"Austerity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had hitherto, since the death, of my mother, conducted himself towards me with a degree of austerity and rigid discipline not altogether calculated to conciliate my hasty disposition, now relaxed his usual strictness, and ever afterwards proved himself not only a kind parent, but an indulgent and sincere ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... influence of the delicate-looking, strong-willed priest. His zeal and enthusiasm appealed to her love of everything pertaining to mysticism, and he seemed to make the chord of religious poetry, which she possessed in common with every woman, vibrate within her. His austerity, his contempt for every luxury and sensuality, his disdain for the things that usually occupy the thoughts of men, his love of God, his youthful, intolerant inexperience, his scathing words, his inflexible will made Jeanne compare him, in her mind, to the early martyrs; and she, who ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... austerity that since Stuart times has marked relations of House of Commons with royalty Mr. HOGGE is known at Westminster simply as the Member for East Edinburgh, a position he with characteristic modesty accepts. But blood, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... prelates and mercenery generals indulged in every sensuality, turned treachery into a science and violence into an instrument; and sometimes let themselves be intoxicated into mad lust and ferocity, as their subjects were occasionally intoxicated with mad austerity and mysticism; but the excesses of mad vice, like the excesses of mad virtue, lasted only a short time, or lasted only in individual saints or blood-maniacs; and the men of the Renaissance speedily ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... enjoy the fortune Mrs. Owen had been accumulating so long and, from all accounts, by processes hardly less than magical. Mrs. Bassett's humor was not always equal to the strain to which her aunt subjected it. Hallie Bassett had, in fact, little humor of any sort. She viewed life with a certain austerity, and in literature she had fortified herself against the shocks of time. Conduct, she had read, is three fourths of life; and Wordsworth had convinced her that the world is too much with us. Mrs. Bassett discussed nothing so ably as a vague ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... rigor, rigorousness, harshness, exactness, cruelty; seriousness, gravity; violence, intensity, acuteness; austerity, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Amboise was. But of one thing he was certain, the King was a man much maligned and little understood: harsh of word and stern of act, perhaps, but with a great, undreamed wealth of tenderness behind the apparent austerity. Of that the little coat of mail and tinselled mask bore witness. It was wonderful, he told himself, how the yearnings of the human heart found excuse for what the sterner brain condemned; surely that was where the human drew nearest to the divine! This was not alone a master to ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... of a lyric river carry one away.... And one feels like never moving: like plucking to infinity, as one might tear roses to pieces, these white full hours; like clinging forever to this clear teacher in the eternal twilight of this last lesson of austerity ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... door, poised for instant return along the path of duty to the front walk, only waiting to be sure his summons would be obeyed. Stonie was sturdy, freckled, and in possession of Uncle Tucker's big gray eyes, Rose Mary's curled mouth and more than a tinge of Aunt Viney's austerity of manner. ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... alternative. One married, happily or not as the case might be, and took the risk. Or one stayed single, like Harriet, growing a little hard, exchanging slimness for leanness and austerity of figure, flat-chested, thin-voiced. One blossomed and withered, then, or one shriveled up without having flowered. All at once it seemed very terrible to her. She felt as if she had been caught in an inexorable hand that had closed ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... your Eyes shot the haughty Austerity upon me of a right Courtier, your valued minutes had never been disturbed with dilatory Trifles of this nature; but my heart, on dull Consideration of your Merit, had supinely wish'd you Prosperity at a ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... impersonal, almost entomological indeed, in her method; she killed every remark as he made it and pinned it out for examination. In the biological laboratory that was their invincible tone. But she disapproved more and more of her own mental austerity. Here was an experienced man of the world, her friend, who evidently took a great interest in this supreme topic and was willing to give her the benefit of his experiences! Why should not she be at her ease with him? Why should not she ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... combine devotion with amusement in a manner that we shall do well to study if not imitate. For this best agrees with what we gather to have been the custom of Christ himself, who, indeed, never speaks of austerity but to condemn it. If Christianity is to be a living faith, it must penetrate a man's whole life, so that he can no more rid himself of it than he can of his flesh and bones or of his breathing. The Christianity that can be taken up and laid down as if it were a watch or a book is Christianity ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... slew a Pagan champion who challenged the best man amongst the Christians. Returning to his own country he devoted himself to religion, and became Abbot of Glastonbury, but subsequently retired to a cave on the side of a mountain, where he lived a life of great austerity. Once as he was lying in his cell he heard two men out abroad discoursing about Wyn Ab Nudd, and saying that he was king of the Tylwyth or Teg Fairies, and lord of Unknown, whereupon Collen thrusting his head out of his cave ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... they went forth into the daylight. The kindly, familiar place seemed in Matthiette's eyes oppressed and transformed by the austerity of dawn. It was a clear Sunday morning, at the hightide of summer, and she found the world unutterably Sabbatical; only by a vigorous effort could memory connect it with the normal life of yesterday. The cool edges of the woods, vibrant now with multitudinous shrill pipings, the ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... reward of the future. His eloquence and zeal soon melted the haughty resolve of the rebellious but still noble-minded women. Roused to a new sense of power and responsibility, they embraced his rigid rule, and with the enthusiasm of their sex, that never halts midway in reform, became models of austerity. The better to signify to the world the spiritual change wrought in their temper, they migrated from the abode which they had sworn to make the symbol and palladium of their independence, and went to San Sisto, Saint Dominic taking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... been attempted of it. It is said that modern manners are inconsistent with frequenting the theatre: that the late hours of dinners preclude the higher classes from going to it; that the ladies' dresses are soiled by the seats in the boxes, before going to balls. The austerity of principle, in the strictly religious portion of the community, is justly considered as a great bar to dramatic success; as it keeps from the theatre a large part of society, which, from the integrity and purity of its principles, would, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... them to inform Choo Hoo that under certain restrictions travellers would in future be permitted access to the spring in the copse which did not freeze in winter. The besieged emperor somewhat relaxed the austerity of his demeanour at this; another pourparler took place, in the midst of which the fox told the Commission to mention (as if casually) that among others there would be a clause restoring independence to all ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... gradually declined and was replaced by the very different ideal of chivalry. It consisted chiefly of three new elements. The first element was a spirit of gallantry which gave women a wholly new place in the imaginations of men. It was in part a reaction against the extreme austerity of the saints, and this reaction was much intensified after the cessation of the panic which had risen at the close of the tenth century about the approaching end of the world. It was in part produced by the softer and more epicurean civilisation ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... and as wild as the song of a bird, but it was a melody which no bird would adhere to. A theme was repeated again and again. In the middle of trills, grace-notes, runs and catches it recurred with a strange, almost holy, solemnity,—a hushing, slender melody full of austerity and aloofness. There was something in it to set her heart beating. She yearned to it with her ears and her lips. Was it joy, menace, carelessness? She did not know, but this she did know, that however terrible it ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... that neither celibacy nor marriage, study nor warfare, long attracted him. The conditions about him seemed beyond his remedy, and, like many others, he retired from a sinful world to the harshnesses and austerity of a hermit's life. Fasting did for him what it seems to do for all when excess is reached either by self-will or necessity. He became truly a "visionary." "He saw visions and dreamed dreams." His temperament and his religious exercises made ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... with an effort. He was in sore straits, but he saw one last chance. His researches in detective fiction had given him the knowledge that detectives occasionally relaxed their austerity when dealing with a deserving case. Even Gridley Quayle could sometimes be softened by a hard-luck story. Freddie could recall half a dozen times when a detected criminal had been spared by him because he had done it all from the best motives. He determined to throw ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Still as an arctic sea; Light fails; night falls; the wintry moon Glitters; the crocus soon Will ope grey and distracted On earth's austerity: ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... than the Greek stories, and somewhat inferior to them in refinement of thought and delicacy of imagery, these tales partake of the rugged, forceful character of the people among whom they were composed. Yet, with all their austerity and sternness, they are replete with vivid action, and they charm us by their very strength and the lessons which they teach of heroic endurance and the ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... esteemed, and to which our own Society is so much indebted, and which it recognizes here, there, and in every region. He was a source of great edification to me—and to many others of our Society who had come to me from Manila and who were afterward my guests—by his great piety, austerity, eloquence, penitence, and blameless and exemplary life. In this way time passed until September of the year fifteen hundred and ninety-six, when, the division and allotment of the fourteen fathers who had arrived in the previous August having been made, I began to have guests and companions—with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... of the papal chair in the person of Gregory the Great. Of noble descent and of great wealth, which he devoted to religious uses as soon as he became master of it, he had also the characteristics which were held to denote the highest holiness. In austerity, devotion, and imaginative superstition, he, whose known virtue and capacity caused him to be forced into the papal chair, remained a monk to the end of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... many reasons, I think we had better take the medieval method as our model up to a point, and make a certain selection of material for our studies, based upon some relation to general effect, but not necessarily imitating a medieval austerity of rejection, which would be the merest affectation on our part. Upon these principles, and taking somewhat of a middle course, I shall here note a few types of foliage which I think may be useful to you in the work upon ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... Memory of the first Reformers, for having left their Order in that Pickle, and almost at the Mercy of the Laity, after they had been made dependent on the Clergy. If those pious Leaders had understood, or at least consulted Human Nature, they would have known, that strict Lives and Austerity of Manners don't go by Inheritance, and must have foreseen, that as soon as the Zeal of the Reformation should begin to cool both the Clergy and the Laity would relax in their Morals; and consequently, that their Successors, after Two or Three ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... him sending for the tea. She was pretty, and had a certain air of refinement, but it was a dainty prettiness that somehow harmonized with the exotic luxury of the room. This was a different thing from Alice Featherstone's rather stately beauty, which found an appropriate background in the dignified austerity of ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... of speaking and a certain austerity of manner, I used to think that Sir John was in a measure inscrutable. He had such a curt way of ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... the queens of the school, and conceived that by their splendour they threw all the rest into the shade. In less than five minutes they had thus revealed to me their characters, and in less than five minutes I had buckled on a breast-plate of steely indifference, and let down a visor of impassible austerity. ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... an instant, and then replied, "If, Varney, it be indeed true that Foster knows not as yet that the man he saw was Tressilian, I own I were unwilling he should learn what nowise concerns him. He bears himself already with austerity enough, and I wish him not to be judge or privy-councillor in ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... were noted for their excessive pride and pretensions to strict orthodoxy in all outward observances. Abdulmelik ben Salih, who was a well-known general and statesman of the time, was especially renowned for pietism and austerity ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... only within the portals of his home that his real nature disclosed itself. The simple and pathetic pages in which his widow has recorded the story of their married life unfold an almost ideal picture of domestic happiness, unchequered by the faintest glimpse of austerity or gloom. That quiet home was the abode of much content; the sunshine of sweet temper flooded every nook and corner; and although the pervading atmosphere was essentially religious, mirth and laughter ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... him at the end of the year by Governor Don Joan de Silva. The opposition of some was not wanting, although that convent was so desired and applauded. However, that opposition soon ended; and our religious endured it with signal austerity for many days, until the very noble gentleman and master-of-camp, Don Bernardino del Castillo Ribera y Maldonado—a native of Mexico, castellan of the fort, and regidor of the city—together with his very virtuous wife, Dona Maria Enriquez de Cespedes, through the devotion that they bore to our institute ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... silence a moment. There was something in its dignity, its restfulness, its touch of austerity which challenged her. She said abruptly—"I want to speak to you please, Mr. Winnington. ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... one perfect moment, when the serene austerity of his face had given the lie to that of which he was accused, lingered with her, a faint elusive thread of hope which would not leave her, urging, suggesting, combating the hard facts to which he himself ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... transactions with the great the same point was always strenuously laboured. When they imposed penance, they were remarkably indulgent to persons of that rank. But they always made them purchase the remission of corporal austerity by acts of beneficence. They urged their powerful penitents to the enfranchisement of their own slaves, and to the redemption of those which belonged to others; they directed them to the repair of highways, and to the construction ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... such violence before such a judge, to bring forward frivolous and self-contradictory accusations, and then in the same breath to blame me on both charges at once? Is it not a sheer contradiction to object to my wallet and staff on the ground of austerity, to my poems and mirror on the ground of undue levity; to accuse me of parsimony for having only one slave, and of extravagance in having three; to denounce me for my Greek eloquence and my barbarian birth? Awake from your slumber and remember that you are speaking before ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... is described as wearing "a black cap and a black hat, and a red paragon bodice," bordered and looped with different colors. This would appear to have been rather a showy costume for the times. Her freedom from the austerity of Puritan manners, and disregard of conventional decorum in her conversation and conduct, brought her into disrepute; and the tongue of gossip was generally loosened against her. She was charged with witchcraft, and actually ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... was about them a charm, the charm associated with misfortune. I looked upon them as the victims of fatality. The man was very tall and thin, rather stooping, with hair perfectly white, too white for his comparatively youthful physiognomy; and there was in his bearing, and in his person that austerity peculiar to Protestants. The daughter, who was probably twenty-four or twenty-five, was small in stature, and was also very thin, very pale, and she had the air of one who was worn out with utter lassitude. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... mind, and customs of France, and to make it a republic after the manner of the ancients; they sought to establish the dominion of the people; to have magistrates free from pride; citizens free from vice; fraternity of intercourse, simplicity of manners, austerity of character, and the worship of virtue. The symbolical words of the sect may be found in the speeches of all the reporters of the committee, and especially in those of Robespierre and Saint-Just. Liberty and equality for the government of the republic; ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... importance, which marked the ancient dynasty of the French nation. It marks too, in a historical view, the changes of the public feeling which the people of this country have undergone, from the distant period when the towers of Notre Dame rose amidst the austerity of Gothic taste, and were loaded with the riches of Catholic superstition, to that boasted aera, when the loyalty of the French people exhausted the wealth and the genius of the country, to decorate with classic taste the residence of ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Oakhurst. Not but that he was accustomed to a certain frank female admiration; but then it was of the coulisse, and not of the cloister, with which he always persisted in associating Mrs. Decker. To be addressed in this way by an invalid Puritan, a sick saint with the austerity of suffering still clothing her, a woman who had a Bible on the dressing-table, who went to church three times a day, and was devoted to her husband, completely bowled him over. He still held her hands as she ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... perhaps come next. Every one has been influenced by Wordsworth, and it is hard to tell precisely how. A certain innocence, a rugged austerity of joy, a night of the stars, "the silence that is in the lonely hills," something of the cold thrill of dawn, cling to his work and give it a particular address to what is best in us. I do not know that you learn a lesson; you need not—Mill did not—agree with ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be offered on this subject; and yet perhaps the republican spirit was more likely to manifest itself at Bordeaux than at Paris, where the presence and influence of a court had for ages past enervated the independence of character, and enfeebled the austerity of principle that form the basis of patriotism and liberty. The states of Languedoc, and the habits that necessarily result from the administration of a province governed by itself, could not fail to ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... with it a day of general gloom and austerity. The man who has been toiling hard all the week, has been looking towards the Sabbath, not as to a day of rest from labour, and healthy recreation, but as one of grievous tyranny and grinding oppression. The day which his Maker intended as a blessing, man has converted into a curse. Instead ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... 25. Basilian water-sponges. The Basilian order of monks were pledged to austerity; but probably Lamb intended merely a joke upon his friend Basil Montagu's teetotalism (see note in Vol. I. to "Confessions of a Drunkard," a paper quoted in Montagu's Some Enquiries into the Effects of Fermented Liquors). In John Forster's copy of the Last Essays of Elia, in the South Kensington ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... with proper gravity, "I am glad to find that any undue austerity of character—of which, however, I assure you, upon my honor, I never suspected you—has received so invaluable a corrective. Still, it is obvious to remark, that, if the chief effect of this new style of religion is to abate any excessive antipathy which the ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... prospects for the medium term will depend on renewed commitment to responsible monetary and fiscal policies and to the introduction of structural reforms to liberalize markets and promote competition. The new government of Ronald VENETIAAN has begun an austerity program, raised taxes, and attempted to control spending. the exchange rate has responded by stabilizing. The Dutch Government has restarted the aid flow, which will allow Suriname to access international ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... they all lived, was placed at his disposal. These huts were ranged in a square, in the center of which stood a larger building, used as their synagogue. Here John remained nearly a month; and was greatly struck by their religious fervor, the simplicity and austerity of their lives, and the doctrines which they held. He learned that the more rigorous of the sect abstained, altogether, from the use of meat and wine; and that celibacy was strictly enjoined. Those who married did not separate ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... particularly a very frequent inconsistency among men, to frown down unmercifully the very weaknesses which they encourage and of which they derive the benefit. For my part, I hold severely aloof from a degree of austerity as ridiculous in a man as uncharitable in a Christian. And as to that unfortunate conversation which a deplorable chance caused you to hear, and in which my expressions, as it always happens, went far beyond the measure of my thought, it is an offense which I can ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... very presence of the monarch—the tribune intruding with his veto within the chamber of the patrician order. His own establishment was formed upon the English model, and amidst the gayety and ease of Fontainebleau he assumed an air of republican austerity. When the fine ladies of the court would attempt to drag him to the card-table, he shrugged his shoulders with an air of affected contempt for the customs and amusements of the old regime. Meanwhile, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... their pleasures and to comply with the desires of the multitude, as a steersman shifts with the winds. Quitting that loose, remiss, and, in some cases, licentious court of the popular will, he turned those soft and flowery modulations to the austerity of aristocratical and regal rule; but, employing this uprightly and undeviatingly for the country's best interests, he was able generally to lead the people along, with their own will and consent, by persuading and showing them ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... let me add, if thou shalt neither bear fruit nor depart, God will take his name out of thy mouth (Jer 44:26). He will have fruit. And I say further, if thou wilt do neither, yet God in justice and righteousness will still come for fruit. And it will be in vain for thee to count this austerity. He will reap where he hath not sowed, and gather where he hath not strewed (Matt 25:24-26). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... All trembling, the poor fellow passes along the corridor, at the end of which an angel in white takes down particulars as to his name, his class, and so forth, and tells him that he is expected. Entering the Judgment Hall, the Poilu is bewildered by its austerity and splendour. The Good God is at the head, between Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin. All the saints are there, and the Poilu notices particularly the military ones—St. George, St. Hubert, St. Michael, St. Leonard, St. Marcel, St. Charlemagne, St. ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... said, "I'm going to save you two lads, no matter how idiotically you act or talk. I like you, in spite of your ridiculous ascetic airs and your nonsensical assumption of austerity. You can't make me angry nor lose my protection, no matter how rude and chilly you are. If you two don't appreciate the kind of entertainment we are offering you and haven't sense enough and manners enough ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... so, another will be made happier, and your Saviour honored? You may not have it in your power to manifest this "mind of Jesus" on a great scale, by enduring great sacrifices; nor is this required. His denial of self had about it no repulsive austerity; but you can evince its holy influence and sway by innumerable little offices of kindness and good-will; taking a generous interest in the welfare and pursuits of others, or engaging and cooperating in schemes for ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... The dying command of Buddha terrified me: "All things pass away; work out your own salvation diligently!" The words were spoken to comfort and strengthen the bereaved disciples, but to me they sounded as an imprecation, so different is the training of our society from theirs. The loneliness and austerity of the command appalled me; I would not take the first step, and turned back to seek the beautiful things ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... trace of Dodge's spirit—in reality she knew so blindingly much more than the most penetrating critical intellect—caused her to leave the reviews unread. No one else living had understood Pleydon; and when descriptions of his life spoke of the austerity in his later years, his fanatical aversion to women, Linda thought of the brittle glove in ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... man,' answered Sandoz, seating himself more comfortably on the cushions. 'His letter is idiotic. He is just finishing his law studies, and he will inherit his father's practice as a solicitor. You ought to see the style he has already assumed—all the idiotic austerity of a philistine, who has turned over a ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... done was nothing to cry about. I think, my reader, that, even if you were a Scotch minister, you would appear with considerable confidence before your Judge, if you had never done worse than failed to observe a Scotch Fast-day with the Covenanting austerity. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... a boy strong and full of blood. The very discipline that had given a gloomy cast to his mind had given strength and fortitude to his body. He was austere, because austerity was all that he had ever known or had a chance of knowing; but too often austerity is but the dam that holds back the flood of potential passion. Not to know the power which rages behind the barricade is to leave the structure weak for a hapless day ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... without let or hinderance of hostile faiths and warring causes. He did not, as another in his desperate case might have done, make the most of his time by using it for very straightforward love-making. There was a fine austerity in him that denied such a course. Were he an undoomed man his creed and his cause would forbid him to philander; being a doomed man, it could not consort with his honor to act differently. But he was radiantly happy in her constant companionship, ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... those Houses such young women secluded themselves from all society and gave themselves up to the care of the poor and the young. In the more strict and enclosed of those retreats the inmates never came out of doors at all, but wholly sequestered themselves up to a secret life of austerity and prayer. This was the ideal life led in those Houses for religious women. But Teresa soon found out the tremendous mistake she had made in leaving her father's family-fireside for a so-called Religious ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... natural than that Vanna or any other woman should minister to my thirst for information? Men are like that. I pretend to be no better than the rest. She pleased my fastidiousness—that fastidiousness which is the only austerity in ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... her mother's clinging hands Rosa began to repeat the Salve Regina. "Hail, Queen, Mother of mercy. Thou our life, our sweetness, our hope, hail!" Her voice gradually rose and lost more and more of its cool austerity, as though she were intoxicating herself with the sweet beauty of the words, until it became warm and soft and melting as she said, "To Thee we call, to Thee we sigh, as we grieve and weep in this vale of tears." And then passing from the Salve to another ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... were free to come and go as they liked, and to mix with all sorts and conditions of men and women, the case was precisely the opposite for girls. Very especially severe were the restrictions imposed upon the growing daughters of the Duchess Eleanora. Brought up amid all the austerity and fanaticism of the Spanish Court, Eleanora de Toledo viewed woman's early life from the conventual point ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... much to the point: "illam ipsam quam jactant sanitatem non firmitate sed jejunio consequuntur." That is why they so unanimously hate every firmitas, because it bears testimony to a kind of health quite different from theirs; hence their one wish to throw suspicion upon all austerity and terseness, upon all fiery and energetic movement, and upon every full and delicate play of muscles. They have conspired to twist nature and the names of things completely round, and for the future to speak of health only there ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... brought from a mining ditch at great expense, and was of insufficient quantity. In this emergency Mulrady thought of sinking an artesian well on the sunny slope beside his house; not, however, without serious consultation and much objection from his Spanish patron. With great austerity Don Ramon pointed out that this trifling with the entrails of the earth was not only an indignity to Nature almost equal to shaft-sinking and tunneling, but was a disturbance of vested interests. "I and my fathers, ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... classical and ecclesiastical antiquity. In addition to this, literary and theological studies were pursued, and the mysticism of pseudo-Dionysius was cultivated. The life, though simple and self-denying and hard, was not of extreme austerity. There was a division of the monks into two classes, similar to the division in vogue in later time in the West into choir-monks and lay-brothers. The life of the choir-monks was predominantly contemplative, [v.03 p.0470] ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... with a smile, an ex-sinner, he had none of the asperities of austerity, and he professed, with a good deal of distinctness, and without the frown of the ferociously virtuous, a doctrine which may be ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... as a student of the Koran and became early imbued with the quietism of Islam. The cheerfulness and exuberant joy which characterize the poems he wrote before he reached his fortieth year, had bubbled up under the repressions of severe discipline and austerity. But the religion of Mohammed was soon exchanged by him, under the guidance of a famous teacher, for the wider and more transcendental system of Sufism. Within the area of this magnificent scheme, the boldest ever formulated under the name of religion, he found the liberty which his soul ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... was reading intently, Mr. Goodworth was thinking profoundly, the rain was falling inveterately, the fog was thickening dirtily, and the austerity of the severe-looking parlor was hardening apace into its most adamantine Sunday grimness, as Zack was brought to say his lesson at his father's knees. He got through it perfectly again; but his childish manner, during this third trial, altered ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... de la Prov. de Santiago de Mexico, lib. ii. cap. 88 (Brusselas, 1625); Palacios, Des. de Guatemala, p. 40; Garcia, Or. de los Indios, p. 124. To such an extent did the priests of the Algonkin tribes who lived near Manhattan Island carry their austerity, such uncompromising celibates were they, that it is said on authority as old as 1624, that they never so much as partook of food prepared by a married woman. (Doc. Hist. New York, iv. ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... from abroad and by foreign loans. Roughly half of the government's external debt is owed to the US, which is its major source of economic and military aid. The bitter Israeli-Palestinian conflict; difficulties in the high-technology, construction, and tourist sectors; and fiscal austerity in the face of growing inflation led to small declines in GDP in 2001 and 2002. The economy grew at 1% in 2003, with improvements in tourism and foreign direct investment. In 2004, rising business and consumer confidence - as well ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... softened her austerity, and she turned away to hide it. "To think," he wondered, "that a sense of humour should inhabit that!" He broke a roll and munched it gloomily, pondering this revelation. "And such humour ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... to be endured by these regiments will be the military lesson of obedience which they must learn before they can be of any service. It always seemed to me, when I came near them, that they had not as yet recognized the necessary austerity of an officer's duty. Their idea of a captain was the stage idea of a leader of dramatic banditti—a man to be followed and obeyed as a leader, but to be obeyed with that free and easy obedience which is accorded to the reigning chief of the forty thieves. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... moonlight! 'Tis a fine spectacle, apart from all its indissoluble associations of awe and beauty. The mitigating hour softens the austerity of a mountain landscape magnificent in outline, however harsh and severe in detail; and, while it retains all its sublimity, removes much of the savage sternness of the strange and unrivaled scene. A fortified city, almost surrounded by ravines, and rising in the center of chains of far-spreading ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... dear," said Lady Mountjoy, in her most austere voice. She had a voice which could assume austerity when she knew her power to be in the ascendant. As Florence entered the room Miss Abbott left it by a door on the other side. "Take that chair, Florence. I want to have a few minutes' conversation with you." Then Florence sat down. "When a young lady is thinking of being ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... thy rites, Though dark Thibet, that dread ascetic, falls In strange austerity, whose trance appalls, Before thee, and a suppliant on thee calls. Continue still thy silence high and sure, That something beyond fleeting may endure — Something that shall forevermore allure Imagination on to mystic flights Wherein alone no ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... former has its foundation in the scene which is present, while the latter hovers betwixt recollection and hope. Let me not be understood as affirming that everything flows in one unvarying strain of wailing and complaint, and that the voice of melancholy is always loudly heard. As the austerity of tragedy was not incompatible with the joyous views of the Greeks, so that romantic poetry whose origin I have been describing, can assume every tone, even that of the liveliest joy; but still it will always, in some indescribable way, bear traces of the source ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... see, not Dr. Pound, who preached it, but my father, who practised and embodied it. I loved him, but he made of righteousness a stern and terrible thing implying not joy, but punishment, the, suppression rather than the expansion of aspirations. His religion seemed woven all of austerity, contained no shining threads to catch my eye. Dreams, to him, were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... have made some general observations on the Christmas festivities of England, and am tempted to illustrate them by some anecdotes of a Christmas passed in the country; in perusing which I would most courteously invite my reader to lay aside the austerity of wisdom, and to put on that genuine holiday spirit which is tolerant of folly, and anxious ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... at the time pay any particular attention to the latter part of the king's discourse, for, indeed, the beginning was far more interesting to me; but when I afterwards learnt that madame Louise had quitted the grandeurs of Versailles for the gloom and austerity of a convent I recollected it, and easily comprehended that it was spoken in allusion to an event which took place some time afterwards, and of which I shall speak in its proper place. However, the king's prediction was exactly verified; and the report in general circulation ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... clumsily for one of these brown cylinders now, neglecting to remove his glance of gloating austerity from ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... outrage was plain enough to Hale's inexperience now. Yet he could not understand the cool acquiescence of his fellow-passengers, and was furious. His reflections were interrupted by a voice which seemed to come from a greater distance. He fancied it was even softer in tone, as if a certain austerity ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... distance. Inside, a ray of sunlight stretched across the polished floor, and gleams of brightness rested on the rows of books and somber paneling. Brantholme was old, but modern art had added comfort and toned down its austerity; and George, fresh from the northern snow peaks, was conscious of its ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... only consisted of the military and sacred dances, and the scenes in the circus. With the advent of the arts of Greece the austerity hitherto practised by the Romans, which had arisen, says Duray, "Much more from poverty than conviction," for "Two or three generations had sufficed to change a city which had only known meagre festivities and rustic delights into the home ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... mind, and he joined to it the obstinacy of a stupid man; the abbe undertook to persuade him that he was in love with the marquise. It was not a difficult matter. We have described the impression made upon the chevalier by the first sight of Madame de Ganges; but, owing beforehand the reputation of austerity that his sister-in-law had acquired, he had not the remotest idea of paying court to her. Yielding, indeed, to the influence which she exercised upon all who came in contact with her, the chevalier had remained her devoted servant; and the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... but it certainly lends some support to Mrs. Gaskell's statements that he had begun already, at two-and-twenty, to be an anxiety to his family. Haworth, that schooled his sisters to a high and beautiful austerity, ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... her younger sister, under the domestic rule of her mother, had reached the age of eight-and-twenty. Youth mitigated the graceless effect which her likeness to her mother sometimes gave to her features, but maternal austerity had endowed her with two great qualities which made up for everything. She was patient and gentle. Mademoiselle Augustine, who was but just eighteen, was not like either her father or her mother. She was ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... frightened," she asserted; adding, with a touch of the austerity which was her Puritan birthright: "Nor quite so conscienceless as ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... and by simple facts averred, How with Geneura stood his suit, avows; And how, engaged by writing and by word, She swore she would not be another's spouse. How, if to him the Scottish king demurred, Virgin austerity she ever vows; And other bridal bond for aye eschewed, To pass her ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... your breast. And already the roses are beginning to pour over the walls; the wistaria is climbing up the cypresses; a pomp of camellias and azaleas is in all the gardens; while in the grassy bays that run up into the hills the primrose banks still keep their sweet austerity, and the triumph of spring over the just banished winter is still sharp ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... engrossing Heaven by way of Monopoly to their own Corporation, and managing it by a joint Stock, exclusive of all others (as pernicious in Divinity as in trade, and perhaps more) The same Pretences to Miracles, Martyrs, Inspirations, Merits, Mortifications, Revelations, Austerity, Antiquity, &c. (as all Persons conversant with History, or that travel, know to be true) and this cui bono? I think it the Honour of the Reformed Part of the Christian Profession, and the Church of England in particular, that it pretends to ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... man, whose visage is spoiled by a dishonest glance, and demeanor tarnished by an innate vulgarity, is a teacher of foreign languages. He assumes important airs, as teachers generally do and though affecting, in his discourse, a Puritan austerity, few men are more intensely devoted to the pursuit of gain. An adventurer, he had but one purpose in view when he settled in the United States and commenced teaching—to find an heiress. After a fruitless search among his young pupils of the fair sex, he ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... Voltaire himself as a proper object for the persecutions of Geneva. But there was a still deeper root of discrepancy, which we have already pointed out. Rousseau's exaggerated tone was an offence to Voltaire's more just and reasonable spirit; and the feigned austerity of a man whose life and manners he knew assumed in his eyes a disagreeable shade of hypocrisy.[36] Besides these things, he was clearly apprehensive of the storms which Rousseau's extraordinary hardihood had the very natural effect of raising in the circles of authority, though it is true that the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... him—Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over other fields than these.—But how to come out of this condition and actually migrate thither? All that he could think of was to practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... Prince, and, in order to support himself against the Queen-regent, the chief minister, and all the Princes of the blood, formed a cabal of men who all died mad, and whom I never took for conjurers from the first time I knew them. Such were Beaupre, Fontrailles, Fiesque, Montresor, who had the austerity of Cato, but not his sagacity, and M. de Bethune, who obliged M. de Beaufort to make me great overtures, which I received very respectfully, but entered into none. I told Montresor that I was indebted to the Queen for the coadjutorship of Paris, and that ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... requesting the favour of an immediate interview with him. The letter was marked "Private and Confidential," and had been addressed to him at the bank, instead of at home - two unusual circumstances which made him obey the summons with the more alacrity. The senior member of the firm, a man of much austerity of manner, made him gravely welcome, requested him to take a seat, and proceeded to explain the matter in hand in the picked expressions of a veteran man of business. A person, who must remain nameless, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... particulars here related of the convent discipline, were communicated to me by the resident priest. This gentleman was certainly not a prejudiced witness on the side of austerity—for he frankly complained of the lonely life which the rules of the Sisterhood inflicted on him, and unhesitatingly acknowledged that he was anxious for the time when his clerical successor would ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... eyebrows. A little gentleness of manner goes a long way with such young folk as we were all then, when it is seen naturally and easily worn for our sakes, and in sympathy with our accustomed glee, by one who in his ordinary deportment may have added the austerity of religion to the venerableness of old age. Smiles from old Laurence Logan, the Seceder, were like rare sun-glimpses in the gloom—and made the hush of his house pleasant as a more cheerful place; for through the restraint laid on reverent youth by feeling akin to fear, the heart ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... existence,—feeling their way into the harshest or saddest meditations, with looks that defy calamity; relaxing muscles made rigid with pain; hovering o'er the couch of sickness, with sunshine and laughter in their beneficent faces; softening the austerity of thoughts whose awful shadows dim and darken the brain,—loosening the gripe of Misery as it tugs at the heart-strings! Let us court the society of these gamesome, and genial, and sportive, and sparkling beings,—whom ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... royal state and went to live in the jungle, and among the lowest and most unhappy classes, so as to learn the secret of human pain and misery by personal experience: tested every known austerity of the Hindu ascetics and excelled them all in his power of endurance: sounded every depth of woe in search of the means to alleviate it: and at last came out victorious, and showed the world the ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... usual stoutness, possessed all the agility and perseverance of the Indian character. His carriage was dignified, his eye penetrating, his countenance, which even in death, betrayed the indications of a lofty spirit, rather of the sterner cast. Had he not possessed a certain austerity of manners, he could never have controlled the wayward passions of those who followed him to battle. He was of a silent habit; but when his eloquence became roused into action by the reiterated encroachments of the Americans, ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... Such austerity had hitherto been unknown to English saints, and the marvel was increased by the sight—to our notions so revolting—of the innumerable vermin with which the hair-cloth abounded—boiling over with them, as one account describes ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... turned voluptuary. There was also a sag at the corners. His flesh hinted of grossness, especially so in the eagle-like aquiline nose that must once have been like the other's, but that had lost the austerity ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... burst from the bystanders—"A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!" It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown culprit what he came there for, and whom he was seeking? The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neighbours, who used to keep ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... impurity and strengthlessness of multitudes of creatures who arrogantly boast that they are civilised—he was too angry for that. He was only conscious that a vain and impertinent echo of the town had, by his instrumentality, found its way into and vilified the secret refuge of God's austerity. Tearing back the bolts from the storehouse door and lifting the latch, he rushed ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... Beginners of a Nation, 123-132.] prevailing immoralities and extravagances were more bitterly reprobated in books, sermons, and parliamentary statutes; and Puritanism took on that unlovely aspect of exaggerated austerity which characterized its most conspicuous ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... licentiousness which was spreading throughout the Church as well as lay society, two illustrious monks, St. Bernard and St. Norbert, not only went preaching everywhere reformation of morals, but labored at and succeeded in establishing for monastic life a system of strict discipline and severe austerity. Lastly, it was the period when, in the laic world, was created and developed the most splendid fact of the middle ages, knighthood, that noble soaring of imaginations and souls towards the ideal of Christian virtue and soldierly ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the old vaulted chambers of the Dominican monastery at Perth echoed with sounds that would seem incongruous in such a home of austerity, but that the disturbed state of Scotland rendered it the habit of her kings to attach their palaces to convents, that they themselves might benefit by the "peace of the Church," which was in general accorded to all ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... that in which the Marchioness of Montespan had lately been dominant. But there was an obvious impropriety in sending him on an embassy rather of a spiritual than of a secular nature to a pontiff of primitive austerity. The Protestants all over Europe sneered; and Innocent, already unfavourably disposed to the English government, considered the compliment which had been paid him, at so much risk and at so heavy a cost, as little better than an affront. The salary of the Ambassador was fixed at a hundred ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was a man of the apparent age of sixty, of rather slight proportions of body, but with a large head, and coarse features, that seemed to be kept almost constantly in play by a lively, flashing countenance, in which meekness and fire, kindness and austerity, were curiously blended. As he seated himself, he turned round and faced the court with a fearless and even scornful air, but promptly rose, at the bidding of the chief judge, to listen to the information, which the clerk proceeded to read ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson |
