"Penitential" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Bible tell us their own transgressions, under the direction of the Spirit of God; a thing writers in general are very shy about. Moses tells us how he spake unadvisedly with his lips, and was punished for it. David's penitential psalms record the bitter tears he wept over his transgression; tears which could not wash out the sentence against the man after God's own heart—the sword shall never depart from thy house. An overburdened people, a rotten court, a falling empire, continual strife, a family ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... look of Morning Prayer. This is no longer called Matins, and no longer begins as before with the Lord's Prayer. An Introduction has been prefixed to the office consisting of a collection of sentences from Holy Scripture, all of them of a penitential character, and besides these of an Exhortation, a Confession, and an Absolution. There can be little doubt that this opportunity for making public acknowledgment of sin and hearing the declaration of God's willingness to forgive, was meant to counterbalance ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... those days. People brought their dinners and had a general penitential gorge. Instrumental music was proscribed, as per Amos fifth chapter and twenty-third verse, and the length of prayer was measured by the physical endurance ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... the domino copied from the penitential sack, departed for the Opera House, leaving Gustavus to follow. Yet, despite the measure of precaution, no sooner had the masked King himself entered the crowded theatre, leaning upon the arm of the Count of Essen, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... century," says Masden, "or from the beginning of the sixth, the custom prevailed in Spain of the infirm, when so heavily afflicted as to be in danger of death, piously assuming the tonsure and the penitential habit, and engaging to continue both through life, if God raised them up. As the use of this penance became common enough to throw discredit on the piety of all who did not thus undertake it, if the sick or dying man was unable to demand the habit, his relations or friends ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... the two cousins breathed a penitential sigh, dropped her bare, jewelled arms out of her ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... penitential court, and the court of archives shall be established in the place of residence ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... passionate fervour born of her clerical ancestry and her consequent belief in the inherent viciousness of unconverted man. Moreover, her inherited notions of conversion included spiritual writhings and physical night-sweats and penitential tears by way of its accomplishment. According to the creed of all the Parson Wheelers since the Puritan migration, one became a Christian rather violently, and not by leisurely unfolding. It had been to her the greatest of all reliefs since ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... insists on a treatment vigorously succinct for each in particular. I myself, it suddenly strikes me, must have been the chief offender against this reasonable law: but my offences were committed in pure ignorance and inattention, faults which henceforth I shall guard against with a penitential earnestness. Reformation meanwhile must begin, I fear, simultaneously with this confession of guilt. It would not be possible (would it?) that, beginning the penitence this month of November, I should postpone the amendment till the next? No, that would ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... is faithfully echoed by the Fathers. Thus St. Clement of Rome,(552) in commenting on the penitential sermons of Noe and the prophet Jonas, says: "We may roam through all the ages of history and learn that the Lord in all generations(553) gave opportunity for penance to all who wished to be converted, ... even though they ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... ye faithful, grinding and hair-splitting band, Work on, in slavish fear, and penitential pain, But daily pray, that thro' this young and prosp'rous land, A system, higher, purer, freer, yet ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... two in point of years, and being mechanically inclined, devotes himself to turning in their sockets the little bobbins which form a balustrade around the top of the pew; but being diverted from this very suddenly by a sharp squeak that calls the attention of his Aunt Joanna, he assumes the penitential air of listener for full five minutes; afterward he relieves himself by constructing a small meeting-house out of the psalm-books and Bible, his Aunt Joanna's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... side street toward a high-walled brick church, and presently they walked side by side up the broad aisle so far that it seemed to Nan as if her aunt were aiming for the chancel itself, and had some public ceremony in view, of a penitential nature. They were by no means early, and the girl was disagreeably aware of a little rustle of eagerness and curiosity as she took her seat, and was glad to have fairly gained the shelter of the high-backed pew as she bent ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... [Footnote 114: The penitential jurisprudence was continually improved by the canons of the councils. But as many cases were still left to the discretion of the bishops, they occasionally published, after the example of the Roman Praetor, the rules of discipline ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... that gives me a right to speak and offer my testimony against ideas which I think wholly unwarranted by the facts in the case. The views of modern philosophers, attacking the sanctity of Christian marriage, are to me perfectly abhorrent. Deprive marriage of its mystical, sacramental, penitential character, and it ceases to be the bulwark of a well-ordered society. I must again call upon St. John Chrysostom to speak for me. He says: 'Marriage is one of the most surprising mysteries, by reason of the sublime character which belongs to it, of representing the ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... bear unto the stricken solace sweet As water to the wounded, and to be A strength and an assurance to the weak. Ay! life, like matter, is atomic, and Man blows unto the winds what multiplied Makes up the universe. This radiant earth, Which, in its penitential moods the heart Feels were a paradise if guilt were not, Sprung from the womb of space, in perfectness Co-equal with the fairest orb that holds Vice-royalty in heaven for the sun; Form, substance, seeming, and that vivid charm Which is the soul of matter like in each. Mind differs ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... music and great threnes Idolatrous, as on soft gorgeous wings, If Time's least kiss had subtly disallowed Their beauty's sacred unisons?—Fair things Desire their revel-raiment be their shroud. Yet, fierce insurgent, cease vain wars to wage! Art thou so pure as to decline, forsooth, These penitential usages of age That expiate proud cruelties of youth, And bring thee to the last and perfect art, To love the lovely with ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... this catastrophe approached with penitential looks. They had nothing to say, nor had we. They bent down slowly, and touched our feet with both hands. "Ku kuata moendo"—"to catch the foot"—is their way of asking forgiveness. It was so like what we have seen a little child do—try to bring a dish unbidden to its papa, and ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... Hastings looked blindly about for support, and Mr. Frothingham and Antoinette flew to her side. In that moment the lady had seen herself, prophetically, in black samite and her parrot bonnet, set adrift in the penitential airship ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... thought, with the not acutely painful kind of remorse we lay upon the penitential altar for our own shortcomings, "that he doesn't realize how I'm shirking and letting him do all the pulling." And to him she said, "If you could have seen into my mind while Janet was here, you'd give me up ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... thousand darts, and they could not build up the breaches of the crumbling wall. As day was added to day, the despair grew ever deeper. In every street might be met long processions of monks bearing crosses and chanting penitential psalms and prayers, while in the house-doors women wailed to Christ for mercy, and held to their breasts the children which must so soon be given to death, or torn from them ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... immediately about the house had once been cleared of its trees, the decayed stumps of which were half concealed by the new growth that had been suffered to repair the ravage wrought by the ax. Apparently the man's zeal for agriculture had burned with a failing flame, expiring in penitential ashes. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... goods, imprisonment of their persons, and the sacrifice of their lives,—"not loving their lives unto the death." All these tribulations, however, could not separate them from the love of God. (Rom. viii. 37-39.) They had "washed their robes,"—not in penitential tears, their own martyr-blood, their doing or suffering in the cause of Christ; but their robes were "made white in the blood of the Lamb," who was "made of God unto them ... justification and sanctification." (1 Cor. i. 30.) Could the human mind conceive ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... darkness feels a hand Thrill with its touch his own, and his cheek fanned By odors subtly sweet, and whispers near Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose but hear, So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting low The wail of David's penitential woe, Before him still the old temptation came, And mocked him with the motion and the shame Of such desires that, shuddering, he abhorred Himself; and, crying mightily to the Lord To free his soul and cast the demon out, Smote with his staff the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... ruled it another twelvemonth, there would have been never a bit of discipline left. There's none so much now. Sister Roberga had better look out. If she gives me many more pert answers, she'll find herself barred into the penitential cell on bread ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... incredible suffering and dangers, we next find her carrying on her shoulders the different articles of furniture and utensils necessary for housekeeping, that were needed by Sister Assumption in the House of Providence, already described. Here was truly a mortified, humble, and penitential spirit, such as this fallen world seldom sees. We have before remarked that the House of Providence lasted but one year, after which it was changed into a mission. It was at first situated in the upper town, between the Hotel-Dieu and the Cathedral. ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... this experience, but for purposes of valuation it is of little moment to us whether the dynamic flash came to him in his cell at Wittenberg as he was studying the Epistle to the Romans, or whether it came while he was climbing the penitential stairway in Rome.[7] When all legendary coverings are stripped away we have left an inner event of the first importance, a live idea bursting into consciousness like a new star on the field of vision. By processes much ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... The far east end was lost in obscurity, and we could barely trace the outlines of the splendid roof. Far down, near a confessional, knelt a small group of hooded women, motionless as carven images. Their heads were bowed, their whole attitude betrayed the penitential mood. There might have been eight or ten at most, and they never stirred. But every now and then a fair penitent issued from the confessional box; and, cloaked and hooded, glided back to the seat she had lately occupied, and resumed the penitential attitude. The ceremony was drawing ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... reasoned explanation of her postponement of it. The instinct that led her to keep it wholly to herself, was probably one of the reflections of that morning with Portia. She was still in a penitential mood when she went to the doctor—a mood which the contemplation of Portia's frustrated life and her own undeservedly happy one, had bitten deep into her soul. It was a mood that nothing but pain could satisfy. The only relief ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... for contemning love; Whose high imperious thoughts have punish'd me With bitter fasts, with penitential groans] ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... rising of a particular constellation—as, for instance, that of the Great Bear, or that of the sons of Ishtar; sometimes at the moment when the moon "raised above the earth her luminous crown." On such a date a penitential psalm or a litany was to be recited; at another time it was forbidden to eat of meat either cooked or smoked, to change the body-linen, to wear white garments, to drink medicine, to sacrifice, to put forth an edict, or to drive out in a chariot. Not only at Babylon, but everywhere ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... hair were designed and managed to charm and ensnare amorous beholders. But I did then, and do now consider her, as after she had expressed a visible and sacred sorrow for her sensualities; as after those eyes had wept such a flood of penitential tears as did wash, and that hair had wiped, and she most passionately kissed the feet of her's and our blessed Jesus. And I do now consider, that because she loved much, not only much was forgiven her: but that beside that blessed blessing ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... can we rejoice in Christ, as having been redeemed by Him, if we are in this sort of gloomy penitential state? How much is said in St. Paul about peace, thanksgiving, assurance, comfort, and the like! Old things are passed away; the Jewish law is destroyed; pardon and peace are ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... not religion, it is mythology, for it presents a material image to the mind, and one that can be easily turned into narrative, into a story,—which, in fact, suggests a hero, a king, and a story. Take, again, the so-called "Penitential Psalms." To the specimen given on p. 178, let us add, for greater completeness, ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... bank huge water-wheels, Belted with jars and dripping weeds, Send forth their melancholy moans, As if, in their gray mantles hid, Dead anchorites of the Thebaid Knelt on the shore and told their beads, Beating their breasts with loud appeals And penitential ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... away was the penitent's. The one was for appearance, the other for piety. He used to put into disorder the coverings of the bed, so as to give the impression of having slept in it, while he really slept, or at least took such repose as was necessary to keep him alive, on the penitential laths he had hidden. ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... the war in Spain. But it must not be supposed that social questions were neglected, even in the darkest days of the war, however meagre the legislative fruits may appear. Session after session, Romilly pressed forward reforms of the criminal law, the institution of penitential houses in the nature of reformatories, and the abolition of state lotteries. Others laboured, and with greater success, to remedy the delays and reduce the arrears in the court of chancery. Constant efforts were made to expose defalcations in the revenue, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... from affectation than conviction. When he came upon his death-bed, he expressed remorse for his past life, and discovered at that period, sentiments which he had never before suffered to enter his mind. This penitential behaviour, in the opinion of some, was the occasion why all his brethren neglected him, and did not bestow on his memory one elegiac song, nor any of the rites of verse. We find no encomiums upon him, but what appeared in a Grubstreet Journal, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... Boy fell behind a little. Those places on his heels that had been so badly galled had begun to be troublesome again. Well, it wouldn't do any good to holla about it—the only thing to do was to harden one's foolish feet. But in his heart he felt that all the time-honoured conditions of a penitential journey were being complied with, except on the part of the arch sinner. Ol' Chief seemed to be ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... other, or both. Like the holy religion which she symbolises, her sweet face draws blessing and love wherever it goes; it heals old wounds with its beauty, it carries peace into the heart of discord, it touches murder itself into soft and penitential tears. In reading the old tender-hearted poet, we feel that there is something in a woman's sweetness and forgiveness that the masculine mind cannot fathom; and we adore the hushed step and still countenance of Constance almost ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... here, And go no farther in your cruelty: Send her a penitential garment to put on Next to her delicate skin, and furnish her With ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... of Penitential Desires, Sighs, and Groans of the Wounded Soul. In Two Books, adorned with suitable Cuts. In Verse. With numerous Woodcuts. 12mo. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... the way of his becoming a Creesus. And, in fact, Uncle Jack had believed so heartily in his own project that he had put himself thoroughly into Mr. Peck's power, signed bills, in his own name, to some fabulous amount, and was actually now in the Fleet, whence his penitential and despairing confession was dated, arriving simultaneously with a short letter from Mr. Peck, wherein that respectable printer apprised my father that he had continued, at his own risk, the publication of "The Capitalist" as far as a prudent care for his family would ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... articles necessary to the successful prosecution of his increasing labours. At the termination of one hundred years, consumed in toil and sorrow, Adam having been instructed by the angel Gabriel in a penitential formula by which he might hope yet to conciliate Allah, the justice of Heaven was satisfied, and his repentance was finally accepted by the Most High. The joy of Adam was now as intense as his previous sorrow had been extreme, and another century ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... the names of those are written who are Atheists or very wicked; and a third book, of those whose judgment is suspended till the day of expiation, and whose names are not written in the book of life or death before that day. The first ten days of this month they call the penitential days; and all these days they fast and pray very much, and are very devout, that on the tenth day their sins may be remitted, and their names may be written in the book of life; which day is therefore called the day of expiation. And upon this tenth day, in returning ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... told him he would have to stay there for ten minutes. Then she left the room. At the end of the allotted period, she returned and said, "Time's up, Master Lou: you may come out now." But the little boy stood motionless in his penitential corner. "That's enough: time's up," repeated Cummy. And then the child mystically raised his hand, and with a strange light in his eyes, "Hush...," he said, "I'm telling ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... away—and Lapidoth presently found himself outside of his reverie, considering what the purse would fetch in addition to the sum it contained, and what prospect there was of his being able to get more from his daughter without submitting to adopt a penitential form of life under the eyes of that formidable son. On such a subject his ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... heretical, seeing that it was expressly contrary to Holy Scripture. Whereupon they call upon him to abjure, execrate, and detest these errors and heresies; prohibiting his book and condemning him to confinement, with the penance of reciting once a week, for three years, the seven penitential psalms. And thereupon, this man, Galileo Galilei, of the age of seventy, on his knees, with his hands on ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... greater than ever. It is the penitential season of Lent; some excellent persons renounce all worldly amusements; others, not quite so excellent, and both lots thinking, it may be, no small beer of themselves, we may term the first lot Treble Excellent and the second Double ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... church was rich beyond expression. All that opulent devotion and inventive ingenuity could devise, in wood, bronze, marble, silver, gold, precious jewelry, or blazing sacramental furniture, had been profusely lavished. The penitential tears of centuries had incrusted the whole interior with their glittering stalactites. Divided into five naves, with external rows of chapels, but separated by no screens or partitions, the great temple forming an imposing ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... audacious," laughed Christy; and he was laughing very earnestly, as though the extra cachinnation was assumed for a purpose. "I suppose I ought to dress myself in ash cloth and sashes, shut myself up in my state room always when off duty, and shed penitential tears from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, and during the lone watches of the night, and in fortifying my soul against the monstrous sin of audacity. ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... himself now. It may make some difference in the settlements, perhaps, but he and the lawyers may arrange that. I shan't think of interfering with such a man as Grey. If you could only know, my dear, what I've suffered!" Alice in a penitential tone expressed her sorrow, and then he too assured her that he had forgiven her. "Bless you, my child!" he said, "and make you happy, and good, and—and—and very comfortable." After that he ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... preservation of another yet holier. This act of devotion, so worthy of the true Crusader, recalled from carnage those who had forgotten their vows in the thirst for vengeance, and the whole army, led by the clergy, followed him to the same church in penitential procession. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... sick, he brings relief to him who is mourning for his transgressions, and he brings life out of death and receives the soul committed to his mercy to a blessed dwelling above. Perhaps we pass here somewhat beyond the early period of the religion and touch on its ultimate phase. The penitential hymns of the later literature form a strong contrast to the magical incantations, which fill so much space in the Babylonian sacred literature. The confessions they contain are not very spiritual; the supplicant bewails his sufferings rather than his sins. Indeed, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... dull sloth, and, lashing his sides in a penitential manner with his tail, glided through the opening in the mimosa-bush, bounded into the branches of a neighbouring tree, ran nimbly out to the end of one of them, and leaping with a magnificent spring over a gully, ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... after I left her at the Fort, she should watch me very closely herself, and also have Georgia tell her whenever she should see me do wrong. Consequently, for a while after I reached Sonoma, I was frequently on the penitential bench, and was as often punished for fancied misdoings as for real ones. Yet, I grant that grandma was warranted in being severe the day that she got back from town before ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... told. You remember that when I carried off Mary, I had no intention of leaving England whatever: my object was, after making her my wife, to open negociations with the old colonel, and after the approved routine of penitential letters, imploring forgiveness, and setting forth happiness only wanting his sanction to make it heaven itself, to have thrown ourselves at his feet 'selon les regles,' sobbed, blubbered, blew our noses, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... much question of 'letting' Magda do things, is there?" retorted Lady Arabella. "If she's made up her mind to be penitential—penitential she'll be! I dare say it won't ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... Pelicans. Their elongated bills, and heavy leathern pouches suspended thereto, give them the most lugubrious expression. A pensive race, they stand for hours together without motion. Their dull, ashy plumage imparts an aspect as if they had been powdered over with cinders. A penitential bird, indeed, fitly haunting the shores of the clinkered Encantadas, whereon tormented Job himself might have well sat down ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... responsible for that blunder, which in most countries would certainly have evoked a cry of betrayal, the mainsheet of Nelson's Victory would be all too inadequate as a penitential white sheet and far too ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... for you two, Charles and Mary Lamb! What peace is possible under the curse which even now is gathering against your heads? Is there peace on earth for the lunatic—peace for the parenticide—peace for the girl that, without warning, and without time granted for a penitential cry to heaven, sends her mother to the last audit?" And then, without treachery, speaking bare truth, this prophet of woe might have added—"Thou also, thyself, Charles Lamb, thou in thy proper person, shalt enter the skirts of this dreadful hail-storm; even thou shalt taste the secrets ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... decadence did Tolstoy in his novels. Ibsen is the type of the philosophical anarch, the believer in man's individuality, in the state for the individual, not the individual for the state. It is at least more dignified than the other's flood of confessions, of hysterical self-accusations, of penitential vows, and abundant lack of restraint. Yet no one doubts Tolstoy's repentance. Like Verlaine's it carried ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Cathedral. The warden of the Fleet was there, and the knight marshal, and the tipstaffs, and "all the company they could make," "with bills and glaives;" and in the midst of these armed officials, six men marching in penitential dresses, one carrying a lighted taper five pounds' weight, the others with symbolic fagots, signifying to the lookers-on the fate which their crimes had earned for them, but which this time, in mercy, was remitted. ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... seriously to doubt the young girl's commercial wisdom. But she was firm. Whether she thought her parents a necessity of respectable domesticity, or whether she regarded their presence in the light of a penitential atonement for some previous disregard of them, no one knew. Public ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... procession was a penitential one, and its object to appease my offended deity. But what a mistake, poor things! No one ever regained my favour by making a frump ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... one of their number to perform a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadaloupe. The admiral was chosen. Twice more were lots drawn with a similar object, and once again the lot fell to the admiral. Afterwards, he and all the crew made a vow to go in procession, clothed in penitential garments, to the first church, dedicated to the Virgin, which they should meet with on arriving at land; and this vow, as we shall see presently, was followed ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... countess, whose present aim was to throw the virtue of Wallace off its guard, and to take that by sap, which she found resisted open attack, with a penitential air disappeared by another passage. Edwin's gentle mother was followed by the same youth who had brought Helen's packet to Berwick. It was Walter Hay, anxious to be recognized by his benefactor, to whom his recovered ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... shoulder, and sorely spent. But he saw that it was a desperate case and that all was lost, and no more of his army were coming up to the rescue, because the narrow pass was choked with dead. So he began to sing the penitential psalms in time with ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... because John Wesley preached in this same graveyard when he made an evangelistic tour in Ireland. Although this is only a yearly service, and a commemoration service of one whom the people delight to honor, they made it pretty much a penitential service. There were no seats but what the damp earth afforded, no stand for the officiating minister but a grave; it was not, therefore, a very attentive congregation which he addressed. The speaker, a Mr. Pepper, had emigrated from thence when a lad to America. ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... station made to any peculiar spot remarkable for local sanctity. There, a station means the performance of a pilgrimage to a certain place, under peculiar circumstances, and the going through a stated number of prayers and other penitential ceremonies, for the purpose of wiping out sin in this life, or of relieving the soul of some relation from the pains of purgatory in the other; here, it simply means the coming of the parish priest and his curate to some house in ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... Antecedent Imprisonment and Torture Heretics who were also Criminals Heresy Punished as Such Should the Death Penalty Be Inflicted upon Heretics? The Responsibility of the Church Abuses of the Penalties of Confiscation and Exile The Penitential Character of Imprisonment The Syllabus and the Coercive Power ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... taken at Agincourt; and that, whatever quarrel might arise with France, England should never make peace without holding Normandy. Then, he laid down his head, and asked the attendant priests to chant the penitential psalms. Amid which solemn sounds, on the thirty- first of August, one thousand four hundred and twenty-two, in only the thirty-fourth year of his age and the tenth of his reign, King Henry the ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... felt, in the redoubling of her blissful agony, the material drawing near, as it were, of the blessed Saturday evening; and when Saturday came and mademoiselle's dinner had been hastily served and her work done, she would make her escape and run to Notre-Dame de Lorette, hurrying to the penitential stool as to a lover's rendezvous. Her fingers dipped in holy water and a genuflexion duly made, she would glide over the flags, between the rows of chairs, as softly as a cat steals across a carpeted floor. With bent head, almost crawling, she would ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... those great practical truths, which ought ever to be kept before your mind. You may bring up your sins, and set them in order before you; and discover your easily besetting sins. You may be led to exercise penitential sorrow of heart, and be driven anew to the cross of Christ for pardon, and for strength to subdue indwelling corruption. Whenever you discover that you have exercised any correct feeling, or that your conduct has in any respect been ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... leaf, put on the new man, turn from sin; reclaim; repent in sackcloth and ashes &c, (do penance) 952; learn by experience. Adj. penitent; repenting &c v.; repentant, contrite; conscience- smitten, conscience-stricken; self-accusing, self-convicted. penitential, penitentiary; reclaimed, reborn; not hardened; unhardened^. Adv. mea culpa. Phr. peccavi; erubuit [Lat.]; salva res est [Lat.] [Terence]; Tu l'as voulu [Fr.], Georges Dandin; and wet his grave with my ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... pensive, and forming itself; for it was in the height of these irregularities that Steele composed his "Christian Hero," a moral and religious treatise, which the contritions of every morning dictated, and to which the disorders of every evening added another penitential page. Perhaps the genius of Steele was never so ardent and so pure as at this period; and in his elegant letter to his commander, the celebrated Lord Cutts, he gives an interesting account of the origin of this production, which ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... systems of philosophy have sophisticated the natural sense of guilt by destroying the consciousness of personality. All races of men have shown a feeling of moral delinquency and a corresponding fear. The late C. Loring Brace, in his work entitled "The Unknown God," quotes some striking penitential psalms or prayers offered by the Akkadians of Northern Assyria four ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... was done; except by Time and the outrageous scandal of publicity, it could not be undone. But this weapon he had not used, knowing perfectly well that the idea of public shame would be, just then, a matter of indifference to Elizabeth?-perhaps even a satisfaction to her, as the sting of the penitential whip is a satisfaction to the sinner. All he said was summed up in three ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... days came on, oh, how Katy longed to be in Silverton, to kneel again in its quiet church, and offer up her penitential prayers with the loved ones at home. At last she ventured to ask Wilford if she might go, her spirits rising when he did not refuse her request at ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... sweet the words of peace to hear From him to whom 'tis given To wake the penitential tear, And ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... down before his bed and said, "Sir, be thinking of your soul; it seemeth to us that, saving the divine mercy, you have not more than two hours." The king summoned his confessor with the priests, and asked to have recited to him the penitential psalms. When they came to the twentieth versicle of the Miserere,—Ut oedificentur muri Hierusalem (that the walls of Jerusalem may be built up),—He made them stop. "Ah!" said he, "if God had been pleased to let me live ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... melancholy, aggravated by his weary toils, perilous fightings, and fierce throes, which led him down often into the deep mire where there was no standing; and which sighs through all his life. The penitential Psalms and Paul's wail: 'O wretched man that I am,' perhaps never woke more plaintive echo in any human heart than they did ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... not any lucid and real perception of difficulties, but only a sudden alarmed compunctious consciousness that filled her mind. She fled, as it were, from the circumstances which made these horrors possible, hurrying back into her former attitude with a penitential urgency. Jock, indeed, was very dear to her, but he was no more than second, nay he was but third, in Lady Randolph's heart. Her husband's supremacy he could not touch, and though he had been almost her child in the old days, yet he was not, nor ever would be, her child in the same ineffable ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... early as the time of Hammurabi, and later in Assyria. In the genealogical constructions she was brought into connection, as daughter, wife, or other relation, with any god that the particular conditions suggested. As the Assyrians grew morally she was endowed with all the highest virtues (so in the Penitential Psalms), and occupied so preeminent a position that under favorable circumstances she might perhaps have become the only god ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... Burleigh shall be satisfied," she answered, roguishly. "Really, that's right. Four girls offered to substitute for me in this penitential pilgrimage and write some long translations ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... which he had previously described. Instead of the listlessness of Childe Harold, he is active and enterprising; such as the noble pilgrim would have been, but for the satiety which had relaxed his energies. There is also about him a solemnity different from the animation of the Giaour—a penitential despair arising from a cause undisclosed. The Giaour, though wounded and fettered, and laid in a dungeon, would not have felt as Conrad is supposed to feel in that situation. The following bold and terrific verses, descriptive of the maelstrom agitations of ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... and appointed the 22d of June as the day on which it was to be delivered. Two days previous to this, Galileo was summoned to appear at the holy office; and on the morning of the 21st, he obeyed the summons. On the 22d of June he was clothed in a penitential dress, and conducted to the convent of Minerva, where the Inquisition was assembled to give judgment. A long and elaborate sentence was pronounced, detailing the former proceedings of the Inquisition, and specifying ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... [5962]Nevisanus, lib. 3. Alex. ab Alexandro, lib. 4. cap. 8. Tunstall, Erasmus' tracts in laudem matrimonii &c., and I doubt not but in the end he will rest satisfied, recant with Beroaldus, do penance for his former folly, singing some penitential ditties, desire to be reconciled to the deity of this great god Love, go a pilgrimage to his shrine, offer to his image, sacrifice upon his altar, and be as willing at last to embrace marriage as the rest: There will not be found, I hope, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Jennings, and long before you have read what I have written—he has leaped out of bed—seized—doubled up—and flung the battered bailiff headlong down the narrow stair-case to the bottom. This done, Roger, looking like Don Quixote de la Mancha in his penitential shirt, mounted into bed again, and quietly lay down; wondering, half-sober, at the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... forgiveness which God, in His love and mercy, bestows freely on the faithful. But nothing of this kind, they said, was to be found in the confessional. The conscience was tormented with the enumeration of single sins, and burdened with all sorts of penitential formalities; and it was just with a view that everyone should be drawn to this discipline of the Church, should use it regularly, and should seek for no other way to make his peace with God, that the educational activity of the Church, both with ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... abstinence, spread abroad by the assiduous parasites at that of their maitre d'hotel. Madame Victoire was not indifferent to good living, but she had the most religious scruples respecting dishes of which it was allowable to partake at penitential times. I saw her one day exceedingly tormented by her doubts about a water-fowl, which was often served up to her during Lent. The question to be determined was, whether it was 'maigre' or 'gras'. She consulted a bishop, who happened to be of the party: the prelate immediately assumed the grave ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... conditions—so different from any northern atmosphere. He hated the filth of the much-neglected city, the squalor of its lower classes, the narrowness of its streets, and the peculiar pavement, which, as he says makes walking in Rome a penitential pilgrimage. He goes to the carnival, and his penetrating glance proves it to be a ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... my dear Mistress Alice, as if you were chanting one of the seven penitential psalms; and you, good Doctor, as if ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... remainder of his stay, Corny balanced between joy and his selfishness in being joyful, in a manner sufficiently ludicrous,—breaking out one moment in the most extravagant demonstration, to be twitched from it the next by a penitential spasm. As for Drake, hardly yet clear of the shadows that haunted his fever, he but mistily comprehended the change that was before him; and it will need weeks and perhaps months of home-nursing and watching before body and mind can win back their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... subject to European influences, have probably borrowed their colors from Genoa and the Italian Riviera. In the interior of the country, and especially in Morocco, where the whole color-scheme is much soberer than in Algeria and Tunisia, the color of the native houses is always a penitential shade ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... not you? You are my first remembrance. It was you who told me that was my name. It was you who told me that on every twentieth of December my life had a penitential anniversary in it called a birthday. I suppose the last communication ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... David's penitential prayer Had enter'd God's compassionate ear; And where the angel stood, even there God bade the King ...
— Mother Stories from the Old Testament • Anonymous
... pp. cloth, 5s. Original. Ditto, Two Vols., calf, gilt edges, 9s. Original. The separate Parts may still be had. The Christian Taught by the Church Services. Cloth, 2s. 6d. Original. Ditto ditto, calf, gilt edges, 4s. 6d. Original. The separate Parts may still be had. Penitential Reflections for Days of Fasting and Abstinence. (Tracts for Lent), 6d. Compiled. Rules for the Conduct of Human Life, 1d. Abp. Synge. Ejaculatory Prayers, 2d. A. Cook. Pastoral Address to a Young Communicant, 1/2d. Original. Litanies for Domestic Use, 2d. Compiled. Family Prayers. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... fitfully a moment, little sad remorseful penitential sobs, and died away softly across the prairie as a breath ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... more significant than others of man's relation to Deity in his sense of sin and need for mercy, and as requiring, therefore, peculiar prominence in the total impression the oratorio should convey. If this was his aim, it is all accomplished. The penitential feeling embodied in the song is that which will longest linger in a remembrance of the work. The soft tone of the contralto voice, and the keenness of that of the violin, are accessories to the effect which the master well knew how to handle; ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... glories, the wealth, the beauty of mission joys, before the least cruel echoes of Secularization are heard. The sun of Franciscan and Spanish glory is still mounting the firmament higher and higher. The sky still wears Our Lady's blue [2] and no penitential purple has appeared with the departing rays of sunset, only the royal purple and gold which years before had made the scene a fairylike setting for the heavenset relief ship to San Diego and assured the noble enterprise of the exploration ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... up with anger). But let me only lay hands on that infernal quill-driver! I'll make him skip—be it in this world or the next; if I don't pound him to a jelly, body and soul; if I don't write all the Ten Commandments, the seven Penitential Psalms, the five books of Moses, and the whole of the Prophets upon his rascally hide so distinctly that the blue hieroglyphics shall be legible at the day of judgment—if I don't, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... approached the foreman, he discovered that individual, several degrees less breezy than usual, engaged in an animated conversation with a young man whose prevailing expression was so penitential that Dennis, with prompt Celtic intuition, decided that he was gazing upon ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... ourselves adequate to the task of exposure and condemnation; but, though we do not approve a life of ease and comfort accorded to condemned felons, we unhesitatingly affirm, that in most, if not all cases, the cruel treatment which the convicts underwent, instead of having a penitential influence, only served to harden them in their iniquities; and while they frequently became perfectly callous to the infliction of punishment, they were debased to the incarnation of fiends, merely ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... honors missing, Knows naught of smile, and nod, and sweet hand-kissing, Knows naught of golden promises of kings; Knows naught of coronets, and stars, and strings; In solitude the lovely rebel sighs! But vainly drops the penitential tear— Deaf as the adder to the woman's cries, We suffer not her wail to wound our ear: For food we bid her hopeless children prowl, And with the ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... defaming their pastor. Some went further and wrote and left at his door notice containing coarse and dishonorable remarks. To such an extent had these ideas progressed that some persons attributed the furrows with which penitential works had seamed the brow of the humble priest ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... Robinette, as she tucked her shoeless foot beneath her mud-stained skirt and made herself as comfortable as possible. "I'll even offer a return of confidence upon my own weaknesses, if I can find them, but at present only miles of virtue stretch behind me. Ugh! How the mud smells; quite penitential! Now:— ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... states of man, or with what the Greeks call ethos. And only with Beethoven did it begin to find the language of pathos, of passionate will, and of the dramatic occurrences in the souls of men. Formerly, what people desired was to interpret a mood, a stolid, merry, reverential, or penitential state of mind, by means of music; the object was, by means of a certain striking uniformity of treatment and the prolonged duration of this uniformity, to compel the listener to grasp the meaning of the music and to impose its mood upon him. To all such interpretations of mood or atmosphere, ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... lisse, but it is generally of white. In this country a widow's first mourning dresses are covered almost entirely with crape, a most costly and disagreeable material, easily ruined by the dampness and dust—a sort of penitential and self-mortifying dress, and very ugly and very expensive. There are now, however, other and more agreeable fabrics which also bear the dead black, lustreless look which is alone considered respectful to the dead, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... is which has made the fifty-first Psalm the model of all true penitence for evermore. Penitential prayers in all ages have too often wanted faith in God, and therefore have been too often prayers to avert punishment. This, this—the model of all true penitent prayers—is that of a man who is to be punished, and is content to take his punishment, knowing that he deserves ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... believed, with Desfontaines, who said that he had been drowned, while bathing, at Caen, about half-past two on July 31. The appearance was naked to the waist, his head bare, showing his beautiful yellow locks. He asked Bezuel to learn a school task that had been set him as a penalty, the seven penitential psalms: he described a tree at Caen, where he had cut some words; two years later Bezuel visited it and them; he gave other pieces of information, which were verified, but not a word would he say of heaven, hell, or purgatory; 'he seemed not to hear my questions'. There were two ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... sacrifices, or even by human sacrifices, is repugnant to rather than conformable with natural reason. There exists no discernible connection between the one and the other. We may suppose that eucharistic, penitential, and even deprecatory sacrifices may have originated in the light of nature and reason, but we are unable to account for the practice of piacular sacrifices for substitutional atonement, on the same principle. The ethical principle, that one's own sins are not ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... outbreak of the last French war in America, he returned to New France, a changed and reformed man; an ascetic in his living, and, although a soldier, a monk in the rigor of his penitential observances. His professional skill and daring were conspicuous among the number of gallant officers upon whom Montcalm chiefly relied to assist him in his long and desperate struggle against the ever-increasing forces of the English. From the capture of Chouaguen and the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... be cheerful under the shadow of Sir Wilfrid Spence, was tortured by this conversation. She had half a mind to say, "You don't seem to think how uncomfortable you're making me." But she forbore. Any remark of that sort would rouse Lucia to efforts penitential in their motive, and more painful to bear than this pitiful outburst, the first in many months of patience and reserve. She remembered how Lucia had once nursed her through a long illness in Dresden. It had not been, as Kitty expressed it, "a pretty illness," and she had been distinctly irritable ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... anchorite, and the veins of his forehead began to swell Polykarp felt that his father's visitor was something more than his poor clothing would seem to indicate and that he had hurt his feelings. He had certainly seen some old anchorites, who led a contemplative and penitential life up on the sacred mountain, but it had never occurred to him that a strong youth could be long to the brotherhood of hermits. So he said to him kindly: "Hermas—is that your name? We all use our hands here and labor is no disgrace; what ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... business being urgent, and the presents valuable, he was ushered into the sick-chamber of the dying head of the Christian church. Supported by attendants, the pope proceeded to pronounce, in a feeble voice, the penitential discipline of Clotaire. He said that the king could not expect pardon unless he gave the highest possible satisfaction to the heirs of the murdered man: but here a fit of coughing attacked and carried off his holiness, so that whatever penance he intended to inflict was never ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... first batter their ears, that they may learn to hear with their eyes? Must one clatter like kettledrums and penitential preachers? Or do they only believe ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the toiling ploughman, who "plays full seldom," winning by hard labor what wasteful men destroy; the mediaeval dandy, whose only employment is to exhibit his attire; the hermit, who seeks by solitude and penitential life to win "heaven's rich bliss"; the merchant, who has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... told them that the interior, in its chief hall, represented the heavens. It was a circular apartment surrounded by twenty-two pillars, and everything was painted sky-blue. A portion of this temple is the "Penitential Retreat" of the emperor, where he keeps three days of fasting, meditating over his own sins and those of the government, previous to offering up his sacrifice. Connected with the temple was a band of five hundred musicians, who reside there; ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... electors to assemble, from distant provinces, or even foreign countries; and this is occupied in paying the last tribute of respect and affection to the departed Pontiff. His body is embalmed, clothed in the robes of his office, of the penitential color, and laid on a couch of state within one of the chapels in St. Peter's, so that the faithful may not only see it, but kiss its feet. This last act of reverence to the mortal remains of the immortal Pius VIII., the writer ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... choked by sobs, Barbara pointed out the line. That, at least, was true. The old man raised it to his lips as a monk might raise his crucifix when kneeling in penitential prayer. ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... miracles were to be seen in certain places, as in the heathen times. The happy souls of departed Christians were invoked; it was believed that they were wandering about the world, or haunting their graves. There was a multiplication of temples, altars, and penitential garments. The festival of the purification of the Virgin was invented to remove the uneasiness of heathen converts on account of the loss of their Lupercalia, or feasts of Pan. The worship of images, of fragments of the cross, or bones, nails, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... several writers. In selecting from Mrs. Pilkington, I regret that you omitted (look at p. 255) 'Sorrow,' or at least that you did not abridge it. The first and third paragraph are very affecting. See also 'Expostulation,' p. 258: it reminds me strongly of one of the Penitential Hymns of Burns. The few lines upon St. John the Baptist, by Mrs. Killigrew (vol. ii. p. 6), are pleasing. A beautiful Elegy of Miss Warton (sister to the poets of that name) upon the death of her father, has escaped your notice; nor can I refer you to it. Has the Duchess of Newcastle ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... troop was already moving away, with a slight consciousness that its zeal about the head-gear had been superabundant enough to afford a dispensation from any further demand for penitential offerings. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... remits guilt to no one whom He does not, at the same time, humble in all things and bring into subjection to His vicar, the priest. 8. The penitential canons are imposed only on the living, and, according to them, nothing should be imposed on ...
— Martin Luther's 95 Theses • Martin Luther
... used to designate the Bible or any particular division of it begin with a capital; as, "Holy Writ, The Sacred Book, Holy Book, God's Word, Old Testament, New Testament, Gospel of St. Matthew, Seven Penitential Psalms." ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... Manor-house, at sound of which the tender-hearted baronet and his wife ran out as if to welcome a prince and princess of the blood. They were overjoyed to see their spoilt child return safe and sound—though she was only Mrs. Willowes, wife of Edmond Willowes of nowhere. Barbara burst into penitential tears, and both husband and wife were contrite enough, as well they might be, considering that they had not a guinea ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... which are purely ceremonial, and which probably took a long time to reach the luxuriant growth they have attained in the tablets. For ceremonial offences a ceremonial purification was felt to suffice. But there were others which, as the Babylonian Penitential Psalms testify, were felt to go deeper and to be sins, personal sins of the worshipper against his ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... however, which, as Charley well understood, was intended all in kindness. He told him how Mr. Snape complained of him, how the office books told against him, how the clerks talked, and all Somerset House made stories of his grotesque iniquities. With penitential air Charley listened and promised. Mr. Oldeschole promised also that bygones should be bygones. 'I wonder whether the old cock would lend me a five-pound note! I dare say he would,' said Charley to himself, as he left the office. He abstained, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... the grace of God from his evil ways was moved with a desire to do penance for his sins. Accordingly he sought the counsel of a certain Irish priest, to whom he made a general confession and confided his desire of entering upon a penitential life. So deep was his sorrow that he expressed himself ready to accept any penance his director might impose, even to spending whole nights in prayer, or fasting for a week continuously. The priest having imposed upon him the penance of taking food twice only ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... odours yield In homage, Mighty One! to thee; From herbs and flowers in every field, From fruit on every tree, The balmy dew at morn and even Seems like the penitential tear, Shed only in the sight of heaven— All ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the penitential gates Sustained by staring Seraphim Where the souls of the devout ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... you quite changed. It is scarcely a year since I saw you, and you bear marks of weariness. You stoop like an old man. Look at me, always the same, firm as a rock. "God smites the wicked with many plagues, but he encompasseth with his help those that hope in him." Second penitential psalm. You are not wicked: what plague consumes you? Ambition? Patience, everything will be changed, since your enemy is vanquished. Is it your conscience which is ill at ease? But conscience should be cheerful; that is its true sign. Is it anything ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... discharged from confinement then, and will at once return to your duty," replied Mr. Lowington, upon whom Shuffles did not venture to intrude his extremely penitential story. "To which ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... acceptance because the air was pleasant. The men had been discussing the expected phenomenon, lamenting that the Church should still lend itself to the superstitions of the populace by regarding it as of evil omen, and organizing a penitential procession for the occasion to implore God to avert all ill. Rufinus declared that it was blasphemy against the Almighty to interpret events happening in the course of eternal law and calculable beforehand, as a threatening sign from Him; as though man's deserts ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... being according to the newer creed. As the original and supreme being, God is not only the Creator, but the watchful Judge as well, demanding reverent obedience to the laws of the world in which he has placed man, and imposing sacrifices and penitential observances when his mandates have been disobeyed. As the God of Mercy he is incarnated in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and offered as a vicarious sacrifice for sinners who are thus enabled to escape the penalties they would otherwise have suffered. ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... one's first astonishment to find one's self among the historic places subsides; yet how often, as our horses' hoofs rang on the slippery stones, my thoughts went suddenly back to the scene when Saint Gregory passed over, chanting litanies, at the head of the whole populace, who formed one vast penitential procession, and saw the avenging angel alight on the mausoleum of Adrian and sheath his sword in sign that the plague was stayed; or to that terrible day when the ferocious mercenaries of the Constable de Bourbon and the wretched inhabitants given over to sack and slaughter swarmed across together, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... backslidings which David more keenly scrutinized and more bitterly lamented than any of his censors, because they were necessary, in a measure, that he might be the full-orbed man to utter every form of spiritual feeling. And if the penitential psalms discover the deepest hell of agony, and if they bow the head which utters them, then let us keep those records of the psalmist's grief and despondency as the most precious of his utterances, and sure to be needed by every man who essayeth ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... the Bible. It had been the self-imposed custom of these two young people to read aloud a chapter every night as their one vague formula of literary and religious discipline. When it was produced, Maggie, presuming on his affectionate and penitential condition, suggested that to-night he should pick out "suthin' interestin'." But this unorthodox frivolity was sternly put aside by Jim—albeit, by way of compromise, he agreed to "chance it," i. e., open ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... imprisonment was it coincided, much to his own surprise, with the Jewish Penitential period, and the Day of Atonement came in the middle. A wealthy Jewish philanthropist had organized a prison prayer-service, and Elkan eagerly grasped at the break in the monotony. Several of the prisoners who posed as Jews with this same motive were detected and reprimanded; but Elkan felt, with ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... herself her lesson, and that afterwards, with a swift look around the room to assure herself that she was unobserved, she made a hurried sign of the cross. It occurred to him that this might have followed some penitential prayer of the child, and remembering her tuition by the padres it gave him an idea. He dismissed school a few moments earlier in order that he might speak to her alone ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... who confess the doing of penance, and through the door of reconciliation to admit to the communion of the sacraments those who have been cleansed by a salutary satisfaction." Brose says: "The amount of the penance must be adapted to the trouble of the conscience." Hence divere penitential canons were appointed in the holy Synod of Nice, in accordance with The diversity of satisfactions, Jovinian the heretic, thought, however, that all sins are equal and accordingly did not admit a diversity of satisfactions. Moreover, satisfactions should ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous
... to be had amongst you? Is Dost Mohammed dead?" Upon which rather narrow basis was immediately raised in London a glorious superstructure to the justice of the Dost. Certainly, if the Dost's justice had ever any reference to pedlars, it must have been a nervous affection of penitential panic during some fit of the cholera, and as transient as the measles; his regard for pedlars being notoriously of that kind which tigers bear to shoulders of lamb; and Cabool has since rung with his pillagings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... fathers," he said, "loved good cheer and soft lodging, few miles of riding would carry them to the Priory of Brinxworth, where their quality could not but secure them the most honourable reception; or if they preferred spending a penitential evening, they might turn down yonder wild glade, which would bring them to the hermitage of Copmanhurst, where a pious anchoret would make them sharers for the night of the shelter of his roof and the benefit ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... never be sufficiently stamped with the brand of reprobation. But we must seek carefully to distinguish between the offence and the offender. Nothing should be done on our part, by word or deed, to mock the penitential sighings of a guilty spirit, or send the trembling outcast away, with the despairing feeling of "No hope." "This man receiveth sinners," and shall not we? Does He suffer the veriest dregs of human ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... Tannhaeuser deep, long-untouched chords. At the same moment that the aroused sense of pollution would overwhelm him, the reminder shines forth to him in the pilgrims' words of the possibility of forgiveness and regeneration through repentance and penitential practices. A very miracle of God's grace it seems to him, by which he sees the door of hope open to him anew. The weight of his emotion forces him to his knees; he makes his own the words of the pilgrims wending their way out of sight: "Ah, heavily oppresses me the ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... calming the conscience; the priests in every country possess sovereign secrets for disarming the wrath of Heaven. However true it may be that the anger of Deity is appeased by prayers, by offerings, by sacrifices, by penitential tears, we have no right to say that religion holds in check the irregularities of men; they will first sin, and afterward seek the means to reconcile God. Every religion which expiates, and which promises the remission of crimes, if it restrains any, it encourages the great number to ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... which they had held a solemn service before a statue erected to the Virgin Mary on the shore opposite to the ships. All who were fit to walk went in procession from the fort to the statue, singing penitential psalms and the Litany ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... well-meaning way, will spy out your bachelor life and know every fact of the past. However, Cardot says he means to exert his paternal authority. The poor man will be obliged to do the civil to his wife for some days; a woman made of wood, my dear fellow; Malaga, who has seen her, calls her a penitential scrubber. Cardot is a man of forty; he will be mayor of his district, and perhaps be elected deputy. He is prepared to give in lieu of the hundred thousand francs a nice little house in the Rue Saint-Lazare, with a forecourt ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... authority the writer defends by precedents unnecessary to enumerate here. On the first Sunday in Lent, 1819, its proceedings were commenced at Avignon, by a solemn procession, which made the circuit of the principal streets of the town, singing penitential psalms, and halted on the hill of Notre Dame; where an inaugural sermon was delivered on a spot called Calvary, and supposed to represent that sacred place. The multitude, assembled by curiosity or a better feeling, was so great, that two of the missionaries found it ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... tendril of holy feeling up to height of tower or summit of spire for the great winds to waft onward and upward. God pity the heart that does not involuntary reverence to God's templed places, made sacred a thousand fold by every penitential tear, by every throb of devotion, by every aspiration after the divine existence, from which let down a little while, we wander, for what we know not! God doth not tell, save that it is to "love first Him, Sole and Individual," and then ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... the Penitential Psalms, etc., by Hans Mielich. Vienna, too, can show a magnificent Missal by Georg Hoefnagel, bearing the dates 1582 to 1590. Venice is represented in the work of Benedetto Bordone and the Ducali. Florence in the splendid Missals, etc., ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... encouraged to take a higher and a nobler view of marriage, to overcome their egoism and selfishness, and to practise moderation and self-restraint in the lawful use of marital rights. The Church urges her people to strengthen their self-restraint by observing the penitential seasons, especially Lent; by fasting or by abstaining from flesh meat at other times, if necessary by abstaining from alcohol; and by seeking that supernatural help which comes to those who receive the Sacraments worthily. When all other deterrents fail, it is lawful, according to the teaching ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... mortified, semi-penitential air, that, on the first glance, rather mollified her. Still, however, she was not sufficiently clement to give him the least assistance in opening the conversation, by the suggestions of any of those nice little oily nothings with which ladies, when in a gracious mood, can smooth ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in his power, he was driven into Hippo, which was so strongly fortified that he was able to hold it out a whole year, during which time St. Augustine died, after a long illness. He had caused the seven penitential Psalms to be written out on the walls of his room, and was constantly musing on them. He died, and was buried in peace before the city was taken. Boniface held out for five years altogether before Africa was entirely taken by the Vandals, ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... felicity as erudition; and great must have been that erudition which could form a pretended language and its grammar, and fertile the genius which could invent the history of an unknown people: it is said that the deception was only satisfactorily ascertained by his own penitential confession; he had defied and baffled the most learned.[45] The literary impostor Lauder had much more audacity than ingenuity, and he died contemned by all the world.[46] Ireland's "Shakspeare" served to show that commentators are not blessed, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... had bound their hearts. They knelt and bowed their faces upon the cold sod that covered the sacred dust of their dead. They stretched forth their hands across the little grave, each to the other, and the Angel of God washed all the bitterness of the years from their hearts with a rain of penitential tears, and sent them down life's pathway hand-in-hand, as in the old days when Love was lord of their two lives and the lost babe was cradled upon ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... there was something attractive. Of course, as a matter of prejudice he attended its ceremonials from time to time and found them comfortable and satisfying. Comfortable also were the dogmas of forgiveness to be obtained by an act of penitential confession, and the sense of a great supporting force whose whole weight was at the disposal of ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... of my endurance. Cold and rain together, supervening in that hour of the spirit's default, may well have made me light-headed; nor was it easy to distinguish the tooth of self-reproach from that of genuine hunger. Stiff, qualmish, vacant of body, heart, and brain, I left my penitential boulder and crawled down to the road. Glancing along it for sight or warning of the runners, I spied, at two gunshots' distance or less, a milestone with a splash of white upon it—a draggled placard. Abhorrent thought! Did it announce the price upon the head of Champdivers? "At least I will ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
