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Sackcloth   Listen
Sackcloth

noun
1.
A garment made of coarse sacking; formerly worn as an indication of remorse.
2.
A coarse cloth resembling sacking.



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"Sackcloth" Quotes from Famous Books



... that after I had once or twice pulled off my clothes before her, she was able to dress and undress me; tho I never gave her that trouble when she would let me do either myself. She made me seven shirts, and some other linen, of as fine cloth as could be got, which indeed was coarser than sackcloth; and these she constantly washed for me with her own hands. She was likewise my schoolmistress, to teach me the language: when I pointed to anything, she told me the name of it in her own tongue; so that in a few days I was able to call for whatever I had a mind to. She was very good-natured, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... than it is now. A certain couple having been guilty of illicit intercourse, and also within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity, appeared before the Presbytery of Lanark, and made confession in sackcloth. They were ordered to return to their own session, and to stand at the kirk-door, barefoot and barelegged, from the second bell to the last, and thereafter in the public place of repentance; and, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... guard's van, and, as these trains used to bump and jolt in the most unpleasant manner, we made ourselves as comfortable as we could in a sort of 'zariba' composed of our valises and a number of large packages sewn up in sackcloth. Our feelings when we later on discovered that these packages were corpses may be left to ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... put on the sackcloth and ashes, when the striped bug came at four o'clock A.M., and we watched the tender leaves, and watered night and morning the feeble plants. "I tell you, Polly," said I, uncorking the Bordeaux raspberry vinegar, "there is not a pea here that does ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... Roman civilisation was to be overthrown in the twinkling of an eye. Those who hoped to be of the remnant and to be saved, so as to lead a clarified and heavenly life in the New Jerusalem, must hasten to put on sackcloth and ashes, to fast and to pray, to watch with girded loins for the coming of the kingdom; it was superfluous for them to study the dead past or to take thought for the morrow. The cataclysm was at hand; a new heaven and a new earth—far more worthy of study—would be unrolled ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... Esteem, tho he is ashamed to have it challenged in so publick a Manner. It must be allowed, that any young Fellow that affects to dress and appear genteelly, might with artificial Management save ten Pound a Year; as instead of fine Holland he might mourn in Sackcloth, and in other Particulars be proportionably shabby: But of what great Service would this Sum be to avert any Misfortune, whilst it would leave him deserted by the little good Acquaintance he has, and prevent his gaining any other? As the Appearance of ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... you can't well be dressed plainer than you are, unless you go in sackcloth at once. 'Tis your excitement is what makes you look so ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... persisted, feeding himself prodigiously, "is not the fact, but this savage glee over it. It's as though a lot of caged animals set up a howl of delight every time the cage door was opened and a new pair was introduced into the pen. They ought to perform the wedding ceremony in sackcloth and ashes, after duly fasting, accompanied by a few faithful friends ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... said my master, what sort of an answer you'd have from Pamela. The younger miss said, She never heard of such grave folks in her life, on such an occasion: Why, sir, said she, I hope you'll sing psalms all day, and miss will fast and pray! Such sackcloth and ashes doings, for a wedding, did I never hear of!—She spoke a little spitefully, I thought; and I returned no answer. I shall have enough to do, I reckon, in a while, if I am to answer every one that ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... as unhistorical: considering the poor success the Hebrew prophets had in their own land, such a wholesale conversion of a foreign city, even if such a visit as Jonah's were likely, must be regarded as extremely improbable, to say nothing of the impossibility of the animals fasting and wearing sackcloth, iii. 7, 8. The miraculous fish and the miraculous tree which grew up in a single night forbid us to look for history in the book. Nineveh's fame is a thing of the past, iii. 3; the book is written after, probably long after, its fall in 606 B.C. The lateness of the book and ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... the star under which you were born. That's why. You think a chintz kerchief can conceal the blot of the nobleman from the eyes of the people? We'll recognize a priest even if he's wrapped in sackcloth. Here, for instance, you put your elbows on a wet table, and you started and frowned. Besides, your back is too ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... involved us in with their accursed astronomy. Boccaccio and the Troubadours should have been burned instead, and if this had been done all the abominable modern literature which would persuade the faithful that this world is not all sackcloth and ashes would never have been written. Away with him who says that the earth is as beautiful as heaven," and Gautier's phrase, "Moi, je trouve la terre aussi belle que le ciel, et je pense que la correction de la forme est la vertu," ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... tear; weeping &c v.; flood of tears, fit of crying, lacrimation, lachrymation^, melting mood, weeping and gnashing of teeth. plaintiveness &c adj.; languishment^; condolence &c 915. mourning, weeds, willow, cypress, crape, deep mourning; sackcloth and ashes; lachrymatory^; knell &c 363; deep death song, dirge, coronach^, nenia^, requiem, elegy, epicedium^; threne^; monody, threnody; jeremiad, jeremiade^; ullalulla^. mourner; grumbler &c (discontent) 832; Noobe; Heraclitus. V. lament, mourn, deplore, grieve, weep over; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... marrying me," added Mrs. Yorke, who liked occasionally to crack a dry jest against matrimony, even though it should be at her own expense. "He has repented it in sackcloth and ashes, Robert Moore, as you may well believe when you see his punishment" (here she pointed to her children). "Who would burden themselves with such a set of great, rough lads as those, if they could help it? It is not only bringing ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... long, dark and low-ceiled. The rafters are discolored with smoke, the board-floor with wear, the walls with strings and festoons of onions and native herbs. Ears of maize and great sides of beef and pork hang drying from above. In the dim rear are two pine bed-frames, with spreads of sackcloth and plaid canopies; nearer are sets of shelves lined with trenchers and earthen crockery in formal array, while a wood-fire smoulders on the wide hearth in front between the window-openings, fortified with a primitive crane and kettle of strange designs and ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... leaving Liberty still languishing in chains, and Tyranny still rampant in the high places of the world, to wage no longer a useless war against the irresistible Fates. Happily, with you such moods were of the rarest: you would have been more than mortal had not your soul at times sat in sackcloth and ashes. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... Ginet-moils the next, then Pippins. Let them lie about three weeks, after they are gathered; Then stamp and strain them in the Ordinary way, into a woodden fat that hath a spigot three or four fingers breadth above the bottom. Cover the fat with some hair or sackcloth, to secure it from any thing to fall in, and to keep in some of the Spirits, so to preserve it from dying; but not so much as to make it ferment. When the juyce hath been there twelve hours, draw it by the spigot (the fat inclining that way, as if it were ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby

... village children seemed all at once to have forgotten how to scream and shout, and no sound from the street disturbed me. Even the morning and evening bell rang with a deep, muffled tone, which scarcely stirred the silence. I heard afterward that Jean had swathed the bell in a piece of sackcloth, and that the children had been sent off early ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... in which most of his mighty works had been done, because they changed not their minds. [11:21]Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works which have been done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have changed their minds long ago in sackcloth and ashes. [11:22]But I tell you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in a day of judgment than for you. [11:23]And you, Capernaum, which are exalted even to heaven, shall go down even to hades; for if the mighty works which have been done in you ...
— The New Testament • Various

... still missing. Greatest loss of all—the old flag of the school. It waves over the school no longer. We have doffed the cap and bells, and gone into sackcloth and ashes. Our heart is heavy. We can smile no longer. We can only whistle one tune—the Dead March. Our heart will continue heavy. Our noble frontispiece will never beam again. Our lips will continue to warble ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting

... behold the resurrection without himself entering the grave! Upon a time when he should be perchance at home, or at Damascus, or, it might be, at Jerusalem, the sun would become as blood, the moon as sackcloth of hair, the last trump would swell ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... glee by declaring that I was now a partner in a prosperous undertaking establishment, and that written jokes might go hide their heads in sackcloth ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry

... understood those little attentions of friendship, so superior to costly presents, unhappy being that I am. Why do I thus deceive myself? What is to be the outcome of all this wild, aimless, endless passion? I cannot pray except to her. Oh, Wilhelm, the hermit's cell, his sackcloth and girdle of thorns, would be luxury and indulgence compared with what ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... nothing remarkable about the dress, except her wearing of it. There is a grace of carriage that will make purple of sackcloth. Still, the gown was well cut of fawn-coloured stuff, which her stockings and shoes matched. Her face was generous—proud, too, yet tender and very beautiful. The soft rose of her cheeks, the misty ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... her a hardened little sinner! I abused her like a pickpocket, and called her an ungrateful serpent! Bring some sackcloth and ashes, somebody, quickly! I shall go in mourning for the ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... And taller images, whose history I know not, nor inquired—a scene of blood, Of resignation amid mortal pangs, And other things, exceeding all belief. Hither the aged Opas of Seville Walked slowly, and behind him was a man Barefooted, bruised, dejected, comfortless, In sackcloth; the white ashes on his head Dropped as he smote his breast; he gathered up, Replaced them all, groaned deeply, looked to heaven, And held them, like ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor

... frequent ablutions which the religious rites demanded of the Jews and their freedom from all enervating excesses, bore excellent results in a diminished mortality. Nevertheless, many a victim was hurried to an untimely grave, many a family sat in sackcloth and ashes for a ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... penitent saints serve us as saving beacons to guide our course during the tempest. Many a feeble soul would have suffered shipwreck had it not taken refuge near those tutelary towers where are suspended the memorial deeds of the sainted heroes whose armor was sackcloth, whose watchword the sigh of repentance poured out ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... silk gauze neckties of a tasteful gaiety of tint, which he had at the time thought very well of. But now, as he spread out the whole array on his bed, it seemed too emblematic of a light and blameless spirit for his wear. He ought to put on something as nearly analogous to sackcloth as a modern stock of dry-goods afforded; he ought, at least, to wear the grave materials of his winter costume. But they were really insupportable in this sudden access of summer. Besides, he had grown thin during his sickness, and the things bagged about him. If he were going to see Mrs. Bowen ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... the young doctor to the body, and then back again. At last, with a start, he did as he was bidden. He had almost expected the sight that met his eyes, and yet the shock was cruel. To see, fixed in the rigidity of death and naked on that coarse layer of sackcloth, the man whom he had left well clad and full of meat and sin upon the threshold of a tavern, awoke, even in the thoughtless Fettes, some of the terrors of the conscience. It was a CRAS TIBI which re-echoed in his soul, that two whom he ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

... ASHTON,—We, the undersigned, do regret in sackcloth and ashes our serious misconduct in going away at an improper time, and in an improper manner, on a sleigh-ride, without your ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins

... I give you, grief and dreadful laughter; Sackcloth for banner, ashes in your wine. Go forth, go forth, nor ask me what comes after; The fifth stone shall not ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson

... have more indignantly resented the process than did that small quadruped,—his Celtic feelings being so severely wounded by it, in fact, that he abstained from sustenance for three days, putting himself into moral sackcloth and ashes for that period by retiring into his penitential cell under a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... pierced the eyes. It was a blinding beam of tone, higher and more undulating. His heart harshly ticking like a clock, he viewed, as in a vision, the march of the nations, the crash of falling theocracies, of dying dynasties. On a stony platform, vast and crowded, he knelt in sackcloth and ashes; the heavens thundered over the weeping millions of Nineveh; and the Lord of Hosts would not be appeased. Stretching to the clouds were black, basaltic battlements, and above them reared white terraced palaces, as swans that strain their throats to the sky. ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... Bible needs any description of Oriental mourning for the dead. The rent garments and sackcloth (2 Sam. iii. 31), loud weeping and wailing (ver. 32), protracted lamentation as for Jacob (Gen. 1.10 and 11), and for Moses (Deut. xxxiv. 8), and the hired mourning women (Jer. ix. 17, and Matt. ix. 23), were to be found nowhere in greater perfection than among the Nestorians. It is very ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... hear it," said Maggie judicially. "And I hope now that she'll spend the rest of her days in sackcloth—with a scourge," she added. "Oh, did I tell you about ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... for a seat in the legislative assembly? How many of this description have been detected in their first offence, in their very offset in the career of criminality? How many ever afterwards deplore their errors in sackcloth and ashes, and conduct themselves in the most correct and unexceptionable manner? And shall no distinction be made between them and the still persevering offender whom no inducements can withhold, no punishments deter from the commission of fresh enormities? Shall the novice ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... but so tattered and dirty and threadbare that it was a marvel to me it did not fall to pieces before my eyes. The great ruff drooped brown and dank upon his shoulders. The gay shirt and doublet hung like grey sackcloth on his limbs. His shoes flapped in fragments about his feet, and the empty scabbard at his belt swung like the shreds of a worn ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... This is the state which not to be proud of, Mr. Vansittart said was proof of baseness in an Englishman! It is in this situation of the country, that Pitt Clubs have the insolence to hold their triumphal carousals!—Shall we never see these men in sackcloth? These insolent men, while wallowing in wealth, do not reflect on the pangs which must wring the poor man's heart before he can so far subdue the feelings of the husband and the father as to make him "desert his family;" or, if they do reflect on them, they must be more ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... houses of refuge, from which it has been thought expedient to banish everything pleasant, as though the only repentance to which we can afford to give a place must necessarily be one of sackcloth and ashes. It is hardly thus that we can hope to recall those to decency who, if they are to be recalled at all, must be induced to obey the summons before they have reached the last stage of that misery which I have attempted to describe. To me the mistake which we too ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope

... the demise of a laurelled chieftain or a titled senator. True, the throng who came out to see that pale form and marble brow were not gathered from the proud and great of earth. No king came weeping to the house of death; no noble cortege came in sackcloth and stood as mourners there; but the elect of God, the fruits of missionary labor on heathen soil, the converted sons and daughters of darkness, were the sincere, humble, ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy

... "How do you wear sackcloth and ashes?" he cried, catching me in his arms as he made the query. "If you've got any in the house bring 'em along and I'll put them on. Seriously, girl, I'm awfully sorry I let my temper out of its little cage. No nice thing getting angry at your bride, because she doesn't like cats. I'll ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... him by her cruelty; that there was nothing left her but to die, and all that sort of thing; and for three days she was little better than a mad woman. At the end of that time, after the fashion of her people, she retired to her own room, covered herself with sackcloth and ashes, and remained hidden from all eyes for the space of a fortnight, weeping and wailing constantly and touching nothing but bread ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... had been her misfortune and was now her only crime, to spare a mother whose conduct had been otherwise irreproachable. But her tears and pleadings produced no effect on Ali, who ordered her to be taken, loaded with fetters and covered with a piece of sackcloth, to the prison ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... himself.—He began by throwing in a pilgrimage to a miraculous virgin.—The devil pulled out an assignation with some fair mortal Madonna, who had ceased to be immaculate.—The saint laid in the scale the sackcloth and ashes of the penitent of Lenten-time.—Satan answered the deposit by the vizard and leafy robe of the masker of the carnival. Thus did they still continue equally interchanging the sorrows of godliness with the sweets of sin; and still the saint was distressed ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... Joseph. Threw him alive into a pit. Ishmaelites took him down into Egypt. Sold him to Potiphar. Judah advised that he be raised from the pit. Jacob recognized the coat. Refused comfort. Rent his clothes and put on sackcloth. They took his coat. Killed a kid and dipped the coat in its blood. Brought it to Jacob. "This have we found; know now whether it be thy son's coat ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... moral perversity of a young woman who never regrets a witty deception or a graceful subterfuge, but repents sometimes in sackcloth and ashes for her truth-telling. I'd give half my forest now to have back the letter I sent you yesterday. But since I cannot recall it, I wish you to bear in mind that what was true of a woman's heart yesterday, to-day may be only a little breach of sentiment with ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... education, but you diffuse the taste for rubbish and something worse, in the shape of books. No good thing but has its shadow of evil attendant upon it. And if we had only to estimate by visible or human forces, we might well sit down and wrap ourselves in the sackcloth of pessimism. 'We see not yet all things put under Him'; but 'we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour,' and the vision that cheered the first martyr—of Christ 'standing at the right hand of God'—is the rebuke of every fear and every gloomy anticipation for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... in the visitation of his monasteries, January 1, 1049, being then eighty-seven years old, and having been fifty-six years abbot. He would be carried to the church, to assist at the divine office, even in his agony; and having received the viaticum and extreme-unction the day before, he expired on sackcloth strewed with ashes on the ground. See his life, by his disciple Lotsald, as also, by St. Peter Damian, who wrote it soon after the saint's death, at the request of St. Hugh of Cluni, his successor, in Bollandus, and Bibliotheca Cluniacensis by Dom Marrier, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... are scattered," President Woodruff and his apostles declared in their petition. "Homes are made desolate. Many are still imprisoned; others are banished and in hiding. Our hearts bleed for these. In the past they followed our counsels, and while they are still afflicted our souls are in sackcloth and ashes.... As shepherds of a patient and suffering people we ask amnesty for them and pledge our faith and honor for ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... a shop where were no jewels, nor gold, nor costly silks, nor pearls of great price; but all that was in it was coarse sackcloth, and rough and hairy garments, and heaps of ashes, and here and there a loaf of bitter bread, and bitter herbs, and bottles wherein tears were stored. As he gazed on this shop something seemed to whisper to his heart, "Go and buy." So he went with his sorrowful heart, ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce

... which a sun that seldom sleeps bakes the grey stones, bares every detail of a crumbling ruin, and intensifies the wistful odor of decay. This, the remnant of Solomon's glory, is the Wailing Wall of the Jews. Clad in sackcloth and covered with ashes, patriarchal figures sway to and fro, press their lips to the hot granite, beat now their chests and now the wall, and today, as every day for eighteen hundreds of years, wail in the words ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... in Europe. The plausible argument is that the mass of such tourists are inferior in intellect and taste to the general level of Europeans who display curiosity about history or art. Which is probably true. But it ought to be remembered by us Europeans (and in sackcloth!) that the mass of us with money to spend on pleasure are utterly indifferent to history and art. The European dilettante goes to the Uffizi and sees a shopkeeper from Milwaukee gazing ignorantly at a masterpiece, and says: "How inferior this shopkeeper from Milwaukee is to me! The American ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... Who underneath the world's bright vest With sackcloth tame their aching breast, The sharp-edged cross in ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris

... be angry with my good advice! "Experientia does it," as Mr. 'Aughton would say.... I break down about once in three months like clockwork—from sheer overwork. I certainly am never happy idle; but I have too often to sit in sackcloth in the depths of my heart—whilst everybody is beseeching me to be "idle"—from a consciousness that, not from doing nothing, but by doing B when I should have done A, and C when I should have done B, a kind of ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... sooner ordained priest and consecrated as archbishop than he changed his habits. He became as austere as Lanfranc. He laid aside his former ostentation. He clothed himself in sackcloth; he mortified his body with fasts and laceration; he associated only with the pious and the learned; he frequented the cloisters and places of meditation; he received into his palace the needy and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... of stone out of them and giving them a heart of flesh." A Plato would rather have spoken of taking the films from their intellectual gaze and opening their eyes to the pure essences of things. The Hebrew would sit in sackcloth and ashes to atone for his offences and to induce the proper spiritual submission. The Hellene would only fast, if he fasted at all, so that he might by his plain living secure high thinking. No ardent missionaries, Jonahs or Pauls, could come out of Greece; it could produce ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... Garden, St. James's Street, and Piccadilly, whose glories her sister's pen had depicted with such fond enthusiasm, was now deserted by the rabble of quality who had peopled its palaces, while the old London of the East, the historic city, was sitting in sackcloth and ashes, a place of lamentations, a city where men and women rose up in the morning hale and healthy, and at night-fall were carried away in the dead-cart, to be flung into the pit where the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... 13:24 24 And it shall come to pass, instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle, a rent; and instead of well set hair, baldness; and instead of a stomacher, a girding of sackcloth; burning instead of beauty. ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... de Marignan, I have neither heard, nor desired to hear, more. Even Josephine's pretty face is fast fading from my memory. It is ever thus with the transient passions of our premiere jeunesse. We believe in them for the moment, and waste laughter and tears, chaplets and sackcloth, upon them. Presently the delusion passes; the earnest heart within us is awakened; and we know that till now we have been mere actors in "a masquerade of dreams." The chaplets were woven of artificial flowers. The funeral was a mock funeral—the banquet a stage feast ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... perjury. As it is, I have no doubt that various people have set me down as 'full of arrogance and assumption,' at which the gods must laugh, for really, if truths could be known, I feel even morbidly humble just now, and could show my sackcloth with anybody's sackcloth. But it is difficult to keep to the conventions rigidly, and return visits to the hour, and hold engagements to the minute, when one has neither carriage, nor legs, nor time at one's disposal, which is my case. If I don't at once answer (for instance) such a letter as you ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... the lives of the saints. His enthusiastic mind was affected, and he resolved to pass from worldly to spiritual knighthood. He became a saint, after the notions of the age; that is, he fasted, wore sackcloth, lived on roots and herbs, practised austerities, retired to lonely places, and spent his time in contemplation and prayer. The people were attracted by his sanctity, and followed him in crowds. His heart burned to convert heretics; and, to prepare himself for his mission, he ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... would. Beggars mustn't be choosers; but if they might, I should say it was the very thing. Sackcloth, you know; and then, perhaps, the ashes might be excused. I'm in solemn earnest, though. I'm reformed. You've done it; and you," she added, turning round short on Leslie Goldthwaite,—"you've been at it a long time, unbeknownst to yourself; and ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... Then Judith went to the House of the Lord and fell upon her face and called upon the Lord who breakest the battles to bless her purpose. She went thereafter to her house, put off the garments of widowhood and of sackcloth, and bathed, and anointed herself with precious ointment, and put on the garments of gladness, with bracelets and chains and rings and ornaments to lure the eyes of all the men that should see her. Then she went forth with her maid out ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... seer: he is a mere relater of pretty stories. Algernon Charles Swinburne has more fire in him, and more wealth of expression, but he does not prophesy; he has a clever way of combining Biblical similes with Provengal passion—et voila tout! The prophets are always poor—the sackcloth and ashes of the world are their portion; and their bodies moulder a hundred years or more in the grave before the world finds out what they meant by their ravings. But apropos of these lines of Shelley. He speaks of the duality of existence. 'Nothing in ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... wood pressed into her flesh, a little above the ankle-bones—of discomfort, rather, in comparison with the anguish throbbing and biting across her shoulder-blades. Some one—it may have been in unthinking mercy—had drawn down the sackcloth over her stripes, and the coarse stuff, irritating the raw, was ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... Two men in sackcloth aprons were considering an untrimmed hedge that ran down the hillside and disappeared into mist beside those roarings. They stood back and took stock of the neglected growth, tapped an elbow of hedge-oak here, a mossed beech-stub ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... walk alone; Put a shirt of sackcloth on: Never keep a fast, or pray For good luck in love ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... very commonly indicate the meaning of the symbols which they employ. Thus the prophet Isaiah is directed to loose the sackcloth from his loins, and put off his shoe from his foot, walking naked and barefoot. Chap. 20:2. Then follows the explanation of this symbolical transaction: "Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... Bejant, Son of the Morning, Fresh as a daisy dipt in the dew, Hearken to me and receive my warning: Though rents be heavy, and bunks be few And most of them troubled with rat or mouse, Never take rooms in a corner house; Or sackcloth and ashes and sad self-scorning Shall be for a portion ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray

... Lie down he could not, if he wished it; for his cell, as every one knows, was only four feet and a half in length. In all these years, he never covered his head with his hood, even when the sun was hottest, or the rain heaviest. He never covered his feet: the only garment he wore was made of sackcloth, and that was as tight as it could be, with nothing between it and his flesh; over this, he wore a cloak of the same stuff. He told me that, in the severe cold, he used to take off his cloak, and open the door and the window of his cell, in order that when he put ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... remained inefficacious simply because the sinner rejected it of his own free will. Upbraiding the wicked cities of Corozain and Bethsaida, our Lord exclaims: "If in Tyre and Sidon had been wrought the miracles that have been wrought in you, they had long ago done penance in sackcloth and ashes."(111) The omniscient God-man here asserts the existence of graces which remained inefficacious in Corozain and Bethsaida, though had they been given to the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon, they would have proved effective. The ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... Now do write directly, and let me hear of you [in d]etail. And tell Mr. Martin to make a point of coming home to us, with no grievances but political ones. The Bazaar is to be something sublime in its degree, and I shall have a sackcloth feeling all next week. All the rail carriages will be wound up to radiate into it, I hear, and the whole country is to be shot into the heart ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... defeated, she was not overcome. She felt that she might yet recover her lost ground, that she might yet hurl Mr. Slope down to the dust from which she had picked him, and force her sinning lord to sue for pardon in sackcloth and ashes. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... worrier. He ever sits on the "stool of repentance," clothing himself in sackcloth and ashes for what he has done or not done. He cries aloud—by his acts—every five minutes or so: "We have done those things which we ought not to have done and have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and there is no health in us." Everything past is regretted, everything present ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... Nation that firmly was settling The crown on her head, Sits, like Rizpah, in sackcloth and ashes, And watches ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... know now whether it be thy son's coat or not. And he knew it, and said, It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt torn in pieces. And Jacob rent his garments, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down to the grave to my son ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... Bonegulch sits in sackcloth and ashes and cools her mammoth cheek in the breezes of Colorado canyon. The self-styled Emporium of the West has lost her British darling, Beaver Bill, the big swell who was first cousin to the Marquis of Buckingham and own grandmother to the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various

... mine that you stole last week? You can't go to camp-meeting with that on your conscience. Come, now, better take off your finery and repent in sackcloth and ashes." ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... thou make me thus to sorrow for my son? Needs must I punish thee, and as for Alaeddin, he will assuredly be hanged.' 'And I will die for love of him,' answered Jessamine. Then Khatoun stripped her of her jewels and silken raiment and clothing her in sackcloth drawers and a shift of hair-cloth, sent her down into the kitchen and made her a scullery-wench, saying, 'Thy punishment shall be to split wood and peel onions and set fire under the cooking pots.' Quoth she, 'I am willing to brook all manner of hardship and servitude, but ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous

... for his royal father's soul, The chanters sung, the bells did toll, The bishop mass was saying - For now the year brought round again The day the luckless king was slain - In Katharine's aisle the monarch knelt, With sackcloth-shirt and iron belt, And eyes with sorrow streaming; Around him, in their stalls of state, The Thistle's knight-companions sate, Their banners o'er them beaming. I too was there, and, sooth to tell, Bedeafened with the jangling knell, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... you upon your marriage. But seriously, Herr Comrade, I ought to call you to account for your robbery of an artist from our midst. Please tell your wife that the whole city is in sackcloth and ashes ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... Make a nunnery out of me if you must; clutch at me for sanctuary, if you want to; I'll stand for it! But if you'll listen to me you'll give up romantic martyrdom and sackcloth, put on your best frock, smile on Hamil, and go and ask your mother for a ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... 'She's humbling herself now, I trust and pray, but she was light-minded and full of vanity when Philip married her, and it might ha' been a lift towards her salvation in one way; but it pleased the Lord to work in a different way, and she mun wear her sackcloth and ashes in patience. So I'll say naught more about her. But for him as is absent, as thee hast spoken on so lightly and reproachfully, I'd have thee to know he were one of a different kind to any thee ever knew, I reckon. If he were led away by a pretty face to slight one as was ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell

... instructions which had been received, that Nelson exclaimed, "Do his majesty's ministers know their own minds? They at home," said he, "do not know what this fleet is capable of performing—anything and everything. Much as I shall rejoice to see England, I lament our present orders in sackcloth and ashes, so dishonourable to the dignity of England, whose fleets are equal to meet the world in arms; and of all the fleets I ever saw, I never beheld one, in point of officers and men, equal to Sir John Jervis's, who is a commander-in-chief able to lead them to glory." Sir Gilbert ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... give power unto My two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and three-score days, clothed in sackcloth."—Rev. ii. 3. ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... and go out on a bat like a man, but console yourself with this: you'd be a long sight worse off when you got through than when you started, and you'd either go to smash altogether or spend the rest of your life trying to get back where you were before; and sackcloth hurts. There isn't one bit of joy to be got out of it. If you can't get the very best in this world, take nothing. That's the only religion for a woman to cling to, and if she does cling to it she can do ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... often much worn, or even ragged, are put on. If you pay a lady or gentleman a morning visit, you find them so metamorphosed as scarcely to be known; the men in dirty coarse cloth great coats, wide sackcloth trowsers and slippers; the women in coarse calico wrappers, with a coloured handkerchief tied round their hair. All the little gaudy finery they possess is kept for the evening, but even then there is nothing either ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... of the mine. And forthwith Elsie fell from the clouds, and was brought back, shuddering, to cold reason again. She was sick at heart; she hated herself for her self-abasement. She must gird her with sackcloth and mourn; and the fight must be fought now, without parley or hesitation, unless the sweetness were to go forth from life for ever, and all things should turn ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... They shall come down from their ships, they shall stand upon the land, And shall cause their voice to be heard over thee, and shall cry bitterly, And shall cast up dust upon their heads, and wallow in the ashes; And they shall make themselves bald for thee, and gird them with sackcloth, And they shall weep for thee in bitterness of soul with bitter mourning. And in their wailing they shall take up a lamentation for thee, And lament over thee saying, Who is there like Tyre, Like her that is brought to silence in the midst of the sea? When ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... been dear to me. They are vain, I know; how very vain in their attempt to soothe or comfort me. Dearest Lionel, you cannot guess what I have suffered during these long months. I have read of mourners in ancient days, who clothed themselves in sackcloth, scattered dust upon their heads, ate their bread mingled with ashes, and took up their abode on the bleak mountain tops, reproaching heaven and earth aloud with their misfortunes. Why this is the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... was always inclined to argue a point; "when I like people, I should like them just the same as if they went about yelling Te Deums at the top of their voices; and when I don't like them, it wouldn't make me like them to see them dressed from head to foot in sackcloth and ashes." ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... in the Highest—a thing poor Dryasdust never did, nor will do. The hapless generation that now reads these words ought to hold its peace when it has read them, and sink into unutterable reflections, not unmixed with tears, and some substitute for 'sackcloth and ashes,' if it liked. In its poor canting, sniffling, flimsy vocabulary, there is no word that can make any response to them. This man has a living God-inspired soul in him, not an enchanted artificial 'substitute for salt,' ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... no joy in their joy because he was filled with such heavy melancholy that it was as though even the blue sky had turned to sackcloth to his eyes, so that he beheld nothing ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle

... acting upon impulse and without reflection; that was Orion's way. Everything he did he did with conviction and enthusiasm and with a vainglorious pride in the thing he was doing—and no matter what that thing was, whether good, bad or indifferent, he repented of it every time in sackcloth and ashes before twenty-four hours had sped. Pessimists are born, not made. Optimists are born, not made. But I think he was the only person I have ever known in whom pessimism and optimism were lodged in exactly equal proportions. Except in the matter of grounded principle, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... firmament stretched its azure expanse, bespangled with unnumbered stars, and adorned with the moon 'walking in brightness;' while the transparent surface both received and returned her silver image. Here, instead of being covered with sackcloth,[A] she shone with resplendent lustre; or rather with a lustre multiplied in proportion ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp

... that, awaking from sin, could not have been contented with the sober duties of mediocre goodness; that would have plunged into the fiery depths of monkish fanaticism, wrestled with the fiend in the hermitage, or marched barefoot on the infidel with a sackcloth for armor,—the cross for a sword. Now, the impatient desire for redemption took a more mundane direction, but with something that seemed almost spiritual in its fervor. And this enthusiasm flowed through strata of such profound melancholy! ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... thoughtfully. "Oh, you mean sackcloth and ashes. That's in a different department—Con Grazia, also a different priced goods. But I don't believe we need worry about the laundry work. Mother thought we were perfectly heroic to undertake ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis

... dignity." "Your excellence," replied the priest, "must remember that there are various opinions as to what constitutes true dignity. For myself, I hold to Saint Peter's notion, that a man may maintain his dignity, though clothed in sackcloth. And since no really great ambassador ever thought of travelling in any other manner, I think you may venture to follow their example, without fear of damaging your dignity." This so completely reconciled the general, that he declared ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... grimly, "he is going to repent of that business in sackcloth and ashes before he dies; he has received his first instalment of punishment this morning, and there is more in ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... "when their heart was humbled with heaviness, they cried to the Lord in their troubles, and he delivered them from their distress." And they have found good success in so doing, as David confesseth, Psal. xxx. 12. "Thou hast turned my mourning into joy, thou hast loosed my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness." Therefore he adviseth all others to do the like, Psal. xxxi. 24. "All ye that trust in the Lord, be strong, and he shall establish your heart." It is reported by [2819]Suidas, speaking of Hezekiah, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... banner, where purple, and scarlet, and green, and orange, and every gay colour, were mingled with cloth of gold and fair embroidery; instead of this, crept on the gloomy pageant of superstition, in cowl and sackcloth; with cross and coffin, and frightful symbols of human suffering. In place of the frank, hardy knight, open and brave, with his lady's favour in his casque, and amorous motto on his shield, looking, by gallant deeds, to win the smile of beauty, came the shaven, unmanly monk, with downcast eyes, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... progress through life to enjoy as well as they can, but always with moderation, the good things of this world, to put confidence in God, to be as independent as possible, and to take their own parts. If they are low-spirited, let them not make themselves foolish by putting on sackcloth, drinking water, or chewing ashes, but let them take wholesome exercise, and eat the most generous food they can get, taking up and reading occasionally, not the lives of Ignatius Loyola and Francis Spira, but something more agreeable; for example, the life and adventures ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... stairs and through the wonderful doorway: beggars crouch under the wall of the terrace; the sellers of cakes, of syrups and lemon-water, and of the big and luscious watermelons that are so popular in Cairo, display their wares beneath awnings of orange-colored sackcloth, or in the full glare of the sun, and, their prayers comfortably completed or perhaps not yet begun, the worshippers stand to gossip, or sit to smoke their pipes, before going on their way into the city or the mosque. There are noise and perpetual movement here. Stand for a while to gain an ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... his public career. She had done all this, and he had been successful. She strove, therefore, to be triumphant on his behalf, but she knew that she was striving ineffectually. She had made a mistake, and the days were coming in which she would have to own to herself that she had done so in sackcloth, and ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... may forgive it; but the inexorable monitor of our deeds was all the time beside us writing the record, and the history of that act is inscribed forever in the tissues of our brain. It may be repented of bitterly in sackcloth and ashes and be discontinued, but its effects can never be quite effaced; they will remain with us a handicap till our dying day, and in some critical moment in a great emergency we shall be in danger of defeat from that long past and ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... didst smother mankind in Thy flood, The sun is as sackcloth, the moon is as blood, The stars fall to earth as untimely are cast The figs from the fig-tree that shakes in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... so even in this glorious land of free schools and liberty—are relatively to the remaining ten per cent, either poor and dishonest, or poor and ignorant; and that none of the hundred per cent, goes into sackcloth and ashes when he gets something for nothing. I, sir, am—or I was until recently—a Jeffersonian Democrat. But our party made a great mistake a few years ago by sticking to the slave interest too long. I finally became hopeless of success at the polls. Now, when I whisper ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... and, wherever a struggle has been made on American soil for liberty, one of these descendants of the youth who landed on American soil with Columbus, in 1492, has been found. They disliked Andros, and the members of this now extensive and widely scattered family were in sackcloth and ashes, so to speak, when King James, in 1688, gave Andros a vice-regal commission to rule New York and ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... It was the time when fashionable people finish the season by going to Goodwood—and to Goodwood Elinor was going with a party, Lady Mariamne and a number of the "set." She told her mother, to amuse her, of the new dresses she had got for this important occasion. "Phil says one may go in sackcloth and ashes the remainder of the year, but we must be fine for Goodwood," she said. "I wanted him to believe that I had too many clothes already, but he was inexorable. It is not often, is it, that one's husband is more anxious than one's self ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... sit in sackcloth and ashes over the riotous carriage of their own phagasytes; ever ruthlessly destroying millions upon millions ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... encounter the fierce Apennine blast, and be rocked on the Mediterranean wave, which the sirocco heaps up, huge and dark, and pours in a foaming cataract upon the strand of Italy. Finally, we shall tread together the sackcloth plain on which Rome sits, with the leaves of her torn laurel and the fragments of her shivered sceptre strewn around her, waiting with discrowned and downcast head the bolt of doom. Entering the gates of the "seven-hilled city," we shall climb the Capitol, and survey a scene which has ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... without, blue as the sulphur flames creeping over the charcoal within. It is lonely work for him in the storm. By day he has many little things to do between the greater labours, to make the pockets (or sacks) by sewing the sackcloth, or to mark the name of the farmer and the date with stencil plates. For sewing up the mouth of the pocket when filled there is a peculiar kind of string used; you may see it hanging up in any of the country ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... in sackcloth and sitting in ashes. My head is bowed in humility and I am beating my breast in contrition. There is no joy in my face and my eyes look downward. Truly I am full of regret. Did she not write long, joyous, inquiring, curious, inviting pages to me? and I have not answered! ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... said he, throwing down the bag, 'but that will not last us any time. Now you must go to the Sultana, clothed in sackcloth and robes of mourning, and tell her that your husband, Abu Nowas, is dead, and you have no money for his burial. When she hears that, she will be sure to ask you what has become of the money and the fine clothes she gave ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various

... had hitherto been so soft to her! She was there told that she was unfeminine, unladylike! And then, he that was sitting by her was so smooth, so sympathizing, so anxious to please her! In her anger and her sympathy she had shown it; and from that day to this she had repented in the roughness of sackcloth and the bitterness of ashes. It was possible that Caroline Waddington should so sin against a woman's sense of propriety; that, alas! had been proved; but it was impossible that she should so sin and not know that she had sinned, not feel ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... to get from her the small remains of the means necessary to provide her with food. In HERON'S collection of God's judgments on wicked acts, it is related of an unnatural son, who fed his aged father upon orts and offal, lodged him in a filthy and crazy garret, and clothed him in sackcloth, while he and his wife and children lived in luxury; that, having bought sackcloth enough for two dresses for his father, the children took away the part not made up, and hid it, and that, upon asking them what they could ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... of the scenes which he might encounter there. His crimes had condemned thousands to death and other thousands to live-long woe. He sought by priestcraft, and penances, and monastic vows, and garments of sackcloth, to efface the stains of a soul crimsoned with crime. He died, and his guilty spirit passed away ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... on the door handles and side rails of P. L. M. railway carriages. Medenham borrowed it because of the intolerable heat of the leather jacket. Its distinctive character became visible when he viewed it in the June sunshine, and he wore it as a substitute for sackcloth, since he, no less than Cynthia, recognized that a dangerous acquaintance was drawing to an end. So Dale's coat imposed a shield, as it were, between the two, but the man drove with little heed to the witching scenery that Dorset unfolded at each turn of the road, and the woman sat distrait, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... Adam was sore grieved, and he put on sackcloth and ashes, and he fasted many, many days, until God appeared unto him, and said: "My son, have no fear of Samael. I will give thee a remedy that will help thee against him, for it was at My instance ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... a space that I met her— Just for a day in the train! It began when she feared it would wet her, That tiniest spurtle of rain: So we tucked a great rug in the sashes, And carefully padded the pane; And I sorrow in sackcloth and ashes, Longing to do ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... cold. These were my two great physical troubles. I could neither get a sufficiency of food nor of clothing; but I suffered less from hunger than from cold. In hottest summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost in a state of nudity; no shoes, no stockings, no jacket, no trowsers; nothing but coarse sackcloth or tow-linen, made into a sort of shirt, reaching down to my knees. This I wore night and day, changing it once a week. In the day time I could protect myself pretty well, by keeping on the sunny side of the house; and in bad weather, in the corner of the kitchen chimney. The ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... giving way to their grief, the mourners filed into the room. Some had cymbals, some flutes, some pieces of sackcloth which they put over their heads before turning their faces to the wall. "Alas the lion—alas the hero—alas for him!" wailed the mourners. "Woe! Woe! Death hath entered into the place of the living and hath taken the flower of its strength! Oh, grave! Oh, tomb! Hungry art ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... Crowned with eternal glory! Heaven, forgive My feebleness of arm that reached him not, And take thy servant to thy mercy. 'Tis A glorious triumph still; proud Babylon's No more; the Harlot of the Seven Hills Hath changed her scarlet raiment for sackcloth And ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... Aiah, took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until the water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest upon them by day, nor the beasts of ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... their voices. All the melody is in walk and gesture; they are as graceful as cats, and the women have exactly the 'breasts like pomegranates' of their poetry. A tall Bedaween woman came up to us in the field yesterday to shake hands and look at us. She wore a white sackcloth shift and veil, und weiter nichts, and asked Mrs. Hekekian a good many questions about me, looked at my face and hands, but took no notice of my rather smart gown which the village women admired so much, shook hands again ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... was bringing forth fruits meet for repentance, I would be among the first to hail his reformation with heartfelt satisfaction; but when I hear that while he no longer sells liquor, that he constantly offers it to his guests, I feel that he should rather sit down in sackcloth and ashes than fireside at sumptuous feasts, obtained by liquor selling. When crime is sanctioned by law, and upheld by custom and fashion, it assumes its most dangerous phase; and there is often a fearful fascination in the sin that is ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... heart and hope to die," protested Drew, to appease his divinity. "Put any penance on me you like. I'll sit in sackcloth and put ashes on my head if you say so, and you'll never ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... himself, aided by that experienced nurse, Mrs. Gamp, in somewhat dilapidated attire, followed. The babies, from a span long to an indefinite length, of all shapes and sizes, black, white, and snuff-colored, twins, triplets, quartettes, and quincunxes, in calico and sackcloth, and in a state of nature, filled the vehicle, and were hung about it by the leg or neck or middle. A half-starved quadruped of osseous and slightly equine appearance drew the concern, and the shrieking axles drowned the cries ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... seen Joan looking so charming. Of course she was in grey—that was in the nature of a certainty on such an occasion, but she might have been in sackcloth for all the attention Vane paid to her clothes. It was her face that held him, with the glow of perfect health on her cheeks, and the soft light of utter happiness in her eyes. She was pretty—always; but with a sudden catch ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... continued with me in my temptations, and I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me, that ye may eat and drink at my table,' he began to draw his breath more slowly. We saw that he was just going, so he was removed from his bed, and laid upon sackcloth and ashes. And thus, the whole family of his children being collected round him, he gave up his last breath into the hands of his Creator, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... repentance stool. A very good specimen of this old-time relic may be seen in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries, at Edinburgh. It is from the church of Old Greyfriars, of Edinburgh. In the same museum is a sackcloth, or gown of repentance, formerly used at the parish ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... unpleasant, a gag secured silence. In addition to the torture inflicted by such articles as we have enumerated, suspected criminals were not unfrequently put in the stocks and jugs, whipped at a "cart tail," made to stand bare-headed and bare-footed before the public, or exposed in sackcloth at a church door or the market cross, to be gazed at, laughed at, and sometimes to be pelted by onlookers, rendered cruel and superstitious by their rulers ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... for they had a large supply of flowers and confetti on hand, which they were anxious to dispose of suddenly—since in ten minutes the horses would run, and then the carriages must leave the Corso. It was the last day of Carnival, and to-morrow—sackcloth and ashes. How the masks crowd around them; how the beautiful faces, unmasked, are smiling! Look at them well, stamp them on your heart, for many and many one shall we see never again. Another Carnival will bring them ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... come back again—safe enough," commented Phil, philosophically, holding paint-brush No. 1 in his mouth, while he manipulated with No. 2. "He will come back in sackcloth and ashes; he is just that sort, you know,—thunder and lightning, fire and tow. And they will make it up ecstatically in secret, and pretend that nothing has been the matter, and there will be no going into the ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... evident that the execution was, in the eyes of the people, only the commencement of the Carnival. Suddenly the tumult ceased, as if by magic, and the doors of the church opened. A brotherhood of penitents, clothed from head to foot in robes of gray sackcloth, with holes for the eyes, and holding in their hands lighted tapers, appeared first; the chief marched at the head. Behind the penitents came a man of vast stature and proportions. He was naked, with the exception of cloth drawers at the left side of which hung a large knife in a sheath, and he ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer



Words linked to "Sackcloth" :   material, textile, cloth, fabric, garment



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