"Saintliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... continued, "that prophecy alone is not sufficient proof of saintliness. You know there are such things (such cases have been met with) as prophetic visions which were the work of-well, perhaps not of malign spirits, we know too little of these matters to assert that—but of occult powers, of powers innate in ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... both ascetic saints. This tradition is very important, for it enables us to see something of the early character of Narayana. He was an ancient saint of legend, who was connected with a hero Nara, just as Krishna was associated with Arjuna; and the atmosphere of saintliness clings to him obstinately. Tradition alleges that he was the rishi, or inspired seer, who composed the Purusha-sukta of the Rig-veda (X. 90), and represents him by choice as lying in a yoga-nidra, or mystic sleep, upon the body of the giant ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... Macchiavelli, smiling, "a various scholar must have various opinions. And as for the Frate, whatever we may think of his saintliness, you judge his preaching too narrowly. The secret of oratory lies, not in saying new things, but in saying things with a certain power that moves the hearers—without which, as old Filelfo has said, your speaker deserves to be called, 'non oratorem, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... at his best. Giotto's thoughtfulness could not be better illustrated than in S. Croce. One sees him, as ever, thinking of everything: not a very remarkable attribute of the fresco painter since then, but very remarkable then, when any kind of facile saintliness sufficed. Signor Bianchi, who found these paintings under the whitewash in 1853, and restored them, overdid his part, there is no doubt; but as I have said, their interest is unharmed, and it is that which one so delights in. Look, for instance, at the attitude of Drusiana, suddenly twitched ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... further: I think there are distinct traces of humour in the sayings and the conduct of our Lord;" and he proceeded to quote examples. Everyone is aware how Dr. Bonar himself knew how to combine with the profoundest reverence and saintliness a strain of delightful mirth; and the absence of this is the great defect ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... of the age was beginning to set against monasticism. It was the period when perhaps there was more of license and less of saintliness than at any other, and when the long continuance of the Great Schism had so injured Church discipline that the clergy and ecclesiastics were in the worst state of all, especially the monastic orders, who owned no superior but the Pope, and between the two rivals could avoid ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... peoples. We in England would feel even deeper sadness than weighs upon us now if we could suppose that such principles had been embraced by the nation whose thinkers have done so much for human progress and who have produced so many shining examples of Christian saintliness; but when those principles have been ostentatiously proclaimed, when a peaceful neutral country which the other belligerent had solemnly and repeatedly undertaken to respect has been invaded and treated ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... forgiven him," I snapped out. "He may have reason, and justice, and saintliness on his side, yet I never can ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... and enthusiastic imitation of heroes and saints, and whether or not he will ever come to such imitation will depend upon the ability of his exceptional fellow-countrymen to offer him acceptable examples of heroism and saintliness. ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... enough for breakfast; the Princess Palatine died in a convent, and the Princess Conde in a prison; the fair Sevigne chose the better part, and the fairer Montespan the worse; the lovely La Valliere walked through sin to saintliness, and poor Marie de Mancini through saintliness to sin; Voiture and Benserade and Corneille passed away, and Racine and Moliere reigned in their stead; and Mademoiselle, who had won the first campaigns of her life and lost all the rest, died a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... all in silent patience,—was it not heroic? Had she been more plastic than she was, the effort would not have been so great. Being what she was, it was grand; and made as it was for penitence, it had in it the essential spirit of saintliness. For saintliness comes in small things as well as great, and George Herbert's swept room is a true image. There was saintliness in the docility with which she rose at six and went to bed at nine; saintliness in the quiet asceticism with which she ate porridge ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... Moon—had been turned for him to Blood! But, as Pater suggests, there is "Philosophy" in all this, and more Philosophy than many suppose. It is unfortunate that the unworldly Coleridge and the worldly Thackeray should have both pitched upon Lamb's "saintliness" to make copy of. Nothing infuriated him more than such a tone towards himself. And he was right to be infuriated. His "unselfishness," his "sweetness," of which these good men make so much, were ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... have not merely made assertions, but have earnestly laboured to prove the conclusions at which I reluctantly arrived. Are George Sand's pretentions to self-sacrificing saintliness, and to purely maternal feelings for Musset, Chopin, and others to be accepted in spite of the fairy-tale nature of her "Histoire," and the misrepresentations of her "Lettres d'un Voyageur" and her novels "Elle et lui" and ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... men had been joined by many of the peasants and were approaching the castle. They were Jonas, Mathison, and Zacharia, seditionists; but they were going through the country in the garb of holy men, stirring up the people under cover of saintliness. ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... Mr. Gregory and nothing could have exceeded the saintliness of her expression. Insulted, she was enjoying to the full ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... said or did was wholly free from that quality of other-worldliness which was beautiful in Estelle, but which would not have endured repetition in the sister or the cousin. There Harry and I, also, once more agreed. Cecile never allowed herself to reflect a spirit of saintliness, or even of sacrifice, but only of ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... which Christian faith and practice can be reared." In the third place he was greatly affected, not merely by the paramount place of sanctity in the Roman theology and the professed Roman system, but by the standard of saintliness which he found there, involving complete and heroic self-sacrifice for great religious ends, complete abandonment of the world, painful and continuous self-discipline, purified and exalted religious affections, beside which English piety and goodness at its ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... wonderful, that from such a man should come one side of the perfection of that idealism which Giotto had begun. Fra Angelico's angels, saints, Saviour, and Virgin are more divinely calm, pure, sweet, endowed with a more exulting saintliness, a more immortal youth and joy, and a more utter self-abnegation and sympathetic tenderness than are to be found in the saints and the angels, the Saviour and the Virgin of other painters. Neither is it surprising that Fra Angelico's defects, besides that of ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... admonition, and if he did it was only to some youth younger than himself. But there was something in the direct grave look of his eyes, and in the pure steadfastness of his expression, which gave to his aspect a touch of saintliness quickly felt by those about him. For in those days men, in spite of many and great faults, were not ashamed of their religion. Much superstition might be mingled with their beliefs, corruption and impurity were creeping within the fold of the Church, darkness and ignorance prevailed ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the joyful hope of a journey to Italy—the fairest dream of a twenty-year-old artist. It only remained for me to take leave of my father, from whom I had been separated for twelve years. I confess that even his image had long faded from my memory. I had heard somewhat of his grim saintliness, and rather expected to meet a hermit of rough exterior, a stranger to everything in the world, except his cell and his prayers, worn out, tried up, by eternal fasting and penance. But how great was my surprise when a handsome old man stood ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... though he was much more than that. Be it far from me to disparage the ordinary type of Roman ecclesiastic, who is bred in a seminary, and perhaps spends his lifetime in a religious community. That peculiar training produces, often enough, a character of saintliness and unworldly grace on which one can only "look," to use a phrase of Mr. Gladstone's, "as men look up at the stars." But it was a very different process that had made Cardinal Manning what he was. He had touched life at many points. A wealthy home, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... how long the fiery Mahomedan would keep his sword sheathed, did he not feel that his own personality and that of his brother Mahomed Ali would count for very little without the reflected halo with which they were at least temporarily invested by the saintliness of Mr. Gandhi's own simple and austere life of self-renunciation, so different in every way from their own. For it is to his personality rather than to his teachings that Mr. Gandhi owes his immense influence with the people. It is a very different influence from that of Mr. Tilak, to whom he ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... she went on, "happened thirty years ago. I have suffered since. I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft, amiable natures they would have refined to saintliness; of strong, evil spirits they would have made demons; as for me, I have only been a woe-struck ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... hardly to your credit," he sneered. "Or, I should say, to your education. Saintliness does not set well upon you, madam. Your clothes are ill-fitting already. Of ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... printing from amateur films. For who is so indifferent as not to wish to be snapped a few times with the doves forming a heavenly halo above one's head, one's body in a sentimental pose, and one's eyes looking straight into the camera? Well, well; this is as near saintliness as most of us will ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... spirit of his age, and the psychological problems suggested by his inner history. He belonged to that class of eminent ecclesiastics — and it is by no means a small class — who have been distinguished less for saintliness and learning than for practical ability. Had he lived in the Middle Ages he would certainly have been neither a Francis nor an Aquinas, but he might have been an Innocent. As it was, born in the England of the nineteenth century, growing up in the very seed-time ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... saintly character in men. Only that preacher is truly successful who, in the end, is able humbly to claim to have been in this sense a "wise master-builder;" who can point to the results of his labours in the beauty and strength of the churches in which he has toiled, in the saintliness of the men and women to whom he has spoken ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... Rani, [5] was still young and had no pretensions to saintliness. Rather, her talk and jest and laugh inclined to be forward. The young maids with whom she surrounded herself were also impudent to a degree. But there was none to gainsay her—for was not this the custom of the house? It seemed to me that my good fortune ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... from its amorous exploits as from its dashing uniform. But the passion of this officer was a true love, and many young hearts will think it noble. He loved this woman because she was virtuous; he loved her virtue, her modest grace, her imposing saintliness, as the dearest treasures of his hidden passion. This woman was indeed worthy to inspire one of those platonic loves which are found, like flowers amid bloody ruins, in the history of the middle-ages; worthy ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... them last winter out in the Carriso cow country; a 'Protestant' priest, he called himself, of your persuasion. He was the most hopeless bigot I've ever known, and by long odds the nearest masculine approach to true, gritty saintliness. There was nothing he wouldn't do, no hardship he wouldn't cheerfully undergo, to brother a man who was down, and the wickedest devil in all that God-forsaken country swore by him. Yet he would argue with me by the hour, splitting hairs over Apostolic Succession, ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... become the Earl of Beaconsfield, and had made his bellicose and Judaical speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet. The fleet had been ordered to Besika Bay, and the metropolitan Press was busy backing Turkish saintliness for all it was worth. The Black Sea ports were crowded with steamers, and a great rush was made to get them loaded before hostilities broke out. In a few days there were but two vessels left in —— Harbour. The last cart-loads of grain in bags were ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... help me, lady innkeeper, For Satan even now his hand Doth on me lay, And so grievously I err In my despair That I know not if I go or stand Or backward stray. 72 Succour thou my helplessness And strengthen me with holy fare, For I perish, Of thy noble saintliness Liberal to bless, For knowing my deserts I dare No hope to cherish. 73 I acknowledge all my sin And before thee meekly thus Forgiveness crave. O Lady, let me now but win Into thine inn, Since One suffered even for us, That He might save. 74 Bid me welcome, Mother holy, ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... conception which underlay Kantian as well as Christian ethics. He asserted that the true motive of morality is not the salvation of the individual man but the Progress of humanity. In fact, with Fichte Progress is the principle of ethics. That the Christian ideal of ascetic saintliness detached from society has no moral value is a plain corollary from the idea of earthly Progress. [Footnote: X. Leon, La Philosophie de Fichte ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... regard all human love as a weakness, when not actually sinful as in sex-love, it is evident that sexual love, in its emotional, or psychic aspect, was at the root of the "ecstacies" which are so ardently described in ecclesiastical history as "evidences of saintliness." ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... saintliness of both boys during the afternoon's ride took the sting out of Mrs. Burton's defeat. They gabbled to each other about flowers and leaves and birds, and they assumed ownership of the few Summer clouds that were visible, and made sundry exchanges of them with each. When the dog Jerry, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... stressful, stormy hours of my most unhappy youth did I not wish that she had preferred the virginal life of the cloister, and thus spared me the heavy burden of an existence which her unholy and mistaken saintliness went so ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... this must be the face, the eyes, which had appealed to all the romance in Vanno. Even the man whom conviction had dedicated body and soul to the religion of self-sacrifice had enough humanity mingling with his saintliness to feel the peculiar appeal of this gentle girl. She was not only a woman, she was Woman. Unconsciously she called, not to men, but to man, to all that was strong, to all that was chivalrous and ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... considerately soothed by {142} the pronouncement that "the mass of a Christian congregation are about as innocent as men and women can well be in a world where natural temptations are so rife, and so many social adjustments discountenance heroic saintliness" [3]—the latter a truly admirable feat of circumlocution. And sometimes, as we have seen, sin and evil are themselves in essence negated—generally in virtue of some pseudo-philosophic or pseudo-scientific ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... because he was so old, the citizens were very sorrowful. For not only did they miss the soft pat-pat of his steps passing through the city, but they grieved for the sorrow of Saint Francis in losing a kindly friend,—Saint Francis of whose saintliness and power the humble beast had been ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... moral power and earnestness in a high degree, warmth of sympathy and sensitiveness to all beauty, but she had no saintliness. Profound as was her reverence for moral purity, and lofty as was her moral purpose, she was not a saint, and holiness was not a characteristic of her nature. This clear and high sense of moral truth everywhere appears in her life and thought. "For the lessons most imperatively needed by the ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... "Bratzlavers" were the Cinderella among the Hasidim, lacking the powerful patronage of a living Tzaddik. Their heavenly patron, Rabbi Nahman, could not hold his own against his living rivals, the earthly Tzaddiks—all too earthly perhaps, in spite of their saintliness. ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... possible and desirable. It is proved also that a so-called great man meant a great danger for mankind; a saintly man never could be dangerous. We do not need great men at all, we need good and saintly men. We ought not to seek after greatness, but after goodness and saintliness. Greatness is no real virtue, but goodness and saintliness are virtues. Greatness is only an illusion, but goodness and saintliness are realities. Christianity came to impress these realities on the human conscience ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... ironically; perhaps, amidst the tatters of his honour, some rag still covered a spot that could feel shame, and the monstrous deed, in doing which he had entrapped the nun to help him unawares, seemed foul beside the purity of her intention and the saintliness of ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... most renowned. Although flourishing in a century which produced personages like Frederick, Emperor of Germany, and our first great Edward, who far excelled him in genius and prowess—as wise rulers in peace and mighty chiefs in war—his saintliness, his patience in affliction, his respect for justice and the rights of his neighbours, entitle him to a high place among the men of the age which could boast of so many royal heroes. In order to comprehend the crusade, of which he was leader, it is necessary to ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... question of making Charles a deputy, the marquis naturally thought of Arcis, a place where his family had left so many memories. The organist also recollected his aunt's desire; he knew how influential she was in that region because of her saintliness, and having in his nature a touch of that intrigue which likes to undertake things difficult and arduous, he went to see her, with the approval of the Marquis de Sallenauve, and let her know that one of the most skilful sculptors in Paris ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... words, "It is good to be here." Peter knew when he was in good company. He was not very wise himself, but he had sense enough to recognise wisdom in others. He was not himself a finished saint, but he had a hearty appreciation of those who had attained saintliness. He had reverence, power to recognise, and ungrudgingly to worship, what was good. He had an honest delight in seeing his Master honoured, a delight which, perhaps, some of us envy. It was not a forced expression, it was not a feigned delight. He was a man who always felt that something ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... diminutive roadside station. Mr. Spillikins had alighted, and there was Miss Philippa Furlong sitting behind the chauffeur in the Newberrys' motor. She was looking as beautiful as only the younger sister of a High Church episcopalian rector can look, dressed in white, the colour of saintliness, on a ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... he could have done or suffered anything. As for the blood not running from the wounds, I conjecture that the places had become insensitive by frequent stabbing in the same spot. And this is the miracle that testifies to the saintliness of the Dervish and to the truth of his doctrines! I suspect that much of "the wisdom of the East" is of this character: ancient discoveries of the shady side of human psychology, the grotesque aberrations, trances, hypnotic impressionability, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... showing more corruption than it has ever done before or since in any other place, naturally threw him into sympathy with the Reformed. The reaction that half a century later filled the Gallican Church with saintliness had not set in; her ecclesiastics were the tools of a wicked and bloodthirsty court, who hated virtue as much as schism in the men whom they persecuted. The Huguenots were for the most part men whose ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... churches of the land; look at the multiplication of schools; the greater exactness of ritual observance; the higher standard of clerical life, service, and devotion; the more frequent celebrations; the cathedrals open; the loving sisterhoods labouring, under episcopal sanction, with the meek, active saintliness of the Church's purest time; look—above all, perhaps—at the raised tone of devotion and doctrine amongst us, and see in all these that the movement did not die, but rather flourished with a new vigour when the party of the movement was so greatly broken up. It ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... hymns, all those inspiring addresses. Likewise, of course, entirely forget all the loving dealings of God with yourself and with others—a Hindu has no such memories to help her. Then go and live in a devil's den and develop saintliness. The truth is, even you would find it difficult; but this Hindu girl's case is worse than that, a million times worse. Think of the life, and then, if you can, tell her she must be quite satisfied with it, that it is the will of God. You could not say that it is His will! It is the will of the Terrible, ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... son of his mother, had by this time learned all that Mr Lorimore, the schoolmaster, could teach; and as it was evidenced to every body, by his mild manners and saintliness of demeanour, that he was a chosen vessel, his mother longed to fulfil his own wish, which was doubtless the natural working of the act of grace that had been shed upon him; but she had not the wherewithal to ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... quietness, the well-bred but simple air of it, with a tang of scholarly mustiness, the whole of a fragrance never entirely lost to those who have known it intimately. Something of the spirit of George Herbert, that homely gentleman of unassuming saintliness, the epitome of everything that was best and most characteristic in the Anglican Church, has descended on country parsonages ever since and is only now beginning to wear thin. And it was the Church of Herbert, of ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... he merited. But the young poet could not resist the temptation of throwing a brighter light on the redeeming points in the character of a robber and murderer by pointedly placing him in contrast with the even darker shades of hypocritical respectability and saintliness in the picture of his brother Franz. The language in which Schiller paints his characters is powerful, but it is often wild and even coarse. The Duke did not approve of his former protege; the very title-page ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... brought up by Jesuits, who often give them some good lessons on the subject, and they are delighted to confess to a third party; and these confessions with a seasoning of tears gives them in their own eyes quite a halo of saintliness." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... you," she said, as they were talking about it one afternoon after Minnie had gone home, "How far her saintliness will carry her. You all say that she never gets provoked except with me. Well, I promise you, I'll provoke her; I know her, and exactly how long any impression lasts with her. I suppose she's been attending some revival meeting and got this wonderful sweetness there, but I'll scatter ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... result was, willy-nilly, that he was led away to a private sanitarium for mental disease, while in the newspapers appeared pathetic accounts of his mental breakdown and of the saintliness of his character. He was held a prisoner in the sanitarium. I called repeatedly, but was denied access to him; and I was terribly impressed by the tragedy of a sane, normal, saintly man being crushed by the brutal will of society. For the Bishop was sane, and pure, and noble. ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London |
