"Hermit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his lady, by accompanying him in his different places of residence, is become skilful in several languages. Talisker is the place beyond all that I have seen, from which the gay and the jovial seem utterly excluded; and where the hermit might expect to grow old in meditation, without possibility of disturbance or interruption. It is situated very near the sea, but upon a coast where no vessel lands but when it is driven by a tempest on the rocks. Towards the land are lofty hills streaming with waterfalls. ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... think, I suppose, that the age of miracles has passed, or survives only in their miraculous cures, and so coolly defy the lightnings of Heaven. I was so much excited on this subject that Thompson suggested to me to give up my situation, turn Peter the Hermit, and carry a fiery scrubbing-brush through the country, preaching to all lovers of Nature to join in a crusade to wash the Holy Places ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... far from the coast; but where could he deposit the body of his mistress, how inter it with all the honours suitable to her rank and merit? he at length recollected, that in the forest which surrounded his mansion, dwelt an aged hermit, at whose cell the corpse might remain till its interment: he could then enjoy the sad pleasure of visiting daily the object of all his solicitude, and he determined to found on the spot an abbey, in which a number of monks should pray for ever for the soul of ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... fishing, or bird- hunting, or trail hiking, much as the fight instinct leads us to football, or the hunt instinct sends every dog sniffing at dawn through the streets of his town. Not every one is thus atavistic, if this be atavism; not every American is sensitive to spruce spires, or the hermit thrush's chant, or white water in a forest gorge, or the meadow lark across the frosted fields. Naturally. The surprising fact is that in a bourgeois civilization like ours, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... and Credit were in hostile order, the weaker simply devoted to fighting for delay, when a winged messenger bearing the form of old Mr. Braddock descended to her with the reconciling news that a hermit bachelor, an acquaintance of Mr. Redworth's—both of whom wore a gloomy hue in her mind immediately—had offered a sum for the purchase of The Crossways. Considering the out-of-the-way district, Mr. Braddock thought it an excellent price to get. She thought the reverse, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... off my couch serene, Woods, meadows, towns and seas have seen; And in one wood, beside a cave, A hermit kneeling by a grave:— The which I felt so touched to see I wept a shower of sympathy. And in one mead I saw, methought, A brave, dark-armored knight, who fought A shining-dragon in a mist, That, mixed with flames did roll and twist Out of the beast's ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... do: and that is to go mad, divest himself of his garments, and take to the greenwood. This Ywain duly does, supporting himself at first on the raw flesh of game which he kills with a bow and arrows wrested from a chance-comer; and then on less savage but still simple food supplied by a benevolent hermit. As he lies asleep under a tree, a lady rides by with attendants, and one of these (another of the wise damsels of romance) recognises him as Sir Ywain. The lady has at the time sore need of a champion against ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Franklin is dead, and I am in possession of his cottage, which will be a delightfully additional plaything at Strawberry. I shall be violently tempted to stick in a few cypresses and lilacs there before I go to Paris. I don't know a jot of news: I have been a perfect hermit this fortnight, and buried in Runic poetry and Danish wars. In short, I have been deep in a late history of Denmark, written by one Mallet, a Frenchman,(761) a sensible man, but I cannot say he has the art of making a very tiresome subject agreeable. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... find it hard to tear yourself away from the hermit-crabs, Ragsie?" she laughed. "You must have gobbled down more than a hundred. It's high time you ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... effect his departure the gang find that they are surrounded by troops led by Don Sebastian, a friend of Don Henrique. The coiners, in company with the latter, however, make their escape in the disguise of monks on their way to the neighboring monastery, singing a lugubrious chorus ("Unto the Hermit of the Chapel"), while Catarina and Rebolledo elude the soldiers by taking a subterranean passage, carrying with them a casket ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... was such a fine opportunity in the "Old Dominion," in those days, for one who really hungered for gore to distinguish himself. It would have been a glorious sight to see the gigantic captain, full of the fiery spirit that animated Peter the Hermit when exhorting his followers to the rescue of the holy sepulcher, charging gallantly at the head of his men into the place "where death reigneth." There were several of those ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... of Peter the Hermit either does not exist in this country, or, if here, does not yield itself readily to knowledge and use. The "Life of Peter the Hermit," by D'Outremant, and another by Andre Thevet, on which Michaud draws heavily, seem beyond reach, as are also the histories of ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... out to greet him at his approach. The people were less cordial. His assumed devotion could not deceive those who knew him to be a devotee of pleasure.[1198] His appearance forcibly reminded them of the old story of Master Fox turned hermit, and cries of "Au Renard! Au Renard!" were so loudly uttered when he was seen in the streets preceded by an attendant carrying a large silver cross, the badge of his office, that he was soon fain to discard ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... one who had thought too closely on the paradoxical aspect of the love of posthumous fame. With the ascetic pride which lurks under all Platonism, [201] resultant from its opposition of the seen to the unseen, as falsehood to truth—the imperial Stoic, like his true descendant, the hermit of the middle age, was ready, in no friendly humour, to mock, there in its narrow bed, the corpse which had made so much of itself in life. Marius could but contrast all that with his own Cyrenaic eagerness, just then, to taste and see and touch; reflecting on the ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... and their other religious books that these mediaeval bibliomaniacs expended their choicest art and their most loving care. St. Cuthbert's "Gospels," preserved in the British Museum, was written by Egfrith, a monk, circa 720; Aethelwald bound the book in gold and precious stones, and Bilfrid, a hermit, illuminated it by prefixing to each gospel a beautiful painting representing one of the Evangelists, and a tessellated cross, executed in a most elaborate manner. Bilfrid also illuminated the large capital letters at the beginning of the gospels. This precious volume was still further ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... red-haired lad, one must have a clear head in the tumult of his direction. I was once lost for several hours on the side of Anthony's Nose above the Hudson because I jumbled such advice. And although I made the acquaintance of a hermit who dwelt on the mountain with a dog and a scarecrow for his garden—a fellow so like him in garment and in feature that he seemed his younger and cleaner brother—still I did not find the top or see the clear sweep of ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... that for six or eight months of the year the land is ice-bound. On the island we visited a small church, within the sacred precincts of which no woman's foot dare tread, but we had a peep at another chapel where a hermit once lived. He never spoke to any one for seven years, and slept nightly in his coffin, in which he was not buried, however, it being necessary to keep the article ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... their master, they were as much delighted by his joy as if they had been preparing for a village fair in which they were to take part. They never dreamed of pay for their generous toil, but derived their most grateful recompense from the pleasure they imparted to the hermit and his child. ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... "It is so indeed. Many hundred years ago, this place, where stand the abbey and the town, was a howling wilderness. Not far off, however, lived a venerable hermit, Patrick by name, who often sought the desert for the purpose of therein exercising his austerities. One day he lighted on this cave, which is of vast extent. He entered it, and wandering on in the dark, lost his way, so that he could no more find how to return to the light of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Hermit, of course. I should have thought the presence of the raven would have enlightened you: he is always described as going about in company ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... would stare at the Notice by the half-hour (that being the time allowed by the Steam-Tug Company), and hope, with much blushing and giggling, to catch a glimpse of Mr. Fogo. But the hermit remained steadily indoors. ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... all the winds behind the protecting promontory, with perhaps already some humble shrine or hermit's cell upon Inchgarvie or Inchcolm to give them promise of Christian kindness, with the lonely rock of Edinburgh in the distance on one side, and the soft slopes of the Fife coast rising towards the King's palace at Dunfermline on ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... is a success as a human being. His sincerity is proverbial in all things, both great and small. In him there is nothing of the mystic, the hermit, or the sybarite. He has great joy of life, and this joy is true, honest, and real, and never simulated. He drinks in life at every pore, and gives forth life that invigorates and inspires whomsoever it touches. His laugh is the expression of his wholesome nature; his ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... which pleased him; as she slipped down the room before him to place him at table he saw that she was, as it were, involuntarily, unwillingly graceful. She made him think of a wild sweetbrier, of a hermit-thrush; but, if there were this sort of poetic suggestion in Cynthia's looks, her acts were of plain and honest prose, such as giving Westover the pleasantest place and the most ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... though probably not wrought by the same hands. In the panels are sculptures representing events in the life of our Lord. The lowest panel is too defaced for us to determine the subject; on the second we see the flight into Egypt; on the third figures of Paul, the first hermit, and Anthony, the first monk, are carved; on the fourth is a representation of our Lord treading under foot the heads of swine; and on the highest there is the figure of St. John the Baptist with the lamb. On the reverse side are the Annunciation, the Salutation, and other scenes ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... with hermit heart Disdain'st the wealth of art, And gauds, and pageant weeds, and trailing pall: But com'st a decent maid, In Attic robe array'd, O chaste, unboastful nymph, to ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... hermit's fare is not only the most natural, but the only naturally palatable, I suppose,—a crust of bread and a draught from the ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... house was put in a state of defence. Ladies of his household driving to church were insulted. To avoid occasion of strife he remained quietly at his country-seat; and, for his consideration of the public weal, was ridiculed, caricatured, and dubbed, in contempt, the Hermit of Monklands. ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... The veriest hermit in the nation May yield, all know, to strong temptation: Away they went, through thick and thin, To a tall house near Lincoln's Inn. The moonbeam fell upon the wall, And tipped with silver roof and all,— Palladian walls, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... more wealth, more finery, more self-indulgence—even more aesthetic and artistic luxury; but more virtue, more knowledge, more self-control, even though I earn scanty bread by heavy toil; and when I compare the Caesar of Rome or the great king, whether of Egypt, Babylon, or Persia, with the hermit of the Thebaid, starving in his frock of camel's hair, with his soul fixed on the ineffable glories of the unseen, and striving, however wildly and fantastically, to become an angel and not an ape, I will say the hermit, and not the Caesar, is ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... other men: Flight of cashiers, or mobs, he'll never mind; And knows no losses while the Muse is kind. To cheat a friend, or ward, he leaves to Peter, The good man heaps up nothing but mere metre, Enjoys his garden and his book in quiet; And then—a perfect hermit in his diet. Of little use the man you may suppose Who says in verse what others say in prose; Yet let me show, a poet's of some weight, And (though no soldier) useful to the state. What will a child learn sooner than a song? What better teach a foreigner the tongue? What's ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... restless pines complain, As on their summit rolls the breeze of night; Beneath, the hoarse stream chides the rocks in vain: The Pilgrim pauses on the dizzy height. Then to the vale his cautious step he prest, For there a hermit's cross was dimly seen, Cresting the rock, and there his limbs might rest, Cheer'd in the good man's cave, by faggot's sheen, On leafy beds, nor guile his sleep molest. Unhappy Luke! he trusts a treacherous ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... aloof from the propaganda of bureaucratic enlightenment which was carried on by Lilienthal in the name of Uvarov. The Volhynian hermit was completely overshadowed by the energetic young German. Even when Lilienthal, after realizing that a union between Jewish culture and Russian officialdom was altogether unnatural, had disappeared from the stage, Levinsohn still persisted in cultivating ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... had never been much given to the pleasures of the table; but this habit of simplicity had grown on him of late, till the Duchess used to tell him that his wants were so few that it was a pity he was not a hermit, vowed to poverty. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... be derived, in part at least, from his social environment. The lonely craftsman perfecting his art in the solitude of a one-man workshop does not correspond with our industrial ideal any more than the hermit or the monk corresponds with our general religious ideal. It was the great apostle of craftsmanship, William Morris, who best set forth the social ideal of industry in his immortal sentence: 'Fellowship is Life and lack of Fellowship is Death.' Our study of the workman, then, is ...
— Progress and History • Various
... of the Psalter in English, from the early years of the fourteenth century, still exist, one of which was by Richard Rolle, the Yorkshire hermit, who also translated ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... public. I do not know as any one but myself can estimate the cost to him of having a stranger in our courts; especially in these narrow ones. A week or so does very well; but months will not do at all. . . . You know that he has but just stepped over the threshold of a hermitage. He is but just not a hermit still. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... numerous foibles, cherished the pardonable weakness of a respect for the religious mendicants, who form one of the chronic plagues of Asiatic society. Taking advantage of this, a Kashmirian in the interest of the Minister took occasion to mention to Alamgir that a hermit of peculiar sanctity had recently taken up his abode in the ruined fort of Firozabad, some two miles south of the city, and (in those days) upon the right bank of the Jamna, which river has now receded to a considerable distance. The helpless devotee resolved ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... during the seventeenth century, who escaped after fourteen years' confinement. Dread of China and Japan induced the king to send envoys with tribute to Peking and Yedo, but the tribute was small, and the isolation was maintained, Corea winning for itself the names of the Hermit Nation and the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... wilderness &c. (unproductive) 169; howling wilderness; rotten borough, Old Sarum. exclusion, excommunication, banishment, exile, ostracism, proscription; cut, cut direct; dead cut. inhospitality[obs3], inhospitableness &c. adj.; dissociability[obs3]; domesticity, Darby and Joan. recluse, hermit, eremite, cenobite; anchoret[obs3], anchorite; Simon Stylites[obs3]; troglodyte, Timon of Athens[obs3], Santon[obs3], solitaire, ruralist[obs3], disciple of Zimmermann, closet cynic, Diogenes; outcast, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... The Prophet and his warriors up on the Tippecanoe, a man named Quill,—an Irishman from down the river some'eres towards Vincennes,—all this is hearsay so far as I'm concerned, mind you,—but as I was saying, this man Quill begin to make his home up in that cave. He was what you might call a hermit. There were no white people in these parts except a few scattered trappers and some people living in a settlement twenty-odd miles south of here. As the story goes, this man Quill lived up there in that cave for about four or five years, hunting and trapping all around the country. White people ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... habits which a modern spirit loves to point out, as the great essential of hermit-life, united with the family characteristic of the early Seton to verify the last ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... (sweet sadness!) "The garden was a wild" (a picturesque wild) "And man the hermit" (he made no complaint) "Till the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the lady found her pretty babe;— Ere the morning light was nigh, To the hermit's cell[7] that little page Had borne ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... (written by my father's command) to put off what cattle he had left about his house, and to discharge his servants; which I had done at the time called Michaelmas before. So that all that winter, when I was at home, I lived like a hermit, all alone, having a pretty large house, and nobody in it but myself, at nights especially; but an elderly woman, whose father had been an old servant to the family, came every morning and made my bed, and did what else I had occasion for her to do, till I fell ill of the ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... I have not left except once for two months—the evening when you met me. During all this time I have not got up from the bed where I work at the great work, for the sake of which I have condemned myself to this hermit's life, and which happily I have just finished, for my powers have come to an end." It must have been during these last months in his garret, when he neglected everything for his projected masterpiece, that, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Meantime he sadly suffers in their grief, Out-weeps an hermit, and out-prays a saint: All the long night he studies their relief, How they may be ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... STEPHENS, I. K. The Hermit Philosopher of Liendo, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1951. Well-conceived and well-written biography of Edmund Montgomery—illegitimate son of a Scottish lord, husband of the sculptress Elisabet Ney—who, after being educated in Germany ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... untiring efforts of Peter the Hermit, with the support of Pope Urbain II., brought about the first Crusade, and in 1099 we first hear of Gerard, the founder of the Order of St. John. Gerard was a French monk who, seeing the good work done by the Hospice of St. John, had attached himself to it, and had at this time been ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... had known it, she was receiving an unheard-of compliment! The hermit Carlyon—the old Oxford Professor of Greek, who had come to this out-of-the-way corner because he had been assured by the agent there would be no sort of society around him—now intended to put on a tall hat and frock coat, and make a formal call on two ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... would such stirring monuments be; full of life and commotion; than hermit obelisks of Luxor, and idle towers of stone; which, useless to the world in themselves, vainly hope to eternize a name, by having it carved, solitary and alone, in their granite. Such monuments are cenotaphs indeed; founded far away from ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... hope may be on Saturday. I have likewise some things to finish for Chambers before I go, and then I think I shall be able to enjoy a few days of a stravaig.... I got a slight interruption last night; just as the twilight came on, Alex. Smith came in. Now I had been living like a hermit for some time, and though he has been more than a fortnight returned I had not seen Smith for ten days. The matter was irresistible. We set to and got very jolly together. He complained of having low spirits, but they were soon elevated, and before he ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... fellow creatures who had lived in the beautiful wild places of this land much longer than any man whatsoever, he spent part of his days among them. At such times he was a sort of hermit. ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... the great things of history. Witness the inferior mentality but the burning ardor of a Peter the Hermit, moving all Europe to the most extraordinary war the world has seen. Consider Napoleon crossing the Alps—an achievement all men said was impossible. Impossible! That word is found only in ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... no sea-coast, has been termed the Hermit Republic of South America. Its territory is over 600,000 square miles in extent, and within its bounds Nature displays almost every possible panorama, and all climates. There are burning plains, the home of the emu, armadillos, and ants; sandy deserts, where the wind drifts the sand like snow, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... a stowaway than a millionaire, thought Blanco the following afternoon, when he had come over the side of the Isis and sought out the owner of the yacht. Benton had turned hermit and withdrawn to the most isolated space the vessel provided. It was really not a deck at all—only a space between engine-room grating and tarpaulined lifeboats on what was properly the cabin roof. Here, removed from the burnished ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... excellent reasons for these lapses, if the hermit but knew them. Though he is stagnant in his cell, his connections without are whirling in the very vortex of life. That void interval which passes for him so slowly that the very clocks seem at a stand, and the wingless hours plod by in the likeness of tired tramps prone to rest at ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... tell the course of the stars in the heavens; versed was he likewise in the ancient wisdoms and philosophies, both Latin and Greek, having learned all these things from him whom men called Ambrose the Hermit. But of men and cities he knew little, and of women and the ways of women, less than nothing, for of these matters Ambrose ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... not live altogether as a hermit. He visited Edmeston of Mount Edmeston, a neighbour less than fifty miles distant; was occasionally seen at Johnson Hall, with Sir William; or at the bachelor establishment of Sir John, on the Mohawk; and once ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... ways and wonders of the gods in distant travel in foreign lands, and having thoroughly studied in particular the wisdom of the Egyptian priests and of the Greek Pythagoreans, had returned to his native country to endhis life as a pious hermit in a cavern of the "holy mountain." He remained accessible only to the king and his servants, and gave forth to the king and through him to the people his oracles with reference to every important undertaking. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... effect: 'If you can't stop the wind from blowing, neither can you prevent evil thoughts from entering your mind.' I daresay the thing that occurred to you wasn't actually evil in the sense which the hermit meant, but it is pretty sure to have been foolish; and that, for all practical purposes, is the same thing. By the way, this is excellent bacon; quite the best I've tasted for a long time. ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... I returned for a fresh supply of eggs on the third day, with a basket I had constructed out of young boughs, and which enabled me to carry a whole week's sustenance. Then I felt quite satisfied, and made up my mind that I would live as a hermit during my sojourn on the island, however long it might be; for I preferred anything to obeying the orders of one whom I detested as I did ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... which told of a certain rat who, weary of the anxieties of this world, retired to a cheese, therein to live in peace. Profound solitude reigned around the hermit. He worked so hard with his feet and his teeth that in a few days he had a spacious dwelling and food in plenty. What more could he desire? He thrived well, growing large and fat. Blessings are showered upon those who are ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... the girl's presence here in the abandoned cabin, her taking up a hermit life on the shore, could not remain unknown to the neighbors on Wreckers' Head for long. Yet at this season of the year the men were all busy elsewhere and the women almost never came down to the beaches. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... 'King Yayati, the son of Nahusha, having thus installed his dear son on the throne, became exceedingly happy, and entered into the woods to lead the life of a hermit. And having lived for some time into forest in the company of Brahmanas, observing many rigid vows, eating fruits and roots, patiently bearing privations of all sorts, the monarch at last ascended to heaven. And having ascended ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... its splendid mart, Its hives of sweets, and cabinets of art; And, lo, majestic as thy manly song, Flows the full tide of human life along. Still must my partial pencil love to dwell On the home-prospects of my hermit cell; The mossy pales that skirt the orchard-green, Here hid by shrub-wood, there by glimpses seen; And the brown pathway, that, with careless flow, Sinks, and is lost among the trees below. Still must it trace (the flattering tints forgive) Each fleeting charm ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... in abundance from individuals; but there is no romance in councils of state or deliberative assemblies. There, cool judgment and cautious policy must restrain and regulate the warm impulses of feeling. I trust we are never to be carried away, by the fascinating eloquence of this second Peter the Hermit, into schemes of foreign interference, that would rival the wild enterprises of the Crusades." The letter concludes in a minor strain: "It is now half-past twelve at night, and I am sitting here scribbling ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... to that officer whose head was projecting from an upper window. "I remember! McGuire told me about this Winslow—some hermit that he ran across. He has some invention—some machine—said he had been to the moon. I always thought Mac half believed him. We'll go over Mac's things and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... house not far from the Burdock station. An old woman did the cooking for him and went home at night. For the rest he dwelt almost like a hermit, and so far as any one knew he had not a relative in the world. But the report had gone out as it always does in such cases, that he was very rich, and now his desire to see a lawyer and make a will convinced Roy that for once ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... I had lost my young wife, the one I loved best on earth, and I came to beg my discharge; for my longing was to go back to my native mountains and live a hermit's life in Tyrol. My empress would not release me. 'How!' said she, 'are you so weak that you must skulk away from the world because Almigthy God has seen fit to bereave you of your wife? He tries your faith, man, and you must ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... old home to the care of his relatives, and started out on his quest. He traveled through all the mountainous regions of the land, climbing to the tops of the highest peaks, but never a hermit did he find. ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... bushes we found numbers of large hermit-crabs, crawling, or rather running, about in whelk shells, half a dozen of them occasionally having a grand fight amongst themselves. We picked up at least twenty different sorts of gracefully shaped pieces of coral, and quantities of shells of an infinite variety of form ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... reached the mouth of the grotto, by that "very bad track" which the learned personage above mentioned clambered up, we saw the ruins of the building which the doctor at first thought had been possibly a hermit's cell; but which, upon more deliberate reflection, he became of opinion "was designed, perhaps, for a sentinel to look out, and regulate, by signals, the approach of the men and teams employed in carrying marble ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... sword; but by a wonderful interposition of Providence this bad brother was converted from his evil intention, for just as he entered the skirts of the wild forest he was met by an old religious man, a hermit, with whom he had much talk and who in the end completely turned his heart from his wicked design. Thenceforward he became a true penitent, and resolved, relinquishing his unjust dominion, to spend the remainder of his days in a religious house. The ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... meat and wood smoke is dear to the heart of man. Fine, too is the sting of salt and the rasp of the north wind in the sheets. Come forth, one and all, unto the great lands oversea, and the strange tongues and the hermit peoples. Learn before you die to follow the Piper's Son, and though your old bones bleach among grey rocks, what matter if you have had your bellyful of life and come to your heart's desire?" And the tune fell low and witching, bringing tears ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... I gaze below on hell's fierce bed, And those its waves of flame oppress, Swarming in ghastly wretchedness; Whose life on earth aspired to be One altar-smoke, so pure!—to win If not love like God's love for me, At least to keep his anger in; And all their striving turned to sin. Priest, doctor, hermit, monk grown white With prayer, the broken-hearted nun, The martyr, the wan acolyte, The incense-swinging child,—undone Before God fashioned star or sun! God, whom I praise; how could I praise, If such as I might understand, Make out and reckon on his ways, And ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... nothing but the terrible wrath of God and eternal condemnation, he cannot but sink into despair over his sins. Such is the inevitable consequence where the Law alone is taught with a view to attaining heaven thereby. The vanity of such trust in works is illustrated in the case of the noted hermit mentioned in Vitae Patrum (Lives of the Fathers). For over seventy years this hermit had led a life of utmost austerity, and had many followers. When the hour of death came he began to tremble, and for three days was in a state of agony. ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... white teeth in a broad grin. "I promise! That boy with the bass voice cured me. I'm goin' to be a hermit." ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... 1399 (Nicolas begins) dwelt in a hut near Caer Dathyl in Arvon, as he had dwelt for some five years, a gaunt hermit, notoriously consecrate, whom neighboring Welshmen revered as the Blessed Evrawc. There had been a time when people called him Edward Maudelain, but this period he dared ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... blockade-running upon Charleston. This in turn drew thither the blockaders, which had to be the more numerous because the harbor could be entered by two or more channels, widely separated. There was thus constituted a blockade society, which contrasted agreeably with the somewhat hermit-like existence of the smaller stations. The weather was usually pleasant enough—many Northerners now know the winter climate of South Carolina—so during the daytime the ships would lift their anchors and get more or less together; the officers, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... cup. At the close of this expedition, his vast army were disposed in nine different camps, upon the head waters of the river Amour. Each division had tents of a particular color. On a festival day, as all were gazing with admiration upon their youthful leader, a hermit, by previous secret appointment, appeared as a prophet from heaven. Approaching the prince, the pretended embassador from the celestial court, declared, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... perches you look down upon a lively scene of foliage, flowers, greensward, gay costumes and frolicking children. The view is wide, and has many features that would be strange to "dear old Robinson Crusoe." His cabin is multiplied into a hamlet, and his hermit life is gone. But you still recognize the place as a modernized portrait of the island of De Foe's wonderful book. And, as if to furnish you with a fresh piece of evidence, yonder appears Robinson Crusoe himself, in his coat of skins, and bearing his musket ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... at the strange shape of his saddle, and I was recommended to mount outside the little enclosure, on a patch of open ground, where my steed would not be able to brush me off. The moment I mounted, the "Hermit" as he was called, made for a dry ditch and tried to lie down, but a sharp cut from a stock-whip brought him out of it, and then he laid his ears well back and started for a good gallop, to endeavour to get rid of his strange ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... beginning of the Rains. The sky is black with clouds. On a lake lovers dally in a tiny pavilion, while in the background two princes consult a hermit before leaving on their travels. The rainy season was associated in poetry with love in separation and for this reason a lonely girl is shown walking in a wood. In a garden pavilion Krishna dallies with Radha, the approaching rain ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... what it was will be told in the next volume of this series, to be entitled, "The Motor Girls on Cedar Lake; Or, The Hermit of Fern Island." In that we will meet with the young ladies and their friends again, and hear further of Cora's resourcefulness in times ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... heavy fowled, bald-headed, somewhat goggle-eyed old gentleman, Rudolph did his best to lead the life of a hermit, and escape the cares of royalty. Timid by temperament, yet liable to fits of uncontrollable anger, he broke his furniture to pieces when irritated, and threw dishes that displeased him in his butler's face, but left affairs of state mainly to his valet, who ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... on a day King Arthur, wandering from his court, had fought and vanquished a valiant knight, but he himself had been sore wounded. Merlin, coming to his aid, had taken him to a hermit's cave, and there with many marvellous salves had searched his wounds, so that in three days the king ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... water their plains and quicken into life their needy crops, or to worship the gentle bovine that provides them daily with milk and cheese and ghee. Wonderful legends are told of the cow in Hindoo mythology. The Ramayana tells of a certain marvellous cow owned by a renowned hermit. The hermit being honored by a visit from the king, who had with him a numerous retinue, was sorely puzzled how to provide refreshments for his princely guests. The cow, however, proved herself equal to the emergency, and—"Obedient ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... seek some hermit cell, Where I alone my beads may tell, And on the wight who that way fares Levy a toll for my ghostly pray'rs, Levy a toll, levy a toll, Levy a toll for ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... very singular visit; 'tis to a hermit, who has lived sixty years alone on this island; I came to him with a strong prejudice against him; I have no opinion of those who fly society; who seek a state of all others the most contrary to our nature. Were I a tyrant, and wished ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... lighthouse on Coquet Island keeps watch over the entrance to the harbour. Some of the walls of the monastery, which stood on the island in Saxon days, can now be seen forming part of the dwelling of the lighthouse keeper. For many generations, too, hermit after hermit went to dwell on this tiny islet, and St. Cuthbert himself is said to have inhabited the little cell at one time. The island was captured by the Scots in the Civil Wars of King Charles's reign, and held ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... of course, sometimes ran into extremes. It was easy to trace to the inexorable demand on all for exact truth that austerity which made this willing hermit more solitary even than he wished. Himself of a perfect probity, he required not less of others. He had a disgust for crime, and no worldly success could cover it. He detected paltering as readily in dignified and prosperous persons as in beggars, and with equal scorn. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... queer style," returned Randy. "According to what he says, and what that Bill Hobson told me, he must be a good deal of a hermit." ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... apropos of which we have a Bardic tale told, which almost transports one to the far East, the simple lives and awful privileges of the Hindoo Brahmins. It seems that some of King FEARGAL's army, in foraging for their fellows, drove off the only cow of a hermit, who lived in seclusion near a solitary little chapel called Killin. The enraged recluse, at the very moment the armies were about to engage, appeared between them, regardless of personal danger, denouncing ruin and ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... board, it was a floating town—and more than once in the crowded decks and saloons he caught glimpses of men he knew in club, college, or business. He would invariably beat a precipitate retreat. His daily procedure was hermit-like. With the exception of an early morning stroll, alone, on the promenade deck, he took no more chances after that first morning. His meals were served in his stateroom. From the splendid library of the ship he secured ample reading material ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... their knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall awhile repair, To dwell a weeping hermit there! ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... little daughter to the Ursulines at Tonon. That child took a great fondness for Father La Combe, saying, "He is a good father, one from God." Here I found a hermit, whom they called Anselm. He was a person of the most extraordinary sanctity that had appeared for some time. He was from Geneva; God had miraculously drawn him from thence, at twelve years of age. He had at nineteen years of age taken the habit of hermit of ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... said the Countess, "I was as one mad, and set myself toward the convent, to end there, praying for him. But a very holy hermit that lives beneath Merlin Oak, in the very midst and heart of the Dunes, to whom I brought a relic from Jerusalem as a pious offering, set me right and told me I was not made for a religious. 'It may be, my daughter, that in too much thought on your religion you will lose it,' he ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... the fullest possible extent; I need not put myself out at all; at any hour of the day, at any period that seems favourable, I have the requisite elements before my eyes. Ah, dear village, so poor, so countrified, how happily inspired was I when I came to ask of you a hermit's retreat, where I could live in the company of my beloved insects and, in so doing, set down not too unworthily a few chapters of ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... we raced— We rounded the hill by "The Hermit's Well"— We burst on the Westbrooke Bridge—"What haste? What errand?" shouted the sentinel. "To Beelzebub with the Brewer's knave!" "Carolus Rex and he of the Rhine!" Galloping past him, I got and gave In the gallop password and countersign, All soak'd with water and soil'd with ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... sometimes the only songster in the wood. There is a liquid sound in his tones that slightly resembles that of a glassichord; though in some parts of the country he has received the name of Fife-Bird, from the clearness of his intonations. By many persons this species is called the Hermit-Thrush. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... crab that likes to live in a shell; so if they find one empty, they take possession of it; they are called "hermit crabs." We often used to pick up a shell with a crab ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... a hermit's cell Would break the silence of this dell— It is not quiet—is not ease, But something deeper far than these. The separation that is here Is of the grave, and of austere And happy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... "And so the king did, and on that very day began work on his houses, and he enclosed the city round about; and that done, he left Nagumdym, and soon filled the new city with people. And he gave it the name VYDIAJUNA, for so the hermit called himself who had bidden him ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... uninteresting literatures, dimly interested in all that the world did not care for. He lived in the gloom of present failure, embittered by the memory of past successes, wearied with long illness, and therefore constrained to live like a hermit, never appearing ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... that I have got a hold of you and can manipulate you in reference to your repentance and future conduct,—I will require from you a mode of life that, in its general attractions, shall be about equal to that of a hermit in the desert. If you flinch you are not only a monster of ingratitude towards me, who am taking all this trouble to save you, but you are also a poor wretch for whom no possible hope of grace can remain." When it is found that a young man is neglecting his duties, doing nothing, spending his ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... much to cause deterioration in the quality of American citizenship. Let us resolve that America shall be neither a hermit nation nor a Botany Bay. Let us make our land a home for the oppressed of all nations, but not a dumping-ground for the criminals, the paupers, the cripples, and the illiterate of the world. Let our Republic, in its crowded and hazardous future, ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... if some hermit had been using it as a store-room," said her husband; for there were odds and ends of furniture and clothes and boxes and handbags scattered ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... from exposure. It pushes its way into the icy fastnesses of the North or of the South, in order that it may discover new channels of trade. It carries the influence of your power and the beneficent advantages of your civilization to the secluded and hermit empires of the Eastern world, and brings them into touch with our Western civilization and its love of law for the sake of the law rather than for fear of the law's punishments. It stands guard upon the outer frontiers of civilization, in pestilential climates, often exposed to noisome disease, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... being deprived of it. The dodder, says Drummond, has roots like other plants, but when it fixes sucker discs on the branches of neighboring plants and begins to get its food through them, its roots perish. When it fails to use them it loses them. He also points to the hermit-crab as an illustration of this great fact in nature, that disuse means loss, and that to shirk responsibility is the road to degeneration. The hermit-crab was once equipped with a hard shell and with as good means of locomotion as other crabs. ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers
... Bumps, who had lived almost the life of a hermit for part of the winter, was now allowed the freedom of the premises for a part of each day. They kept the gates shut; but the goat had too good a home, and led too much a life of ease here at the Corner House, to ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... at Fattehpur was believed to have tremendous influence with those deities who control the coming of babies into this great world; hence the emperor and his sultana visited Shekh Selim in his rock retreat to solicit his interposition for the birth of a son. Now, the hermit had a son only 6 months old, who, the evening after the visit of the emperor, noticed that his father's face wore a dejected expression. Having never learned the use of his tongue, being but a few months old, this precocious child naturally caused great astonishment when, ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... kind of place for a hermit," said Monica. "He could have had a little cell and told his beads without being disturbed by anybody, except an occasional knight-errant who would blow a horn from the opposite bank. I wonder ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... Crustacea contains, besides the lobster (and its near allies, hermit-crabs, prawns, shrimps, and cray-fish), all crabs, including those very quaint-looking animals (now so often seen in our living collections), the king-crabs (Limulus), and a variety of more or less strangely different forms such as ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... the Bard sleep here indeed? Or is it but a groundless creed? What matters it? I blame them not Whose Fancy in this lonely Spot 20 Was moved; and in this way express'd Their notion of it's perfect rest. A Convent, even a hermit's Cell Would break the silence of this Dell: It is not quiet, is not ease; But something deeper far than these: The separation that is here Is of the grave; and of austere And happy feelings of the dead: And, therefore, was it rightly said 30 That Ossian, last of all his race! ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... quite in the dark, and know not what they shall do, or those who can not resist temptations, and find they make themselves worse by being in the world, without making it better, may retire. I never read of a hermit, but in imagination I kiss his feet; never of a monastery, but I could fall on my knees, and kiss the pavement. But I think putting young people there, who know nothing of life, nothing of retirement, is dangerous and wicked. It is a saying as ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... the supposed poet. They were, he said, like those of a man who should build a large ship in an inland place, with no sea to launch it upon. The Iliad was the large ship; the sea was the public. Homer could have no readers, Wolf said, in an age that, like the old hermit of Prague, "never saw pen and ink," had no knowledge of letters; or, if letters were dimly known, had never applied them to literature. In such circumstances no man could have a motive for composing a long poem. [Footnote: Prolegomena to the ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... "A hermit's life would not suit me badly," said Brian, who was lying on his back on a patch of sand in the shade, with a hat of cocoa-nut fibre tilted over his eyes. "I think I could easily let you ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... fifty-four inscriptions in Latin and Greek, written, or rather painted, with a brush by Montaigne. Their interest has suffered a little from the restoration which some of them have undergone; but there they are, the crystals of thought picked up by the hermit of the tower in his wanderings along the highways and byways of ancient literature, and which he fastened, as it were, to the beams over his head, just where the peasants to-day hang their dry sausages, their bacon, and strings of garlic. Many persons copy sentences out of their favourite books, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... there is nothing to show. Many of these would be found if the monks' cemetery were excavated, as after the twentieth Abbot, Warin (1183-1195), had issued his new orders regulating burial, all the monks were buried in coffins of stone. Roger the Hermit was a monk of St. Albans, a deacon; but though as monk he rendered obedience to the Abbot, he did not live within the precincts, for on one occasion as he was returning from Jerusalem three holy angels ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... steep, stony path. At the bottom the king found a narrow grassy ledge by the brink of the stream, across which the light from a rude lantern in the mouth of a cave shed a broad beam of uncertain light. At the edge of the stream sat an old hermit with a long white beard, who neither spoke nor moved as the king approached, but sat throwing into the stream dry leaves which lay scattered ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... worth the having for a mind, like an hermit sequestered from all things else, to spend an eternity in self-converse and the enjoyment of such a diminutive superficial nothing as itself is.... We read in the Gospel of such a question of our Saviour's, What went ye out into the wilderness to see? We may invert it, What do you return ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... not of the family connection was my quondam correspondent in America, Arthur Helps. Somehow or other I had formed the impression from his writings that he was a venerable sage of very advanced years, who contemplated life as an aged hermit, from the door of his cell. Conceive my surprise to find a genial young gentleman of about twenty-five, who looked as if he might enjoy a joke as well as ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... man," said Morton, "the revenues of the Halidome will bring more men, spears, and horses, into the field in one day, than his preaching in a whole lifetime. These are not the days of Peter the Hermit, when monks could march armies from England to Jerusalem; but gold and good deeds will still do as much or more than ever. Had Julian Avenel had but a score or two more men this morning, Sir John Foster had not missed a worse welcome. I say, confiscating the monk's ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... of this sentence shows itself constantly in Emerson's poems. He finds his inspiration in the objects about him, the forest in which he walks; the sheet of water which the hermit of a couple of seasons made famous; the lazy Musketaquid; the titmouse that mocked his weakness in the bitter cold winter's day; the mountain that rose in the horizon; the lofty pines; the lowly flowers. All talked ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... scoured and swept Through coppice, clump, and dell, Within that holy circle slept Calm as in hermit's cell. ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... such a life as the Comte de Serizy, whom you all know, I think; but even more quietly, for his house was in the Marais, Rue Payenne, and he hardly ever entertained. His private life escaped public comment by its hermit-like simplicity and ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... was an old man, clad in a robe of coarse brown serge, with a cowl drawn partly over his head, a rope girdle like that used by a cordelier, sandal shoon, and a venerable white beard descending to his waist. The features of the hermit, for such he seemed, were majestic and benevolent. Seated on a bank overgrown with wild thyme, beneath the shade of a broad-armed elm, he appeared so intently engaged in the perusal of a large open volume laid on his knee, that he did not ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... upon limpets, hermit-crabs, and rain-water. He was surrounded by a screaming garrison of gulls, cormorants, and sea-mews. The deep boom of the waves among the caves and reefs was never out of his ears. By day he was roasted in the terrific heat which beat with pitiless ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Hermit, one day mong the rest as hee was busilie prouiding meate, VVhich was with Natures cunning almost drest, dri'd with the Sunne new readie to be eate, Inrag'd vpon a suddaine throwes away His hard-got foode; and thus began ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... blessed Idyl—(the more so, as on such occasions, I am generally arrayed in a morning gown, though I am sorry to say, not a calamanco one, with great flowers;) this melancholy pleasure was already grown here in Halle to a sweet, pedantic habit. Since I began my hermit's life here, I have been printing; and so long as I remain here, I shall keep on printing. In all probability, I shall die with a proof-sheet ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... from the top of the village hill will pass pretty mansions set apart from their neighbors in leafy and flowery solitudes wherein the most unsocial hermit might find elbow-room enough; he will see little cottages which stand nearer to the roadside, as if they shunned isolation and wished to share in the life that often fills the highway in front of them. Farther down the houses become more companionable; they ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... be on our way"; and then their thoughts dwelt on lighter subjects as they ascended another lofty mountain terrace, and paused again to scan the wider prospect that made the sense of daily life in the valleys below as remote as the world seems to the hermit in his devotional seclusion. Then they began to descend the sloping plateau which inclined toward the brow of the hill overlooking the region of ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... to death, and an agony even to a bloody sweat in his body, and expostulations with God, and exclamations upon the cross. He was a devout man who said upon his death-bed, or death-turf (for he was a hermit), Septuaginta annos Domino servivisti, et mori times? Hast thou served a good master threescore and ten years, and now art thou loth to go into his presence? Yet Hilarion was loth. Barlaam was a devout man (a hermit too) that said that day he died, Cogita te hodie ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... reprinted are from some odd leaves of a first draft. The play is of course not unlike Salome, though it was written in English. It expanded Wilde's favourite theory that when you convert some one to an idea, you lose your faith in it; the same motive runs through Mr. W. H. Honorius the hermit, so far as I recollect the story, falls in love with the courtesan who has come to tempt him, and he reveals to her the secret of the Love of God. She immediately becomes a Christian, and is murdered by robbers; Honorius the hermit goes back to Alexandria to pursue a life ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... mood, Lead you rightly to my altar, Where the wisest Muses falter, And worship that world-warming spark Which dazzles me in midnight dark, Equalizing small and large, While the soul it doth surcharge, Till the poor is wealthy grown, And the hermit never alone,— The traveller and the road seem one With the errand to be done,— That were a man's and lover's part, That were Freedom's ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... July, Hums with a louder concert. When the wind Sweeps the broad forest in its summer prime, As when some master-hand exulting sweeps The keys of some great organ, ye give forth The music of the woodland depths, a hymn Of gladness and of thanks. The hermit-thrush Pipes his sweet note to make your arches ring; The faithful robin, from the wayside elm, Carols all day to cheer his sitting mate; And when the autumn comes, the kings of earth, In all their majesty, are not arrayed As ye are, clothing the broad mountain-side And spotting ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... to tell you," continued Mr. Vance, turning to Diggory, "that our next-door neighbour is called 'The Hermit.' He's a queer old fellow, who lives by himself, and never makes friends or speaks to any one. He's supposed to be very clever, and I've heard it said that he's got a very valuable collection of coins, ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... town, because, let his own genius be what it may, it will repel quite as much of agreeable and valuable talent as it draws, and, in a city, the total attraction of all the citizens is sure to conquer, first or last, every repulsion, and drag the most improbable hermit within its walls some day in the year. In town he can find the swimming-school, the gymnasium, the dancing-master, the shooting-gallery, opera, theatre, and panorama,—the chemist's shop, the museum of natural history, the gallery of fine arts, the national orators in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... night. That one thing was that while the face listened reposefully the legs were industriously dancing like the legs of a marionette. The neat flowers and the sunny glitter of the garden lent an indescribable sharpness and incredibility to the prodigy—the prodigy of the head of a hermit and the legs of a harlequin. For miracles should always happen in broad daylight. The night makes ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... paintings in the Metropolitan Museum is a brilliant and altogether remarkable little picture by John Sargent, entitled "The Hermit" (Pl. 21). Mr. Sargent is a portrait-painter by vocation, and the public knows him best as a penetrating and sometimes cruel reader of human character. He is a mural painter by avocation and capable, on ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... flesh, the western coasts, And the ocean way, and, far beyond, that land The Future's heritage, and prophesied Of Brendan who ere long in wicker boat Should over-ride the mountains of the deep, Shielded by God, and tread—no fable then - Fabled Hesperia. Last of all he saw More near, thy hermit home, Senanus;—'Hail, Isle of blue ocean and the river's mouth! The People's Lamp, their Counsel's Head, is thine!" That hour shone out through cloud the westering sun And paved the wave with fire: that hour not less Strong in his God, westward his face he set, Westward and north, and spread ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... differed from that of Fra Giovanni da Vicenza in Verona. Yet the commencement of his political authority was very nearly the same. The son of a poor boxmaker of Pavia, he early took the habit of the Augustines, and acquired a reputation for sanctity by leading the austere life of a hermit. It happened in the year 1356 that he was commissioned by the superiors of his order to preach the Lenten sermons to the people of Pavia. 'Then,' to quote Matteo Villani, 'it pleased God that this monk should make his sermons so agreeable to every species of people, that the fame of them and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... me, Sorrowing with these I therefore go." I thus: "From Campaldino's field what force or chance Drew thee, that ne'er thy sepulture was known?" "Oh!" answer'd he, "at Casentino's foot A stream there courseth, nam'd Archiano, sprung In Apennine above the Hermit's seat. E'en where its name is cancel'd, there came I, Pierc'd in the heart, fleeing away on foot, And bloodying the plain. Here sight and speech Fail'd me, and finishing with Mary's name I fell, and tenantless my flesh remain'd. I will report the truth; which thou again0 Tell ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... imaginative magnificence, the godless ascetic passion of misanthropy, the martyrdom of an atheistic Stylites. Timon is doubtless a man of far nobler type than any monomaniac of the tribe of Macarius: but his immeasurable superiority in spiritual rank to the hermit fathers of the desert serves merely to make him a thought madder and a grain more miserable than the whole Thebaid of Christomaniacs rolled into one. Foolish and fruitless as it has ever been to hunt through Shakespeare's ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the affair the next day. He steadfastly refused any longer to share the same room with the sailmaker; and after a stubborn resistance the weaver was obliged to give in and assign Heller another room. So the manufacturer once more became a hermit; and glad as he was to be rid of the sailmaker's company, it preyed on his spirits to such an extent that he realized fully for the first time into what a hopeless cul de sac fate had thrust him ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... this light the Persian, in distinction from the Hindoo, appears to be considerate and reasonable. In the second command is implied warlike practice, but not that of the nomadic tribes. The Persian fights on horseback, and thus appears in distinction from the Indian hermit seclusion and the quietism of the Lamas as ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... they never feared the forest, nor all the boars and wolves that were in it. But being weary, they wished for some place of shelter, and took a green path through the trees, thinking it might lead to the dwelling of some hermit or forester. ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... 'on the altar of a little church, and is guarded by a troop of nuns. They never sleep, night or day, but every now and then a hermit comes to visit them, and from him they learn certain things it is needful for them to know. When this happens, only one of the nuns remains on guard at a time, and if we are lucky enough to hit upon this moment, we may get hold of the vase at once; if ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... Italy—the cherished dream of the boy-artist. Before departing, I wished to take leave of my father, whom I had not seen for twelve years. I had heard divers reports of the extreme austerity of his life, and expected to see the withered figure of a hermit, worn-out, exhausted, macerated with fast and vigil. My astonishment was great when I beheld my father. No trace of exhaustion was on his countenance, which beamed with a joy whose source was not of this world. A beard as white as snow, and long thin ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... weeping. "I never pitied any one so much in my whole life! To go up that long, long lane; to come upon that dreary house hidden away in the trees; to feel the loneliness and the silence; and then to know that she is living there like a hermit-thrush in a forest, without a woman to care for her, it ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Ancient English Style To Mr Pope Health: an Eclogue The Flies: an Eclogue An Elegy to an Old Beauty The Book-Worm An Allegory on Man An Imitation of some French Verses A Night-Piece on Death A Hymn to Contentment The Hermit ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... The hermit boys had brought the cattle home, and sat round the fire to listen to the master, Guatama, when a strange boy came, and greeted him with fruits and flowers, and, bowing low at his feet, spoke in a bird-like voice—"Lord, I have ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore
... dear," de Virelle blurted out aside, for even his dull senses saw I was not pleased, "our good Moliere must have had this hermit captain in his mind when he made Alceste to rail so at the hypocrisies of the world, and urge the telling of truth and looking ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... intended, as its name implies, to fulfil that function. From Manchuria the political influence and the spontaneous infiltration would naturally extend to Korea, and on the deeply indented coast of the Hermit Kingdom new ports and arsenals, far more spacious and strategically more important than ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... There are hermit souls that live withdrawn In the peace of their self-content; There are souls, like stars, that dwell apart In a fellowless firmament; There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths Where highways never ran— But ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... look might have been on the face of the great Florentine, when he beheld the multitude gaze half in rapture, half in awe, on his work in the Sistine Chapel; then, folding his coarse garments round him, walked through the streets of Rome to his hermit dwelling, and sat himself down under the shadow of his ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... without a glance on either side of him, Naudheim left the room, amidst a silence which was almost an instinctive thing—the realization, perhaps, of the strange nature of this man, who from a stern sense of duty had left his hermit's life for a few days, to speak ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... widest sense, the author of the Bible in Spain had many points in common. As it was, the later years of Borrow's life were spent somewhat moodily, and with some of the mystery of Swift's or of Rousseau's, at Oulton, near Lowestoft, whence, at Christmas 1874, he sent a message to the neighbouring hermit, Edward Fitzgerald at Woodbridge, in the vain hope of eliciting a visit. {39a} His wife, who had been won with her widow's jointure and dower during the flush of his missionary successes in 1840, died at the end of January 1869, {39b} and on July 26th, 1881, after ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... be the ones to do the thinking," said Ned, as he stretched himself out at his ease, on the railing to the little porch. "With Lou married, and you three going, there's nothing else left for us to do. I'm going to turn hermit, ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... His dark eyes were full of a pensive calm. His body was inclining forward, supported by arms folded across his knees. An unlit pipe thrust in the corner of his mouth was the one touch that defeated the efforts of his flowing hair and dark beard to suggest a youthful hermit meditating in the doorway of ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum |
