"Beatifical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a crime was done, we believe it not, unless it appear that there might have been some desire of obtaining some of those which we called lower goods, or a fear of losing them. For they are beautiful and comely; although compared with those higher and beatific goods, they be abject and low. A man hath murdered another; why? he loved his wife or his estate; or would rob for his own livelihood; or feared to lose some such things by him; or, wronged, was on fire to be revenged. Would any ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... his idealist predecessors, art is beatific. It is the flower of life; he who is plunged in artistic contemplation ceases to be an individual; he is the conscious subject, pure, freed from will, from ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... pity for the objects of misery which he beheld on every side. He attempted to point out a higher life, by which sorrow would be forgotten. He could not prevent sorrow culminating in old age, disease, and death; but he hoped to make men ignore their miseries, and thus rise above them to a beatific state of devout contemplation and the practice of virtues, for which he laid ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... of the Mother Church are agreed," replied the gracious father, "first, that infants dying unbaptised are excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven. Second, that they will not enjoy the beatific vision outside of heaven. Third, that they will arise with adults and be assembled for judgment on the last day. And, fourth, that after the last day there will be but two states, namely: a state of supernatural and supreme ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... indestructible thing. This material world on which such vast systems have been superimposed—this may mean anything. It may be a dream, it may be a joke, it may be a trap or temptation, it may be a charade, it may be the beatific vision: the only thing of which we are certain is this human soul. This human soul finds itself alone in a terrible world, afraid of the grass. It has brought forth poetry and religion in order to explain ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... demand. Benevolent old Chinamen, flaneurs and literati would visit this bazaar of an afternoon with the sole object of buying a few of these little birds for two or three cash each and then letting them fly away, a beatific smile betraying the salve to inward feelings generated by a knowledge of merit acquired, any miseries inflicted on the sparrows by capture and confinement counting for nothing in the balance against the good work accomplished ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... finished his own, looking out of the window at two girls in Sunday splendour kissing one of the stable boys behind a farm cart. They were all three apparently enjoying themselves very much, the girls laughing, the boy with an expression at once imbecile and beatific. They thought the master's eye could not see them there, but the master's eye saw most things. He took up his pen again and added a postscript. "If you come soon you will be able to enjoy the society of your friend Bibi. She came on Wednesday, I believe." Then, feeling slightly ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... hardly noticed how the minutes were going by as he read. Presently he had come to the end of the first volume, the only one he had with him, and he raised his eyes from the closing page with that exquisite exaltation, that beatific satisfaction of mind and spirit,—even almost one might say of body,—which for the lover of literature nothing in the world like ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... wholly wrong impression of what Bishop Berkeley calls 'the philosophy of fire' if we set before our minds in this connection, the raging element whose strength is in destruction. Let us rather picture to ourselves as the type of fire the benign and beatific solar heat, the quickener and fosterer of all terrestrial life. For according to Zeno, there were two kinds of fire, the one destructive, the other what we may call 'constructive,' and which he called 'artistic'. This latter kind of fire, which was known ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... short might be the time allowed him to impart to his friends those sacred, precious, all-important truths he had himself learned. As he went on speaking, his countenance seemed to assume an almost beatific expression; the tones of his voice were full of melody. His friends listened with rapt attention, tears streaming down from their eyes, their breasts heaved; but not one moved his position, not a gesture was ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... as, with Zoe Oppner and the Zimmermanns, they made their way to the library. Only a few minutes elapsed, to their surprise, ere Alexander reappeared. Martyr-like, he had performed his painful duty, and a beatific consciousness of his martyrdom was writ large upon him. In an absolutely toneless voice ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... antidote. He abandoned this study of his fellow-creatures and plunged once more into the museums, sated himself with the eternal beauties, and came out to resume his place amid the tumultuous throng with rested nerves and a beatific smile upon his lips. It mattered so little, his welfare of to-day or to-morrow—whether he went hungry or satisfied to bed! The other things were in his heart. He ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... careless of the coming hour, we talked gaily of our coasting voyage, of our arrival at Athens. We would make our home of one of the Cyclades, and there in myrtle-groves, amidst perpetual spring, fanned by the wholesome sea-breezes—we would live long years in beatific union—Was there such a thing as ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... and loveliest of your adorable sex, your slave prostrates himself before your stainless and beatific feet (bowing low and kissing his fingers). Illustrious Ladies, I pray ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... perfection,—both Paula and Jerome panted: he, that he might be more free to translate the Scriptures and write his commentaries, and to commune with God; she, to minister to his wants, stimulate his labors, enjoy the beatific visions, and set a proud example of the happiness to be enjoyed amid barren rocks or scorching sands. At Rome, Jerome was interrupted, diverted, disgusted. What was a Vanity Fair, a Babel of jargons, a school for scandals, a mart of lies, an arena of passions, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... passionate appealing (the forte passage in D flat major), followed by a sinking helplessness (the two bars with the shakes in the bass), accompanied by moans and deep breathings. The two parts of the second section are a rapturous gaze into the beatific regions of a beyond, a vision of reunion of what for the time is severed. The last movement may be counted among the curiosities of composition—a presto in B flat minor of seventy-five bars, an endless series of triplets from beginning to end in octaves. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... very fine, Messiou," said the general confidently. And in the interest of international courtesy he immediately assumed the beatific expression he usually kept ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... was plain to both Mr. Mahaffy and Hannibal that the judge was in a state of mind best described as beatific. The tenderest consideration, the gentlest courtesy flowed from him as from an unfailing spring; not that he was ever, even in his darkest hours, socially remiss, but there was now a special magnificence to his manner that bred suspicion in Mahaffy's soul. When he ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... is now so incomprehensible to us—is none other than the possession and enjoyment of God himself in the Beatific Vision, as well as the perfect satisfaction of every rational craving of our nature in the glorious resurrection of the body. It is on this glorious happiness we are going to meditate; and first, we shall ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... soul in the mind, the mind either is God or is in God, as Plotinus said. As in its essence it is in God who is its life, similarly through the intellectual operation, and the will consequent upon such operation, it agrees with its bright and beatific object. Fitly, therefore, this rapture of heroic enthusiasm feeds on such "high emprise." For the object is infinite, and in action most simple, and our intellectual power cannot apprehend the infinite except in speech or in a certain manner of speech, so to say ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... smoke; but when much had rushed out through the new opening, they saw two prostrate figures, sweating from every pore. Their eyes were closed, they breathed stertorously. The expression on their heavy faces was beatific. ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... in his promenade, stuck his hands inside his baggy pockets, and tilted slowly to and fro on the points of his carpeted toes. Anon he took his pipe from his mouth, and blew out big whiffs of smoke, glancing around the while with an expression of beatific contentment. The whole appearance of the man was an embodiment of the holiday spirit, the unrestrained enjoyment of one who has escaped from work, and sees before him a pageant of golden idle hours. Margot and Ronald smiled in sympathy even as they looked. He was a plain little man, a fat ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... approached the gate at Girard College wearing his usual little white necktie, his spectacles and his beatific, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... mortal man—to enter into the heaven of being loved by you. But, at least, you have been the vision in my life—the sacred manifestation of what girl and sweetheart and woman and wife might be—and for that I thank you. In the shadow of that beatific vision I shall walk henceforth, and believe me when I say that I shall walk ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... least erected Spirit that fell From heav'n, for ev'n in heav'n his looks and thoughts 680 Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of Heav'ns pavement, trod'n Gold, Then aught divine or holy else enjoy'd In vision beatific: by him first Men also, and by his suggestion taught, Ransack'd the Center, and with impious hands Rifl'd the bowels of thir mother Earth For Treasures better hid. Soon had his crew Op'nd into the Hill a spacious wound And dig'd out ribs of Gold. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... incessantly praying and seeking and knocking, until one day "he was translated into the holy Sabbath and glorious Day of Rest to the soul," and, according to his own words, was "enwrapt with the Divine Light for the space of seven days and stood possessed of the highest beatific wisdom of God, in the ecstatic joy of the Kingdom."[16] Boehme looked upon this "Sabbatic" experience as his spiritual call, and from this time on he increased his endeavours to live a pure life of godliness and virtue, refusing ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... Garden of Eden," said the scientist, with such a beatific smile that his face was less hideous. "We start immediately. I have arranged with Professor Michael for you ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... hearing of voices behind a wall! I, who had said that "God ordains nothing that is not for good"—was suddenly ready to believe that He had ordained the death of the lover to whom His laws had guided me! I, to whom had been vouchsafed the beatific vision of an Angel—an Angel who had said— "God thinks no evil of thee—desires no wrong towards thee—has no punishment in store for thee—give thyself into His Hand, and be at peace!" was already flinching and turning away from ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... she had looked woman-y, girl-y, even remotely, affectedly feminine, Barton would doubtless have floundered heroically through some protesting lie. But to the frank, blunt, little-boyishness of her he succumbed suddenly with a beatific grin of relief. "Yes, we certainly ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... actually risen above the mediocrity of the figure in his portrayal of the features of the Christ? The rector started, and stared again. There was no weakness in the face, no meekness, no suggestion of the conception of the sacrificed Lamb, no hint of a beatific vision of opening heavens—and yet no accusation, no despair. A knowing—that were nearer—a knowing of all things through the experiencing of all things, the suffering of all things. For suffering without revelation ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... From that beatific vision Lorraine floated into others more entrancing. All the hairbreadth escapes of the heroine of the movie serial were hers, adapted by her native logic to fit within the bounds of possibility,—though I must admit they bulged here and there ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... never were the two gazers tired of gazing, and of smiling as they gazed. Luise, they thought, had seemed a little sad as well as weary when she alighted at the dear familiar door. But this smile was so full of joy unspeakable, so fraught with beatific meaning, so reflective of beatific vision, that it laughed their fears away, and spoke volumes where the seeming sorrow had ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... rampart. Mammon led them on— Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed In vision beatific. By him first Men also, and by his suggestion taught, Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew Opened into the hill a spacious wound, And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire That ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... and I went ashore. One afternoon, in sauntering through the orange and lemon groves which render its environs so inviting, I caught a glimpse of a countenance so serene, so indescribably lovely, that for an instant I was disposed to believe I had encountered the beatific spirit of St. Rosalie herself. The face was that of a woman apparently about eighteen years old, who evidently ranked among Sicilian aristocrats, and whose elegant attire enhanced her beauty. I followed, at a respectful distance, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... doubt—let me see: ten minutes after four,—no doubt you are sound asleep. Care has fled away to some other head. Those invisible communicants, those aerial heralds whose existence, benignity, and seasonable succour are parts, thou knowest, of my creed, are busy in the weaving of some beatific dream. At their bidding the world of thy fancy is circumscribed by four white walls, a Turkey-carpeted floor, and a stuccoed ceiling. Didst ever see such before? Was't ever, in thy wakeful season, in the same apartment? Never! ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... it a question of the intellectual light sometimes visible to scholars. I speak of that light which is hidden from those very scholars because their eyes could not bear its lustre, a transluminous light which fills the soul with beatific visions, and of which it is said that God wraps it about ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... instead of a college letter, was woven a yellow cross. On meeting me the cyclist dismounted and insisted on shouting me the way. When we came to the inn I offered him a krona. My guide smiled as though he was possessed by a beatific vision. "No! I will not take the money, but the gentleman will buy my bicycle!" As I expressed my astonishment at this request, he smiled again confidently and replied. "In a vision last night the Lord appeared unto ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... it with a beatific expression, and turned to Nils. "You drink him slow, dis wine. He very soft, but he go down ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... my papers. I am so pleased with this prospect, so utterly contented and happy, that I feel afraid as I think of it, lest it should escape me; and, even to my dearest Hal, am shy of speaking of my happiness. What is ambition to me, with this certainty? What do I care for wars, with this beatific ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... such wine, the journey would be worth while," Rolf murmured to the shield-maiden, beside whom he sat, when at last the business of eating was over and the pleasure of drinking had begun. As he spoke he tilted his head back, with closed eyes and a beatific smile, and let the contents of his horn run slowly ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... drew from the pocket of his gray-check cutaway, purple and fine linen, the purple being an ornate and indecipherable monogram, wherewith to wipe his troubled brow. Susan Gluck's Orphan, who was playing down-wind, paused to inhale deeply and with a beatific expression. Restoring the fragrant square to its repository, the pink one essayed ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... dream of the sceptic; and, as we have seen, it is not without truth and justice that he thus dreams. But with this dream of his, magnificent as it is, there is connected another which is infinitely false: for he imagines that the sublime spectacle of a world without sin, that the beatific vision of a universe robed in stainless splendour might have been realized by the Divine Omnipotence; whereas, this could have been realized only by the universal and continued cooeperation of the whole intelligent creation with the grand design of God. On the other hand, ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... apart in the Roman Catholic Church for the commemoration of the faithful departed. The celebration is based on the doctrine that the souls of the faithful which at death have not been cleansed from venial sins, or have not atoned for past transgressions, cannot attain the Beatific Vision, and that they may be helped to do so by prayer and by the sacrifice of the mass. The feast falls on the 2nd of November; or on the 3rd if the 2nd is a Sunday or a festival of the first class. The practice of setting apart a special day for ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... flung himself on the bed with uncontrollable sorrow. One arm lay over the breast and partly round the neck of the body, which breathed no longer, and whose face was lit up by a beatific smile; for Jim Travers was with mother and Maggie and father, and they should go ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... teaches that the faithful who have died in Christ are happy and blest in Paradise even though the Final Heaven and the Beatific Vision is still but a thing to be longed for far off in the future. Lazarus is "comforted" after his hard life on earth. "The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, there shall no torment ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... States, gave me a new idea upon the subject. On such a point I speak with great diffidence; but I am inclined to think that my author was right; that the real end which Americans set before themselves is Acceleration. To be always moving, and always moving faster, that they think is the beatific life; and with their happy detachment from philosophy and speculation, they are not troubled by the question, Whither? If they are asked by Europeans, as they sometimes are, what is the point of going so fast? their only feeling is one of genuine astonishment. Why, they reply, ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning marl ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... there is another reason why this beatific association must have its time-limit; for, unfortunately, one's Auto-Comrade is always of the same sex as one's self, and in youth, at least, if the presence of the complementary part of creation is long denied, there comes a time when this denial surges ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... the Chinaman, with a beatific smile slowly spreading over his countenance. "You no likee black ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... paradise and hell, and it opened heaven itself for the immediate entrance of a few spotless souls. Pope John XXII., as Gieseler shows, was accused of heresy by the theological doctors of Paris because he declared that no soul could enter heaven and enjoy the beatific vision until after the resurrection. Pope Benedict XII. drew up a list of one hundred and seventeen heretical opinions held by the Armenian Christians. One of these notions was that the souls of all deceased adults wander in the air until the Day of Judgment, neither hell, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... us return to the dinner. The fare is excellent, the company delightful, and I am just revelling in that beatific state of mind born of a sufficiency of the good things of this earth, when nothing seems to me more pleasant than a City dinner, when I am tapped upon the shoulder by the Toastmaster, who bears a warrant to consign me to misery. I have to make a speech. I have passed through the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... was always sad, always separate, always worshipping in beatific loneliness, in seclusion and renunciation of the world; the modern supra-man passes from end to end of the pole of being and stops at any point and functions normally. "He stands and works, then kneels and prays." He is lord of ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... side of the man with which Arnold wholly sympathized showed itself suddenly. At the mention of his wife's name an expression partly fatuous, partly beatific, transformed his homely features. He was looking at her picture which stood always opposite him. He had the air of an adoring devotee before some ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... trance. I remained thus for hours, ardently thinking on Olivia, recollecting every incident of my past life in which she had had the least part, placing all her divine perfections full in view, and unable to detach my mind one moment from the beatific vision. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the least erected spirit that fell From heaven; for even in heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, Than ought divine or holy else enjoyed In vision beatific. Paradise Lost, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... So do the beatific speak; Yet have they ears, and eyes as well; And if not with a paler cheek, They feel the shivers in them dwell, That something of a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... been a success gastronomically, socially and financially, was apparent from the beatific boozy smile that pervaded Breen's face as he lay back in his easy-chair. To disturb a reverie of this kind was as bad as riding rough-shod over some good father digesting his first meal after Lent, but the boy's purpose was too lofty to be blunted ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... errands, blessing and blessed, the two wild men had a word from her mouth, or a kiss of her hand, and were happy all the day after. For they loved her with a love mightier than ever Hereward had heaped upon her; for she had given him all: but she had given those two wild men naught but the beatific vision of ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... The first beatific vision that was to greet my gaze would be, of course, that one which I was to behold most frequently throughout the aeons without end—even the face of that radiant being who had gone before, to await me ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Assumption, more than twice seven times is it reiterated in a very brief space, and with slight variations of expression, that Mary was taken up into heaven; and that, not on any general and indefinite idea of her beatific and glorified state, but with reference to one specific single act of divine favour, performed at a fixed time, effecting her assumption, as it is called, "to-day." [AEs. 595.] "To-day Mary the Virgin ascended the heavens. Rejoice, because she is reigning with Christ ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... last midnight while I read The tomes you so despise, A specter rose beside the bed And spoke in this true wise; "From Canaan's beatific coast I've come to visit thee, For I'm Frognall Dibdin's ghost!" Says ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... being exaggerated and darkened into a Moloch of cruelty, unless you remember that, side by side with them, or rather underlying them and determining them, are aspects of the divine nature to which only child-like confidence and calm beatific returns of love do rightly respond. The terror of the Lord is a garb which our sins force upon the love of the Lord, and when the one is presented it brings with it the other. Never should they be parted in our thoughts ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... itself, to maintain its isolated and petty self, by a kind of practical lie in things; although through every incident of its hypothetic existence it had protested that its proper function was to die. Surely! those transient affections marred the freedom, the truth, the beatific calm, of the absolute selfishness, which could not, if it would, pass beyond the circumference of itself; to which, at times, with a fantastic sense of wellbeing, he was capable of a sort of fanatical devotion. ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... pains, and the concert therefore began with "Tarara-boom-de-ay," followed by the "Apache" waltz. His part of the programme was concluded with a humorous recitation. Meanwhile he stood in the doorway with a beatific smile; this did him good. In this way the music went the round, and all had their favourite tunes. Certain numbers were kept to the last; I could see that they were to the taste of all. First came an air from "The Huguenots," sung by Michalowa; this showed the vikings to be ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... tirade astounded. Used as I was to men losing their heads through vanity, I could not credit my own ears and eyes when they reported to me this insane exhibition. I looked at Roebuck. He was wearing an expression of beatific patience; he would have made a fine study for a picture of the martyr at ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... we are bound to take the brightest view which circumstances allow. Let us then assume the best. Let us assume that before next Innocents' Day the war will have ended in a glorious peace. God grant it; but, even in that beatific event, what will become of the children? They cannot be exactly what they would have been if their lot had been cast in normal times. Unknown to themselves, their "subconscious intelligence" must have taken a colour and a tone from the circumstances in ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... deep breath, and opened my eyes, whereat the voice cried out gladly that its intercessions had been heard, and I knew that it was on my behalf that the saints of Heaven had been disturbed in their beatific peace. My head was pillowed in a woman's lap, and it took me a moment or two to realise that that lap was Madonna Paula's, as was hers the voice that had reached my awakening senses, the voice that now welcomed me back ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... integral part it is in their noble design of the Adelphi. It is the very key to the Adelphi, the well-ordained initiation for us into that small, matchless quarter of London, where peace and dignity do still reign—peace the more beatific, and dignity the finer, by instant contrast with the chaos of hideous sounds and sights hard by. What man so gross that, passing out of the Strand into Adam Street, down the mild slope to the river, he has ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Church holds on this point is that unregenerate children are deprived of the beatific vision, or the possession of God, which constitutes the essential happiness of ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... have been a love that would have carried him safely into and through a beatific old age—or it may have been; we choose to think that it was a growth that would have bloomed perennially. It was, I think, such a love as every man of imagination feels to be a mountain of wealth beside which all else is dwarfed to utter nothingness—a concretion from the endless and eternal ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... region,—suggestive to mad fancies of the breasts of a half-buried Titaness, stretched out by a stray thunderbolt, and hastily hidden away beneath the leaves of the forest,—in that home where seven blessed summers were passed, which stand in memory like the seven golden candlesticks in the beatific vision ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... unwounded, waiting to go forward with his bombers. Presently came Warren, bright and jaunty as a bird, and carrying his left arm. 'I'm all right,' said Montag, 'got a cushy one here.' On his heels came G.A.; his face was that of a man fresh from the Beatific Vision. Much later, when I had managed to get transport to push him away, I asked him, 'Got your stick, G.A.?' This was a stout stave on which he had carved, patiently and skilfully, his name, 'H.T. Grant-Anderson,' and a fierce and able-looking tiger at the top, then ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... de resistance for the destined magazine, heavily weighting her slender thread of story with disquisitions on economy and charity, and meaning to land her heroines upon various industrial asylums where their lot should be far more beatific than marriage, which was reserved for the naughty one to live unhappy in ever after. In fact, Rachel, in her stern consistency, had made up her mind to avoid and discourage the Colonel, and to prevent her own heart from relenting in his favour, or him from having any opportunity of asking ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are few who, going to the images, behold in them the realities, and these only with difficulty. There was a time when, with the rest of the happy band, they saw beauty shining in brightness—we philosophers following in the train of Zeus, others in company with other gods; and then we beheld the beatific vision and were initiated into a mystery which may be truly called most blessed, celebrated by us in our state of innocence, before we had any experience of evils to come, when we were admitted to the sight of apparitions innocent and simple and calm and happy, which we beheld shining in pure light, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... holy heroines, and found a compensating pleasure in the sense of amused superiority, and the secret duality which it gave to her consciousness. She even went so far as to ransack the library for these beatific biographies, and when she found herself rewarded for "diligent reading" her amusement was at its apogee. And thus, when the first awe and interest of the strange life receded, Eileen was left standing apart as on a little rock, criticising, satirising, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... his own. To this list Wordsworth has made an important addition. He has shown by his example and writings that the contemplation of Nature may become a stimulus as inspiring as these; may enable us "to see into the life of things"—as far, perhaps, as beatific vision or prophetic rapture can attain. Assertions so impalpable as these must justify themselves by subjective evidence. He who claims to give a message must satisfy us that he has himself received it; and, inasmuch as transcendent things are in themselves inexpressible, he must convey ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... trout, black bass and young woodcock. The game dinners are good, the prices are high, and the fried potatoes are noted all over the world. They have never been successfully imitated. Are done up in papers and sold like confectionery. The gayly dressed ladies indulge in beatific expressives as they ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... All Souls, "The theological basis for the feast is the doctrine that the souls, which, on departing from the body are not perfectly cleansed from venial sins, or have not fully atoned for past transgressions, are debarred from the Beatific Vision, and that the faithful on earth can help them by prayers, almsdeeds, and especially by the holy sacrifice of the Mass. In the early days of Christianity the names of the departed brethren were entered in the diptychs. Later, in the ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... were covered by gleaming locks of black hair; and as he stood there, sure and secure, a sublime divinity, and played the violin, it seemed as if the whole creation obeyed his melodies. He was the man-planet about which the universe moved with measured solemnity and ringing out beatific rhythms. Those great lights, which so quietly gleaming swept around, were they stars of heaven, and that melodious harmony which arose from their movements, was it the song of the spheres, of which poets and seers have reported so many ravishing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... monopoly of beatific visions. It offers much in that direction. It draws a picture of a future State of great riches and general equality; and the picture is glorified by a vision of general brotherhood. To some this seems more attractive than any ...
— Social Justice Without Socialism • John Bates Clark
... light for me Thy ruddiest blazing torch, That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch Of the glad Palace of Virginity, May gaze within, and sing the pomp I see; For, crown'd with roses all, 'Tis there, O Love, they keep thy festival! But first warn off the beatific spot Those wretched who have not Even afar beheld the shining wall, And those who, once beholding, have forgot, And those, most vile, who dress The charnel spectre drear Of utterly dishallow'd nothingness In that refulgent ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half-maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and having gone three in "no trumps" and found seven to the ace, king, queen in hearts lying before her in dummy, she wore a smile of beatific satisfaction. So also did Alice—for two reasons. The deal obviously spelled money, and Vere Millet could be trusted to get every trick out of it. There were four bridge tables fully occupied in the charming drawing-room, and as she caught the hostess' ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... joyful the purifying sufferings of purgatory! and now, on your altar, Jesus, the high-priest and powerful Lord, full of clement mercy and majestic power, offers himself for thy speedy liberation and admission into the beatific vision. Oh, Magdalen! how art thou exalted! how beyond all imperial splendor and royal power art thou ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... pleasure that only an animal of the feline species knows how to make expressive of supreme happiness. Its stiffened legs and arched back made it appear larger than usual, and the black visage wore a smile of beatific joy. Its eyes blazed magnificently; ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... altogether so Milton. It is not a difference of theological opinion: it is a difference of temper. For Dante the "will of God" at once suggested both the apostolic and the apocalyptic love, joy, peace, the supreme and ultimate beatific vision. Bitter as his life on earth had been, no man ever suffering more from evil days and evil tongues, no man ever more bitterly conscious of living in an evil and perverse generation, he had yet within him a perpetual fountain of peace in the thought of God's ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... a pause, and linking his thoughts together by a simple 'and,' he passes from the unimaginable splendours of the Beatific Vision to the plainest practical talk. Mysticism has often soared so high above the earth that it has forgotten to preach righteousness, and therein has been its weak point. But here is the most mystical teacher of the New Testament ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half-maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels, or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or awoke, screaming, from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the scepter of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hidden His face from him. But when he took his seat in the council, or ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... The dog who preferred the reflection of his bone in the water to the bone itself, though from a practical point of view he made a lamentable mistake, was aesthetically justified. No "orb," as Tennyson said, is a "perfect star" while we walk therein. Aloofness is essential to the Beatific Vision. If we entered its portals Heaven ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... the conversation, quite content, for my own part, to keep silence; but I caught Mrs. Barlow's eye fixed on me as if in abstracted, beatific thought. Soon was made known the result of her meditation. She had concluded that I was incapable of descending to subjects of an ordinary nature. Leaning far forward on the table, with a smile more ecstatic than ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... of Fanatics, and wandered through many lands making many disciples. He was born at Breslau in Silesia in 1651, and at an early age saw strange visions, at one time the devils in hell, at another the Beatific Glory of God. His native country did not appreciate him, and he left it to wander on from university to university, publishing his ravings. At Leyden he met with the works of Boehme, another fanatic, who wrote a strange book, entitled Aurora, which was suppressed by the magistrates. ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... unfathomable eyes; the lips were parted as if with impetuous breath; the whole head leaned slightly forward, giving prominence to the chin, which in reality retreated, a defect chiefly noticeable in profile. Ted had painted what he saw. It might have been the head of a saint looking for the Beatific Vision; it was only that of an ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... practicism, nor with moralism, then our Aesthetic also must be permitted to adorn itself with the title of Aesthetic of pure beauty. But if (as is often the case) something mystical and transcendental be meant by this, something that is unknown to our poor human world, or something spiritual and beatific, but not expressive, we must reply that while applauding the conception of a beauty, free of all that is not the spiritual form of expression, we are yet unable to conceive a beauty altogether purified of expression, that is to ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... passionate emotion, not knowing what he was doing, knelt down near the chair into which she had sunk, and laid his head on her hand. That was Anton. Not a word was spoken. Sabine gazed on the kneeling form as at some beatific vision, and gently laid her ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... with the beatific smile of a cat at a promising mouse-hole. "Ah, excuse me, Mr. Rand." He crossed to the desk, picked up the phone and spoke into it. "This is Arnold Rivers," he said, much as Edward Murrow used to say, This—is London! The telephone sputtered for a moment. "Ah, yes indeed, ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... and purgatory before he may enjoy the "beatific vision?" Are temptation, sin, sorrow, and even death, angels of God sent forth to minister to the perfection of man? or are they fiends which, in some foul way, have invaded the otherwise fair regions in ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... standing upright, while you stretch your taper into a thick darkness that closes over everything a few yards distant and prevents your seeing anything but the horizontal niches in tiers, one above the other, where the mortal remains of the beatific lie surrounded by the symbols of the faith they died for. Here they keep their vigil century after century over our Holy City, while they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... mariner from the troubled sea of time. Life has its storms and its calms, its casualties and dangers; it also has the bright twilight in the shadow of those eternal hills where existence is immortal and joy beatific and unclouded. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... those Emmaus travellers we go Forth from the city-gate of things below; Christ at our side, His Scripture for our light, Here burning hearts and there the beatific sight. ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... cider or "pure juice" as they call it. It is a joy to see them seated about the board, their elbows on the table, their heads bent forward over the steaming bowl, whose savoury perfume as it rises to their nostrils seems to carry with it a veritable ecstasy, if one were to judge by the beatific expression on ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... on the strings and drew the bow with a powerful flourishing sweep. The rich, sonorous tones vibrated after the bow had passed. Then followed the tricks by which an artist seeks to discover flaws or wolf notes. A beatific expression settled upon Hawksley face. He nestled the violin comfortably under his chin and began to play softly. Cutty, the nurse, ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... might from heaven have flown And virgin saints—who not in vain Have striven by purity to gain The beatific crown; ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... years of more or less critical reading of novels of all ages and more than one or two languages, combined with nearly forty years reading of Chrestien himself and a passion for Old French, leave the present writer quite unable to rise to this beatific vision. But let us, before saying any more what Chrestien could or could not do, see, in the usual ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... of the supper arrived. Her nervousness vanished, and he got far away from the neighborhood of the subjects that, even in remotest hint, could not but agitate her. And as the food and the wine asserted their pacific and beatific sway, she and he steadily moved into better and better humor with each other. Her beauty grew until it had him thinking that never, not in the most spiritual feminine conceptions of the classic painters, ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... him do his office if he was ready; and crying out, O pray, pray! Praise, praise, praise,—he was turned over, and died almost without any struggle, with his hands lifted up unto heaven, whither his soul ascended, to enjoy the beatific presence of his Lord ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... possessed, that is to say, the constructive rather than the creative, the organizing rather than the imaginative temperament, but they have rarely been perfunctory and never common. French painting in its preference of truth to beauty, of intelligence to the beatific vision, of form to color, in a word, has nevertheless, and perhaps a fortiori, always been the expression of ideas. These ideas almost invariably have been expressed in rigorous form—form which at ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... amiable man a man of good abilities, a man who had seen much of the world. But he seems to have thought that going to Court was like going to heaven ; that to see princes and princesses was a kind of beatific vision ; that the exquisite felicity enjoyed by royal persons Was not confined to themselves, but was communicated by some mysterious efflux or reflection to all who were suffered to stand at their toilettes or to bear their trains. He overruled all his daughter's ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Reader! I will hope, I will believe, that thou hast experienced feelings and emotions, like those high and holy ones of which I would endeavour now to preserve a faint transcript. Come then, let us unite our ideas, let us speak together, but let us yet mention as present, those beatific thoughts and imaginings which are indeed past. Let us ever remember and cherish in our heart of hearts those golden fore-tastes of future eternity, or (according to Platonism) those rapturous reminiscences of past, which prove beyond logical demonstration, the existence of some vital principle ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... are, I can see myself wedded for pure love, without a care, painting my pictures at ease, with a sweet woman worshipping me, ever at my beck and call, and shielding me from trouble with all the tender force of her passionate little soul!—but commonplace life will net fit itself into these sort of beatific visions! Babies, and the necessary provision of food and clothes and servants—this is what marriage means—love having sobered down to a matter-of-fact conclusion. No—no! I will not marry her! It would be like catching a fairy in the woods, cutting off its sunbeam ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... century Franciscans were preeminently orthodox, but when John XXII stigmatized as heretical the assertion that Christ and his Apostles never had any property, they became criminals whom civil officers were bound to send to the stake.[558] John was himself a heretic as to the "beatific vision." He thought that the dead would not enter the presence of God until the judgment day.[559] The Franciscans held that the blood shed by Christ in the Passion lost its divinity, was separated from the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... of March closes, but the administration seems to enjoy the most beatific security. I do not see one single sign of foresight,—this cardinal criterion of statesmanship. Chase measures the empty abyss of the treasury. Senator Wilson spoke of treason everywhere, but the administration seems not to go to work and to ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... reverential of antique systems, or he was not an Epicurean, and to call him so is a deceitful flattery. We hold that it is morally impossible for a man to dine daily upon the fat of the land in courses, and yet deny a future state of existence, beatific with beef, and ecstatic with all edibles. Another falsity of history is that of Heliogabalus-was it not?-dining off nightingales' tongues. No true gourmet would ever send this warbler to the shambles so long as scarcer birds might ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... and craning her soft white neck, she saw Cousin Emelene, with her gray kitten under one arm and a large suitcase in her other hand, coming up the steps. There was a beatific expression in her gentle, faded eyes, and her lips were quivering uncertainly. When she caught sight of Genevieve's sweet face back of the bored expressmen, she gave a little cry, ran forward, set down her suitcase and clasped her young ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... regulations in his favor, but a future statue of heroic size in the palace plaza. Whereat Mr. Howland turned swiftly to Dan at his side, and from behind his napkin momentarily altered an expression of beatific if humble gratitude, and winked ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... of plates and dishes in the next room, and Marchas said to me, smiling in a beatific manner: 'This is famous; I found the champagne under the flight of steps outside, the brandy—fifty bottles of the very finest—in the kitchen garden under a pear tree, which did not look to me to be quite straight, when I looked at it by the light of my lantern. As for solids, we have ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... are going to an ampler ether, a diviner air. You have attained the beatific state and at once take flight. If they confer perfection like an academic degree at St. ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... made this remark with reference to the blessedness of the Christian in eternity. Such assertions are frequent in the Scriptures. This same apostle, whose soul was so constantly dilated with the expectation of the beatific vision, assures the Corinthians, in another passage in this epistle, that "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." The beloved disciple John, also, though he seems to have ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... defended any error so as to be out of the communion of the church. But that he could not be properly a Millenarian, seems clear from several parts of his writings. For, Ep. 2 and 3, he affirms, that the souls of St. Martin and St. Clarus passed from this world to the immediate beatific vision of God. He establishes the same principles, Ep. 1, ad Claudiam Soror., c. 5. And in his Sacred History, l. 2, c. 3, explaining the dream of Nabachodonosor, he teaches that the destruction of the kingdoms of this world will be immediately succeeded by the eternal reign of Christ with ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... great tones a wondrous melody, while once only, in the middle of the piece, besides that chief song, a tenor voice became prominent in the midst of chords. After the Etude a feeling came over one as of having seen in a dream a beatific picture which when half awake one would ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Catarina, Monreale,—all were but parts of a dreamy vision, like the heavenly city of Sir Percivale, to attain which he passed across the golden bridge that burned after him as he vanished in the intolerable light of the Beatific Vision. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... affirmed to be enormous:—I give those Reichs fellows two good months [scarcely took so long] to be in a condition to show face again. As for ourselves, I can send you nothing but contemptibilities. We have never yet had the beatific vision of Him with the Hat and Consecrated Sword [Papal Daun, that is]; they amuse us with the Sieur Loudon instead;—who, three days ago [7th July, two days] did us the honor of a visit, at the Gallows ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... you have read, with eyes of faith, that torpor of the body is favorable to activity of the mind, and therefore believe that the intellectual powers can be stimulated and strengthened by tropical influences:—you suppose that enervation will reveal itself only as a beatific indolence which will leave the brain free to think with lucidity, or to revel in ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... long tongue of flame had crept under the cage, completely singing every hair from the cat's body. The felicitous adder was slowly burning in two and busily engaged in impregnating his organic system with his own venom. The joyful rat had lost his tail by a falling bar of iron; and the beatific rabbit, perforated by a red-hot nail, looked as if nothing would be more grateful than a cool corner in some Esquimaux farm-yard. The members of the delectated convocation were all huddled together in the bottom of their cage, which suddenly gave way, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... heard outside the door. It is opened suddenly; JACK BARTHWICK seems to fall into the room. He stands holding by the door knob, staring before him, with a beatific smile. He is in evening dress and opera hat, and carries in his hand a sky-blue velvet lady's reticule. His boyish face is freshly coloured and clean-shaven. An overcoat ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Lamb!" will be its ceaseless song of praise. Beyond this I cannot go. In vain I endeavour to ascend in thought higher than "God manifest in the flesh," even to the Triune Jehovah who dwelleth in the unapproachable light of His own unchangeable perfections; and seek to catch a glimpse of that beatific vision which, though begun here in communion with God, is there enjoyed by "the spirits of just men made perfect," "according to His fulness," and therefore in a measure which to us passeth all understanding. ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... God except the embodiment of eternal attributes, of essences which, like beauty, make us happy only in contemplation? The glory of heaven could not be otherwise symbolized than by light and music. Even the knowledge of truth, which the most sober theologians made the essence of the beatific vision, is an aesthetic delight; for when the truth has no further practical utility, it becomes a landscape. The delight of it is imaginative and the value of ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... intoxicating, and resembles mead. It is then taken with a spoon, or is dried in small cakes, with the words "Mash Allah," or "Word of God," imprinted on them. When the dose of two or three drachms a day no longer produces the beatific intoxication, so eagerly sought by the opiophagi, they mix the opium with corrosive sublimate, increasing the quantity of the latter till it reaches ten grains a day. It then acts as a stimulant. In addition to its being used in the shape of ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... become wholly self- identified with evil, so the term "heaven" expresses the spiritual state of the pure in heart, to whom it is given to see GOD. So regarded, heaven is simply the ideal consummation of progressive spiritual advance, the perfect fruition of that "beatific vision" which the saints of GOD desired. It has ever been the conviction of the Christian Church that her members are already, even in this present life, made partakers in the life of heaven, just in proportion as their ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... 824; cheering &c 836; bewitching; enchanting, entrancing, enravishing^. charming; delightful, felicitous, exquisite; lovely &c (beautiful) 845; ravishing, rapturous; heartfelt, thrilling, ecstatic; beatic^; beatific; seraphic; empyrean; elysian &c (heavenly) 981. palmy, halcyon, Saturnian. Phr. decies repetita placebit [Lat.]; charms strike the sight but merit wins the soul [Pope]; sweetness and light [Swift]; beauty ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... But a beatific vision rose before him, one day in church, and he saw the beautiful sister borne away in the clouds of heaven on a bed of filmy whiteness, surrounded by a celestial throng; and he was somewhat comforted. After twelve years, while he was a student ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... is it possible to take seriously what is so manifestly relative and temporary as the various existing forms of human activity? Above all, how is it possible to take one's self seriously, to spend one's thought on the petty interests of a petty individuality, when the beatific vision of universal knowledge, of absolute being, has once dawned on the dazzled beholder? The charm and the savor of everything relative and phenomenal is gone. A man may go on talking, teaching, writing—but the spring of personal action is broken; his actions are ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... doctrine of the Hereafter "that they that have done good shall go into life everlasting and they that have done evil, into everlasting fire." He held that the punishment of the damned is two-fold. The greater punishment, called the pain of loss, consists in the loss of the Beatific Vision, a suffering so great that the genius of St. Augustine can hardly translate it in human language. "To be separated from God," he says, "is a torment as great as the very greatness of God." The other pain of the reprobate ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... see his face illumined by a beatific light, That tells me he is dying fast; the shadows of the night Are passing from his saintly brow and sunken eye away, But he looks beyond them and beholds a ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... how the Ideas of Plato, the "sub specie aeternitatis" of Spinoza, the "Liberation" from "the Will" of Schopenhauer, the "Beatific Vision" of the Catholic saints are all analogues and parallels, expressed under different symbols, of the same universal feeling. The difference between these philosophic statements of the situation and ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... faculties, or any conceivable hallowing of creatural natures, can make the creature able to gaze upon God. I know that it is often said that the joy of the future life for men is what the theologians call 'the beatific vision,' in which there shall be direct sight of God, using that word in its highest sense, as applied to the perceptions of the spirit, and not of the sense. But I do not think the Bible teaches us that. It does teach us ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... soul! Celtic and improvident! Patrick's visions had shown him only the triumphant arrival of his host and the beatific joy of Eva as she floated by his side on the most "fancy" of boat-birds. Of the return journey he had taken no thought. And so the saving and planning had to be done all over again. The struggle for the first nickel had been wearing and wearying, but the amassment of the ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... appurtenances the prelates: but he who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion declares that he is yet ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... mistress ascend by a flight, exquisitely conceived, to the stars; where the sun and the planets of the Ptolemaic system (for the true one was unknown in Dante's time) form a series of heavens for different virtues, the whole terminating in the empyrean, or region of pure light, and the presence of the Beatific Vision. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... not pay in this country, Lorimer," he said, with a beatific air. "Diligence is the one road to success. There is a truss of hay waiting to go through the cutter. Harry, I notice more oats than need be mixed with ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... beatific effects of the cleansing of the heart from all sin is soul-rest. It always accompanies the glorious ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... was to read men, smiled upon Richard at this and went his satisfied way. He would stick to Storri; and he would notify Richard should aught unusual either promise or occur. Inspector Val saw that in Richard's present mood of beatific imbecility a conference with him would mean no more than would ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... do you know, he has made a beatific confusion between last Saturday and next Saturday, and said to me he had told Miss Thomson to mind to come on Friday if she wished to see me ... 'remembering' (he added) 'that Mr. Browning took Saturday!!' So I let him mistake the one ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... headlong at their quarry's legs and brought them down in a smashing football tackle, then, from their position on the ground, astride of their captives, they took in the surprising circle about them. Vandersee's red, smooth face shone in a beatific smile as he directed the seizing and securing of the trapped men. He had no apparent interest in the two whites,—and an interchange of scrutiny satisfied Barry and Little that neither of their men was Leyden. Instead of giving thought to the white captives, Vandersee merely left them in their ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... their homes and stifling the noblest emotions of womanhood? On the contrary women are respected quite as much as they were before Statehood; loved as rapturously as ever, and are led to the altar with the same beatific strains of music and the same unspeakable joy that invested ceremonials before ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... into fresh pith and modern portableness by any congenial Fawcett, they never did exhibit the pathetic importunity and Demosthenic fervor of Baxter. In his Platonic loftiness Howe always dwelt apart; and there have been no glorious dreams since Bunyan woke amidst the beatific vision. Like a soft valley, where every turn reveals a cascade or a castle, or at least a picturesque cottage, Flavel lures us along by the vivid succession of his curious analogies and interesting stories; whilst all the way the path is green with kind ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... La Fontaine have tended to throw a veil of sentiment over his figure, picturing him as the consoling beatific child of nature, driven by an unsympathetic generation to a wistful companionship with the dumb world of brutes. But nothing could be farther from the truth than this conception. La Fontaine was as unsentimental ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... your pardon, most rusticated Audacity," answered Sir Piercie; "truly I become oblivious of every thing beside, when the recollections of the divine court of Felicia press upon my wakened memory, even as a saint is dazzled when he bethinks him of the beatific vision. Ah, felicitous Feliciana! delicate nurse of the fair, chosen abode of the wise, the birth-place and cradle of nobility, the temple of courtesy, the fane of sprightly chivalry—Ah, heavenly court, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... enjoy there quite as much as they can do here, minus the temporal sufferings of this life. They continue natural beings, and therefore can enjoy all natural joy; and that which they lose, being the "beatific vision," of which they have no conception, is a loss of which ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Peggy. She leaned forward, straining her ears. Suddenly an active little bronco seemed to separate from the ruck of the riders and dashed forward alone. On his back sat a familiar figure and not a beautiful one, but to Peggy no angel from heavenly regions could have appeared more, beatific just then, for in the rider she had recognized the redoubtable Bud, the leader of ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... would have seen, had she looked closer, that the young man in question was in no merely beatific or expectant frame of mind. Meryon's look was a look both of excitement—as of one under the influence of some news of ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
