"Austere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no more to me, but remarked to no one in particular that "an austere manner is a poor passport in this country," which implied that I was new to the East, and would learn better if I stayed long enough. I ignored the remark, somewhat pleased that I had rebuffed him, for I well knew he would talk me into a fever if I did not keep him at ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... stimulating and provocative as a paid mistress, but palled as quickly. In New York mysteries beckoned at every street corner, but too importunately. Neither city was sufficiently discreet for Colwyn's reticent mind. But London! London was like a woman who hid a secret life beneath an austere face and sober garments. Underneath her air of prim propriety and calm indifference were to be found more enthralling secrets than any other city of the world could reveal. It was emblematic of London that her mysteries, ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... and dropped a curtsey. The King was immediately captivated, and a few hours later the happy girl found herself in the Royal Palace. After that events moved rapidly. At the lax German Court Gretchen soon forgot her austere upbringing, and entered into the round games and charades with untold abandon! Alas! the fickle heart of the King was soon turned from her. Realising this Gretchen seized upon a noble much enamoured ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... open door. Then he glanced back into the office. Ezra Girdlestone was deep in some accounts, and his brother clerks were all absorbed in their work. He stole up to the woman, with an apologetic smile, slipped something into her hand, and then hurried back into the office with an austere look upon his face, as if his whole mind were absorbed in the affairs of the firm. There are speculations above the ken of business men. Perhaps, Thomas Gilray, that ill-spared half-crown of yours may bring in better interest ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... looked. He was a portly, splendid looking man. He appeared, to me, to be a good, hale, healthy, honest farmer, well kept and one who enjoyed life. He would sell his property if he got his price, not otherwise. He was rather austere and independent about it. He asked me my name and where I was from. (This is a trait of eastern men, down near Connecticut, to ask a man his name and where he lives and, sometimes, where he is going.) I saw that uncle was getting me in rather close quarters, but I talked away ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... nimbly in and out. The clouds still borrowed the light from below, and the solemn, leafless woods on one side were outlined distinctly against the reflection in the sky. The flare showed, too, the abrupt precipice on the other side, the abysmal gloom of the valley, the austere summit-line of the mountain beyond, and gave the dark mysteries of the night a sombre revelation, as in visible blackness it filled the ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... flashed cheerfully from the brass of trumpets, cornets, bassoons; from the silver fittings of flutes; from the gold on scarlet tunics. And in the midst of this ordered brilliance stood the gun-carriage, grey and austere, its human burden hidden under the folds of the English flag. Behind the gun-carriage the Boy's charger waited, with an air of uncomplaining weariness, the boots hanging reversed ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... an old gentleman, with a flowing beard and a fine but rather austere face, entered, and sat down at my invitation. He seemed to have something on his mind. He took off his hat and set it on the floor, and got out of it a red silk handkerchief and a copy of ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay, Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere, Is to the mellow earth ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the dead in desert places, Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor, Hills of sheep, and the homes of the silent vanished races, And winds austere ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... ask me whom I mean by the plain man, my reply is that I mean almost every man. I mean you. I certainly mean me. I mean the rich and the poor, the successful and the unsuccessful, the idle and the diligent, the luxurious and the austere. For, what with the limits of digestion, the practical impossibility of wearing two neckties at once, the insecurity of investments, the responsibilities of wealth and of success, the exhaustingness of the search for pleasure, and the cheapness of ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... my husband, but his nature was too austere to deal patiently with my freakish, petulant, volcanic temper; and when he lectured me for my frivolity, obstinacy plunged me into excesses of gayety, that at heart I did not enjoy. His mother and sister shunned ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... on the self-satisfied pride of such a son. The share which the former allowed him in the government of the empire was just important enough to disengage his mind from petty passions and to confirm the austere gravity of his character, but also meagre enough to kindle a fiercer longing for unlimited power. When he actually became possessed of uncontrolled authority it had lost the charm of novelty. The sweet intoxication of a young monarch in the sudden ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... off in mid-sentence, slow people gaped, not realizing why their friends had so suddenly left them, the Meyricks came up hot and perspiring in fear lest they should be too late, Miss Colley, a yellow virgin of austere regard, smiled largely, Mrs. Dixon beckoned wildly with her parasol to the "girls" who were idly strolling in a distant part of the field, and the archdeacon ran at full speed. The air grew dark with bows, and resonant with the genial laugh of the archdeacon, the ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... was the Anglo-Saxon, cold, austere and uncomplaisant. This Caucasian, fair of skin, with smooth and wavy hair, small cheekbones and elevated forehead, appeared a worshipful master whose station, under God, was of preordained and predestined eminence. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... his blinds; moody men had left their looms for stools by the fire; there were rumors of a conflict in Andra Gowrie's close, from which Kitty McQueen had emerged with her short gown in rags; and Lang Tammas was going from door to door. The austere precentor admonished fiery youth to beware of giving way to passion; and it was a proud day for the Auld Lichts to find their leading elder so conversant with apt Scripture texts. They bowed their heads reverently while he thundered ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... that, the notoriety, which neither Chateaubriand nor Mme. Recamier disliked, would have been less easily secured; but the tone of the reunions was vastly different, and at the celebrated receptions of the Abbaye aux Bois (where Mme. Recamier spent her last quarter of a century) the somewhat austere deportment of the siecle de Louis XIV. was in vogue. All the amusements were in their nature grave. Mlle. Rachel recited a scene from "Polyeucte" for the author of "Les Martyrs," and for archbishops and cardinals; the Duc de Noailles read a chapter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... lead me to some shelter'd cave, Dost there reveal me to myself, and show Of my own bosom the mysterious depths. And when with soothing beam, the moon's pale orb Full in my view climbs up the pathless sky, From crag and dewy grove, the silvery forms Of by-gone ages hover, and assuage The joy austere of contemplative thought. ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... She is austere in manner, plain in appearance, dignified in bearing, about sixty-five years of age, and is noted for her accomplishment in making the most graceful courtesy of any lady in ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... Laureate of to-day deals with language in a way that to the Tennyson of the beginning was—unhappily—impossible. In those early years he neither would nor could have been responsible for the magnificent and convincing rhythms of Vastness, the austere yet passionate shapeliness of Happy, the effects of vigour and variety realised in Parnassus. For in those early years he was rather Benvenuto than Michelangelo, he was more of a jeweller than a ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... letters of Boccio and Saint Gregory as notes, but they placed them on lines of three different colours. The imbroglio continued; to learn music badly took twelve years, and then they could not manage that singers from different towns could read from the same score. Saint Bernard, dry and austere as his times, ridiculed this music as not being solemn enough; he was a man antagonistic to all art; he would have liked to see the churches dismantled and without any architectural adornments; and the slower the music was, the better it seemed to him. ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... solid fact of to-day—had allured his mind. The art of Greece had beckoned to him; its ancient shrines had had their strong summons for his brain; but he had scarcely expected to love the country. He had imagined it as certainly beautiful but with an austere and desolate beauty that would be, perhaps, almost repellent to his nature. He had conceived of it as probably sad in its naked calm, a country weary with the weight of ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... an austere face, yet there was a gleam in his eye that belied the austerity. His cheeks were fat and red, his nose prominent, and he was clean shaven, save for a thick white mustache, that drooped slightly on either side of a full-lipped ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... hers,—more pure, more spiritual, even in its young affections than ever heretofore the countless volumes of the heart, race after race, have given to my gaze: there is yet a deep-buried feeling that warns me of inevitable woe. Thou austere and remorseless Hierophant,—thou who hast sought to convert to our brotherhood every spirit that seemed to thee most high and bold,—even thou knowest, by horrible experience, how vain the hope to banish FEAR from the heart ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... go to church, or, finally, his energy in stifling the groans which suffering wrenched from his physical nature. Few saints carried mortification and renunciation of terrestrial good as far as he. "He is certainly the most austere man in the world and the most indifferent to worldly advantage," wrote Mother Mary of the Incarnation. "He gives away everything and lives like a pauper; and we may truly say that he has the very spirit of poverty. It is ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... sheerest crimson cotton, tied at one shoulder and falling to mid-thigh. Not from Taai did this woman come; one saw that; not from any near island or group. Her beauty was extraordinary, like that of the Marquesans, with that peculiar straightness of all the lines, at once Grecian, austere, and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... India the austere and impersonal character of Sankara's system provoked dissent: He was accused of being a Buddhist in disguise and the accusation raises an interesting question[779] in the history of Indian philosophy to which ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... impression of the Kami no Michi wholly from the poetic liturgies, the austere simplicity of the miyas or shrines, or the worship at the palace or capital, would be as misleading as to gather our ideas of the status of popular education from knowing only of the scholars at court. Among the common people the real basis of the god-way was ancestor-worship. From ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... to those who can teach us to turn our eyes to the charm which surrounds us, and a life which is lived without such perception is apt to be a rough and hurrying thing, even though it may also be both high and austere. Like most of life, the true success lies in not choosing one force and neglecting another, but in an expectant kind of compromise. The great affairs and facts of life flash upon us, whether we will or no; and ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... with the same simple dignity that had characterized him among the friars of the Servi,—after the splendors of the ducal costume, the scarlet, the ermine, the beretta, the gold-brocaded mantle,—the plain folds of the violet robe of the Counsellor seemed almost austere. His lineless face was so fresh in color that it looked youthful, though of singular gravity and refined asceticism. Yet men of force were drawn to him because of his strength, his broad grasp of duty, ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... was right. Hard labour and natural gift had secured their harvest; but that vivid personal element in success which captivates and excites the bystander seemed, in David's case, to have been replaced by something austere, which pointed attention and sympathy rather to the man's work than to himself. When he was young there had been intoxication for such a spectator as Ancrum in the magical rapidity and ease with which he seized opportunity and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I saw a girl climbing a neighbouring peak. She did not perceive us; but when she reached the summit the image of Spero was thrown on a cloud in front of her, by one of those curious plays of sunlight and mist which sometimes occur in hazy, mountainous regions. His fine, austere features and graceful figure were enlarged into a vast, god-like apparition, with a halo of bright colours shining like a glory around his head, and a fainter circle of rainbow hues framing his whole form. It was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... pictures of the sort of life led in the country of Maillane. Of his father he says that he towered above them all, in stature, in wisdom, and in nobleness of bearing. He was a handsome old man, dignified in language, firm in command, kind to the poor about him, austere with himself alone. The same may be said of the poet to-day. He is a strikingly handsome man, vigorous and active, exceedingly gracious and simple in manner. His utter lack of affectation is the more remarkable, in view of the fact that he has been for years an object of adulation, and lives ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... said for it. When the second generation spurned the soil and became urbanized, the residence was transformed from its primal state into a country home, and the family called it "Listening Hill Farm." Its austere parlor of the usual rural type was thrown together with the living-room, the original fireplace was reconstructed, and running water was pumped to the house by means of a windmill. The best of the old furniture had been carried ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... made five pounds.' And he said unto him also, 'Be thou also over five cities.' And another came, saying, 'Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I kept laid up in a napkin: for I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that which thou layedst not down, and reapest that which thou didst not sow.' He saith unto him, 'Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I am ...
— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong
... share of the civil and political rights of the community. In the more simple state of the Arabs, the nation is free, because each of her sons disdains a base submission to the will of a master. His breast is fortified by the austere virtues of courage, patience, and sobriety; the love of independence prompts him to exercise the habits of self-command; and the fear of dishonor guards him from the meaner apprehension of pain, of danger, and of death. The gravity and firmness ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Jersey shore. The sea in every direction was now darkened with millions of black gulls, wild ducks, and other aquatic birds; we shot many of these from the ship's deck, but were, much to our mortification, obliged to see them drift away, the pilot, seconded by our austere captain, strenuously objecting to a boat being lowered; this was very discouraging, as such a change in our diet would, after a rather ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... blanch to the whiteness of alabaster. Her eyes were forget-me-nots after rain. Her mouth was made for pretty slang and kisses. Neither her features nor her most often photographed expression showed the tiniest scrap of what the austere of her sex used to call character. When the world smiled on her she laughed: when it frowned, she cried. When she met Septimus Dix, she flew to him as a child does to a new toy, and spent gorgeous hours in pulling him to pieces to see how ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... steadfast mien Has never failed to dominate the scene. Others have found the post a giant's robe Or lacked the needful patience of a Job; But you, by dint of fearless common sense, Have won and held all Parties' confidence; Firm as the rock and as the crystal clear, When need arises righteously austere, Ready, not eager, your advice to lend, And not afraid in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... Himself, as doubtless all other human perfections, so also the perfection of an usurer; and that, confidently expecting one day to hear from His lips the convicting sentence, "Thou knewest that I was an austere man," your Lordship prepares for yourself, by the disposition of your capital no less than of your talents, a better answer than the barren, "Behold, there thou hast that is thine!" I would only observe in reply, that although the conception of the Good Shepherd, which ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... why he was so rigorous in virtue as to be often thought austere, I answer it was because human nature required the exercise of justice, honor, and gratitude, by all who were clothed with authority to act in the name of the American people. If you ask why he seemed, sometimes, with apparent inconsistency, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... liberty in censuring morals, he avoided all offence, under the cloak of simplicity." Of him and his compeers, Turnebus, and Muretus, and their friend Andrea Govea, Ronsard, the French court poet, said that they had nothing of the pedagogue about them but the gown and cap. "Austere in face, and rustic in his looks," says David Buchanan, "but most polished in style and speech; and continually, even in serious conversation, jesting most wittily." "Roughhewn, slovenly, and rude," says Peacham, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... bell. A dingy servitor in a dress suit, on transient duty, admitted me, and I found Jaffery collarless and minus jacket and waistcoat, smoking a pipe in front of the fire. It wasn't even a good coal fire. Some austere former tenant had installed an electric radiator in the once comfort-giving grate. But Jaffery did not seem to mind. The remains of breakfast were on the table which the dingy servitor began to clear. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... two years he spent, with interruptions, at the university. From Cassel he went immediately to Bonn, where, as during the years of military duty which followed, we only catch glimpses of him as he lived the ordinary, and by no means austere, life of the university student and soldier of the time; that is to say, the ordinary life with considerable modifications and exceptions. He did not, like young Bismarck, drink huge flagons of beer at a sitting, day after day. He was ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... his trust and mine, but had made no comments which by the widest stretch of imagination could be construed into opinions. He gave me the impression then as he did later that he was carrying out strictly the letter of his instructions from the dead. He had a face graven into austere lines, which habit had schooled into perfect obedience to his will. He might have believed the experiment to which he was committed a colossal joke, and no sign of his opinion would be reflected in his facial ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... austere man, but not devoid of compassion, nor even of sympathy. He received Dino with no relaxation of his rather grim features, but told him to eat and drink before speaking. "I will not talk to you fasting," he said; and Dino felt conscious of some touch of compassion in the old man's eyes as ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... through the high windows of the hall, outside of which snow glided and fell lingeringly on the ground. Between the windows hung a large portrait of the Czar in a massive frame of glaring gilt. Straight, austere folds of the heavy crimson window drapery dropped over either side of it. Before the portrait, across almost the entire breadth of the hall, stretched the table covered with green cloth. To the right of the wall, behind the grill, stood two wooden benches; to the left ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... a more than century-old Friends' meeting-house. Unpainted and shingled all over its outward surface. "Old shingle-sides" was its local name, and a lovelier location could not have been chosen even by a less austere ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... education," and that nothing mattered except "the greatness of Desire." A number of letters from literary men witnessed the artistic purity of a novel depicting the life of bawds. Some of the signatories were among the greatest names in contemporary literature, or the most austere of critics. A domestic poet, bourgeois and a Catholic, gave his blessing as an artist to a detailed description of the decadence of the Greeks. There were enthusiastic praises of novels in which the course of ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... with so much violence in behalf of France, that nothing but the inflexible character of Washington, and the immense popularity which he enjoyed, could have prevented the Americans from declaring war against England. And even then, the exertions, which the austere reason of that great man made to repress the generous but imprudent passions of his fellow-citizens, very nearly deprived him of the sole recompense which he had ever claimed—that of his country's love. The majority then reprobated the line of policy which he adopted and ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... more quickly down the forest side towards the building, which now revealed its austere proportions, though Dick could see that they were mitigated by a strange, formal flower-garden, with quaint statues and fountains. There were grim black allees of clipped trees, a curiously wrought iron gate, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... rouse my solemn dander I leave our frivolous youth to flirt; A riband round my straw—for choice, Leander; A subtle nuance in my shirt; For tie, the colours of my school— These are the limits of my austere rule. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... Milan, with his callous, tyrannical father, his quick-tempered mother, and the superadded torment of his Aunt Margaret's presence. Fazio Cardano was a man of rigorous sobriety, and he seems moreover to have atoned for his early irregularities by the practice of that austere piety which Jerome notices more than once as a characteristic of his old age.[177] The discipline was hard, and the life unlovely, but the home was at least decent and orderly, and no opportunities or provocations to loose manners or ill doing existed therein. In ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... were the points around which the room had so delightfully arranged itself. It was a room a trifle overcrowded, but one wouldn't have wanted anything taken away, the graceful confusion, on a background of almost austere order, gave the happiest sense of adaptability to a variety of human needs and whims. Mrs. Upton had finished her own tea, but the flame still burned in waiting under the silver urn; books and reviews lay in reach of a lazy hand; lamps, candle-light and flowers made a soft radiance; a ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... or on the northern coast of Africa, and when it propagated itself in the southern regions of Europe, its stern inflexibility was not able to resist even the influence of clime; the perfumed breezes of the Betis and the Xenil despoiled it, in part, of the austere physiognomy which had been impressed on its whole structure by the sands of Arabia. Even the severe laws of the harem were relaxed in the courts of Boabdil and of Almanzor, for the wives of those two monarchs, openly, and without shame, took part in the pompous ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... from that Manilla, which had never seen a cigar shop, he was willing to give up the "Imperadores." His host, lighting one of the same, thus proceeded: "Pues, caballero; to give you the promised explanation. That the monks of my community are of an order neither very devout nor austere, you've already observed, no doubt, and may have a suspicion they're not monks at all. Soldiers, every man; most having seen service, and many who have done gallant deeds. When I speak of them as soldiers, you will understand it in its true sense, ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... back among the servants; and L'Isle remarked, "your old squire, Lady Mabel, holds an austere belief. I never met a man so confident of his own salvation and of the damnation ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... master of executives not long after he became President. He was most cordial; as Shaughnessy had been austere. Under such a direct impression it seemed that I had at last found a man who would make the inexorable old C.P.R. become a golden door to humanity. Of course I was mistaken. That kind of man is born ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... of Preble Key on recognizing the gateway into which the mysterious lady had vanished was so great that he was at first inclined to believe her entry THERE a mere trick of his fancy. That the confederate of a gang of robbers should be admitted to the austere recesses of the convent, with a celerity that bespoke familiarity, was incredible. He again glanced up and down the length of the shadowed but still visible wall. There was no one there. The wall itself contained no ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... the store arrived at the truth. Parson Fair had indeed offered to pay the interest, and Burr had declined. He had also refused to live with his bride in his father-in-law's house, and when Parson Fair had, with his gracefully austere manner, intimated that he should be unwilling to place his daughter in such uncertain shelter, had replied harshly that Dorothy should have a roof over her head of his own providing while he lived; when he was dead it would be time to talk about ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... floor windows. The doors in that house had a short-waisted effect with little panels above and long panels below. I had a chamber so clean and small that I called it in my mind the Monk's Cell, nearly filled with the high posted bed, the austere table and chairs. The whitewashed walls were bare of pictures, except a painted portrait of Stephen Williams, pastor of Longmeadow from 1718 to 1783. Daily his laughing eyes watched me as if he found my pretensions a great joke. He had a long nose, and a high forehead. His black hair crinkled, ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... and Priscilla presented themselves at the infirmary, and were met at the door by the austere figure of the head nurse. "I will see if Miss Wyatt is awake," she said dubiously, "but I am afraid you will excite her; she's ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... question to the Governor across the table; and he sat now, leaning a little forward, while he waited for an answer. The light from the tall white candles, in branched candelabra of the Queen Anne pattern, fell directly on his handsome austere face, so full of delicate reserves and fine intentions; and all the disturbing questions fled from Corinna's mind while she looked at him. Surely, she repeated to herself, with a triumphant emphasis, surely there was no truth in that old ugly gossip! The backward sweep of his iron-gray hair accentuated ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... Between the two pictures hangs an old crucifix. For that is Armand De Rance, glorious sinner, handsomest, wealthiest, most gifted man of his day—and his a day of glorious men; and this is Armand De Rance, become the sad austere ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... 'who is my neighbor?' Our Lord replies by the parable of the Good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite saw the wounded man that fell among the thieves, and passed by on the other side. That priest might have been austere in his doctrine, that Levite might have been learned in the law; but neither to the learning of the Levite, nor to the doctrine of the priest, does our Saviour even deign to allude. He cites but the action of the Samaritan, and saith to the lawyer, 'Which now of these three, thinkest ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... you have my applause. Get what you want, set England fairly in sight of the crowd, and you are a mighty-minded man." Now the first and last comment upon such a doctrine must be that, if a God exist, it is false. It sets up a part to override the whole: it flaunts a local success against the austere majesty of Divine law. In brief, it foolishly derides the universal, saying that it chooses to consider the particular as more important. But it is not. Poetry's concern is with the universal: and what makes the Celts (however much you may dislike them) ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... We utilized the cover as much as we were able, but nevertheless breathed a sigh of relief when we had dropped below the line of the jungle. We wasted very little time crossing the latter, save for precautions against noise. Even in my haste, however, I had opportunity to notice its high and austere character, with the arching overhead vines, and the clear freedom from undergrowth in its heart. Across this cleared space we ran at full speed, crouching below the grasp of the vines, splashed across the brook and dashed up the other ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... brazen glare; Those myriad dusky flames with points aglow Which writhed and hissed and darted to and fro; A Sabbath of the serpents, heaped pell-mell For Devil's roll-call and some fete in Hell: Yet I strode on austere; No hope could ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... at the platform when we had left it far behind, and saw the tall, austere figure of Holmes standing ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... sedate superior who presided over the spiritual welfare of the parish—and whose solemn celebration of the mass was by no means so agreeable as the lighter service of Father Phil. The Rev. Dominick Dowling was austere and long- winded; his mass had an oppressive effect on his congregation, and from the kneeling multitude might be seen eyes fearfully looking up from under bent brows, and low breathings and subdued groans often rose above the silence of his ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... of St. Paul was indignant at these obstacles, and he expressed himself with great warmth to the other cardinals in presence of the Pope. "If you reject the prayers of this poor man, on the pretence that his rule is novel, and too austere, let us take care that we do not reject the Gospel itself; since the rule of which he solicits the approval, is in conformity with what the Gospel teaches; for, to say that Evangelical perfection, or the vow ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... advertisements. Perhaps they have not gone far enough. As far as I can remember they make no promise of everlasting youth to the users of B. O. S., nor yet have they claimed the power of raising the dead for their estimable products. Why this austere reserve, I wonder? But I don't think they would have had me even on these terms. Whatever form of mental degradation I may (being but human) be suffering from, it is not the popular form. I am ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... suddenly insane, or were they bewitched by this morose intruder and his insufferably familiar confidant? The man was wounded, it was true; they might have to put him up in common humanity; but here was her austere mother, who wouldn't come in the room when Whisky Dick called on business, actually pressing both of the invalid's hands, while her sister, who never extended a finger to the ordinary visiting humanity of the neighborhood, looked ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... of his life, Tiberius seems to have conducted himself with a uniform repugnance to nature. Affable on a few occasions, but in general averse to society, he indulged, from his earliest years, a moroseness of disposition, which counterfeited the appearance of austere virtue; and in the decline of life, when it is common to reform from juvenile indiscretions, he launched forth into excesses, of a kind the most unnatural and most detestable. Considering the vicious passions which had ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... failure, knowing that he might be broken to pieces, but determined that he would not weakly "go to pieces," he performed the greatest service to the community, as well as to himself, by resolutely, at any sacrifice, paying his debts when they became due. It is a pity that such austere Luthers of commerce, trade-militant instead of church-militant, who meet hard times with a harder will, had not a little beauty in their toughness, so that grit, lifted to heroism, would allure affection as well as enforce respect. But their sense is so rigid, their integrity so gruff, and their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Harriet Cowden nee Verity—first cousin of his father, the Archdeacon, and half-sister to his host—in her violet-ink hued gown, to fury of internecine strife amid the mountain fastnesses of Afghanistan,—from the austere and wistful beauty of the grey, long-backed Norman Abbey rising above the roofs and chimneys of the little English market-town, to the fierce hectic splendour of Eastern cities blistering in the implacable sun-glare of the Indian plains. Days on the Harchester playing fields, days on the river ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... them, and bestows their crown To gratify your acceptable zeal. For you are they, that not, as some have done, Do censure us, as too severe and sour, But as, more rightly, gracious to the good; Although we not deny, unto the proud, Or the profane, perhaps indeed austere: For so Actaeon, by presuming far, Did, to our grief, incur a fatal doom; And so, swoln Niobe, comparing more Than he presumed, was trophaeed into stone. But are we therefore judged too extreme? Seems it no crime to enter sacred bowers, And hallowed places, with impure aspect, ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... purples deepen, the flush on the mountains reddens. The air becomes as soft as velvet. Not a leaf now stirs. A holy peace steals over the mountains and settles in the valleys. The snow mountains no longer look cold, hard, and austere. Their purity remains as true as ever. And they still possess their uplifting power. But they now speak of serenity and calm—not, indeed, of the unsatisfying ease of the slothful, but of the earned repose of high attainment. Great peace is about ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... was such a man. He was stationed in Bombay and there is nothing better in appointment in all India. His responsibilities were heavy like those of an empire. Personally he was austere—entirely unapproachable. Of his home life no one knew anything whatever, outside the very few of equal rank. It was understood that the mother of his two small children had died more than a year ago. Some indiscreet person had mooted that she was not sent Home in time. Still, European women do ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... having any desire to free himself of his wife so as to marry his pretty governess, or cousin, or whomever it was suggested he most particularly admired. Russell had arrived at quoting Scripture,—he was at his best, austere, eloquent, persuasive, an orator, a gentleman, a great advocate, and as ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... understand and appreciate generous and kindly sympathy, and could be won by it. But this cool and inflexible elaboration of character, where only the end is considered, and all our timid shrinking and human weakness are ignored,—this austere asceticism which despises the present world and life,—is to me unnatural and monstrous. I confess I never read the Bible very much, and have not listened when it was read. I have half forgotten the story of Lazarus. You left off where Lazarus was in his grave, and Christ was ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... from grossness by the peculiar idealism they infused into their material battles. Of Scotch-Irish inheritance, the direct descendant of one Gregory Truesdale, who had died a martyr for Presbyterianism, Archibald Fowler was inspired by something of the austere devotion which had fortified his religious ancestor. Since his college days his private life had been irreproachable. Though he was a stronger character than his wife, he regarded her with almost superstitious reverence, and made no decision above Wall ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... [i.e., Ra] himself, and therefore in his name which I bear, I can tread on all my enemies. O great Ra, who climbest the heavenly vaults and who sailest in thy boat across the firmament with undisputed authority, do thou save me from that austere god whose eyebrows are as menacing as the balance that weighs the deeds of men. Save me, I pray thee, from these guardians of the passages who will, if they-may, impede my progress. O Tmu, who livest in the august abode, god of gods, who thrivest upon damned souls, thou ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... thin, with a hatchet face and steel-grey eyes, which were singularly bright and penetrating. Much thought had furrowed his forehead and contracted his heavy eyebrows, so that he appeared to wear a perpetual frown, which often misled people as to his character, for though austere he was tender-hearted. He was popular among the students, who would gather round him after his lectures and listen eagerly to his strange theories. Often he would call for volunteers from amongst them in order to conduct some experiment, so that eventually there ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... detect it, for its gables might have been part of wood or hillside. It was of stone, and built in many periods and in many styles which time had subtly blended so that it seemed a perfect thing without beginning, as long descended as the folds of downs which sheltered it. The austere Tudor front, the Restoration wing, the offices built under Queen Anne, the library added in the days of the Georges, had by some alchemy become one. Peace and long memories were in every line of ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... against these ideas. "Austere," he whispered. "The ennobling tests of war." A trooner rode up alongside, and offered him a ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... the critic in spite of himself, so that he bitterly resented being moved by a work so flagrantly and obviously faulty. What was more, the passion of the book was so intense that you were hardly aware of anything else, and its author's austere respect for the ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... Burgess, with a return to the austere manner of the captain of cricket, "he might have chucked playing the goat till after the Ripton match. Look here, young Jackson, you'll turn out for fielding with the first this ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... have to be austere and typographically uninviting. Most literature (as opposed to scientific publications, for example), is typographically simple and can be rendered beautifully into type without encoding it into proprietary word processor file formats or ...
— People of Africa • Edith A. How
... death of her husband, Lady Beltham—whose previous life had inclined to the austere—withdrew into almost complete retirement. The world of gaiety and fashion knew her no more. But in the world where poverty and suffering reign, in hospital wards and squalid streets, a tall and beautiful woman might often be seen, robed all in black, with distinguished bearing ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... crayon sketch, carefully preserved in a black morocco-case, and, amid the most beautiful scenery in the world, gave way to a reverie in which the past blended with the future—his thoughts roaming from the heavenly beauty of the death-bed scene to the austere sanctity of St Bernard or La Trappe. Strange fancies for one who had barely completed his twenty-seventh year, and who was in the heyday of fame and fortune! Suddenly, the sound of approaching footsteps was heard. Conrad hastily closed the morocco-case, replaced it in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... part of the subject, the work of Christ as the true Creator, through the Christian Church, of living morality, what is peculiar and impressive is the way in which sympathy with Christianity in its antique and original form, in its most austere, unearthly, exacting aspects, is combined with sympathy with the practical realities of modern life, with its boldness, its freedom, its love of improvement, its love of truth. It is no common grasp which can embrace both so easily ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... arms at Ashby de la Zouche. Such confusions are purposefully dream-like: the vision being a composite thing, as dreams are, haunted by the modern scene of the holiday in the park, the "gallant glorious chronicle," the Abbey, and that "old crusading knight austere," Sir Ralph. The seven narrators of the scheme are like the "split personalities" of dreams, and the whole scheme is of great technical skill. The earlier editions lacked the beautiful songs of the ladies, and that additional trait of dream, the strange trance- like seizures of ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... the speech had concluded. Yet there remained with him always the trace of his younger days of grave dandyism; he never abandoned the Parliamentary frock-coat, and sketches of him in the illustrated papers convey the austere correctness of its folds; and the hat from which so much service was exacted appeared each day unsurpassable ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... February, 1916, he turned up in Garden City, Long Island, where I first had the excitement of clapping eyes on him. Some of the adventures of that spring and summer may be inferred from "Memories of a Manuscript." Others took place in the austere lunch cathedral known at the press of Doubleday, Page & Company as the "garage," or on walks that summer between the Country Life Press and the neighboring champaigns of Hempstead. The full story of the Porrier's Corner Club, of which ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... unrelieved black, with extraordinary attention to details, passed them by with a careless glance and subsided into the chair which Louis was holding. Her companion, however, as he recognised Francis hesitated. His expression of somewhat austere gloom was lightened. A pleasant but tentative smile parted his lips. He ventured upon a salutation, half a nod, half a more formal bow, a salutation which Francis instinctively returned. Andrew Wilmore looked on ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... so austere and devout a life in a young person of twelve years old could not fail to attract the attention and draw down the censures of the worldly. Many such began to laugh at Francesca, and to turn her piety into ridicule. They intruded ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... to an insensible audience. There were few among them who did not feel that their fortunes were indissolubly connected with those of their commander; and while they had little to expect from the austere character of the governor, they were warmly attached to the person of their young chief, who, with all the popular qualities of his father, excited additional sympathy from the circumstances of his age and his forlorn condition. Laying their hands on the cross, placed on ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... that never even in those first exquisite moments had she been his. The sharp edge of her young sufficiency had lopped off the right limb of his manhood. Never, even in his dreams, if life had allowed him to dream again, should he be able to see himself in any other guise than the meagre, austere front which his obligation to his mother and Ellen had obliged him to present to destiny. She had beggared him of all those aptitudes for passionate relations, by the faith in which he had kept himself inwardly alive. The capacity for ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... this point pardon your father, for it was not his fault. You were born in 1703, at the most austere period of Louis XIV.'s reign; your father was already out of favor with the king, or rather with Madame de Maintenon; and for your sake, as much or more than for his, he sent you into Bretagne, confiding you to Mother Ursula, superior ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... performer, without being impressed in his inmost soul, and feeling his heart swell with powerful emotions. Outside, in the antechamber, were standing the stern generals, the heroic warriors, Zeithen, and the brave Schwerin, and General von Saldern, and their scarred, austere features assumed a soft, touching expression, as they leaned against the wall and listened in breathless silence to the performance of the king. ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... is a priest and courtier, says, 'Well, descendant of Raghu, do not thou, so noble in sentiments, and austere in character, entertain, like a common man, this useless thought. What man is a kinsman of any other? What relationship has any one with another? A man is born alone and dies alone. Hence he who is attached to any one as his father or his ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... recognized him, whether she even remembered him at all, and, if she did, what she thought of him for the idiotic way in which he had acted. Oh, he had been sincere enough at the moment, but, looked at calmly with the austere eyes of twenty-eight, his behavior on that occasion had been something—well, fierce! He groaned at the thought of it and almost wished that Fate had let things alone and spared him a second meeting. Of course there had been extenuating ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... matter, they best can tell who saw her in the shade of retirement as well as in the sunshine of public observation. Perhaps it is not going too far to say, that her least guarded moments would, in others, have been marked for circumspection. At the same time her vigilance had nothing austere, gloomy, constrained, or censorious—nothing to repress the cheerfulness of social intercourse, or to excite in others, even the thoughtless, a dread of merciless criticism after they should retire. It was sanctified nature moving gracefully in its own element. And with respect to the character ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... high and waters widely spread, Is that Seclusion which St. Herbert chose; ... Hither he came in life's austere decline: And, Stranger! this blank Heap of stones and earth Is ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... saw the austere and homely faces of women who represented all that was oldest and best in New York Society, and they wore their haughty bones unchastened by power. There were many more of the succeeding generation, of course, ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... twilight beauty, like the face of an old friend seen in the glow of lamplight. The shouting of urchins at play floated upward, stirring the chords of motherhood in her breast and emphasizing her loneliness. With Oliveta gone what would be left? Nothing but an austere life compressed within drab walls; nothing but sickness and suffering on every side. She had begun to think a great deal about those walls of late and—The bells of a convent pealed out softly in the distance, bringing a tightness ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... Concord River, which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds through which in some other geological period it may have flowed, and by a little digging, which God forbid, it can be made to flow thither again. If by living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit in the woods, so long, it has acquired such wonderful purity, who would not regret that the comparatively impure waters of Flint's Pond should be mingled with it, or itself should ever go to waste its sweetness ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... of her in his day. That austere concealment of her heart, which so impassioned him, chilled enthusiasm in all others of her acquaintance. So her letters were few, and now she was thankful enough. She herself wrote to nobody, and never spoke of her future unless she was compelled ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... does not write seemingly in her own person, the subjects are such disguises as 'The Prisoner,' 'Honour's Martyr,' 'The Outcast Mother,' echoes of all the miseries and useless rebellions of the earth. She spells over the fading characters in dying faces, unflinchingly, with an austere curiosity; and looks closely into the eyes of shame, not dreading what she may find there. She is always arguing with herself, and the answers are inflexible, the answers of a clear intellect which rebels but accepts defeat. Her doubt is itself ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... of the men associated with Waterman prove that he was ranked among the chief citizens of the town. The austere manners of the age, among communities like that established here; the exclusion, at that time, by inexorable laws, of many forms of amusement; and the general sombre aspect of society, kept down the natural exhilaration of ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... was kept by ladies of the name of Guinani, sisters to the wife of Charles Young—the Julia so early lost, so long loved and lamented by him. I was a frequent and much-petted visitor to their house, which never fulfilled the austere purpose implied in its name to me, for all my days there were holidays; and I remember hours of special delight passed in a large drawing-room where two fine cedars of Lebanon threw grateful gloom into the windows, and great tall china ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... his Bible! He shall marry Mademoiselle de Graevenitz in a few years' time; it will be a pious act for him, and a small reward to us for having borne his lectures with such good grace this twenty years.' Zollern smiled. He knew his austere old friend too well, and he could not picture him in the ridiculous role of husband of a cast-off courtesan. With a profound salute the old beau took leave of the company, and followed his hostess into the ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... it does, for here is the highest of instructions. There can be in all hearts only austere and serious thoughts when a sublime spirit majestically makes its entrance upon the other life; when one of those beings whom the visible wings of genius have long sustained above the crowd, suddenly puts forth those other ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... formally installed at Court, under the title of the Marquise de Pompadour. This story, unadorned, may sound paltry, even commercial, but we should not fall into the error of judging it by twentieth century standards. The morals of the French Court, never austere, were especially lax in the reign of Louis XV., and galanteries were the fashion, rather than the exception; while for the post of King's favorite there was a continual rivalry among ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... first time. His emaciated, freckled hand which held the hymn book, trembled with a kind of fever. But his blue eyes shone with the fires of God. To be sure, his voice sounded hollow and hoarse, and often he had to struggle for breath in the middle of a sentence. But what he said was wise and austere, and found favour in the eyes ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... had held slipped from his disinterested hands. So it was, too, in this unintended sense; he loved life. How should he not have loved a life that his living made honourable? How should he not have loved all arts, in which his choice was delicate, liberal, instructed, studious, docile, austere? An amateur man he might have been called, too, because he was not discomposed by his own experiences, or shaken by the discovery which life brings to us-that the negative quality of which Buddhism seems to accuse all good is partaken by our happiness. He had always prayed temperate prayers ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... drinkers were opposed by a powerful party of rigid disciplinarians, and austere devotees; a Spanish physician wrote a Latin treatise, expressly against what appeared to him so impious a practice on a fast day; his book, entitled "Tribunal Medico-Magicum," exhibits much zeal and some learning; that he was strongly attached to the luxury against which he declaims, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... in the Rue St. Gilles was for him a certificate of impunity. Seeing him so economical, every one thought him rich. People who seem to spend nothing are always trusted. Every privation which he imposed upon you increased his reputation of austere probity, and raised ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... light the wax candles in the nine-branched candlestick of silver. He wore a long, hooded mantle reaching to the feet, and showing where it fell back in front a brown gaberdine clasped by a girdle. These sombre-colored robes were second-hand, as the austere simplicity of the Pragmatic required. The Jewish Council of Sixty did not permit its subjects to ruffle it like the Romans of those days of purple pageantry. The young bloods, forbidden by Christendom to style themselves ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... customs of the Restoration. The splendour of this coronation ceremony was singularly spoiled by the pitiable taste of those who had charge of it. These worthies took upon themselves to mutilate the sculpture work on the marvellous facade and to "embellish" the austere cathedral with Gothic decorations of cardboard. The century, like the author, was young, and in some things both were incredibly ignorant; the masterpieces of literature were then unknown to the most learned litterateurs: CHARLES NODIER had never read the ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... the children very much, so he had grown accustomed to thinking of these things just to himself. Tabitha was too young to be made his confidante in such matters; indeed, he could never tell her some things. They would only make her hate the austere father more than ever. So he sighed. This was the fifth time they had moved from one town to another since the mother had died, and each place was worse than the last. No sooner were they well established in one city than the restless spirit seized the father and ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... incredulous, they act as if they believed nothing. We risk being deceived when we judge the opinions of men by their conduct or their conduct by their opinions. A very religious man, notwithstanding the austere and cruel principles of a bloody religion, will sometimes be, by a fortunate inconsistency, humane, tolerant, moderate; in this case the principles of his religion do not agree with the mildness of his disposition. A libertine, a debauchee, a hypocrite, an adulterer, or a thief will ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... drowned, or to her? And if," she added, her conscience rising equal to the vicarious demand upon it, "you hoped there would be danger, had you any right to expose him to it? Even if you chose to risk your own life, you had no right to risk his." She lifted her spectacles again, and turned their austere glitter upon her daughter. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in this a place exactly suitable to his plan, which was to effect reforms of austere character and contrary to nature. He convened his monks, who were amazed at his arrival and residence; he soundly rated them for the scandalous laxity of their conduct, and having reminded them of all the obligations of their office, he informed them of his new regulations, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... proverbially "unlucky Smith" was ordered to report at the office of the Admiral Commanding, and he had a sharp struggle to maintain a becoming composure when he heard the terse compliment and the mention of a recommendation from that austere officer, coupled with the intelligence that the zeppelin had dropped into the sea ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... most beautiful studies of childhood—Rebecca's artistic, unusual and quaintly charming qualities stand put midst a circle of austere New Englanders. The stage version is making a phenomenal ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... in fact, had fallen between two stools. It had fallen between that austere old three-legged stool which was the tripod of the cold priestess of Apollo; and that other mystical and mediaeval stool that may well be called the Stool of Repentance. It kept neither of the two values as intensely valuable. It could not believe in the bonds that bound men; but, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... This was a question I asked myself. You may imagine the extent of the circles of torment that my mind had searched before coming to so simple and so terrible a question. Notwithstanding his efforts, my patron did not succeed in stifling the movements of his heart. Under his austere manner, under the reserve of the magistrate, a passion rebelled, though coerced with such force that no one but I who lived with him ever guessed the secret. His motto seemed to be, 'I suffer, and am silent.' The escort of respect and admiration which ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... three men with whom he had to fight, and began to think that his case was not so desperate as it might have been. He hoped, by the candid and loyal apology which he intended to offer, to make himself a friend of Athos, whose austere mien and noble air pleased him greatly. He flattered himself that he should be able to intimidate Porthos by the affair of the shoulder-belt, which he could, if not killed upon the spot, relate to every body, and which would cover the giant with ridicule. Finally, he did not feel much ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... of the Abbey and the inhabitants of Whalley, many of whom were his tenants, he being joint lord of the manor with John Braddyll of Portfield, the best possible feeling subsisted; for though somewhat austere in manner, and tinctured with Puritanism, the worthy knight was sufficiently shrewd, or, more correctly speaking, sufficiently liberal-minded, to be tolerant of the opinions of others, and being moreover sincere in his own religious views, no man could call him in question ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... granted he did not change his life for a more easy one. . . Let no one, therefore, who is disposed to yield to temptations against his vocation, and to abandon the religious state from weariness, tepidity, or any unworthy motive, think to find any encouragement in his example; for his austere, self-denying, and arduous life will give him only rebuke, and ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... tolerant mood. His sorrow had softened his intolerant and emphatic temper. His experience of the cruel indifference of the elegant made him more conscious of the worth of these honest folk, graceless and devilish tiresome, who had yet an austere conception of life, and because they lived joylessly, seemed to him to live without weakness. Having decided that they were excellent, and that he ought to like them, like the German that he was, he tried to persuade himself that he did in fact like them. ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... complain of the character of the soldiers whom they had to command, for they were certainly, according to these accounts, sufficiently ready to obey the orders they received. Upon this, a certain one of the guests who was present, named Aglaitadas, a gloomy and austere-looking man, who had not joined at all in the merriment which the conversation had caused, asked Cyrus if he believed those ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... man splendidly blonde, and he affected the cloak, the slouch hat, the picturesque amplitude of hair which were once the uniform of the artist. But these, in his final effect, were subordinate to 'a certain breadth and majesty of brow, a cast of countenance at once benign and austere, as though the art he practiced so supremely both exacted much and conferred much. He made a fine and potent figure as he stood, with his back to the bright street and the gutter-child standing beside him like a familiar companion, and read the ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... take up the breast-plate of faith that now fell off his own shrunken body, Clement said within himself: "Heaven itself led my foot hither to this end." It struck him, too, as no small coincidence that his patron, St. Bavon, was a hermit, and an austere one, a cuirassier of ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... difficulty in raising a thousand pounds, and positively refuses in his present difficulties to add above five hundred a year to my former allowance. No father who had thoroughly done his duty by his son, could speak in a more fixed and austere manner. And yet he knows that every shilling will be mine as soon as he goes." The servant who was waiting upon them had been in and out of the room while this was said, and must have heard much of it. But to that Augustus seemed to be quite indifferent. And, ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... their feet lie the tropical valleys with their orange and pineapple groves, and wild, luxuriant vegetation; and then, one turns and glances upward; above him the barren mountain sides, the summits austere, ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... very briefly, speaking of business technicalities which absorbed him, he was noticeably absent and careworn. He looked much older. The gray in his thick hair had increased. He looked very beautiful and austere to Sylvia. They exchanged no more than the ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... England? If we study his history we shall find that he in no way resembles the typical amiable Anglican Canon of the present day, with a wife and children, living within the Cathedral close, but that he is a simple, austere, Benedictine monk. He has been living for some time past in the famous Abbey of Westminster. He was first a simple monk, then he was chosen Prior, and finally Lord Abbot. Some years later, i.e., in 1362, he was appointed to the vacant See of Ely. By whom? Well, in those ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... plague her. But ought she to speak? Her life in the household was one of silent reproach and protest; she kept herself almost constantly imprisoned in her chamber, devoting herself rigidly to the observances of her austere religion. Now, however, the wrong was so flagrant that she resolved to speak to ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... them; and De Malfort spent more of his life in attendance upon Lady Fareham than at Oxford, where he was supposed to be living. Mrs. Lettsome and her brother were frequent guests; and coach-loads of fine people came over from the court almost every day. Indeed, it was only Fareham's character—austere as Clarendon's or Southampton's—which kept the finest of all company at a distance. Lady Castlemaine had called at Chilton in her coach-and-four early in July; and her visit had not been returned—a slight which the proud ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... moment! then what dreams have play! Traditions of eternal toil arise, Search for the high, austere and lonely way, Where Brahma treads through the eternities. Ah, in the soul ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... were sloughing away. Where stones fall, there they lie. In the centre of the town is a marble triumphal arch in honour of Marcus Aurelius. Age would account for much of its ruin, but not all; yet it still stands cold, haughty, austere, though decrepit, in Tripolitan mud, with mean stucco and plaster buildings about it. The arch itself is filled in, and is used as a dwelling. Its tenant is a greengrocer, and the monument to Marcus Aurelius has an odour of garlic; but it need ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... while a thorough new departure in Negro journalism. If ever persuaded to forget for a moment, and be drawn from his business cares, you will find him a pleasant entertainer, both in music and conversation, for beneath his seeming austere countenance there lies an urbane streak of humor, piquant with wit and pleasant ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... and an intimate associate of President Garfield, was elected to succeed him. Under Professor Hinsdale's strong and vigorous guidance, the department rapidly advanced to a recognized place in the curriculum. Though his bearing was somewhat austere and overwhelming, he could unbend, as was proved on one occasion in the Library when his booming voice brought an admonition from an official. Just then an influential member of the Library Committee chanced to appear. He proved a greater disturber of the peace than Professor Hinsdale, ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... Then, concentrating my thoughts on a larger field of meditation, I came to know the essence of things, the illusion of forms. I speedily abandoned the science of the Brakhmans. They are eaten up with lusts beneath their austere exterior; they anoint themselves with filth, and sleep upon thorns, believing that they arrive at happiness ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... was soon convinced that this noise was produced by the numerous and busy footsteps of a solemn, austere, and preoccupied crowd of ants. Not a word was said, but every one ran rather than walked, and they seemed like a thousand individuals, all actuated by one purpose. Supported on the lower branch of a chestnut tree, Piccolissima placed herself a little higher, but very ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... any day thank God for the lancet; and there is none of these brilliant and narrow inventions (except, of course, the asbestos stove) which might not be at some moment necessary and lovely. But I do not think the most austere upholder of specialism will deny that there is in these old, many-sided institutions an element of unity and universality which may well be preserved in its due proportion and place. Spiritually, at least, it will be admitted that some all-round balance is needed ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton |
