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Holy of holies   Listen
Holy of holies

noun
1.
(figurative) something regarded as sacred or inviolable.
2.
(Judaism) sanctuary comprised of the innermost chamber of the Tabernacle in the temple of Solomon where the Ark of the Covenant was kept.  Synonym: sanctum sanctorum.






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"Holy of holies" Quotes from Famous Books



... books of reference as high as hand can reach; the dread tribunal of librarians and keepers in session down yonder, on a kind of judgment-seat, at the end of the avenue whose carpet deadens all footsteps; and behind again, that holy of holies where work the doubly privileged—the men, I imagine, who are members of two or three academies. To right and left of this avenue are rows of tables and armchairs, where scatters, as caprice has chosen and habit consecrated, the learned population of the library. Men form the large majority. ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... deity; tough foundling reared Where every man's his own Melchisedek, How make him reverent of a King of kings? Or Judge self-made, executor of laws By him not first discussed and voted on? For him no tree of knowledge is forbid, Or sweeter if forbid. How save the ark, Or holy of holies, unprofaned a day From his unscrupulous curiosity That handles everything as if to buy, 560 Tossing aside what fabrics delicate Suit not the rough-and-tumble of his ways? What hope for those fine-nerved ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... use of it is the test of a man's life. A very near friend of Dr. Brooks's once heard of a man who said that he knew Dr. Brooks intimately; and this friend said: "No man ought to say that. Not one of us knew Dr. Brooks intimately. There was a central Holy of Holies in his life, into which none of us ever entered." So it was. And this preservation of an inner privacy for the deeper experiences of life is what proves a soul to be peaceful and strong. Guard your soul's individual life. ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... girls, and I made the most of my time. I knew somewhat of the gayety the Winter on the Plains was about to offer. As long as I could I held to the pleasures of the civilized homes and sheltered lives. And with all and all, one sweet girl-face, enshrined in my heart's holy of holies, held me back from idle deception and turned ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... corner of the world. But for us it is sufficiently grave. The Peking-Paotingfu railway is being rapidly destroyed; Fentai station, but six miles from Peking—think of it, only six miles from this Manchu holy of holies—has gone up in flames; a great steel bridge has succumbed to the destroying energy of dynamite. All the European engineers have fled into Peking; and, worst of all, the Boxer banners have been unfurled; and lo and behold, as they floated in the breeze, the four ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... of superstition in man that his heart returns to it with an elastic recoil as often as the openings are restored. Agreeably to this infatuation, the temple of the true God—even its awful adytum—the holy of holies—or the places where the ark of the covenant had rested in its migrations—all were conceived to have an eternal and a self- vindicating sanctity. So thought man: but God himself, though to man's folly pledged ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... she went to bed. His room, with the old-fashioned secretary against the wall, and the stuffed gull on the shelf, and the books in the cupboard, and the polished narwhal horn in the corner, was to her a sort of holy of holies, a place where she was led each evening at nine o'clock, at first by Mrs. Bailey and, later, by Mrs. Hobbs, to shake the hand of the big man who looked at her absently over his spectacles and said good ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... shocked her into a thorough understanding of her own feelings. The grinning fiend of jealousy had swept aside the flimsy veil which she had never before fully lifted; and looking sorrowfully down into the bared holy of holies, she saw standing between the hovering wings of golden cherubim an idol of clay demanding homage, daring the wrath of conscience, the high priest. She saw all now, and saw, too, at the same instant, whither her line of ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... cautions and the cunning of the "Havamal." The first thing enjoined upon a man both by the Norse writer and by the Spanish author is the art of silence. Probably this has been the result of social experience in all countries. "Cautious silence is the holy of holies of worldly wisdom," says Gracian. And he gives many elaborate reasons for this statement, not the least of which is the following: "If you do not declare yourself immediately, you arouse expectation, especially when the importance of your position makes you the object of general attention. Mix ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... also Adam, the Man of the Light, with his three hundred aeons. There also is the Perfect Mind. All these surround a Basket (9) that knows no death. The Ineffable face of the Overseer, who is the Warden of the Holy Place, gazes into the Holy of Holies upon the Boundless One. Now this Warden has faces twain. One is disclosed from the side of the Deep, the other from the side of the Overseer called the Child (or Servant). For there is a Deep [within the ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh

... Nigel, the rain gleaming upon his smiling face, his cheeks flushed with the beating of the wind, his blue eyes shining with tenderness and love. Something held her by the throat, the light of the torches danced up and down; but her strong spirit rose at the thought that others should see that inner holy of holies of her soul. There is a heroism of women to which no valor of man can attain. Her eyes only carried him her message as she held out ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... through the silence of the arid and endless hills, stretching even to the dim peak of Sinai, the whole history of those forty years was unfolded before him, and the mystery of his own ministries revealed to him; and that other Holy of Holies, of which the mountain peaks were the altars, and the mountain clouds the veil, the firmament of his Father's dwelling, opened to him still more brightly and infinitely as he drew nearer his death?—until at last, on the shadeless summit, from him on whom sin was ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... sleep by force; hearken to its voice. The world with its charms has no beauty and holiness whatever, wherefore, then, obey its laws? In John Chrysostom it is said: 'The real shechinah is man!' Shechinah is a Hebrew word and it means the holy of holies. Consequently—" ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... the sanctuary, the "Holy of Holies" of Denderah, where once were treasured images of the gods of Egypt, where only the King or his high priest might venture to come, at the fete of the New Year. They stood in its darkness, this woman who was longing ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... esoteric explanations and profounder mysteries. I have chased Mystery for more years than I shall own, and, so far as I can see, whenever you open the door on her secret chamber, she shuts a door on the other side and is gone into a further holy of holies. I've come to disbelieve in those who tell me that they have caged ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... which answers to our chancel, in all Greek churches is looked upon as the Holy of Holies, shut off from the rest of the building by a screen, called the Iconostat. This is set apart for the priests: laymen may enter, but no woman, not even the Empress, can go into this ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood

... shown everything that we desired to see except the transmission room and the upper conning tower—the twin holy of holies in a commissioned ship—and slipped away, escaping the Captain by a bare two minutes. Which was lucky, as he would probably have had us thrown ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... but serious, disconcerted Pee-wee and chilled his enthusiasm. The very fact that he was summoned into the sitting room seemed ominous for that holy of holies was never used; not more than once or twice in Pee-wee's recollection had his own dusty shoes stood upon that sacred oval-shaped rag carpet. Never before had he found himself within reaching distance of that plush ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... this the purpose of the Creator is revealed. The general interpretation of this verse is that Satan was created as a guard or protector to the throne of the Most High. This is reasonable. Like the golden cherubim, covering the visible mercy seat in the Holy of Holies of the earthly tabernacle, he was created a guard and covering cherub to the heavenly center of Glory. It is expressly stated that he was located by the Most High upon the holy mountain of God, the mountain of God being a symbol of the ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer

... fringe of Bigness's own sanctuary, and now Bibbs reached the roaring holy of holies itself. The car must stop at every crossing while the dark-garbed crowds, enveloped in maelstroms of dust, hurried before it. Magnificent new buildings, already dingy, loomed hundreds of feet above him; newer ones, more magnificent, were rising ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... Sacrament. It is in fact the most sacred of all the ordinances of the Church on earth. There is nothing beyond it—nothing so heavenly, on this side heaven, as this Feast. Nowhere else does the believer approach so near to heaven as when he stands or kneels, as a communicant at this altar, the Holy of Holies ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding

... sins were washed away, and that God would receive me and welcome me as a dear son; and that at any moment, should I be called out of the world, I should be sure of eternal happiness. I also learned another glorious truth, namely, that Christ the great High Priest, who has entered into the Holy of Holies, is now at the right hand of God, and having taken my flesh upon Him, knows all my infirmities, and can be touched by them, having been tempted as I am, and thus acts as my mediator, my intercessor, my advocate; thus ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston

... the holy of holies, were three courts:(1394) the court of the priests; the court of the people, commonly called Atrium Israelis; and, without both these, Atrium Gentium, the court of the heathen, so called, because the heathen, as also many of those who were legally unclean, might not only ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... "Tonight, when it is dark I will torture him." She looked upon his perfect, godlike figure and upon his handsome, smiling face and then she steeled her heart again by thoughts of her love spurned; by religious thoughts that damned the infidel who had desecrated the holy of holies; who had taken from the blood-stained altar of Opar the offering to the Flaming God—and not once but thrice. Three times had Tarzan cheated the god of her fathers. At the thought La paused and knelt at his side. In her hand was a sharp ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... through his logic and psychology; a woman understands Him better through emotions and deeds. It is the men who are concerned about the cubits, the cedar wood, the Urim and Thummim of the Tabernacle; woman walks straight into the Holy of Holies. Men constructed the Cross; women wept for the Crucified. It was a man—a Jew defending his faith in his own supernatural revelation—who tried to ram a sponge of vinegar into the mouth of Christ, dying; it was women who gathered at the sepulchre ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... ducked low and held his square head in his hands as if he feared that the next assault would be on that. But Davis led his associates out of the room through the door which Briggs had flung open, summoned by the crash in his master's holy of holies. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... he says," exclaimed Pan-sat. "It was from that direction that Tarzan-jad-guru was coming when I discovered and trapped him. He was leading his warriors to the very holy of holies." ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... of all, He suffered from God. With hushed breath, we must speak of this. It is the Holy of Holies of the great work on the cross, the impenetrable mystery of the atoning work of the Son of God. From the darkness which enshrouded the cross and the blessed sufferer on the accursed tree, there came the mournful cry: "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" It made ...
— The Work Of Christ - Past, Present and Future • A. C. Gaebelein

... about her,—a divinity which made it almost a profanity to have talked about her at all to such a one as Dolly Longstaff. She was his Holy of Holies, at which vulgar eyes should not even be allowed to gaze. It had been a most unfortunate interview. But this was clear; that, as he had announced his engagement to such a one as Dolly Longstaff, the matter ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... buildings into which he himself may never enter. The halls of kings owe their magnificence to him; but he has no enjoyment of them in their splendor. In the temple he draws a partition line between himself and the Holy of Holies; he may never more set his foot upon the steps which he has laid down for the heart-thrilling ceremonial, as the goldsmith may only adore from far off the monstrance whose enamel and whose jewels he has himself ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... see for weeping, as he removed the child's hands, and took from his bosom, unviolated, the Holy of Holies; and he thought he looked more like an angel now, sleeping the martyr's slumber, than he did when living scarcely an hour before. Quadratus himself bore him to the cemetery of Callistus, where he was buried amidst the ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... a Babylonian temple was not very unlike those of Canaan or of Solomon. The image of the god stood in the innermost shrine, the Holy of Holies, where also was the mercy-seat, whereon it was believed, as upon a throne, the deity was accustomed to descend at certain times of the year. In the little temple of Balawat, near Nineveh, discovered by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, the mercy-seat was shaped like an ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce

... ivy in honor of Bacchus, the god of wine, and offered incense to the idols; and the worst of all these was the false high priest, Menelaus, who led the King Antiochus into the Temple itself, even into the Holy of Holies, and told him all that would most desecrate it and grieve the Jews. So a little altar to the Roman god Jupiter was set up on the top of the great brazen altar of burnt offerings, a hog was offered up, and broth of its flesh sprinkled everywhere in the Temple; then all the precious vessels ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... respects the Copperheads are right. The holy war loses its holiness in the hands of Lincoln, Seward, Halleck, and their disciples and followers, because those leaders violate all the laws of logic and of reason, this holy of holies. At times I would prefer peace than see devoted men so ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... like the origin of their traditions, they afterward forgot. In subsequent rabbinical writings it became Shem, the Name; Shemhammephoresh, the Revealed Name, uttered but once a year, on the day of Atonement, by the high priest in the Holy of Holies. Mention of it by anyone else was deemed a capital offence, though, permissibly, it might be rendered El Shaddai, the Almighty. That term the Septuagint translated into [Greek: ho Kyrios], a Greek form, in the singular, of the ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... She seemed to forget the church and all who were gathered there to witness her happiness, and the soft, dark eyes looked straight before her to the altar, where her husband to be awaited her, as though that altar was to her as the entrance to the holy of holies; as, indeed, it was. ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... a long moment he and I sat again involved in the emptiness of the universe that Tristan's love song had opened for us, and I knew that with ruthless feet I had entered his Holy of Holies and was being allowed ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... opening of this ministry in the most holy place of the heavenly temple. He saw thrones of judgment set up. He saw the moving throne of the Almighty, with its wheels of naming glory, take its position for the final work of our High Priest in the holy of holies above: ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer

... pictures of the temple of Seti, for Monny had an apparatus for natural colour photography which gave sensational results in ancient wall-paintings—when any one except Monny herself did the taking. It was better still in the Seven Chapels, the holy of holies at Abydos, and in the joy of my first colour photography I forgot the doom ahead. Appropriately, the sword I had hung up over my own cranium descended in the Necropolis, at that place of tombs called Umm el-Ka'ab, "Mother of Pots." Nobody wanted to see ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... to look upon the earthen vessels wherein his rice is boiled implies the necessity of a summary smash of the infected crockery; and his kitchen is his holy of holies. When he eats, the company keep silence; and when he is full, they return fervent thanks to the gods who have conducted him safely through a complexity of dangers;—a grain of rice, falling from his lips, might have poisoned his dinner; a stain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... worship as yet in the dark, as in the exquisite dark, like faith, of the Holy of Holies ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... not do for the Lord?' he cried; 'what shall we not do for the Holy of Holies? Why is it that His hand is heavy upon us? Why is it that we have not freed this land, even as Judith freed Bethulia? Behold, we have looked for peace but no good came, and for a time of health, and behold trouble! Why is this, I say? Truly, brothers, it is ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... was a dainty affair of muslin blinds and bed-hangings. To Benjamin it was a holy of holies dedicated to the sweet, the lovely, the inscrutable. All the feminine gear lying around, the little pots of powder and ointment, the strange medicaments for the hair, the mirrors, the row of little shoes, the bits of jewellery lying on ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... nebulous, and there she was frankly puzzled. She could not vision God. Here, in the daguerreotype, was the concrete; much she had grasped from it, and always there seemed an infinite more to grasp. She did not go to church. This was her high altar and holy of holies. She came to it in trouble, in loneliness, for counsel, divination, end comfort. In so far as she found herself different from the girls of her acquaintance, she quested here to try to identify ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... what would the party say about the disestablishment of the Church? Even a party must draw the line somewhere. It was bad to sacrifice things mundane; but this thing was the very Holy of Holies! Was nothing to be conserved by a Conservative party? What if Mr. Daubeny were to explain some day to the electors of East Barsetshire that an hereditary peerage was an absurdity? What if in some rural ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... queen and her acolytes; about 10,000 cells wherein the eggs repose, 15,000 or 16,000 chambers tenanted by larvae, 40,000 dwellings inhabited by white nymphs to whom thousands of nurses minister.* And finally, in the holy of holies of these partss are the three, four, six, or twelve sealed palaces, vast in size compared with the others, where the adolescent princesses lie who await their hour, wrapped in a kind of shroud, all of them motionless and pale, and ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... power to his existence. Her influence pervaded his every thought and feeling, and while it made his life upon earth so full and perfect, it allied him to Heaven; and thus he held her in his house and heart as the Holy of holies. ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... with a very large and magnificent cupola, into which the Gentiles do not bring any image or effigy, but they merely come there to pray. In front of this place is the western wall, which is one of the walls of the Holy of Holies. This is called the Gate of Mercy, and thither come all the Jews to pray before the wall of the court of the Temple. In Jerusalem, attached to the palace which belonged to Solomon, are the stables built by him, forming a very ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela

... the ineffable Name" cried Joseph Eskapha, his old Master. "What! Shall thy unconsecrated lips pollute the sacred letters that even in the time of Israel's glory only the High Priest might breathe in the Holy of Holies ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... that stands out sharply in the men God used. It was this, a man's inner personal life and experience were made use of to an unusual degree. It is as though the sacred inner life were sacrificed. The holy privacies were laid bare to the public gaze. The sweets of the inner holy of holies of the personal life were given up. The people were so far God-hardened that only acted preaching, lived messages, that took it out of one's very life, with pain in ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... people inundate their unfortunate victims with such "weak, washy, everlasting floods"? Why will they haul everything out into the open day? Why will they make the Holy of Holies common and unclean? Why will they be so ineffably stupid as not to see that there is that which speech profanes? Why will they lower their drag-nets into the unfathomable waters, in the vain attempt to bring up your pearls and gems, whose lustre ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... shown you my Holy of Holies, but we will never speak of it again. You know my sorrow, and we will understand each other without words. I have learned to be thankful for the unexpected blessings which come into my life, of which your companionship is one. You will always be welcome ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... half-active state of mind must have had a powerful effect upon the imagination and conscience. The meeting-house was no holy building, but the Sabbath day was a holy day, and was the most comprehensive symbol of the Puritan faith. It was what the altar is in the Catholic Church, the holy of holies, about which the whole movement of religious worship gathered. Whatever disturbed the profound stillness of the day was seized upon by the law as sacrilegious; and never, perhaps, has there been a religion which succeeded so completely in investing ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder

... were on the first floor, and Henry was conducted thither and shown into Witherspoon's private apartment—into the calico, bombazine, hardware and universal nick-nack holy of holies. The room was not fitted up for show, but for business. Its furniture consisted mainly of a roll-top desk, a stamp with its handle sticking up like the tail of an excited cat, a dingy carpet and several ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read

... eye could not have detected a grain of snobbery in him. At Inverary he would not let Boswell call before dinner lest it should look like fishing for an invitation; and when he dined there the next day and sat next the Duke, he did not refrain, even in that Whig holy of holies, from chaffing about one of the Campbells who "had been bred a violent Whig but afterwards kept better company and became a Tory"! So once, when he dined at Bowood with Lord Shelburne he refused to repeat a story at the request of his host, saying that he would ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey

... that he trembled upon the threshold of such a search. He was like the neophyte of some veiled religion, who, after long years of arduous labour and painful preparation, is at length conducted to the doors of its holy of holies, and left to enter there alone. What will he find beyond them? The secret he longed to learn, the seal and confirmation of his hard-won faith, or empty, baulking nothingness? Would the goddess herself, ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... symbolical rites and ceremonies of secret orders; the secrets of the Ancient Alchemists; the Rosicrucians; the Free Masons; the Hermetics; their initiation rites and ceremonies explained; what is meant by the "Holy of Holies?" by the "secret chamber;" and the degree of "mastership;" the sexual significance of the symbolism of the "templars;" the red rose on the cross; the star and the crescent; what is the inner meaning of "the radiant ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... allegory, to grub among the dust and sticks and straws of the floor. In the times of the French Revolution, French soldiers, it is said, stabled their horses in some of the magnificent cathedrals of France; but some of us are guilty of a far worse sacrilege in that holy of holies which we call the soul. "Ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold," but with blood, precious blood, even the blood of Christ. And the soul which cost that, we are ready to sell any day in the open market ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson

... take even Lawrence into the holy of holies until he had obtained permission from Edestone to do so. Having by telephone communicated with him, and receiving his permission, he conducted Lawrence up into the bow of the ship. After passing through several heavy doors, which ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... velvet and came into a chamber of black marble where nothing stirred. Only one taper burned in the third chamber; there were no windows. On the smooth floor and under the smooth wall a silk pavilion stood with its curtains drawn close together: this was the holy of holies of that ominous place, its inner mystery. One on each side of it dark figures crouched, either of men or women or cloaked stone, or of beasts trained to be silent. When the awful stillness of the mystery was more than he ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... with linen;"—the former, with instruments of destruction; the latter, with writing materials. They step (the scene is in the temple) by the side of the brazen altar. Thither there comes to them out of the holy of holies, to the threshold of the temple, the glory of the Lord, and gives to Him who is clothed with linen the commission to preserve the faithful, while the others receive a commission to destroy the ungodly, without mercy. But now, Who is the man clothed in linen? None other than the Angel ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... among the Greeks, so constantly associated with a mouse? The very name, Smintheus, by which his favourite priest calls on him in the 'Iliad' (i. 39), might be rendered 'Mouse Apollo,' or 'Apollo, Lord of Mice.' As we shall see later, mice lived beneath the altar, and were fed in the holy of holies of the god, and an image of a mouse was placed beside or upon his sacred tripod. The ancients were puzzled by these things, and, as will be shown, accounted for them by 'mouse-stories,' [Greek], so styled by Eustathius, the mediaeval interpreter of Homer. Following our usual ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... beautiful, as the manifestation of the infinite in the finite, shows the problem of philosophy, the identity of the real and the ideal, solved in sensuous appearance. Art is the true organon and warrant of philosophy; she opens up to philosophy the holy of holies, is for philosophy the supreme thing, the revelation of all mysteries. Poesy and philosophy (the aesthetic intuition of the artist and the intellectual intuition of the thinker) are most intimately related; they were united in the old ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... sitting there in front of her, with his left hand on his knee, looking in her face, and speaking in such an honest, manly way, she was restrained from exposing to him a phase of her life that would seem folly to him while it was a very holy of holies to her. The alternative ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... meaning of the One have to be presented to it. And it is this, as Eucken shows, which has been partially accomplished by the religions of the world. Their founders were personalities who had scaled the heights towards the "holy of holies" of the One; they descended into the plains to reveal what they had seen and heard and experienced on the heights. They had been able to commune with the Alone, and their natures had been completely transformed. In passing thus ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones

... seemed to leave its long, fiery trace behind it in its passage through the heavens. The soul of the spectator was filled with the sense of its beauty, whilst admiration was sublimed into awe. Speaking to us strange and wonderful things of the hidden Holy of Holies which it seemed to have left, it passed on its headlong journey of billions and trillions of miles with the glad speed of a love-inspired emanation from the Most High. It left us to wonder at its transient visit, and to wish ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... without being predestined for their solution by the loftiness and power of his spirituality. Of what use is it for nimble, everyday intellects, or clumsy, honest mechanics and empiricists to press, in their plebeian ambition, close to such problems, and as it were into this "holy of holies"—as so often happens nowadays! But coarse feet must never tread upon such carpets: this is provided for in the primary law of things; the doors remain closed to those intruders, though they may dash ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... a glimpse into the Holy of Holies," said another student, in relating his experience in ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... nemore opacam concessit: secutus Moses, conjectura herbidi soli, largas aquarum venas aperit." (Hist. v. 3). Tacitus is infinitely more offensive, and, certainly, most untruthful, when he says that the Jews "kept for worship in their holy of holies the image of an ass, as the animal by whose guidance they had slaked their thirst and brought their wanderings to a happy sequel": "effigiem animalis, quo monstrante errorem sitimque depulerant, penetrali sacravere." ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... and were only overcome after a seige of three months. Pompey explored the temple, examined the golden vessels, the table of shew bread, and the candlesticks in their places, but was surprised to find the Holy of Holies empty, there being no representation of a deity. He reverently refrained from touching the gold, the spices, and the money that he saw, and ordered the place to be cleansed and purified that service might be resumed.] had established many cities, and had organized the ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... acquiescence; the knot of men bowed quickly and stiffly; and Max found himself being led across the bare, sawdust-strewn floor into an inner and larger room—a holy of holies—where the light was dimmer and the ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... thee not; And why? it is not lessened—but thy mind, Expanded by the Genius of the spot, Has grown colossal, and can only find A fit[524] abode wherein appear enshrined Thy hopes of Immortality—and thou Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined See thy God face to face, as thou dost now His Holy of Holies—nor be blasted by ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... side, should hold her peace about the man's wife. A man must be very degraded indeed if his wife be not holy to him. Lord George had been driving his wife almost mad during the last twenty-four hours by implied accusations, and yet she was to him the very holy of holies. All the Popenjoy question was as nothing to him in comparison with the sanctity of her name. And now, weak as he was, incapable as he would have been, under any other condition of mind, of extricating ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... seclusion still speak the men of old. It is peopled with a long procession of saints and sages, mariners and merchants, scholars and poets, now of the church triumphant: memories that consecrate the souls of men and banish ignoble thoughts. Here is an altar sacred to hosts of men and women, the holy of holies ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer

... a close unwholesome smell. Time and neglect have made the once-white ceiling like a huge map, in which black and swollen rivers and tangled mountain ranges are struggling for pre-eminence. Melancholy, decay, and desolation are on all sides. The holy of holies, where the profane vulgar could not tread, but which was sacred to the venerable gowned figures who cozily took it in turns to dispense justice and to plead, is now open to any passer-by. Where the public were permitted to listen is bare and shabby as a well-plucked ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... matted room, forty-two feet long by twenty-seven feet deep, with an antechamber at each end. The chapel and the antechambers are all very profusely decorated with pictures on the walls, with carved panels and painted ceilings. The Holy of Holies of this temple is accessible to the public only by special permit. It is composed of three chambers, and here Japanese Buddhist art is exhibited in its perfection,—a blaze of gold and color, with its elaborate ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... to see things right," he replied, choking a little over this unveiling of his holy of holies; "but I don't seem to be able to see some things ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham

... which it stood was the Holy Mountain; the city itself was the Holy City; the courts of the temple were the Holy Place, the temple itself was the Most Holy Place, whilst the inner sanctuary, in which God's glory appeared, was the Holy of Holies. ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton

... first to jubilantly welcome him to France, the first to joyously leave these Tuileries, this royal palace, the grandeur of which frightens me, and in the walls of which it always seems to me as though I were a criminal adorning herself with stolen property, and stretching out her hands toward the holy of holies. And yet I am innocent of this outrage; my conscience is clear, and I am able to say that King Louis XVIII. has no more devoted, faithful, and obedient subject than the wife of the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... appropriate in degree to those whose intellectual accomplishment rises no further than an ordinary story: but there is an inner meaning which the more advanced can appreciate. There is yet an esoteric meaning, a holy of holies, into which only the initiated and instructed can penetrate, and this only those whose spiritual vision is unfolded can discern. "Only those in whom the spirit is evolved can understand the spiritual meaning."[27] But each stage has its ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... were alone together—the dark-eyed girl of my boyhood vision, deep-shrined in the boy-heart's holy of holies, and I who had waited for her coming. It was the hour of golden sunset and long twilight afterglow on the glistening Flat Rock waters and the green prairies beyond ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... awe as she discovered that the soul of her lover was filled with religious ecstasy. She felt that the place whereon she stood was holy ground, and reverently awaited the emergence of the worshiper from the holy of holies into which ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... continued with a malicious snarl, "but the Earth man shall suffer for the indignities he has put upon the holy of holies, nor shall any vileness be too vile to inflict upon his princess. Would that it were in my power to force him to witness the humiliation and degradation ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... difference of religious and political systems, but simply to numerical preponderance. But this preponderance itself grew out of a difference of systems. We have said before, and it cannot be said too often, that in making Canada a citadel of the state religion—a holy of holies of exclusive Roman Catholic orthodoxy,—the clerical monitors of the Crown robbed their country of a trans-Atlantic empire. New France could not grow with a priest on guard at the gate to let in none but such as pleased him. One of the ablest of Canadian governors, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... its measurements are singularly in unison with some of the most ancient temples in Upper Egypt. It consisted of a propylaeon, a temple, and a sanctuary; called respectively the Porch, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. Yet in some respects, if the measurements are correct, the Temple must rather have resembled the form of a simple ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... of the sanctuary in heaven; and he saw there the "seven lamps of fire" and the "golden altar," represented by the golden candlestick and the altar of incense in the sanctuary on earth. Again, "the temple of God was opened,"(676) and he looked within the inner veil, upon the holy of holies. Here he beheld "the ark of His testament," represented by the sacred chest constructed by Moses to contain the ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... solemn occasions does he make himself manifest by action. When he does, the other three yield to his authority, and then we say the man 'speaks with his whole soul' and 'from the bottom of his heart.' But even now the Shekinah is upon the mercy-seat within the Holy of holies, and the ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead

... thinking of sins, and, to show this, he says that Gabriel came to tell him that his prayer was heard, and that there were only seventy weeks to wait, after which the people would be freed from iniquity, sin would have an end, and the Redeemer, the Holy of Holies, would bring eternal justice, not ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... us Christians. We are servants of the Lord—His priests. That we 'stand in the House of the Lord' expresses not only the fact of our great privilege of confiding approach to Him and communion with Him, whereby we may ever abide in the very Holy of Holies and be in the secret place of the Most High, even while we are busy in the world, but it also points to our duty of ministering; for the word 'stand' is employed to designate the attendance of the priests in their office, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... we are all aware, the Jewish Temple was divided into three parts: the Outer Court, open to all; the Holy Place, to which the ministering priests had daily access to burn incense and trim the lamps; and the Holy of Holies, where only the High Priest was permitted to go, and that but once a year, on the great Day of Atonement. For the other three hundred and sixty-four days the shrine lay silent, untrodden, dark. Between it and the less sacred Holy Place hung the veil, whose heavy folds only one man was ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... to him: (1) that it was men's duty to bow to altars as to the throne of the Great God; (2) that the Eucharist was the host and held corporeal presence therein; (3) that there was in the Church a distinction between holy places and a Holy of holies; (4) that the canons and constitutions of the Church were to be ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer

... we shall see Him as He is and be like Him. The Glory which the Father has given Him as the head of the body will be bestowed upon the whole body; for thus He prayed "the Glory, which thou hast given me I have given to them" (John xvii:22). And in the Father's house where He is, in the Holy of Holies we shall behold His Glory. We shall be changed into the same image "that He might be the first born among ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein

... needed the quiet hours in the upper room, and therefore sent away the two with directions which revealed nothing to the others. If He had told the group where the house was, the last supper might never have been instituted, nor the precious farewell words, the holy of holies of John's Gospel, ever been spoken. Jesus takes precautions to delay the Cross. He takes none to escape it, but rather sets Himself in these last days to bring it near. The variety in His action means no change in His mind, but both modes are equally ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Arizona, the Dos S Ranch was the worst. The earth lay bare and desolate before it; the woodpile had disappeared; the bucket was thrown down the well. Never had the flat, mud buildings seemed so deserted or Tommy so tragic in his welcome. The pasture gate was down and even that holy of holies, the branding corral, stunk of sheep. Only the padlocked house had been respected, and that perforce, since nothing short of a sledgehammer could break its ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... morning, in the heart of nature, thousands of miles away from telegraphs and railroads, where the brilliant-feathered birds dipped lightly into the unruffled stream, the place seemed like a sanctuary, a holy of holies, pure, immaculate, and undefiled. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... to clean up, an old woman clasped me to her bosom, and I was bidden to enter. New Year festivities were for the nonce neglected for the novel delight of gazing upon the inner domesticity of this traveling wonder, into his very holy of holies. I received nine invitations to dinner. I dined with mine host and ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... like a column of monks marching with dimmed flambeau of their worship. Angled metal monks of some god of metal, carrying tapers of electric fire, withdrawing slowly from a Holy of Holies whose metallically divine Occupant knew nothing ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... will sound a hard saying to very many, for there are few who have fulfilled these conditions for knowing the best. It must seem to them that I am practically saying to them, "You can never now enter into the holy of holies." Yet I cannot alter what I have said, however acute may be my sympathy with those who have stumbled. I believe it is true, and no good ever came of hiding the truth. It is because it is true that I have such confident hope for mankind. Men and women do in their hearts want ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray

... Paul further largely interprets the ordinances of the Mosaic Law. Thus, the provision that the High-priest alone should enter, once a year, into the Holy of Holies, not without blood, he interprets as follows;—"the HOLY GHOST this signifying,"—("the HOLY GHOST this signifying!)—that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first Tabernacle was yet standing[467]." He explains ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... had been elected in his second term. At that time there were four members; but these were all leaving Oxford at the end of the summer term, and there seemed to be in the ranks of the Bullingdon and the Loder no one quite eligible for the Junta, that holy of holies. Thus it was that the Duke inaugurated in solitude his second year of membership. From time to time, he proposed and seconded a few candidates, after "sounding" them as to whether they were willing to join. But always, when election evening—the last Tuesday of term—drew ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... could summon up sufficient courage to enter this Holy of Holies armed with my colours and brushes. Indeed I only started on this venture after a long spell of hard work, out-of-doors as well as in the studio, and after having made many studies from the nude, and many more still-life studies; then a light broke ...
— Rembrandt • Josef Israels

... had appeared a glass vase filled with flowers which were daily renewed. Except on certain solemn occasions, none intruded into this holy of holies. It is true that a change had been brought about by the arrival of Patricia Hamilton, for she had been accorded permission to use the study as she wished, and she it was who had ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace

... embodied in rhythmic speech. They moved me more profoundly even than the suppressed feeling of his awe-struck prayers, [136] or the fluent fervor of his pulpit addresses; for they raised the veil, and admitted one into his Holy of holies. At other times, literary or artistic themes, the newest poem, novel, picture, concert, came up for discussion; and as these ladies were verse-writers, essayists, critics, and lovers of beauty in all forms, the conversations called out the rich genius and ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... work of scarlet, blue and purple. As usual in our own day the Jewish women were allowed to give generously, work untiringly and beg eloquently to build altars and Tabernacles to the Lord, to embroider slippers and make flowing robes for the priesthood, but they could not enter the holy of holies or take any ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... by this condition; nay, is not even our earthly bliss, which is a foretaste of heaven, only a flower raised upon the rottenness of other flowers—a type of the soul as it issues from corruption? Yes, Aminadab could not get to the holy of holies except by passing through Logie kirkyard, a small and most romantic Golgotha, on the left of the road leading to Lochee, whose inhabitants it contained, and which was so limited and crowded, that one might prefigure ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... enjoy the Beatific Vision of God—are sent to a place of purgation, where, in the crucible of suffering, the lighter stains of their souls are thoroughly removed, and they themselves are gradually prepared to enter the Holy of Holies —where nothing defiled ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... would not even come out to his meals, and fed solitarily in his holy of holies from a tray covered with a white napkin. Our steward used to bend an ironic glance at the perfectly empty plates he was bringing out from there. This grief for his home, which overcomes so many married seamen, did not deprive Captain MacW- of his legitimate appetite. In fact, the ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... Testament, like the Nuschua of the Jewish rabbis, took the place of the holy of holies as the tabernacle of their God and the pledge of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... appointed by Herod, for to them was intrusted large civil as well as religious authority. The one duty which the high priests could not neglect, unless prevented by illness, was to perform the sacrifice in behalf of the people and to enter the Holy of Holies on the day of atonement. Frequently he also offered the sacrifice or presided at the special services on the sabbath, the new moons, or at the great annual festivals. Otherwise the temple duties were performed ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... receiving small coins from the worshippers, who then pass on to the front of the altar to pray. The high altar, and indeed all that I should regard as properly the temple, are protected by a screen of coarsely-netted iron wire. This holy of holies is full of shrines and gods, gigantic candlesticks, colossal lotuses of gilded silver, offerings, lamps, lacquer, litany books, gongs, drums, bells, and all the mysterious symbols of a faith which is a system of morals and metaphysics to the ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... sought. The philosophies excogitated by the insulated intellect help nothing toward even a glimpse of these secrets. In one of his later poems, that entitled 'House', he has intimated, and forcibly intimated, his sense of the impossibility of penetrating to the Holy of Holies of this wondrous human heart, though assured as he is that all our hopes in regard to the soul's destiny are warmed and cherished by what radiates thence. He quotes, in the last stanza of this poem, from Wordsworth's sonnet on the Sonnet, "With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... pointing upward on the altar! But these thoughts of consecration, though true to the time, are false to the whole. There needs no consecration to the wise heart for all is pervaded by One Spirit, and the Soul of all existence is the Holy of Holies. I thought ages would pass, before I had this parent feeling, and then, that the desire would rise from my fulness of being. But now it springs up in my poverty and sadness. I am well aware that I ought not to be so happy. I do ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... dear, old-fashioned Swedish church, with its low white stone walls and its high black roof. The bell had no quaintly-formed tower of its own outside and quite separate from the sacred edifice, like an ecclesiastical functionary whose own soul has never entered into the Holy of holies. No; the parish of Kulleby had its pride in a great new wooden sanctuary, with nothing about its exterior, from foundation to belfry, that might not be seen in any Protestant land whatever. Crowning the top of a green hill that rose in the midst of a wide stretch of rolling meadows stood the ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker

... man? But I didn't wear that diving-dress all the time. I made 'em rig me up a sort of holy of holies, and a deuce of a time I had too, making them understand what it was I wanted them to do. That indeed was the great difficulty—making them understand my wishes. I couldn't let myself down by talking their lingo badly—even ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... of the public that watches the comings and goings of the Street is the conviction that Standard Oil is the holy of holies among stocks. The world has been taught to believe that the owners of Standard Oil regard the shares of the great oil corporation as their most precious, most sacred possessions. Yet while "Standard Oil" has been so scientifically spreading abroad the impression ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... humility, spiritual light, and merit. But from the arrogant, the selfish, and spiritually proud, shall all things be taken away, and truth shroud herself in the veil of delusion. In simplicity of mind, then, and purity of soul, approach the Holy of Holies. "Suffer little children to come unto Me," saith a messenger of the Most High, "for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." Verily, therefore, I say unto you, that not until you can look upon all the works of Nature—beauty ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... court closely crowded together, yet when prostrated there was a wide space between each of them (Rashi says about four ells), so that they could not hear each other's confession, which might have caused them to blush. They had, however, when prostrated, to extend eleven ells behind the Holy of Holies. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... in the Indian and Hebrew religions, the two generating principles throughout Nature represent the Infinite, the Holy of Holies, the Elohim or Aleim—the Ieue. Within the records of the earliest religions of Ethiopia or Arabia, Chaldea, Assyria, and Babylonia, is revealed the same monad principle in the Deity. This monad conception, or dual unity, ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... cooking pot. Here we are, all eyes, like potatoes in the cooking pot aforesaid, trying to peep through a slit where the lid is raised a few inches, ad hoc, as these blasted politicians like to say. My Staff are not with me in this holy of holies, but are stowed away in steel towers or ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... determined on by the will of the president, who announced at the hour of separation when they were to reassemble, and as, since his niece's arrival, Kearney had almost totally forgotten his old associates, the club-room ceased to be regarded as the holy of holies, and was occasionally used by the landlord for the reception of such visitors as he deemed worthy of ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... learn. She's a holy of holies. But I promised to say nothing further about her, and I haven't. I was talking about your Speaker of the House ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... perhaps with the hope of obtaining one of those brilliant revenges which please all women, even the noblest and least worldly,—for may we not believe that even the angels retain some portion of their self-love as they gather in serried ranks before the Holy of Holies? ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... enables some of our very best writers—Mrs. Browning, for instance—to impart, by sonnets and in various vehicles of prose and verse, to the curious and all-devouring public those secrets from the heart's holy of holies that one would hardly confess to a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... follower—all who attain the point of unfoldment at which the Answer is alone possible, must experience that awful feeling of "aloneness" and spiritual hunger, and frightful remoteness from all that the world values, before the Answer comes from Within—from the Holy of Holies ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... introduction of a Giaour into the sanctuary, for Mme. de Bargeton's salon was a kind of holy of holies in a society that kept itself unspotted from the world. The only outsider intimate there was the bishop; the prefect was admitted twice or thrice in a year, the receiver-general was never received at all; Mme. de Bargeton would go to concerts and "at homes" at his house, but she never accepted ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... such their religion, and such their law. But as to our country and our race, as long as the well-compacted structure of our Church and State, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple,[20] shall stand inviolate on the brow of the British Sion,—as long as the British monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the state, shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... land, because he spake the words, 'Hear now, ye rebels; shall we bring you forth water out of this rock?' And yet he murmured not. Art thou more worthy than Aaron, unto whom I showed greater honor than unto any created being, for I sent the angels themselves out of the Holy of Holies when he entered the place? Yet when his two sons ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... carries the most Holy Sacrament and the holy oils. A levite accompanies him, carrying a lamp and ringing a bell. Unmindful of the inclemency of the weather, they move on through the abandoned streets, now filled by crowds of unseen angels, who take the place of man and honor the Holy of Holies. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly



Words linked to "Holy of holies" :   tabernacle, sanctuary, Judaism, sacredness, sanctum sanctorum



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