded of neglected duty, and of those great practical truths, which ought ever to be kept before your mind. You may bring up your sins, and set them in order before you; and discover your easily besetting sins. You may be led to exercise penitential sorrow of heart, and be driven anew to the cross of Christ for pardon, and for strength to subdue indwelling corruption. Whenever you discover that you have exercised any correct feeling, or that ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... took his eyes off his enemy. The fellow was still alive, which was a disappointment, in one way; and yet it was pleasant to see him, all in penitential plasters. He and the company lawyer, who was with him, came and took seats within the judge's railing; and a minute later the clerk called Jurgis' name, and the policeman jerked him to his feet and led him before ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... back in its place, pausing at the table as he returned to his chair to turn down the flame of the lamp. It was too bright for the judge's mood; it was inharmonious with the penitential night. Almost like a voice, strident and in discord above the sobbing music of an orchestra, thought the judge. The firelight was better for a mood ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... penitential menu for some time, they finally decided to live upon mush and milk for the present, and, if Allison should die, forever. "We can warm it in the winter," said Romeo, "and it won't ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... morning, as he was walking along the street, in a very penitential mood, he was accosted by his friend, who demanded of him the one hundred dollars he had borrowed. Simon put on a very important air, and in a tone of confidence which he was far from feeling, assured him he should have the money before ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... smile on their lips and an encyclopedia of language beaming from the orbs above, would arrest the attention of the most inveterate old bachelor that ever lived; nay, it might possibly give birth to a deep penitential sigh and a host of good and sensible resolutions. Ordinary Volantes are the same style of thing, only not so gay, and the usual pace is from three to five and a half miles an hour, always allowing five ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... or the other, or both. Like the holy religion which she symbolises, her sweet face draws blessing and love wherever it goes; it heals old wounds with its beauty, it carries peace into the heart of discord, it touches murder itself into soft and penitential tears. In reading the old tender-hearted poet, we feel that there is something in a woman's sweetness and forgiveness that the masculine mind cannot fathom; and we adore the hushed step and still countenance of Constance almost as if an ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... firmer purpose never to give over until the evidence of pardoning love was mine. As I retired, I knelt by my bedside, and repeated the same prayer, with a few additional words, imploring the aid of the Holy Spirit to teach me the way of life, and penitential tears began to flow. Before I slept my pillow was wet with tears, and was turned for a dry place. As I was reading the Bible through by course, it became more of a companion ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... rules which his Church enjoined. It was no proof of magnanimity in Burns to use his talent in reviling the minister, who had done nothing more than his duty. One can hardly doubt but that in his inmost heart he must have been visited with other and more penitential feelings than those unseemly verses express. But, as Lockhart has well observed, "his false pride recoiled from letting his jovial associates know (p. 017) how little he was able to drown the whispers of the still small voice; and the fermenting bitterness of ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... Christ Church, Oxford, where he became as remarkable for his quickness and proficiency, as for the irregularity of his conduct. On one occasion, owing to his having been guilty of some objectionable frolic, he was about to be expelled, when, upon his writing a penitential letter, the Dean, who seems to have known his talent, promised to forgive him on his translating extempore ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... in prayer. Here all his intellectual, imaginative, and spiritual powers were fused into one and poured themselves forth in an unbroken stream of penitential and adoring affection. When he said, "Let us pray," a divine influence seemed to rest upon all present. His prayers were not mere pious mental exercises, they ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... penitent for being audacious," laughed Christy; and he was laughing very earnestly, as though the extra cachinnation was assumed for a purpose. "I suppose I ought to dress myself in ash cloth and sashes, shut myself up in my state room always when off duty, and shed penitential tears from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, and during the lone watches of the night, and in fortifying my soul against the monstrous sin of audacity. I ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... import it because our moist, cold climate is not favourable for its growth. Nevertheless, it closely resembles the small purple vetch of our summer hedgerows at home. In France its pulse is much eaten during Lent—which season takes its name, as some authors suppose, from this penitential plant. Men become under its subduing dietary influence, "lenti et lenes." The plant is cultivated freely in Egypt for the sake of the seeds, which are flat on both sides, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... truly sensible of his fault.' On which he rose from his knees, pulled out a paper fool's cap, which he had been carving and fashioning for himself, fixed it on his head, and placed himself, with a new kind of penitential countenance, in a corner; continuing such quaint mimickry, of a child in sorrow, that there was no resisting ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... quiet evening at home, for at the end enthusiasm of any kind has a chilling effect on the feelings. None of the party understood this result, and yet all were, in their way, affected by the sudden fall of mental temperature. Mr. Denning went to his library and took out his private ledger, a penitential sort of reading which he relished after moods of any kind of enjoyment. Mrs. Denning selected Ethel Rawdon for her text of disillusion. She "thought Ethel had been a little jealous of Dora's dress," and Dora said, "It ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... when they said their prayers at night and asked pardon for their offences, I would remind them of the sins of the past day, solemnly, but in perfect kindness, to avoid raising a spirit of opposition; penitential hymns should be said by the naughty, cheerful ones by the comparatively good; and every kind of instruction I would convey to them, as much as possible, by entertaining discourse—apparently with no other object than ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... Let it go until to-morrow morning; you will find me in my box just before mass; I will hear you then. My child, I know that in your heart, now, you begrudge the time it would take; and that is right. There are moments when we are not in place even on penitential knees. It is so with you now. We must find your mother. Go you at once to your house; if she is there, comfort her as best you can, and keep her in, if possible, until I come. If she is not there, stay; leave me to find her; one of you, at least, must be where I can get word ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... Often at midnight, by the light of the moon shining in upon her little bed beside theirs, her parents leant over her face, diviner in dreams, and wept as she wept, her lips all the while murmuring, in broken sentences of prayer, the name of Him who died for us all. But plenteous as were his penitential tears—penitential, in the holy humbleness of her stainless spirit, over thoughts that had never left a dimming breath on its purity, yet that seemed, in those strange visitings, to be haunting her as the shadows of sins—soon were they all dried up in the lustre ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... poorhouse on his music-paper had been the solace of those long, dark penitential hours. His alternations between deep depression and dawning hope, and at last his full, deep conviction that there was pardon for all in the abundant mercy of God through Christ, had been expressed in the musical ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... gorgeous wings, If Time's least kiss had subtly disallowed Their beauty's sacred unisons?—Fair things Desire their revel-raiment be their shroud. Yet, fierce insurgent, cease vain wars to wage! Art thou so pure as to decline, forsooth, These penitential usages of age That expiate proud cruelties of youth, And bring thee to the last and perfect art, To love the lovely ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... the plantations, and a few scattered beaters and keepers wait at the old places of appointment for low-spirited twos and threes of cousins. The debilitated cousin, more debilitated by the dreariness of the place, gets into a fearful state of depression, groaning under penitential sofa-pillows in his gunless hours and protesting that such fernal old jail's—nough ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... of the more practical neighbors seriously to doubt the young girl's commercial wisdom. But she was firm. Whether she thought her parents a necessity of respectable domesticity, or whether she regarded their presence in the light of a penitential atonement for some previous disregard of them, no one knew. Public opinion inclined to ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... on the Ptolemaic and Copernican Systems of the World. For this he was cited to Rome, his book ordered to be burned, and he was sentenced to be imprisoned, to make a recantation of his errors, and by way of penance to recite the seven penitential psalms once ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... gone every fear; My spirit seems in heaven to stay; And e'en the penitential tear ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... erudition; and great must have been that erudition which could form a pretended language and its grammar, and fertile the genius which could invent the history of an unknown people: it is said that the deception was only satisfactorily ascertained by his own penitential confession; he had defied and baffled the most learned.[45] The literary impostor Lauder had much more audacity than ingenuity, and he died contemned by all the world.[46] Ireland's "Shakspeare" served to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... not what further ill Effects the Epilogues I have been speaking of may in time produce: But this I am credibly informed of, that Paul Lorrain [3]—has resolv'd upon a very sudden Reformation in his tragical Dramas; and that at the next monthly Performance, he designs, instead of a Penitential Psalm, to dismiss his Audience with an excellent new Ballad of his own composing. Pray, Sir, do what you can to put a stop to those growing Evils, and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... with it. Foremost appear stories of magic, black and white, ancient beliefs and legends without end. Mr King, whose knowledge of the country was at once vast and minute, is quoted as having said 'that he believed almost every form of superstition or superstitious observances condemned in the Penitential of Bartholomew, Bishop of Exeter, 1161-1184, might be found sheltering itself under the Dartmoor Tors.' (This remark must have been made about the middle of the nineteenth century.) 'The same wild creed has been handed down from ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... fathers be now going as cheerful to their death, as bridegrooms to their marriage? By which thou may'st see, myne own good daughter, what a great difference there is between such as have spent all their days in a religious, hard, and penitential life, and such as have (as thy poore father hath done) consumed all their time in pleasure and ease;'" and so he proceeded to enlarge on their merits and martyrdom. His grandson, Cresacre More, referring to this scene, says, "By ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... his senses wandered; now again his mind was calm, And he wrung from out his suffering penitential draughts of balm; Then again his senses left him, and he lay in phrenzy there, Talking wildly in his madness with the dim, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... once indicated him to be a man of office and authority, little accustomed to have his own will disputed. I was not wrong in my conjecture; he was a classical schoolmaster, and was pompously occupied, when I first saw him, reading through his spectacles, with his head raised aloft, the seven Penitential Psalms in Latin, out of the Key of Paradise, to a circle of women and children, along with two or three men in frieze coats, who listened ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... upon to repent. Depend upon it as we go through life an act of repentance, once for all, will not do: we shall need repentance daily. When a man is admitted to the favour of God it is that his mouth should be stopped, it is that he should entertain penitential feeling as long as he lives—not the penitence of guilt, but the penitence of gratitude. The recollection, I am a sinner, will inspire and maintain such penitence; and a blessed end that man will make, who in the full meaning of the words, pours out the prayer at the ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... of the moment was swelling over Roma like a flood. If she could unburden her heart like that! If she could cast off all the trouble of her days and nights of pain! One of the confessional boxes had a penitential rod protruding from it, and going past the front of it she had seen the face of a priest. It was a soft, kindly, human face. She had seen it before ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... credulous and ignorant, so brutal, childish, so mercurial compared with Englishmen of to-day, yet set the standard of national greatness. This absurdly decorated gallant could stab a rival in the back or write a penitential lyric. Each man presents strange, almost inexplicable, contrasts in character, as Bacon or Raleigh, or Elizabeth herself. The drama mingles its sentiment and fancy with horrors and bloodshed; and no wonder, ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... pay expenses. A sort of critical literature was struggling, or rather (p. 019) gasping, for a life that was hardly worth living; for its most marked characteristic was its servile deference to English judgment and dread of English censure. It requires a painful and penitential examination of the reviews of the period to comprehend the utter abasement of mind with which the men of that day accepted the foreign estimate upon works written here, which had been read by themselves, but which it was ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... bird makes merry his dull bars with song, Yet would not penitential psalms accord More fitly with your sin than ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... undone. But this weapon he had not used, knowing perfectly well that the idea of public shame would be, just then, a matter of indifference to Elizabeth?-perhaps even a satisfaction to her, as the sting of the penitential whip is a satisfaction to the sinner. All he said was summed up in ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... does not imply any love for holiness, or any hatred of sin. Nay, it may exist without any sorrow for sin, as in the instance of the hardened transgressor who writhes under its awful power, but never sheds a penitential tear, or sends up a sigh for mercy. The distinction between the human conscience, and the human heart, is as wide as between the human intellect, and the human heart.[2] We never think of confounding the functions and operations of the understanding with those of the heart. ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... man, the gentleman, and the Christian had been demonised out of that fair form by the drink. Oh, what bitter tears she shed that night as she lay awake, racked with thoughts of the past and despairing of the future. The next day came a penitential letter from Frank; he threw himself on her pity—he had been overcome—he abhorred himself for it—he saw his own weakness now—he would pray for strength as she had urged him to do—surely she would not cast him off for one offence—he ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... Divine Entertainments; of Penitential Desires, Sighs, and Groans of the Wounded Soul. In Two Books, adorned with suitable Cuts. In Verse. With numerous Woodcuts. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... she is in love, and the gentleman she loves is not approved of by Tanty and the upshot of it all is we are to leave dear Bath, delightful Bath, to-morrow—to-day rather—for some unknown penitential region which our stern relative as yet declines to name. I am longing to hear more about it; but Tanty, who, though she talks so much, can keep her own counsel better than any woman I know, will not give me any further information ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... led the way into the Hall of Judgment, where a much stronger light than usual was already shining up the stair of Acheron, from which were heard to sound, by sullen and intermitted fits, the penitential psalms which the Greek Church has appointed to be sung at executions. Twenty mute slaves, the pale colour of whose turbans gave a ghastly look to the withered cast of their features, and the glaring whiteness of their eyeballs, ascended two by two, as it were from the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... treatment vigorously succinct for each in particular. I myself, it suddenly strikes me, must have been the chief offender against this reasonable law: but my offences were committed in pure ignorance and inattention, faults which henceforth I shall guard against with a penitential earnestness. Reformation meanwhile must begin, I fear, simultaneously with this confession of guilt. It would not be possible (would it?) that, beginning the penitence this month of November, I should postpone the amendment till the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... where a door opened to the recess, in which the Virgin is placed, and where we were permitted, or rather required to kiss her hand. At the same time, I perceived a great many pilgrims entering the apartments, whose penitential faces plainly discovered the reverence and devotion with which they approached her sacred presence. When we returned, we were presented to the Prior; a lively, genteel man, of good address; who, with Pere Tendre, the Frenchman, shewed us an infinite quantity of jewels, vessels of gold ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse |
