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Recluse   /rɪklˈus/   Listen
Recluse

noun
1.
One who lives in solitude.  Synonyms: hermit, solitary, solitudinarian, troglodyte.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Recluse" Quotes from Famous Books



... as we have described her, with all the simplicity and curiosity of a recluse, attached herself to the opportunities of increasing her store of literature which Edward's visit afforded her. He sent for some of his books from his quarters, and they opened to her sources of delight of which she ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... population, planing and levelling society down in their carpentry of human nature. They would yoke and harness the loftier spirits to one common and vulgar destination. Man is considered only as he wheels on the wharf, or as he spins in the factory; but man, as a recluse being of meditation, or impelled to action by more generous passions, has been struck out of the system of our political economists. It is, however, only among their "unproductive labourers" that we shall find those men of leisure, whose habitual pursuits ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... seldom hear till June, and that is the cuckoo. Sometimes the last days of May bring him, but oftener it is June before I hear his note. The cuckoo is the true recluse among our birds. I doubt if there is any joy in his soul. "Rain-crow," he is called in some parts of the country. His call is supposed to bode rain. Why do other birds, the robin for instance, often make war upon ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs

... Biographical Notice The Two Sisters The Siwash Rock The Recluse The Lost Salmon Run The Deep Waters The Sea-Serpent The Lost Island Point Grey The Tulameen Trail The Grey Archway Deadman's Island A Squamish Legend of Napoleon The Lure in Stanley Park Deer ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... said the venerable recluse, giving me a farewell pat on the shoulder, "come back soon to your spiritual father who loves you, and amiably favor him with another tiny, tiny pinch of ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... still a recluse, you see, but I am preparing to launch for the winter in a few days. Dick was detained in town by a bad fever:—you may suppose I was kept in ignorance of his situation, or I should not have remained so quietly here. He came last week, and the fatigue of the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... that which I proclaim my readiness, though not my willingness, to do, I can only say, that you are the first who has doubted the faith of Hugo de Lacy."—And while the proud Baron thus addressed a female and a recluse, he could not prevent his eye from sparkling, and ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... friend from the West," said Eden easily. "I won't introduce you, because he doesn't like people. He's a recluse. Good-bye. I can't be sure about Tuesday. I'll go with you if I have time after my lesson." She nodded, left him, and went over to the seat littered with newspapers. The young man went up ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... to me how absolutely absorbed I had become in the Martian investigation. Ordinarily a sociable person, in the past week I had become a recluse. College friends that I had seen almost daily since my return to Paris, I now completely neglected, even shunned, lest they should call at my rooms some evening when I was in wave contact with Mars. It also occurred to me that, as surely ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood

... music-stand contained no music of later date than the compositions of Haydn and Mozart. Whatever I examined besides, told me, with the same consistency, the same strange tale. The owner of these possessions lived in the by-gone time; lived among old recollections and old associations—a voluntary recluse from all that was connected with the passing day. In Miss Welwyn's house, the stir, the tumult, the "idle business" of the world evidently appealed in vain to sympathies which grew no longer ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... by the same cloud of dismay. I smothered in small halls situated over saloons and livery stables, travelling by freight-train at night in order to ride in triumph as "Orator of the Day" at some county fair, until at last I lost all sense of being the writer and recluse. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... at that hour and season) to be gone out to dinner, and nobody seemed to be giving the dinners they had gone to. On the doorsteps there were lounging footmen with bright parti-coloured plumage and white polls, like an extinct race of monstrous birds; and butlers, solitary men of recluse demeanour, each of whom appeared distrustful of all other butlers. The roll of carriages in the Park was done for the day; the street lamps were lighting; and wicked little grooms in the tightest fitting garments, with twists in their legs answering to the twists in their minds, hung about ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... oppression. Here, one man has been thrown into prison on the charge of high treason; when all they proved against him was the remark, that if the king had signed the Quebec bill, he had broken his coronation oath. There, another, a poor harmless recluse, as I have ever supposed him, is dragged from his hut in the mountains and imprisoned to await his trial for an alleged murder, committed long ago, and in another jurisdiction; when his only crime, with his prosecutors, probably, is his bold denunciations of their tyranny, unless, as some suspect, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... (worthy the name!), never reached the same power of expressing the rapturous rejoicing of celestial beings, but his conception of the angelic nature remains unapproached, unapproachable: it is only his, for it was the gentle, passionless, refined nature of the recluse which stamped itself there. Angelico's angels are unearthly, not so much in form as in sentiment; and superhuman, not in power but in purity. In other hands, any imitation of his soft ethereal grace would become ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... of George's uncle, who was a recluse living at Tunbridge. He was a scholar and a pedant, and concerned himself but little about his only child, whose fortune ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... Arthur Stanley—the aged and the young—the Jewish recluse and Christian warrior—knelt side by side on the cold earth, which concealed the remains of one to both so inexpressibly dear. The moonlit shrubs and spangled heaven alone beheld their mutual sorrow, and the pale moon waned, and the stars gleamed paler and paler in ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... 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, Pariah, castaway, pilgarlic[obs3]; wastrel, foundling, wilding[obs3]. V. be secluded , ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... (chiefly obtained, I believe, from books, which are his sole amusement, and with which he is amply furnished from the library at the Hall,) that I invited myself to come over and spend an evening with him. The old fox took the alarm at this. He told me that he was quite a recluse, and never received company; but that some evening, when I was quite alone, he would step in and take a cup of coffee with me—a luxury which he has never allowed himself for the last ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... said, "that I'm so busy this week. But we ought to meet at many places, unless you continue to play the recluse. Don't you ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... touch the hem of their retreating robes. The youth here by my side cannot be weary of the fragments from the life of Sappho. He will not believe they are not addressed to himself, or that he to whom they were addressed could be ungrateful. A recluse of high powers devotes himself to understand and explain the thought of Eloisa; he asserts her vast superiority in soul and genius to her master; he curses the fate that casts his lot in another age than hers. He could have understood her; he would have been to her a ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... as if she were Circe; and Alphonso of Castille fancied he could have given useful advice. But she does not go unprovided; she has hellebore at the bottom of the cup. Solitude would ripen a plentiful crop of despots. The recluse thinks of men as having his manner, or as not having his manner; and as having degrees of it, more and less. But when he comes into a public assembly he sees that men have very different manners from his own, and ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... that she was his great-niece. For Honorius Hatchard, in the early years of the nineteenth century, had enjoyed a modest celebrity. As the marble tablet in the interior of the library informed its infrequent visitors, he had possessed marked literary gifts, written a series of papers called "The Recluse of Eagle Range," enjoyed the acquaintance of Washington Irving and Fitz-Greene Halleck, and been cut off in his flower by a fever contracted in Italy. Such had been the sole link between North Dormer and literature, a link piously ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... with a bitter thrill of speech; "ah, what do I know of life? I am only a recluse, a dreamer, a visionary! You must learn of life from the men who have lived, Patricia. I haven't ever lived. I have always chosen the coward's part. I have chosen to shut myself off from the world, to posture in a village all my days, and to consider ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... suit of dark material, a sailor hat, tan gloves with big welts on the back and stout, low-heeled Oxfords. This was the young woman who had come five thousand miles to improve her health! This was the child of the Orient, and in the Orient, woman is a hothouse flower. This was the timid young recluse to whom the soft-spoken diplomats were to carry a few roses ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... Knowing her Spanish parentage, we can better understand why she was such an ardent Roman Catholic. Strange that one so loyal to the forms of her religion should have been the innocent cause of the English Reformation! The injured queen, divorced, remained in England, a religious recluse, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... that Milton might have known better than, with his puritanical connections, to have taken to wife a daughter of a cavalier house, to have brought her from a roystering home, frequented by the dissolute officers of the Oxford garrison, to the spare diet and philosophical retirement of a recluse student, and to have looked for sympathy and response for his speculations from an uneducated and frivolous girl. Love has blinded, and will continue to blind, the wisest men to calculations as easy and as certain ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... capture of the Hindu capital, Dvarasamudra; but the portion of the force to which the brothers belonged suffered a defeat, and they fled to the mountainous tract near Anegundi. Here they met the holy Madhava, who was living the life of a recluse, and by his aid they established the ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... Johnnie was, Maggie had replied that she had gone nutting by previous engagement with Mr. Alvord, and as the party returned in the glowing evening they met the oddly assorted friends with their baskets well filled. In the eyes of the recluse there was a gentler expression, proving that Johnnie's and Nature's ministry had not been wholly in vain. He glanced swiftly from Burt to Miss Hargrove, then at Amy, and a faint suggestion of a smile hovered about his mouth. He was about to leave them ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... serve him. As for solitary habits, the world is right in condemning a man who, out of pure affectation or eccentricity, shuts himself up alone, loses his friends, and sets society against him. Those, however, who act in this way naturally, because their profession obliges them to lead a recluse life, or because their character rebels against feigned politenesses and conventional usage, ought in common justice to be tolerated. What claim by right have you on him? Why should you force him to take part in those vain pastimes, which his love for a quiet life induces ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... and fly to the jungle, where they wander about for years as ascetics, wearing a single garment, subsisting on the most elementary food, and developing their spiritual consciousness. John remained a recluse until he reached the age of about thirty years, when he emerged from the wilderness to preach the "Coming of the Lord," in obedience to the movings of the Spirit. Let us see where he was, and what he did, during the fifteen years of his ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... good-bye. But it is needless to multiply examples; the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When we came to Apemama, of so many white men who have scrambled for a place in that rich market, one remained—a silent, sober, solitary, niggardly recluse, of whom the king remarks, "I think he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Heaven is to be obtained by implicit obedience under most trying circumstances, and the more cruel the despotism they unmurmuringly submit to, the greater will be the accumulation of good works. But cursed to the lowest depths of Purgatory is that recluse who dares to murmur even in his inmost thoughts; and if he so far forgets his duty as to murmur aloud, then all the powers of the Church are ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... almost my judge," she said, with a desperate air. "I must speak now, in virtue of the right that all calumniated beings have to show their innocence. I have been, I am still (if a poor recluse forced by the world to renounce the world is still remembered) accused of such light conduct, and so many evil things, that it may be allowed me to find in one strong heart a haven from which I cannot be driven. Hitherto I have always considered self-justification ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac

... recluse, Hawthorne was an anchorite. He brought up his children in such purity and simplicity as is scarcely credible,—not altogether a wise plan. It was said that he did not even take a daily paper. In the following year Martin F. Conway, the first United States representative ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... their forelegs ran back after the holy man and called out his name. He heard my loud shouts and awaited me forthright; and, as soon as I approached him I said, "When I had quitted thee a thought came into my mind; to wit, that thou art a recluse who keepest thyself aloof from earthly things, pure in heart and busied only with orison and devotion Now care of all these camels will cause thee only toil and moil and trouble and waste of precious time: 'twere better then to give them back and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... country we are travelling in: "Poor Erasmus truckled all his life for a hat. If he could only have been made a cardinal! You see the longing for it in his very features, and can't help regarding him with mingled respect and pity." Of Thomas a Kempis, the recluse of Deventer: "A fine fellow, but hazy, and weak betimes. He and his school tend (as some one has well said) to make humility and humiliation change places." Finally, of the Bible: "The three best translations of the Bible, in my opinion, are, in order of merit, the English, the ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... gentleman, and recluse readily welcomed two such promising guests for the winter. A charming woman of twenty-six, with a mind as well as emotions, and a man not much older, who was both a philosopher and an artist, promised no end of diversion for ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... monarchy. The day following the authorities freed him on the ground that he was demoralizing the prisoners. Time has dealt lightly with him, and no one can read of his latter days—his brilliancy all eclipsed—a recluse except for his love and companionship for children—unmoved. In his day he was a power and in no small degree did he contribute to the living monument of great men—The Union ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey

... The latter, however, was boarded up—nobody could remember a time when it was not. And none knew why it was so closed; certainly not because of the occupant's dislike of light and air, for on those rare occasions when a hunter had passed that lonely spot the recluse had commonly been seen sunning himself on his doorstep if heaven had provided sunshine for his need. I fancy there are few persons living to-day who ever knew the secret of that window, but I am one, as ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... he found himself again opposed by his London friends. Unable to secure a new Alice in Wonderland for his child readers, he determined to give them Kate Greenaway. But here he had selected another recluse. Everybody discouraged him. The artist never saw visitors, he was told, and she particularly shunned editors and publishers. Her own publishers confessed that Miss Greenaway was inaccessible to them. "We conduct all our business with her by correspondence. I have never seen ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... delicately organized as Etienne marriage must come as a slow and gentle inspiration, communicating new powers to his being and vivifying it with the fires of love. As he had said to the father, to impose a wife on Etienne would be to kill him. Above all it was important that the young recluse should not be alarmed at the thought of marriage, of which he knew nothing, or be made aware of the object of his father's wishes. This unknown poet conceived as yet only the beautiful and noble passion of Petrarch for Laura, of Dante for Beatrice. Like ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac

... of an individual soul's being, which no association with others can do away; but there is no reason why we should add to that burden of personality which the Bishop of Oxford, in one of his most striking sermons, has shown to be truly 'an awful gift.' And say, youthful recluse (I don't mean you, middle-aged bachelor, I mean really young men of five or six and twenty), have you not sometimes, sitting by the fireside in the evening, looked at the opposite easy chair in the ruddy glow, and imagined that easy chair occupied by a gentle companion—one who would bring ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... once, into the sitting-room, where I found him with his wife, who sat sewing beside him. The old man rose and received me graciously. By his appearance I was somewhat startled. Instead of a grave recluse in scholastic black, whom I expected to see, I found an affable and lovable old man dressed in the roughest coat of blue with metal buttons, and checked trousers, more like a New York farmer than an English poet. ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... in the smoking-room at a late hour—the centre of a group of eminent men entranced by the brilliancy of my conversation. And now—! I was nothing but a small, dull, soup-stained, sticking-plastered, nerve-racked recluse. Nerves, yes. I assured myself that I had not seen—what I had seemed to see. All very odd, of course, and very unpleasant, but easily explained. Nerves. Excitement of coming to Keeb too much for me. ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm

... had been somewhat of a mystery ever since he had taken the house, three years before. Yet, being apparently comfortably off, subscribing to every charity, and a regular attendant at Middleton church, the simple country-folk had grown to tolerate him, even though he was somewhat of a recluse. Country-folk are very slow to accept the stranger ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux

... often look at things very differently from the manner in which the individuals, of whom the mass may be composed, would look at them when alone. In books, too, man must be studied, but more especially face to face, in constant, earnest observation. The preacher must get out and about. A recluse he cannot afford to be. Pale-faced piety cultivated in the cloister may be admirably adapted for Sunday exhibition, but is apt to prove rather ineffective when brought into active service in week-day tasks. Wisdom ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... the course of instruction in that institution was not in harmony with his tastes, he soon withdrew, applying himself afterwards to the study of the French and German languages (a ready fluency in both of which he finally acquired), and especially to the art dearer than all other studies. A recluse, owning and soliciting no guidance but that of his text-book, in the quiet of the woods, or, if that were inaccessible, the retirement of his chamber, he devoted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... long list. But nearly all these men were men of affairs, of action. Given a good literary style they could hardly have been other than interesting, they had so much to say that they gained from external sources. Even FitzGerald—the one recluse—had all the treasures of literature constantly passing into his study. Cowper had but eighteen books altogether during many of his years in Olney, and some of us who have lent our volumes in the past ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter

... are those of a recluse. When he comes home from the bustle of the city, it would be a great annoyance to have company around him: in fact, I do not care for it, and, I dare say, we shall get on merrily ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... was a recluse, he was by no means an ascetic. He was marked by deep gravity of countenance coupled with a kindly humorous disposition. No one knew where he came from, or why he had taken up his abode in such a lonely spot. Many of the ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne

... gone from Gramarye, and Anthony reigned in his stead, the duty, when it arose, fell to his lot. Never relishing the idea, he would not have believed that it could become so odious. Ere it had taken shape, it loomed vexatious. Looking it in the face, he found it repulsive. No recluse could have been more reluctant to leave his hermitage. Major Anthony Lyveden felt ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... when politics were non-existent, she would not have rested content with the idea only that they ought to have been rife. If the Prior of the Carthusians had pleased her, she would have become a sincere recluse. M. de Luynes initiated her into politics, the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Holland corresponded with her upon them, and Chateauneuf amused her with them. She gave herself up to their pursuit because she abandoned herself, without reserve, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... in a letter to Hector, on March 7 of this year, described Congreve as 'very dull, very valetudinary, and very recluse, willing, I am afraid, to forget the world, and content to be forgotten by it, to repose in that sullen sensuality into which men naturally sink who think disease a justification of indulgence, and converse only with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... before us a month or two ago the case of a gentleman living in a country town—a quiet, shy, studious recluse—born on this fatal day. By some mischance he happened to pick up a journal in which was an article on the Government by Mr. ARNOLD WHITE. He read it. He was so terrified that he expired from heart failure. That sounds to you incredible, but real ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various

... shall I harness myself to a history of this venerable Abbess? But then I must procure the volume by Joseph de Loignac, her first biographer, the notice by the Recluse of Marlaigne, the pamphlet by Monseigneur de Ram, the narrative by Papebroech; above all I must have at hand the translation, made by the Carmelites of Louvain, of the Flemish manuscript written while the Mother was still alive, by her daughters. Where ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... proposes something, though nothing is concluded. We must wait for the second part, which he has promised: perhaps, on his amendment, he may obtain that entire pardon which is now denied him; in the mean time, neighbor, keep him a recluse ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... case! Such minutiae of erudition might be fascinating to others; it was not for him. His large-heartedness, his sympathy, his wealthy and generous spirit could not be condensed into a bookworm, or a recluse. They rather equipped him to become a watchman, that he might declare what he saw. He needed the whole Republic to range up and down in. His ringing words might be heard on our Western frontier; but before their echoes ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various

... possible," said she; "I understood it all. But I must not do anything more to-day, for every day I grow weaker. We must be better acquainted, and a poor sick recluse may certainly claim forbearance. We meet to-morrow evening, at the same hour; ...
— Memories • Max Muller

... fairyland. Arthur and Miss Wishart had gone on in front and were now strayed among boulders. She liked this trim and precise young man, whose courtesy was so grave and elaborate, while he, being a recluse by nature but a humanitarian by profession, was half nervous and half entranced in her cheerful society. They talked of nothing, their hearts being set on the scramble, and when at last they reached the highway and the farm where the Glenavelin traps had been put up, they found themselves a clear ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... Luke and Cecile Shepard Mr. Northrup appeared very well indeed at dinner that night in the Corner House. They learned he could be very entertaining if he wished; that he had not forgotten how to interest women if he had been a recluse for so long; and that even Tess and Dot found something about him to admire. The former said afterward that Mr. Northrup had a voice like a distant drum; Dot said he had a "noble looking forehead," meaning that it was very high ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... speaking, for the first time beyond perfunctory salutations, with the captain, a taciturn recluse of a man, furious just now at some unexpected litigation connected with his cargo and horribly inconvenienced by the loss of his stewardess. Two ladies waiting, literally, on the wharf, have been promised accommodation in the ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... had known that temptation and conquered it. After her reception as a Dominican Tertiary, she had possessed the extraordinary resolution to live for three years the recluse life, not in the guarded peace of a convent, but in her own room at home, in the noisy and overcrowded house where a goodly number of her twenty-four brothers and sisters were apparently still living. And these had been years of inestimable preciousness; but they came to an end at ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... in a well-ordered life. As with many other common blessings we forget its benefits. Nor are these benefits so evident until we see the blighting result in the life of the one who, for any reason whatsoever, has become a social recluse. We have known a few persons who have once been in society, but who have allowed themselves to remain away from all sorts of gatherings, for a number of years. In every case, the result has been openly noticeable. They have become boorish in manners, unsympathetic ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... mind, and looked out into the unknown. Amid stiff, abrupt sentences I wandered; and, presently, I had no fault to charge against their abrupt tellings; for, better far than my own ambitious phrasing, is this mutilated story capable of bringing home all that the old Recluse, of the vanished house, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... the Lady, whose existence grew more and more mysterious, went back for a few days to her house at Neuilly. She would vanish, would reappear, living like a recluse, almost in entire solitude, receiving none of ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain

... so happily in each other's love. No father, mother, wife to either, no kindred upon earth. The elder a bold, frank, impetuous, chivalric adventurer; the younger a gentle, studious, book-loving recluse; they lived upon the ancestral estate like mated birds, one always on the wing, the ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... old Christian came out, stood by the shoulder of the horse and rested his hand on Marks' knee. It was strange familiarity for such an acrimonious old recluse, and even at the distance the attitude of Woodford's ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... It might also be cited as another proof not only of De Quincey's very keen interest in all the leading questions of the time, but as an illustration of the John Bull warmth and heat which he, the dreamer, the recluse, the lover of abstract problems, could bring into such discussions. Here, at all events, his views were definite enough, and stated with a bold precision of English plainness that would have pleased the most pronouncedly Tory or Unionist ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... in the young soldier the same recluse and dreamer of Brienne. In boyhood parlance today, he "flocked by himself," building air castles which in part ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden

... French politics, in the play, are to send the daughter of a King of France (the contemporary King Henri III was childless) to conduct a negotiation about 200,000 ducats, at the Court, steeped in peace, of a King of Navarre, a scholar who would fain be a recluse from women, in an Academe of his own device. Such was not the Navarre of Henri in his war with the Guises, and Henri did not ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... studied human nature so superficially as to fail to comprehend the snares and pitfalls which men's egregious vanity sometimes spring prematurely; and rumour quotes me aright, in proclaiming me a recluse when the curtain falls and the lights are extinguished. To-day I deviated from my usual custom in compliment to the representative of my country, who sends you—so his card reads—'charged with an explanation of his unavoidable absence.' As minister-extraordinary, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... time and by a wholly chance happening, the mystery was out at last. Professor Nicolovius, the bland recluse of Mrs. Paynter's, and Henry G. Surface, political arch-traitor, ex-convict, and falsest of false friends, were ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... assumed by the daughter of a recluse naturalist in the valley of Virginia. She had known no life but that of the open country, where she ran wild all summer, aiding her father in collecting plants and butterflies. At twenty she had never seen a city, and her social contacts had been limited to the country folk, ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson

... powers—to the one board belonged the privilege of ordering and contriving measures; to the other, that of carrying them into execution. Theories, he said, which did not connect men with measures, were not theories for this world: they were chimeras with which a recluse might divert his fancy, but they were not principles en which a statesman would found his system. He maintained, that by the negative vested in the commissioners, the chartered rights of the company, on which stress had been ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Presley's morbidly keen observation, the general impression of the shepherd's face was intensely interesting. It was uncommon to an astonishing degree. Presley's vivid imagination chose to see in it the face of an ascetic, of a recluse, almost that of a young seer. So must have appeared the half-inspired shepherds of the Hebraic legends, the younger prophets of Israel, dwellers in the wilderness, beholders of visions, having their existence in a continual dream, talkers with ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... in mid-August that the aged Steinway was choked to death in his rubbishy old house in East Thirty-ninth Street, where by the current rumour of the neighbourhood, he kept large sums in cash. Suspicion fell upon the recluse's nephew, one Maxwell, who vanished with the discovery of ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... friend in order to enjoy the pleasure of his society. When in office he proposed to pay him a pension of L300 a year out of the secret service money, but Pope declined the offer. Statesmen and men of active pursuits cultivated the society of the poetical recluse, and Pope, whose compliments are monuments more enduring than marble, has recorded ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... you say, Mr. Fuller," said the old man, who had a bearing of sad and gentle dignity, and gave, in a curious and not easily explainable way, the idea that he spoke but seldom and was something of a recluse. "There's a deal in what you say, Mr. Fuller, but the fiddle is not a thing as can be played like any ordinary instryment. A fiddle's like a wife, in a way of speaking. You must offer her all you've got. If she catches you going about ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray

... perceptions, and with a mental and moral constitution which tended always, with the certainty of a physical law, to the beautiful, the pure, and the sublime, he led what many might call an ideal life. Yet was he far from being a recluse, or from being disposed to an excess of introversion. On the contrary, he was a popular, high-spirited youth, almost passionately fond of society, maintaining an unusual number of warm friendships, and unsurpassed by any of the young men ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... up with attention; the flush of joy which mantles in his countenance—the start—the throb—the almost delirious outburst of hysteric exultation with which, when the whole truth was made known, he clasped the two messengers of glad tidings to his breast, with an energy that almost choked the aged recluse! "Ride, ride this instant to the Margravine—say I have wronged her, that it is all right, that she may come back—that I forgive her—that I apologize if you will"—and a secretary forthwith despatched a note to that effect, which was carried off ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... house stood four-square, with a patched-up conservatory on one wing. In the front room they found the recluse's body decently disposed, with an undertaker's assistant in charge. From the greenhouse ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... place. Even yet, I don't know very much. He's the last of an old family, who made their money in real estate, and are supposed to have kept most of it. He's a widower with one daughter. His wife died about ten years ago, and since then he has been a sort of recluse, and has the reputation of being queer. He has been abroad a good deal, and it is only during the last year that he has lived continuously at this place next door, which is called Elmhurst. That's about all I've been able to find out. He certainly lives a retired life, for his place ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson

... awakened all my ardor. What a blissful period of my existence was it that I passed beneath his roof. Another being seemed created within me, or rather, all that was amiable and excellent was drawn out. I was as recluse as ever I had been at the convent, but how different was my seclusion. My time was spent in storing my mind with lofty and poetical ideas; in meditating on all that was striking and noble in history or fiction; in studying and tracing all that was sublime and beautiful ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... hardy weeds can thrive. Here in some damp mouldy chambers dwells a hermit, for nearly all the classic mountains of Southern Italy are tenanted by an anchorite, generally an old and ignorant, but pious peasant, of the type of Pietro Murrone, the holy recluse of the Abruzzi, who was finally dragged from his cell to be invested forcibly with the pontifical robes and tiara as Celestine the Fifth. The present hermitage on Mont' Epomeo dates however from comparatively modern times, for its first occupant is said to have been a German nobleman, a certain ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... did not come, and Eveley felt that perhaps he was reconciled, and had returned to his old pursuit of secluded ballroom corners. But Nolan assured her of the injustice of this. Lem had forsaken all his former haunts, and had become a recluse, brooding alone in his ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston

... Luella Gloaming was naturally glum, So she married young Grouch, the recluse; For she says when she's sad, she just looks at his face— Then she can't help but laugh ...
— Why They Married • James Montgomery Flagg

... all instruments, and although on account of its nature it is excluded from the concert hall, it is the companion of the recluse. The latter says to himself: 'Here I can produce the feelings of my heart, can shade fully, drive away care, and melt away a tone through all its swellings,'" This critic ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover

... speaking. In a very short while she looked as much at home in the presence of the ladies as Petronella herself. Kate found indeed that the city-bred maiden was more advanced in many things than the recluse of the Gate House. She set herself busily to the task of drilling both her companions in the arts of dancing, deportment, the use of the globes, and of playing upon the harpsichord; and found in both apt and eager pupils. ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... supersession by some more public administration. Modern religion admits of no facile flights from responsibility. It permits no headlong resort to the wilderness and sterile virtue. It counts the recluse who fasts among scorpions in a cave as no better than a deserter in hiding. It unhesitatingly forbids any rich young man to sell all that he has and give to the poor. Himself and all that he has must be alike ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... greatest in Spaine. That the Queene hath given no rewards to any of the captains or officers, but only to my Lord Sandwich; and that was a bag of gold, which was no honorable present, of about; 1400l. sterling. How recluse the Queene hath ever been, and all the voyage never come upon the deck, nor put her head out of her cabin; but did love my Lord's musique, and would send for it down to the state-room, and she sit in her cabin within hearing of it. But my Lord ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... visit him, and fearing a doubtful reception he carried with him a pamphlet he had written in 1889, an eulogium of the painter. On the way he asked his fellow-travellers for Cezanne's address, but in vain; the name was unknown. In Aix he met with little success. Evidently the fame of the recluse had not reached his birthplace. At last Bernard was advised to go to the Mayor's office, where he would find an electoral list. Among the voters he discovered a Paul Cezanne, who was born January 19, 1839, who lived at 25 Rue Boulegon. Bernard lost no time and reached a ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... here," Melrose continued—"your presence, as Undershaw has no doubt told you—of course he has told you, small blame to him—was extremely distasteful to me. I am a recluse. I like no women—and d——d few men. I can do without them, that's all; their intimate company, anyway: and my pursuits bring me all the amusement I require. Such at any rate was my frame of mind up to a few weeks ago. I don't apologize ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... not to-night," answered the recluse. "Your young eyes will wax heavy with these midnight vigils. You must sleep, my boy, and to-morrow I will communicate ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... the marquise; for, having got M. de Nocheres who no doubt regretted her prolonged retreat—to entrust him with a commission for his granddaughter, he came to the convent parlour and asked for the fair recluse. She, although she had never seen him, recognised him at the first glance; for having never seen so handsome a cavalier as he who now presented himself before her, she thought this could be no other than the Marquis de Ganges, of whom people had ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... fell upon the trio. Darrin had never heard, before, of the Earl of Denby. Later he learned that the Earl had led a recluse's life among books until the war began. About that time he had married a young noblewoman, and the pair had gone promptly into effective war work, though not in ways that caused their portraits to be published in ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... consoling work, idle thoughts cannot gain mastery over him: selfish wishes or desires are kept at bay. Art is truth: and truth is religion: and its study and practice a daily work of pious duty. What are the world's struggles, brawls, successes, to that calm recluse pursuing his calling? See, twinkling in the darkness round his chamber, numberless beautiful trophies of the graceful victories which he has won:—sweet flowers of fancy reared by him:—kind shapes of beauty which ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... seems very solitary with the two of us living in its great rooms. I, who am getting an old fellow, and you a student and a recluse—no, don't deny it, for nowadays I can barely persuade you to attend even the Bench or a lawn-tennis party. Well, fortunately, we have power to add to our numbers; or at least you have. I ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... "neat-handed Phillis," to milk the cows and churn the butter, while she sat rapt in contemplation of the stars above or the snakes below. It was not until after our arrival at Tampico that I had the mortification to discover that the interesting creature, the charming recluse, is seventy-eight, and has just buried her seventh husband! I accept the account doubtingly, and henceforth shall endeavour to picture her to my mind as an ancient enchantress, dwelling amongst serpents, and making her venomous ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... of a scholarly recluse near New Haven. She marries a clever student, who becomes a sensational preacher, then farmer, then an army officer. His wife passes through many stages of belief and emotion, emerging at last into the sunshine.—W. M. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... all," muttered he, as he wandered aimlessly from one deserted room to another: "the very house seems under a spell. Sybil, sitting like a recluse in her own rooms, growing pale, and wild-eyed, and spectre-like, every day. Evan, in his room, sick with drink, and verging on the D. T. Mother, gliding like a stately ghost from the one to the other, or closeted in her own room; she has not been down stairs to-day. Burrill, the ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... sometimes, even, when her father's turn came round, keeping for him the whole flock of the commune," was fulfilling her sixteenth year. It was Joan of Arc, whom all her neighbors called Joannette. She was no recluse; she often went with her companions to sing and eat cakes beside the fountain by the gooseberry-bush, under an old beech, which was called the fairy-tree: but dancing she did not like. She was constant at church, she delighted in the sound of the bells, she went often to confession and communion, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... here presented with a striking picture of the temper and credulity of the times in which he lived. We plainly see from the contemporary evidence of Wierus, that such things were believed of him by his neighbours; and at that period it was sufficiently common for any man of deep study, of recluse habits, and a certain sententious and magisterial air to undergo these imputations. It is more than probable that Agrippa was willing by a general silence and mystery to give encouragement to the wonder of the vulgar ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... Voltaire could have written. And, what is still better worth observing, Voltaire's books would not have been the powers they were, but for this constant desire of his to come into the closest contact with the practical affairs of the world. He who has never left the life of a recluse, drawing an income from the funds and living in a remote garden, constructing past, present, and future, out of his own consciousness, is not qualified either to lead mankind safely, or to think on the course of human affairs correctly. Every page ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... intimate with every body in the village. But he surprised nobody, no questions were asked about him, because he lived like the rest of the world. But that two men should come into a strange country, and partake of none of the country diversions, seek no acquaintance, and live entirely recluse, is something so inexplicable as to puzzle the wisest heads, even that of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... Mrs. Parry was rather discomfited. "There may be nothing in it, and Franklin seems to be decent enough in his life, though a bit of a recluse. I've nothing to say ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume

... him start a little; evidently no thought of yielding had come to him before. We were passing the house that used to belong to that strange book-lover and recluse, Beckford. I looked up at the blank windows, and thought of that curious, self-centred life in the past, surrounded by every luxury, able to indulge every whim; and then I looked at my companion's pale, tortured face, ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall

... "Dame," said the good man, "if it be so as thou sayest, ye must needs suffer it; for against thy lord and against his barons ye may do nought perforce." "Sir," said the good lady, "thou sayest sooth: but if it please God, I were fain to be a recluse nigh unto thee; whereby I may be at the service of God all the days of my life, and that I may have comfort of thee." "Dame," said the good man, "that would be over strange a thing, whereas thou art too young a lady and too fair. But I will tell thee what thou shalt do. Hard by my hermitage ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris

... although that judgment has often to be framed under conditions which demand almost breathless rapidity, it does not always bear unfavorable comparison with the protracted meditation of the philosophic recluse. [Cheers.] ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... prejudice to surmount. Philip remembered the garden-party, and saw that they could never be surmounted. The Deemster who slapped the conventions in the face would suffer for it. He would be taboo to half the life of the island—in public an official, in private a recluse. An icy picture rose before his mind's eye of the woman who would be his wife in her relations with the ladies he had just left. She might be their superior in education, certainly in all true manners, and in natural grace and beauty, in sweetness and charm, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... see Philip here to-night," Mary was saying, while Eve fastened for her the clasp of a refractory bracelet. "We were afraid he was becoming quite a recluse, and that must be so bad ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... wife's approval; and the next morning our disconsolate hero was on his way to the "hermit" of the cave. The holy recluse had been long famed through that region for his kindness and attention to the wants of those who sought help and counsel; and Michael thought no harm could come of it, even though he might be unable to circumvent the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... institutions dear to many, have no doubt given impressions unfavorable to Thoreau's thought and personality. One hears him called, by some who ought to know what they say and some who ought not, a crabbed, cold-hearted, sour-faced Yankee—a kind of a visionary sore-head—a cross-grained, egotistic recluse,—even non-hearted. But it is easier to make a statement than prove a reputation. Thoreau may be some of these things to those who make no distinction between these qualities and the manner which often comes as a kind of by-product of an intense devotion of a principle ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... the Brahmanas their divinely-inspired theology or body of doctrine. To them were afterward added the Sutras, literally "Strings of pithy sentences" regarding laws and ceremonies. Still later the Upanishads were composed, treating of God and the soul; the Aranyakas, or "Tracts for the forest recluse;" and, after a very long interval, the Puranas, or "Traditions from of old." All these ranked, however, not as divinely-inspired knowledge, or things "heard from God" (sruti), like the Vedas and Brahmanas, but only as sacred ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... is it?" he remarked; "the old man they say acts so queerly, and has kept to himself up there on his estate for years, living the life of a recluse among his books and papers. There must be some good reason for his acting that way. He's met with some sort of terrible disappointment in life it may be; but then that's ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen



Words linked to "Recluse" :   solitudinarian, lone wolf, unsocial, St. John the Baptist, lone hand, loner, John the Baptist



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