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Cloister   Listen
noun
Cloister  n.  
1.
An inclosed place. (Obs.)
2.
A covered passage or ambulatory on one side of a court; (pl.) The series of such passages on the different sides of any court, esp. that of a monastery or a college. "But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloister's pale."
3.
A monastic establishment; a place for retirement from the world for religious duties. "Fitter for a cloister than a crown."
Cloister garth (Arch.), the garden or open part of a court inclosed by the cloisters.
Synonyms: Cloister, Monastery, Nunnery, Convent, Abbey, Priory. Cloister and convent are generic terms, and denote a place of seclusion from the world for persons who devote their lives to religious purposes. They differ is that the distinctive idea of cloister is that of seclusion from the world, that of convent, community of living. Both terms denote houses for recluses of either sex. A cloister or convent for monks is called a monastery; for nuns, a nunnery. An abbey is a convent or monastic institution governed by an abbot or an abbess; a priory is one governed by a prior or a prioress, and is usually affiliated to an abbey.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cloister" Quotes from Famous Books



... is equally complete, equally natural and unforced. It is astonishing that men like Ascham,[59] unless blinded by a survival of mediaeval or a foreshadowing of Puritan prudery, should have failed to see that the morality of the Morte d'Arthur is as rigorous as it is unsqueamish. Guinevere in her cloister and Lancelot in his hermitage, Arthur falling by (or at any rate in battle against) the fruit of his incestuous intercourse—these are not exactly encouragements to vice: while at the same time the earlier history may be admitted to have nothing of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... to be finished as an Easter offering to the Father Superior from devout ladies, who had been dismayed at the imagination of his discomfort. The verandah was granted the title of the Cloister, and the hours of recreation were now spent here instead of in the Library as formerly, which enabled studious brethren to read ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... their advantages. The undue excitement and spirit of rivalry fostered is foreign to the true idea of an earnest student life. The college is no monastery to make the student a recluse, but it should be a place of solitude, a modern cloister, where the student may be kept in partial isolation and away from the turbulent stream of public life and distracting social influences. The student may keep in the midst of the current of actual modern thought and life without sacrificing the quiet seclusion ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker

... in a certain state of mind, might well overwhelm this young man, who was ere long to yearn for the cloister and was destined to be the founder of African monasticism. To give his whole life to the study of wisdom, to compel himself towards the contemplation of God, to live here below an almost divine life—this ideal, impossible to pagan wisdom, Augustin was called ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... antipodes of the heroic. Could he then lean to Rome? He could not do so without damning the men he most loved, even could his keen and in some ways sceptical intellect have consented to commit suicide. Or to the Romanising party in the Church? The movement sprang from the cloister, and he had breathed the bracing air of secular life. He was far too clear-headed not to see whither they were tending. To him they appeared to be simply feeble imitations of the real thing, dabbling with ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... of sunset behind the minarets of the great mosque. I then took up the saddle-bags and delicately picked my way through couchant camels, tethered mules and horses in the courtyard to the khan itself, which was a kind of cloister. I was making my arrangements with the landlord, when Rashid returned, the picture of despair. He flung up both his hands, announcing failure, and then sank down upon the ground and moaned. The host, a burly man, inquired what ailed him. I told him, when he uttered just ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... Catholic priest, who acted as tutor to Alexander Stuart, a natural son of James IV. of Scotland as professor of Greek for a short time at Oxford, and was the most learned man of his time. His best known work is his Colloquia, which contains satirical onslaughts on monks, cloister ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope

... with this activity in religion came a corresponding interest in other lines. Algorisms began to appear, and knowledge from the outside world found {124} interested listeners. Another Raoul, or Radulph, to whom we have referred as Radulph of Laon,[494] a teacher in the cloister school of his city, and the brother of Anselm of Laon[495] the celebrated theologian, wrote a treatise on music, extant but unpublished, and an arithmetic which Nagl first published in 1890.[496] The latter work, preserved ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith

... steal, sir, an egg out of a cloister] I know not that cloister, though it may etymologically signify any thing shut is used by our author, otherwise than for a monastery, and therefore I cannot guess whence this hyperbole could take its original: perhaps ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... for your chivalry rapiers, valour and wager-of-battle, think one moment, how can that answer? The plebeian heart too has red life in it, which changes not to paleness at glance even of you; and 'the six hundred Breton gentlemen assembled in arms, for seventy-two hours, in the Cordeliers' Cloister, at Rennes,'—have to come out again, wiser than they entered. For the Nantes Youth, the Angers Youth, all Brittany was astir; 'mothers, sisters and sweethearts' shrieking after them, March! The Breton Noblesse must even let the mad world have its ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... bonds of matrimony: if an unmarried woman is less constrained there than elsewhere, a wife is subjected to stricter obligations. The former makes her father's house an abode of freedom and of pleasure; the latter lives in the home of her husband as if it were a cloister. Yet these two different conditions of life are perhaps not so contrary as may be supposed, and it is natural that the American women should pass through the one to arrive ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... obstinately "refused to march." After the amateur speechmaking and concert pieces an Italian violinist, who had thrown over a lucrative contract to become a soldier, played exquisitely; and one of the French sisters we had seen walking the deck with the mincing steps of the cloister sang; somewhat precariously and pathetically, the Ave Maria. Its pathos was of the past, and after she had finished, as we fled into the open air, we were conscious of having turned our backs irrevocably yet determinedly upon an era whose life and convictions ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... influence at large on the practice as on the treatment and conception of painting at this stage of its development, one or two examples may be cited as typical of the progress he urged, such as the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa. This wonderful cloister, which measures four hundred feet in length and over a hundred in width—traditionally the dimensions of Noah's ark—was founded by the Archbishop Ubaldo, before 1200, on his return from Palestine bringing fifty-three ships ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... worked in stucco—fresco we call it. Made pictures on plaster. Not but what he had a fine sweep of the hand in drawing. He'd take the long sides of a cloister, trowel on his stuff, and roll out his great all-abroad pictures of saints and croppy-topped trees quick as a webster unrolling cloth almost. Oh, Benedetto could draw, but 'a was a little-minded man, professing to be full of secrets of colour or plaster—common ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... which the Hall of Saint-Louis forms the first floor—displays a long row of Gothic columns, between which the architects of I know not what period have built up two floors of cells to accommodate as many prisoners as possible, by choking the capitals, the arches, and the vaults of this magnificent cloister with plaster, barred loopholes, and partitions. Under the room known as the Cabinet de Saint-Louis, in the Tour Bonbec, there is a spiral stair leading to these dens. This degradation of one of the immemorial buildings of ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... that strange, old city, which might veritably be called a city of the dead. He turned aside into the cloisters, and listened mechanically while an old man discoursed to him in crabbed German concerning Fastrada's tomb and the carved face of the minstrel Frauenlob upon the cloister wall. Presently, however, the guide showed him a little door, and led him out into the pleasant grassy space round which the cloisters had been built. He was conscious of a great feeling of relief. The blue sky was above him again, and his ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... appear'd, and all the gossip rout. O senseless Lycius! Madman! wherefore flout The silent-blessing fate, warm cloister'd hours, And show to common eyes these secret bowers? The herd approach'd; each guest, with busy brain, Arriving at the portal, gaz'd amain, And enter'd marveling: for they knew the street, Remember'd it from childhood all complete Without a gap, ...
— Lamia • John Keats

... thoughts of a man; and, generally, the air we breathe, and the objects we see, have a secret influence upon our imagination. Burke was certain that Milton composed Il Penseroso in the long, resounding aisle of a mouldering cloister, or ivied abbey. He beheld its solemn gloom in the verse. The fine nerves of the mind are braced, and the strings of the harp are tuned, by different kinds of temperature. "I think," Warburton remarked to Hurd, "you have often heard me say, that ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various

... summer of the same year, trained as he already was in the school of the world, he entered into the quiet shades of the cloister. It can scarcely be expected that he will remain there long. First of all, let us take a view of monastic life on its most favorable side, as a school of self-denial, as a place of refuge for more profound study, ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... at an early age took me to —- {26a} where they shortly died, not, however, before they had placed me in the service of a cardinal, with whom I continued some years, and who, when he had no further occasion for me, sent me to the college, in the left-hand cloister of which, as you enter, rest the bones of Sir John D—-; {26b} there, in studying logic and humane letters, I lost whatever of humanity I had retained when discarded by the cardinal. Let me not, however, forget two points—I am a Fraser, it is true, but not a Flannagan: ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... a likely scheme enough in a commercial sense, no doubt," he replied. "But, my dear Mercy, it snaps the continuity of existence. Perhaps a cloister would ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... Plunge in the thick of the fight. There in the street and the mart, That is the place to do right. Not in some cloister or cave, Not in some kingdom above, Here, on this side of the grave, Here, should we ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... in other objects. Religion and its ministers possessed her wholly, and all her enthusiasm was spent on works of charity and devotion. Her father, passionately fond of her, resisted her inclination for the cloister, and sought to wean her back to the world; but she escaped from the chateau to a neighboring convent, where she resolved to remain. Her father followed, carried her home, and engaged her in a round of ftes and hunting parties, in the midst of which she found herself ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... him in what surroundings this preposterous offer, that she should leave the Convent and fly with him to Warwick, had been made to Seraphine. Her swollen countenance would be equally unattractive, whether lifted in cell or cloister, or where white clouds chased one another across ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... their life serves but to contemplate death. Activity of mind, with such an uniformity of existence, would be a most cruel torment. In the midst of the cloister grow four cypresses. This dark and silent tree, which is with difficulty agitated by the wind, introduces no appearance of motion into this abode. Near the cypresses is a fountain, scarcely heard, whose fall is so feeble and slow, that one would be ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... inform me who they are, old man," George suggested, relinquishing his overcoat to a flunkey, and following Lucas into the cloister set apart for the cleansing of hands which have meddled ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... at the repasts of knowledge, than, as Plautus bluntly puts it, having he wits and she wits recline at the repasts of fashion. Isolation is more likely to breed pruriency than commingling to provoke indulgence. The virtue of the cloister and the cell scarcely deserves the name. A girl has her honor in her own keeping. If she can be trusted with boys and men at the lecture-room and in church, she can be trusted with them at school and in college. Jean Paul says, "To insure modesty, I would advise the education ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke

... prisoners in seminary of St. Fermin, to the number of 92 M D The prisoners in the Hotel de la Force, 167 M D The prisoners of the Grand Chatelet, 214 M D The prisoners in the Conciergerie, 85 M D The prisoners of the Castle of Bicetre, 153 M L The prisoners of the Cloister of the Bernardins, 73 M L The prisoners from Orleans butchered at Versailles, 57 M L Le Comte de Montmorin, minister and secretary of state M L Dulau, Archbishop of Arles M L De la Rochefoucault, bishop ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz

... the egg-chamber slung in the centre and isolated on every side by half a score of pillars; the front-hall expanding into a wide mouth and surmounted by a network of taut threads forming a trap. The semi-transparency of the walls allows us to see the Spider engaged in her household affairs. Her cloister of vaulted passages enables her to proceed to any point of the star-shaped pouch containing the eggs. Indefatigable in her rounds, she stops here and there; she fondly feels the satin, listens to the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... a mile or more From traffic and confusion, An oyster dwelt, because he felt A longing for seclusion; Said he: "I love the stillness of This spot. It's like a cloister." (These words I quote because, you note, They rhyme so well ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl

... settee, the crucifix above the door, and the one partially open window, set deep in the stone wall. Outside I could hear voices, and the shuffling of feet on the stone slabs, but within all was silence. I had been away from this emotionless cloister life so long, out in the open air, that I felt oppressed; the profound stillness was a weight on my nerves. Would the sister be successful in her mission? Would the Mother Superior, whose stern rule I knew so well, feel slightest ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish

... William of Trumpington's time were rebuilt in the old style; the five bays to the west of these were refaced with brick and flint, as the original clunch stone had perished, owing to exposure to the weather. The arcading of the north walk of the cloister may still be seen. It will be noticed that this arcading did not follow the division into bays of the aisle walls above. The cloister walk acted as a kind of continuous buttress to the south aisle wall, and owing to its removal this part of the wall was gradually pushed outward. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... counsel go, A husband new they chose for me; The cloister's prior of mitred brow— The good ...
— The Verner Raven; The Count of Vendel's Daughter - and other Ballads • Anonymous

... and are thus nourished into spiritual qualities. Excavating into serenity, we shall discover the pure gold of scholarship; we shall find knowledge in great abundance; we shall find the spirit of the greatest and best books; and we shall come upon the cloister in which meditation ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... air! warmness and spring! Merrily, merrily! Back to its cell each weary thing, Wearily, wearily! And the heart so withered, and dry, and old, Most at home in the cloister cold. ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... encouragingly at the young man from his black-walnut frame. He was the sainted predecessor of Dr. Marks, and the sanctity of his life of prayer and holy toil also lingered in this study. Old volumes and heavy tomes gave to it the peculiar odor which we associate with the cloister, and suggested the prolonged spiritual musings of the past, which are so out of vogue in the hurried, practical world of to-day. This study was, indeed, a quiet nook—a little, slowly moving eddy left far behind by the dashing, foaming current of modern life; and Haldane felt ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... his time, a fearlessness that exacted the admiration while it aroused the indignation of his contemporaries, and a genius that compelled the attention of those who were most zealous to combat its evidences, Bruno, casting off the shackles of the cloister, that 'prigione angusta e nera,' boldly advanced a system of Philosophy, startling, in those Inquisitorial times, from its independence, and horrible from its antagonism to Aristotle, the Atlas of the church. This was no less than pure Pantheism,—God in and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... late in the evening when she entered those gloomy cells where broken hearts find a living burial. To the abbess she said, "I have no longer a home in the palace; may I hope to find one in the cloister?" The abbess received her with true Christian sympathy. After listening with a tearful eye to the recital of her sorrows, she conducted her to the cell in which she was to ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... And as for that large open place belonging to Antioch in Syria, did not he pave it with polished marble, though it were twenty furlongs long? and this when it was shunned by all men before, because it was full of dirt and filthiness, when he besides adorned the same place with a cloister of the same length. ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... was a perfectly natural and justifiable one. Though originally subject to service and tribute on the part of bishop, cloister, or prince, the condition of the tradesman changed with the establishment of the principle that long unchallenged residence in a city insured personal freedom to the individual—a privilege which in those days of marked class discrimination ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... The Cloister Tea Rooms were above a pastry cook's on the first floor of one of the old houses in The Precincts. The irregularly shaped room provided several secluded: tables, and they took one in a remote corner. But their conversation would have suffered nothing in a more central and neighboured situation. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... enigmas of theology. The little Essex priest spoke the more simply, with his round face turned to the strengthening stars; the other talked with his head bowed, as if he were not even worthy to look at them. But no more innocently clerical conversation could have been heard in any white Italian cloister or black Spanish cathedral. ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... Comyn to a conference for January 10, 1306, in the Franciscan friary at Dumfries. On that day the king's justices were holding the assizes in the castle, and Brace and Comyn, with a few followers, met in the cloister of the convent. Hot words were exchanged, and Bruce drew his sword and wounded Comyn. The lord of Badenoch took refuge in the church, and some of Bruce's friends followed him and slew him on the ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... the greatest. Descended from an honourable family, he entered the Church, where a career of great promise opened before him. At an early age, however, he quit the secular priesthood for the cloister and became a monk of the Franciscan Order, in which the austerity of his observance of that severe rule of life and the vigour of his intellect advanced him to ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... which adjoins the General Post Office, there is a cloister bearing the inscription, 'In Commemoration of Heroic Self-Sacrifice.' Within it are tablets to the memory of heroes of humble life, and one of the most interesting of these is that on which is inscribed:—'Alice Ayres, daughter of a bricklayer's ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore

... fountain were a few market stalls, with awnings over them of gay striped linen cloth, about which some people, mostly women and children, were moving quietly, looking at the goods exposed there. The ground floor of the building round the quadrangle was occupied by a wide arcade or cloister, whose fanciful but strong architecture I could not enough admire. Here also a few people were sauntering or sitting reading on ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... country hied, His breast with love and valour glowing. In cloister they have placed his bride, Instruction ...
— Axel Thordson and Fair Valborg - a ballad • Thomas J. Wise

... time in our lives, we have enjoyed the delight of seeing at the house of a friend one of the grand pictures of MURILLO, which was obtained by a distinguished connoisseur at Lima, in 1828, from the cloister of an old convent, where it had hung for countless years in ignoble seclusion. It had probably been brought from Spain during the life-time of the painter, as it is not described by any of his biographers, who have carefully ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... fire and ouercharging of the pieces being so great, as of fifty that were in her, there were not aboue sixteene taken out whole; the rest with ouercharge of the powder being broken, and molten with heat of the fire, were taken out in broken pieces into diuers shippes. The same day was the cloister on the South side of the towne entred by vs, which ioyned very neere to the wall of the towne, out of the chambers and other places whereof we beat into the same ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt

... as the hand of a bride!" This said I, Walter, for thy sake: This said I, for I could not choose. After a pause, my father spake In that cold and deliberate tone Which turns the hearer into stone, And seems itself the act to be That follows with such dread certainty; "This, or the cloister and the veil!" No other words than these he said, But they were like a funeral wail; My life was ended, ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... taking part of the service. It was a beautiful and impressive scene, and there was a great peace on all. It was good to see the intense bliss on Ivinghoe's face as he led his bride down the aisle, and along the cloister; and as they came into the drawing-room, after she had received an earnest kiss, and "my pretty one" from his father, it was to Dr. May that he first led her. Dr. May, his figure still erect, his face bright and cheery, his brow entirely bare, and his soft white ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... a gesture bade the rest retire. And when they were alone, the angel said, "Art thou the king?" Then, bowing down his head, King Robert crossed both hands upon his breast, And meekly answered him, "Thou knowest best! My sins as scarlet are; let me go hence, And in some cloister's school of penitence, Across those stones that pave the way to heaven Walk barefoot till my ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... keeping their summer foliage unchanged, a double row of orange-red chestnuts seemed, as in a picture just begun, to be the only thing painted, so far, by an artist who had not yet laid any colour on the rest, and to be offering their cloister, in full daylight, for the casual exercise of the human figures that would be added to the picture ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... the letter comes. Here she is; I hear steps in the cloister. Now, one bet before they enter. I give you two to one she asks ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... not consist in many prayers, in long vigils, and fasts, in severe chastenings of the body, in dwelling in a cloister or being a hermit. Do not make this sad mistake. His yoke is easy and his burden is light, yet the Christian life is one of self-denial. But his love in our hearts makes it a delight. We are not to keep our bodies under by prolonged fasts and beatings, but to keep in control ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr

... as counsel for the prisoner. Everyone was peculiarly savage that it should have happened to me, a person well known to be so friendly to el Muslimeen. When we arrived we went into a square enclosure, with a sort of cloister on one side, spread with carpets where we sat, and the wretched fellows were brought in chains. To my horror, I found they had been beaten already. I remonstrated, 'What if you had beaten the wrong men?' 'Maleysh! (Never mind!) we will beat ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... succeeding incidents of the Gruyere sovereignty and tell the story of the long predominance of the church in Switzerland. Seven centuries before Turimbert, in the period of the Roman domination, a cloister had been founded at St. Maurice D'Agaune, near the great Rhone gateway of the Alps, in memory of the Theban legion who had preferred death to the abjuration of their Christian faith. Here, three centuries later, the converted Burgundian king, Sigismund, took ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... Sarini, at Bologna, was, in 1796, a friar, but relinquished then the convent for the tent, and exchanged the breviary for the musket. He married a nun of one cloister, from whom he procured a divorce in a month, to unite himself with an Abbess of another, deserted by him in her turn for the wife of an innkeeper, who robbed and eloped from her husband. Last spring he returned ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... the spires beneath the paly moon, And through the cloister peace and silence reign, Save where some fiddler scrapes a drowsy tune, Or copious ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... a look of deep dejection, became distorted with pain. "Oh, it is horrible! And this cloister is ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... out toward the park and calling upon God to have mercy. Through the streaming mist, there came presently toward them two dim figures, carrying a third—what need to go on? After that, the house became a cloister. ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson

... Arnold said, "It must seem odd to you, but I know hardly anybody here. We attempt no social duties," she singled out this one and that, whom Alicia had asked to meet her, and mentioned them to him with a warm pleasure in implying one of the advantages of belonging to the world rather than to the cloister. Stephen knew their names and their dignities. He received what she said with suitably impressed eyebrow and nods of considerate assent. Hilda carried him along, as it were, in their direction. She was full that night of a triumphant sense of her own vitality, her success and value ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... this incident, by alleging that a private marriage had taken place between the lovers: but King Alphonso, who was well-nigh sainted for living only in platonic union with his wife Bertha, took the scandal greatly to heart. He shut up the peccant princess in a cloister, and imprisoned her gallant in the castle of Luna, where he caused him to be deprived of sight. Fortunately, his wrath did not extend to the offspring of their stolen affections, the famous Bernardo del Carpio. When the youth had grown up to manhood, Alphonso, according ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... along about the end of the afternoon they had come out of the church of Saint George the Greater, which as being most accessible had been left to the latter end of their explorations. Mrs. Merrithew had just sent Giuseppe back for a shawl which she had dropped in the cloister. They sat rocking in the gondola looking toward the fairy arcade of the ducal palace and the pillars of the saints, and suddenly Miss Dassonville spoke ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... delightful "Bridge of Sighs," between the years 1826 and 1831, when Thomas Rickman, an architect whose lectures and published treatises had given him a wide reputation, was entrusted with the work. The new buildings were not an artistic success, in spite of the elaborate Gothic cloister, with its stupendous gateway and the imposing scale of the whole pile. Their deficiencies might be masked or at least diminished if ivy were allowed to cover the unpleasing wall spaces, and perhaps if these lines are ever read by the proper authority such a simple and ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home

... hundred paces through a natural cloister of basalt until he arrived at a large uncovered court of the same formation, which a stranger might easily have been excused for believing to have been formed and smoothed by art. In its centre bubbled up a perpetual spring, icy cold; the ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... was built a staircase in varnished oak. There was a quadrangle, and from three sides the interminable latticed windows looked down on the green sward; on the fourth there was an open corridor, with arches to imitate a cloister. All was strong and barren, and only about the varnished staircase was there any sign of comfort. There a virgin in bright blue stood on a crescent moon; above her the ceiling was panelled in oak, and the banisters, the cocoa ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... virtue at all, it can be one only in the cloister; society can derive no sort of benefit from it; it enervates the mind; it benefits nobody but priests, who, under the pretext of rendering men humble, seek, in reality, only to degrade them, to stifle in their souls every spark of science and of courage, that they may the ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... at Chester and saw the Cathedral, which is not of the first rank. The Castle. In one of the rooms the Assizes are held, and the refectory of the Old Abbey, of which part is a grammar school. The master seemed glad to see me. The cloister is very solemn; over it are chambers in which the singing ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... by the infinite and truthful variation of expression on the other, the most sublime strength because the most absorbing unity, of multitudinous passion that ever human heart conceived. Hence, in the cloister of St. Mark's, the intense, fixed, statue-like silence of ineffable adoration upon the spirits in prison at the feet of Christ, side by side, the hands lifted, and the knees bowed, and the lips trembling together;[18] and in St. Domenico of Fiesole,[19] that whirlwind ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... the Oreto from Monreale, on the slopes of the mountains just above the little village of Parco, lies the old convent of Sta. Catarina. From the cloister terrace at Monreale you can see its pale walls and the slim campanile of its chapel rising from the crowded citron and mulberry orchards that flourish, rank and wild, no longer cared for by pious and loving hands. From the rough road that climbs ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... sat at the window of his office in Great Cloister Street, Westminster, he made his thoughts travel back to a certain glorious morning in August which now seemed so remote and irrecoverable. At this precise time he was waiting on the balcony of the Hotel de la Plage—the sole hostelry ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... Herald lives in cloister grey; He lives by clerkly rules; He dreams in coats and colours gay, In argent, or and gules; He blazons knightly shield and banner In dim monastic hall, And in a grave and reverend manner ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various

... cloister to castle, and of the burning of Vale Abbey—Of the siege of the castle, and the exploits of ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar

... foes. Never was man so bent upon revenge. As run wild deer before the chasing hounds, Before Rolland the Pagans flee.—"Well done!" The Archbishop cries, "Such valor a true Knight Should have, when mounted, armed, on his good steed! Else, not four deniers is he worth: a monk In cloister should he be, and spend his life In praying for our sins!...." "Strike," said Rolland, "No quarter!"—At the word the French renew The combat ... yet the Christian loss was ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier

... themselves accustomed to intrigue of a like nature, led her down the path to ruin. False keys were made, and one or other of the faithless sisters introduced the young man into the convent at night. When Virginia resisted, and enlarged upon the sacrilege of breaking cloister, Arrigone supplied her with a printed book of casuistry, in which it was written that though it might be sinful for a nun to leave her convent, there was no sin in a man entering it. At last she fell; and for seven years she lived in close intimacy with her lover, passing the nights with ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... still lived, and from the bloody scene of her husband's execution she repaired to Kiew. There would she live in the cloister of the Penitents, preserving the memory of the being she loved, and imploring the vengeance of Heaven upon ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... friends, and in others are hucksters, who jabber and gesticulate in frantic recommendation of their fruits and small wares. Immediately in front is the custom-house with its colonnade of white pillars, resembling a cloister. To the left Lopez's palace rears its shattered tower, and on the right hand is the arsenal, which serves as the barracks for the three or four thousand troops composing the Brazilian army of occupation. Near it is the horse-car station, connected by the street-cars with the station ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... wanted peace at any hazard. Quarreling began first between individuals of the various factions, but it soon resulted in conflicts between civilians and the volunteer guard. The first step taken by the military was to seize and occupy the cloister, which lay just below the citadel, the final goal of their leader, whoever he was, and the townsfolk believed it was Buonaparte. Once inside the citadel walls, the Corsicans in the regular French service ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... fair lady, rest a while Beneath this cloister wall; See, through the thorn blows cold the wind And drizzly rain ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... east end of the Cathedral to the south end of the Transept, a few yards south of which may be observed a range of Early English arches, each containing a double arch, which is again subdivided, but all have been long blocked up; this was a portion of what was called the "Dark Cloister." To the eastward of these is another range of arches with piers about twelve feet in height, some of which are comparatively perfect; these piers are alternately cylindrical and octagonal, the octagonal columns presenting alternately a side ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous

... their influence as great centres of learning, English law had enjoined every mass-priest to keep a school in his parish church where all the young committed to his care might be instructed. The youth of the middle classes, destined for the cloister or the merchant's stall, chiefly thronged these schools. The aristocracy cared little for book-learning. Very few indeed of the barons could read or write. But all could ride, fence, tilt, play at cards, and carve extremely well; for ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... the name indicates, been in the possession of the Dominican or "Black" Friars. The Priory buildings had consisted chiefly of a great church two hundred and twenty feet long and sixty-six feet broad, with a cloister on the south side of the church forming a square of one hundred and ten feet, and a smaller cloister to the south of this. At the dissolution of the religious orders, the property had passed into the ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... her in her misery. But always she had been afraid, because she thought that the Queen might remember her only as one that had wronged her childish innocence. For she remembered that the maids' dormitory at the old Duchess's had been no cloister of pure nuns. So that, at best, she was afraid, and she sent her yard-worker and a shepherd a great way round to fetch the larger boat of two to ferry over the Queen's men. Then she went indoors to redd up the houseplace and to ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... dragged Priam along the cloister to the muffled music of "He will swallow up death in victory." They had not thus proceeded very far when they met another policeman, an ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... pallid cheeks, By Fra Hilario in his diocese, As up the convent-walls, in golden streaks, The ascending sunbeams mark the day's decrease; And, as he asks what there the stranger seeks, Thy voice along the cloister ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... heavy shadow over both court and garden; moreover, a deep silence reigned there. But this silence, these half-lights, this solitude, soothed a royal soul, which could there surrender itself to a single emotion, as in a cloister where men pray, or in some ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... indicating the end of the period. Three or four boys went forward to confer with Mr. Beaver about certain vexing algebraic problems. Needless to say, neither Burton nor Harrington was among these. They drifted out into the cloister with the rest of the class, having certain problems of their own, not algebraic. One or two boys addressed Burton and were rebuffed with a curt word, which was unusual, as Burton was almost painstakingly ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... shall find him here, he plies With greater speed his plumes of gilded scale, And deems as well that Peace, here guested, lies, And Charity and Quiet, without fail. But finds he is deceived in his surmise, As soon as he has past the cloister's pale. Here Silence is not; nor ('tis said) is found Longer, except in writing, on ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... was not all. The marquise, as we know, had taken refuge in a convent, where Desgrais dared not arrest her by force, for two reasons: first, because she might get information beforehand, and hide herself in one of the cloister retreats whose secret is known only to the superior; secondly, because Liege was so religious a town that the event would produce a great sensation: the act might be looked upon as a sacrilege, and might bring about a popular ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... labyrinths of doubt and contradiction, is the pinnacle of faith he would reach. And often in this labyrinthic gloom, where a gleam of light from some recess of thought or fancy reveals here a Hermit in his cloister, there an Artist in his studio, below a Nawab in his orgies, above a Broker on the Stock Exchange, we have paused to ask a question about these glaring contrarieties in his life and thought. And always would he make this reply: "I have frequently moved ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... am!" she laughed, completely understanding. "I think we're like those two in The Cloister and the Hearth. I'm just the rough Burgundian cross-bow man, Denys, who followed that gentle Gerard and told everybody that ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... humour is blithe and friendly. In another poem, now known as Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, the humour is grotesque, bitter and pungent, the humour of hate. The snarling monk of the Spanish cloister pours out on poor, innocent, unsuspecting "Brother Lawrence" a wealth of really choice and masterly vituperation, not to be matched out of Shakespeare. The poem is a clever study of that mood of active disgust which most of us have felt toward ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... artificially contrived access of light and air, was in many respects as little the method of nature, that is to say it gave as little play for the spontaneous working and growth of the forces of nature in the youth's breast, as that regimen of the cloister which he so profoundly abhorred. Partly this was the result of a ludicrously shallow psychology. He repeats again and again that self-love is the one quality in the youthful embryo of character, from ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... portal in the Gothic style with elaborately carved doors, and is flanked on the north by an uncompleted tower. The interior contains tapestry of the 16th century and other works of art. The archbishop's palace and a Romanesque cloister adjoin the cathedral on its south side. The church of St Jean de Malto, dating from the 13th century, contains some valuable pictures. The hotel de ville, a building in the classical style of the middle of the 17th century, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... object of the mission of Jesus was to "save His people from their sins;" [198:4] and the tendency of all the teachings of the New Testament is to promote sanctification. But the holiness of the gospel is not a shy asceticism which sits in a cloister in moody melancholy, so that its light never shines before men; but a generous consecration of the heart to God, which leads us to confess Christ in the presence of gainsayers, and which prompts us to delight ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... never to be forgotten Gerard in The Cloister and the Hearth, and wonder if it was some monastery-trained youth like him who rested from the creation of saints and angels upon vellum, to draw fighting knights upon linen, and whether, perchance, his hushed heart burned within him at the ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler

... to-day is like a cloister during some penance, where the spring is afraid to stir ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore

... heart Gave thanks to God that blissful eventide, A thousand and four hundred years and more Gone by. But now clear rang the compline bell, And two by two they wended towards their church Across a space for cloister set apart, Yet still with wood-flowers sweet, and scent beside Of sod that evening turned. The night came on; A dim ethereal twilight o'er the hills Deepened to dewy gloom. Against the sky Stood ridge and rock unmarked amid the day: A few stars o'er them shone. As bower ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... was littered all over, knee-deep, with dry cane-trash; and mules, just freed from their galling saddles, were rolling on their backs in it, kicking with all their legs at once, and evidently in a state of high enjoyment. Part of one side of the square was a sort of wide cloister, and in it stood chairs ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... three hundred years ago are a peculiar feature of modern Rome, and interest the stranger more than many things of which he has heard loftier descriptions. You pass through the grand breadth and height of a squalid entrance-way, and perhaps see a range of dusky pillars, forming a sort of cloister round the court, and in the intervals, from pillar to pillar, are strewn fragments of antique statues, headless and legless torsos, and busts that have invariably lost what it might be well if living men could lay aside in that unfragrant atmosphere—the nose. Bas-reliefs, the spoil of some far ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... in these thoughts, and the decision was firmly made—a worldling became a servant of the church;—the young artist took leave of the world, and entered the cloister. ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... that we should not depart the countrey without the licence of the Viceroy. [Sidenote: The Italians our great enemies for the trade in the East.] It doth spite the Italians to see vs abroad: and many maruell at our deliuery. The painter is in the cloister of S. Paul, and is of their order, and liketh there very well. While we were in prison, both at Ormuz and here, there was a great deale of our goods pilfered and lost, and we haue beene at great charges in gifts and otherwise, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt

... chronicles of the very kind which furnished Browning with the matter of The Ring and the Book. It is, however, more apt and more curious to compare them with the scenes of Gerard's experiences with the princess in The Cloister and the Hearth, as instances of different handling of the same matter by two novelists of talent almost, if ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... the censer are in their graves; the congregation—many generations—all in their graves; but the church still stands the same. The moth-eaten, dusty cowls, and the bishops' mantle, from the days of the cloister, hang in the old oak presses; and old manuscripts, half eaten up by the rats, lie strewed about on the shelves ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... to the cloister of a college; not the gray, classic cloisters which lie along the banks of the Cam or the Isis,—huge, battered hulks, on whose weather-stained decks great captains of learning have fought away their lives,—nor yet the cavernous, quadrangular courts that sleep ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... her cause. Disgusted with a world, in which she had hitherto experienced nothing but misfortune herself, and been the innocent cause of so much to others, she determined to renounce it for ever, and seek a shelter in the peaceful shades of the cloister. She accordingly entered the convent of Santa Clara at Coimbra, where, in the following year, she pronounced the irrevocable vows, which divorce the unhappy subject of them for ever from her species. Two envoys from Castile, Ferdinand de Talavera, Isabella's confessor, and Dr. Diaz ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... adventure, is not unworthy to be named with Huc in the annals of missionary enterprise; and we know not how to give him higher praise. We speak of personal characteristics, and in these—in the qualifications for a life of self-denying severity, not exercised under the protecting shadow of a cloister, but in hourly conflict with danger and necessity—the one looks to us like a younger brother in likeness to the other. His account of Texas, its physical geography, its earlier and later history, its populations, settled and nomad, and of the history and customs ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... encouragements. Finally, she begged her father to let her make a winter retreat to some place near the headwaters of the Penobscot. When the hunters were abroad, it did them no harm to remember there was a maid in a wilderness cloister praying for the good of her people; and when they were fortunate, they believed in the material advantage of her prayers. Nobody thought of searching out her hidden cell, or of asking the big-legged hunter and his wife to tell its mysteries. The dealer with invisible spirits commanded ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... "Sacrum pingue," &c. given by [Omega]. [Phi]. (Vol. vi., p. 36.), is to be found in Misson's Voyage to Italy, copied from an old cloister wall of Santa Maria Novella at Florence. These ingenious verses are Leoline[2], and it is noted that "the sacrifice of Cain ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various

... Savoy was, as usual, resting after dinner in the long gallery, or perron, built the whole length of the keep, on a level with the first floor, and overlooking the great courtyard below. It was like a cloister, with great arched windows, and served for a general meeting-place or lounge in cold or wet weather. From thence he could see the boy going through all his pretty feats of horsemanship as if he had been a man of thirty who had been trained to ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare

... feet that knew no rest While o'er the sea forth went the fatal sign: The asp of Egypt, the Numidian wine, My Sigurd's sword, my Brynhild's fiery bed, The tale of years of Gudrun's drearihead, And Tristram's glaive, and Iseult's shriek are here, And cloister-gown ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris

... looked at her, and the man in him felt the pity of it as do all men when such fresh, virginal youth as was Miss Dumont's turns an enraptured face toward that cloister door which never again opens ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... You are not going to take the veil there, are you? It would be a great pity. No? You wish to lead the life of an intelligent woman who is free and independent? That is well; but it was rather an odd idea to begin by going into a cloister. Oh!—I see, public opinion?" And Madame Strahlberg made a little face, expressive of her ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... this year illustrated his march, or object-glass, with a host of images or spectra—that is, woodcuts of head and tail pieces—to suit all tastes—from the mouldering cloister of other days to the last balloon ascent. The Notices of Saints' Days and Holidays, Chronology and Biography, Astronomical and Naturalist's Notices, are edited with more than usual industry; and the poetry, original and selected, is for the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various

... Temple and Jocelyn had done or seen also a century before and at the same place. That horror which had blanched the face of all three men for life had fallen perhaps with a less overwhelming force on Temple's seasoned wickedness, but had driven the worthless Jocelyn to the cloister, and was driving Sir ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... chapel of Our Lady in this church, called Scala Celi, to which people were continually coming in pilgrimage, and offering at the altar there; most folks desiring to have masses sung for them here, or to be buried in the cloister of Scala Celi, that they might be partakers of the many pardons and indulgences granted by the Popes to this place; this being the only chapel (except that of the same name at Westminster, and that of Our ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various

... programmes. He had forgotten even that the solemn thirtieth birthday was close upon him. It seemed to him as if his own egoism was lying about in scattered pieces, which he must collect in the calm of this cloister, and reconstruct. He wanted to resume possession of himself, very slowly, without violent effort. He wound up his watch; the hour was not yet half-past ten. The whole ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... have their ash-pans and their brooms To purge the chapel and the rooms; Their many mumbling Mass-priests here, And many a dapper chorister, Their ush'ring vergers, here likewise Their canons and their chanteries. Of cloister-monks they have enow, Aye, and their abbey-lubbers too; And, if their legend do not lie, They much affect the papacy. And since the last is dead, there's hope Elf Boniface shall next be pope. They have their ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... eleventh century, the Cistercians, and, a few decades later, the Premonstrants sprang up: the former in Burgundy (Citeaux), the latter in a woody country near Laon (Premontre). The order of Carthusians, founded about the year {88} 1084, which commenced with a cloister of anchorites (Carthusia, Chartreuse) in a rugged valley near Grenoble, was the most austere in its practice. A life of solitude and silence in a cell, a spare and meagre diet, a penitential garment of hair, flagellations, and the rigid practices of devotional ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... these men whose names I have somewhat arbitrarily linked, will live. Each sowed in sorrow and reaped in grief. They were tender, kind, gentle, with a capacity for love that passes the love of woman. They were each indifferent to the proprieties, very much as children are. They lived in cloister-like retirement, hidden from the public gaze, or wandered unnoticed and unknown. They founded no schools, delivered no public addresses, and in their own day made small impress on the times. Both were sublimely indifferent to what had been said and done—the term precedent ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... been a very hot day in Rome, as was to be expected at that season; and I had stayed in the cloister in the cool, as my Lord Abbot had bidden me, not knowing whether it would be on that day or another, or, indeed, on any at all, that His Holiness would send for me. I knew that my Lord Abbot had been to the Vatican again and ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... passage through which it guided them, they reached an aperture of irregular roundish shape, about the size, of the cloister window of a convent. They saw at once that it was big enough to allow the passage of their bodies. They saw, too, that it was admitting the sunbeams—admonishing them that it was still ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... greatest stage of all time, and on it placed a lot of little figures, "pigmy minds"—all save one, and he the nearest great, an unworldly person summoned from a cloister, with the vision of genius and the practical incapacity of one who has run away from life, hating men but loving all mankind, eloquent but inarticulate in a large way, incapable of true self expression in his chosen field of political action, so self-centered that he forgot the world's ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... have been made in the sides of the mountain. At A (Fig. 2), on a level with the ground, is seen a great cloister ornamented with a series of bass reliefs representing the principal gods of the Hindoo paradise. The side walls contain large, two-storied halls ornamented with superb sculptures of various divinities. Columns of squat proportions support the ceilings. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various

... black-letter chronicles were written in Latin, and music was scored and hymns were composed, and many a rare manuscript was illuminated in crimson and blue and emerald and gold; and we looked through the fair arches into the cloister-garth where in the green sward a grave lay ever ready to receive the remains of the next brother who should pass away from this little earth to the glory of Paradise. What struck W. V. perhaps most of all was, that in some leafy places these holy houses were so ancient that even ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... from a vase on the mantelpiece, stuck it in the fire and lit the gas, which exploded in its crystal cloister with ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... white, and be a nun like you, Fast with your fasts, not feasting with your feasts; Grieve with your griefs, not grieving at your joys, But not rejoicing; mingle with your rites; Pray and be prayed for; lie before your shrines; Do each low office of your holy house; Walk your dim cloister, and distribute dole To poor sick people, richer in His eyes Who ransomed us, and haler too than I; And treat their loathsome hurts and heal mine own; And so wear out in almsdeed and in prayer The sombre ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... of the convent, the notes of the organ, the clouds of incense, the waxen tapers burning at the feet of the Virgin, the litanies of the nuns,—all this had filled her mind with the poetry of the cloister, and with that mystic and indefinable love which at the first contact with the world was ready to change into a violent passion when it should meet with an object upon which ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... all the activity of a brisk and prosperous town; thereby again giving the strong and satisfying sense of contrast, the sense of eager and every-day cares and pleasures, side by side with these secluded havens of peace, the courts and cloister, where men may yet live a life of gentle thought and quiet contemplation, untroubled, nay, even stimulated, by the presence of a bustling life so near at hand, which yet may not intrude ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... for the cloister life, and for the Romish religion, and he sought, by the aid of divine grace, to attain to the new birth through the Word of God. Speaking of his change of views to a Prussian clergyman, he thus describes his conversion: "Look you, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson

... leader; a son of the wisest and firmest ruler the kingdom has yet acknowledged." It was agreed, therefore, by the people, that he should be invited to come, and a summons was sent from Metz, the then capital of the district, to the cloister at Cologne. Young and brave, pining in uncongenial society, and debarred from the employment of his talents, Charles seized this opportunity of release. Eagerly accepting the invitation, he hastened to return with the messengers, and soon, amidst the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... a strain of wondrous music rising up in cloister dim, Through my life's unwritten measures thou dost steal, a glorious hymn! All the joys of earth and heaven in the singing meet, and flow Richer, sweeter, for the wailing of an undertone of woe. How I linger, how I listen for each mellow note that falls, Clear as chime of angels floating downward ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... gathered herself together though still, it was evident, bewildered. "I don't mean to blame Hugh so much. It was your fault, too, I suppose. You asked for the cloister, I know." ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... large embrace He folds the enchanted hill; then like a god Strides into heaven behind the purple peak. Oh beautiful! In the clear, rayless air, I see the chequered vale mapped far below, The sky-paved streams, the velvet pasture-slopes, The grim, gray cloister whose deep vesper bell Blends at this height with tinkling, homebound herds! I see—but oh, how far!—the blessed town Where Liebhaid dwells. Oh that I were yon star That pricks the West's unbroken foil of gold, Bright as an eye, only to gaze on her! How keen it sparkles o'er the Venusburg! When ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... Intellect has not gone,—the loftiest order of well-trained intellects will never go,—the other way[523]. It is, on the contrary, none but a very shallow wit which errs. Had it confined its speculations to the cloister, or come abroad with sorrow and shame, we should have pitied in silence, and in silence also have lamented. But when it comes insultingly abroad, and sets up a claim to intellectual superiority even while it denies the most sacred truths;—then pity gives way before indignation ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... examination before the Rector with such credit that they were placed at once in the third class—a rare distinction—and Paul indeed at the end of his first half-year had come out top and passed into the second. The friends talked together of the life of the cloister, of the happiness of study amid the practice of holiness and in the presence of God. At the end Peter and Butzbach sought out the Steward and gave him their names: Paul, the brilliant leader of the trio, remained behind in the world, and ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... complex and engaging world in which we live to the love of our comrades in it. Accordingly the third precious interest to be cultivated by the college student is an interest in people. The scholar today is not a being who dwells apart in his cloister, the monk's successor; he is a leader of the thoughts and conduct of men. So the new subjects which stand beside the classics and mathematics of medieval culture are history, economics, ethics, and sociology. Although ...
— Why go to College? an Address • Alice Freeman Palmer

... the reign of the dynasty Tsi, in the first year of the year-naming[E] 'Everlasting Origin,' (Anno Domini 499,) came a Buddhist priest from this kingdom, who bore the cloister name of Roci-schin, that is, Universal Compassion, (Allgemeins Mitleiden: according to King-tscheu it signifies 'an old name,[F]') to the present district of Hukuang, and those surrounding it, who narrated that 'Fusang is about ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... sheets was a plan, carefully drawn and instantly recognizable by a person who knew the ground, of the south aisle and cloisters of St Bertrand's. There were curious signs looking like planetary symbols, and a few Hebrew words in the corners; and in the north-west angle of the cloister was a cross drawn in gold paint. Below the plan were some lines of writing ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James

... the director. For the cloister it is all right but for the street I really think it would be better to do away with it, ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... and sometimes from the Old. It is said they were designed to supply the place of the Greek and Roman theatre, which had been banished from the Church. The plays were written and performed by the clergy. They seem to have first been employed to wile away the dulness of the cloister, but were very soon introduced to the public. Adam and Eve in Paradise, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection were theatrized. The effect could hardly be salutary. The different persons of the Trinity appeared on the stage; on one side of the scene stretched the yawning throat ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... strayed bacchanal October, who hangs her scarlet and wine-colored garlands on cloister and pinnacle, on wall and tower. And gradually the foliage of grove and garden, turns through shade of bluish metallic green, to the mingled splendor of pale gold and beaten bronze and deepest copper, half glowing and half drowned in the low, mellow ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... in blending of illumination from searchlights above; lack of direct illumination on court itself; steam cauldrons, with illumination, incandescent lights, gas torches in small serpent cauldrons, lanterns in arches of the arcade that burn around cloister. ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... is such utterances as these which have sent the sound of his name into all lands, and his words throughout all the world. Every form of human sorrow, doubt, struggle, error, sin; the nun agonising in the cloister; the settler struggling for his life in Transatlantic forests; the pauper shivering over the embers in his hovel, and waiting for kind death; the man of business striving to keep his honour pure amid the temptations of commerce; the prodigal son ...
— David • Charles Kingsley

... Newton, Malebranche, etc. Immanuel Kant was almost the only profound speculative thinker who was decidedly convivial, and given to gulosity, at least at his dinner. Asceticism ordinarily reigns in the cloister and student's bower. The Oxford scholar long ago, as described by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... inhabitants. However, even the oldest inhabitants breathed a deep sigh of relief, when finally they were housed in the brand-new church up beside the college campus, a real stone church, with transepts and painted windows and choir-stalls within, and a cloister and a grand tall tower without. The ramshackle old wooden church had been dear to them, had even remained dear to them after the railroad had laid down its tracks under their very eaves; but they were fretted by the crudely caustic comments of strangers ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... in the cloister Sang to each other; For so many sisters Is there not one brother! Ay, for the partridge, mother! The cat has run away with the partridge! Puss! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... an old man's weakness, And share the deepest secrets of my soul, My wrongs, my fears, my motives, my designs.— When unsuccessful wars, and civil factions Embroil'd the Turkish state, our sultan's father, Great Amurath, at my request, forsook The cloister's ease, resum'd the tott'ring throne, And snatch'd the reins of abdicated pow'r From giddy Mahomet's unskilful hand. This fir'd the youthful king's ambitious breast: He murmurs vengeance, at the name of Cali, And dooms my rash fidelity ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... years ago there dwelt in a cloister a monk named Urban, who was remarkable for his earnest and fervent piety. He was a studious reader of the learned and sacred volumes in the convent library. One day he read in the Epistles of St. Peter the ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... climb the oaks, to swing in the maples, to scale the roofs and the towers and the masts of the vessels. What had I to do with a monkish frock and a whitewashed cell? Ouf! I put my fingers in my ears and ran away whenever my poor mother talked of the cloister. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... cows, sheep, and swine, entangled in an enormous mass, made it impossible to pass that way. Napoleon turned his horse, and took the road to St. Peter's gate. Slowly, and with perfect composure, he rode through Cloister and Burg Streets. Not a muscle of his fane betrayed any uneasiness or embarrassment; it was grave and ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach



Words linked to "Cloister" :   religious belief, court, ring, priory, convent, monastery, isolate, religious residence, surround, cloistral, residence



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