"Penitential" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... material drawing near, as it were, of the blessed Saturday evening; and when Saturday came and mademoiselle's dinner had been hastily served and her work done, she would make her escape and run to Notre-Dame de Lorette, hurrying to the penitential stool as to a lover's rendezvous. Her fingers dipped in holy water and a genuflexion duly made, she would glide over the flags, between the rows of chairs, as softly as a cat steals across a carpeted floor. With bent head, almost ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... After the penitential psalms, a litany, and the office appointed, the bishop stood with his back to the altar, and spoke urbi et orbi from the text, "God, who in divers times and in divers places," etc. I cannot do more than ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Nevertheless he did not yet abandon his former superior. Placing a heavy wooden collar on his neck, clad in sackcloth and sprinkled with ashes, he again returned to his spiritual leader, and in this penitential guise implored pardon. He was ignominiously ejected. Nor did he venture to revisit the unforgiving Sheikh. But it happened that in a few weeks Sherif had occasion to journey to the island of Abba. His former ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... minister, who merely carried out the rules which his Church enjoined. It was no proof of magnanimity in Burns to use his talent in reviling the minister, who had done nothing more than his duty. One can hardly doubt but that in his inmost heart he must have been visited with other and more penitential feelings than those unseemly verses express. But, as Lockhart has well observed, "his false pride recoiled from letting his jovial associates know (p. 017) how little he was able to drown the whispers of the still small voice; and the fermenting bitterness of a mind ill at ease within himself ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... longer uplifted by any sense of sanction and of satisfaction. Of the pride of life there remained in him only sufficient to prevent him from regarding his behavior as in any sense a shame and a disaster to his own youth. Otherwise his mood was entirely penitential. He could not look at the thing as it affected himself. However it might be for him, he had wronged Violet, and that was calamity enough for any man to face. According to all his instincts and traditions, he had ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... was not long on the way. The fortress had triple inclosures; Henry was conducted into the second; his retinue remained outside the first. He had laid aside the insignia of royalty; nothing announced his rank. All day long, Henry, bareheaded, clad in penitential garb, and fasting from morning till night, awaited the sentence of the sovereign pontiff. He thus waited during a second and a third day. During the intervening time he had not ceased to negotiate. On the morrow, Matilda interceded with the Pope ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... in self-imposed penitential devotions, there appeared to him, in the chapel of Linlithgow, a vision. At the time, around him in their stalls, sat the Knights of the Thistle, chanters sung, and bells tolled. The monarch in sackcloth, and wearing the painful iron belt which constantly reminded him of ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... was a constitutional melancholy, aggravated by his weary toils, perilous fightings, and fierce throes, which led him down often into the deep mire where there was no standing; and which sighs through all his life. The penitential Psalms and Paul's wail: 'O wretched man that I am,' perhaps never woke more plaintive echo in any human heart than they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the earth, and it could not have got this power if Governments had been governing solely for the good of their peoples. "Bow down your heads before God," is the invocation constantly used in the Missal during the penitential season of Lent and the government of every nation ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... those days. People brought their dinners and had a general penitential gorge. Instrumental music was proscribed, as per Amos fifth chapter and twenty-third verse, and the length of prayer was measured by the physical endurance of ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... history. But these very writers of the Bible tell us their own transgressions, under the direction of the Spirit of God; a thing writers in general are very shy about. Moses tells us how he spake unadvisedly with his lips, and was punished for it. David's penitential psalms record the bitter tears he wept over his transgression; tears which could not wash out the sentence against the man after God's own heart—the sword shall never depart from thy house. An overburdened ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... must be great indeed, as I assure you they make my heart ache with penitential pangs, even though I was really not guilty. As I commence farming at Whitsunday, you will easily guess I must be pretty busy; but that is not all. As I got the offer of the Excise business without solicitation, and as it costs me only six months' attendance for instructions, to entitle ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... their Father in Christ; and that, 'even as a father pitieth his own children, so is the Lord merciful to them that fear him?' Had they, by faith, taken this blessed truth to their souls, they might and would, not in hopelessness and dread, but in trust and penitential love, make their wants known as a child to its parent; they would arise, and in humble compunctions, and not desponding trust, say, 'Father, I have sinned.' They would carry each trouble to him, and say, 'Lord, thou knowest me to be set in this ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... The propaganda, the penitential court, and the court of archives shall be established in the place of residence ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... has, in the way of accommodation, to some belated one, and content himself with the scantest of those scant comforts, impressing, at the same time, with his native delicacy, the notion, that he courts, rather than shrinks from, the almost penitential regime. Though one would naturally think, that the scorn of material comforts, suggested here, and which many others of his acts evince, would scarcely breed indolence in the Indian, yet this is with him an almost unconquerable weakness. ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... designate as the awakening on the morn of a day that throughout its tardy course shall fulfil not a single desire: not one. [FOOTNOTE: "Den Tag zu sehen, der Mir in seinem Lauf Nicht einen Wunsch erfullen wird, nicht Einen." Faust.] None the less it is a penitential prayer, a conference with God in the faith of the eternally good. The eye turned inwards here, too, sees the comforting phenomena it alone can perceive (Allegro 6/8), in which the longing becomes a sweet, tender, melancholy disport with itself; [FOOTNOTE: Ein Wehmuthig holdes ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... dear, I am quite worn-out; we dined out every day last week, and have four more dinners in the next five days.' These good people show their British grit by the persistency with which they go on with their penitential hospitality, and their lack of ideas in never attempting to modify it so as to make it a pleasure instead of ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... South, and, with the spelling book in one hand and God's holy word in the other, set the millions of freedmen on the way toward reading, reasoning and righteousness. Around God's throne may their crowns of life eternal glitter with the penitential tears of a grateful people redeemed unto a common Father by their prayers, ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 49, No. 02, February, 1895 • Various
... to him with the penitential aspect of the prodigal son; and, faith, he would have not made a bad representation of the fatted calf about to be killed on my return,—so corpulent looked he, and so dejected! 'Graceless reprobate!' he began, 'your poor father is dead!' ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... deep, long-untouched chords. At the same moment that the aroused sense of pollution would overwhelm him, the reminder shines forth to him in the pilgrims' words of the possibility of forgiveness and regeneration through repentance and penitential practices. A very miracle of God's grace it seems to him, by which he sees the door of hope open to him anew. The weight of his emotion forces him to his knees; he makes his own the words of the pilgrims wending their way out of ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... is which has made the fifty-first Psalm the model of all true penitence for evermore. Penitential prayers in all ages have too often wanted faith in God, and therefore have been too often prayers to avert punishment. This, this—the model of all true penitent prayers—is that of a man who is to be punished, and is content to take his punishment, ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... man stepped into years, and of great prudence. Xavier committed the new Christians to his care, and put into his hands the form of baptism in writing, the exposition of the creed, the epitome of our Saviour's life, the seven penitential psalms, the litanies of the saints, and a table of saints' days as they are celebrated in the church. He himself set apart a place in the palace proper for the assemblies of the faithful; and appointed the steward to call together as many of the Pagans as he could, to read both to the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... Master rebuked the unkind suggestion. Peter, the trusted but treacherous disciple, expected nothing but harsh and merited reproof for faithlessness. He who knew well how that heart would be bowed with penitential sorrow, sends first the kindest of messages, and then the gentlest of rebukes, "Lovest thou me?" The watchmen in the Canticles smote the bride, tore off her veil, and loaded her with reproaches. When she ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... the meaning of the mute appeal, Nor waited for my questioning, but said: "Speak; and be brief, be subtle in thy words." On that part of the cornice, whence no rim Engarlands its steep fall, did Virgil come; On the' other side me were the spirits, their cheeks Bathing devout with penitential tears, That through the dread impalement forc'd a way. I turn'd me to them, and "O shades!" said I, "Assur'd that to your eyes unveil'd shall shine The lofty light, sole object of your wish, So may heaven's grace clear whatsoe'er of foam ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... anarch, the believer in man's individuality, in the state for the individual, not the individual for the state. It is at least more dignified than the other's flood of confessions, of hysterical self-accusations, of penitential vows, and abundant lack of restraint. Yet no one doubts Tolstoy's repentance. Like Verlaine's it carried with it its ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... zither, is practised for several hours in a little stuffy room filled with three or four dozen obviously unwashed humans, reeking with bad tobacco and worse absinthe, and pervaded by the ghosts of inferior meals, it becomes more penitential than the treadmill. A dog's life, said Paragot. Whereat Narcisse sniffed. It was not at all the life for a ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... being too steep for horses and carriages, are meant only to sustain the lighter tread of mules and asses. The more level streets are paved with broad, smooth flag-stones, like those of Florence,—a fashion which I heartily regret to change for the little penitential blocks of Rome. The walls of Siena in their present state, and so far as I have seen them, are chiefly brick; but there are intermingled fragments of ancient stone-work, and I wonder why the latter does not prevail ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... my sometime Lady ruled it another twelvemonth, there would have been never a bit of discipline left. There's none so much now. Sister Roberga had better look out. If she gives me many more pert answers, she'll find herself barred into the penitential cell on bread ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... Hermas," said the anchorite, and the veins of his forehead began to swell Polykarp felt that his father's visitor was something more than his poor clothing would seem to indicate and that he had hurt his feelings. He had certainly seen some old anchorites, who led a contemplative and penitential life up on the sacred mountain, but it had never occurred to him that a strong youth could be long to the brotherhood of hermits. So he said to him kindly: "Hermas—is that your name? We all use our hands here and labor is no disgrace; what ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... This psalm is David's penitential psalm. It may be fitly so called, because it is a psalm by which is manifest the unfeigned sorrow which he had for his horrible sin, in defiling of Bathsheba, and slaying Uriah her husband; a relation at large ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of their lives,—"not loving their lives unto the death." All these tribulations, however, could not separate them from the love of God. (Rom. viii. 37-39.) They had "washed their robes,"—not in penitential tears, their own martyr-blood, their doing or suffering in the cause of Christ; but their robes were "made white in the blood of the Lamb," who was "made of God unto them ... justification and sanctification." (1 Cor. i. 30.) Could the human mind conceive the idea of rendering ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... rather die than continue so. But if they may be taken off, and if I may hear mass, and be removed to a penitential prison, and have a woman about me, I will be good, and will do what shall seem good ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... to the woods, and Rolf started into the potatoes with a hoe, but he was stopped by a sudden outcry of poultry. Alas! It was Skookum on an ill-judged partridge hunt. A minute later he was ignominiously chained to a penitential post, nor left it during ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... up to the point where he had taken Sandy on board. He did not like to part with him in anger, for, to a certain extent, he sympathized with him in his penitential confession. But, more than this, he was afraid Sandy might revenge himself upon him for the reproaches ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... des Hommes; not at all monumental, and given over to puddles and to shabby cafes. I recall with tenderness the tortuous and featureless streets, which looked like the streets of a village, and were paved with villanous little sharp stones, making all exercise penitential. Consecrated by association is even a tiresome walk that I took the evening I arrived, with the purpose of obtaining a view of the Rhone. I had been to Arles before, years ago, and it seemed to me that I remembered finding on ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... more fixed resolve to continue asking, with a firmer purpose never to give over until the evidence of pardoning love was mine. As I retired, I knelt by my bedside, and repeated the same prayer, with a few additional words, imploring the aid of the Holy Spirit to teach me the way of life, and penitential tears began to flow. Before I slept my pillow was wet with tears, and was turned for a dry place. As I was reading the Bible through by course, it became more of a companion than ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... breathed, an appropriate verse quoted, and a few minutes were all that could be given at any one time to discourse upon it. It is characteristic of his strong, cheerful faith, even during those last trying moments, that he on one occasion asked to have the more supplicatory, penitential Psalms exchanged for those of praise and thanksgiving, in which he joined, knowing them already by heart; and in the same strain of calm yet triumphant hope, he whispered to himself on the night when his alarming state ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... by animal sacrifices, or even by human sacrifices, is repugnant to rather than conformable with natural reason. There exists no discernible connection between the one and the other. We may suppose that eucharistic, penitential, and even deprecatory sacrifices may have originated in the light of nature and reason, but we are unable to account for the practice of piacular sacrifices for substitutional atonement, on the same principle. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... all subsequent ages, perplexed and abandoned in this ungovernable world, has set sail resolutely for that enchanted island and found there a semblance of happiness, its narrow limits give so much room for the soul and its penitential soil breeds so many consolations. True, the brief time and narrow argument into which Christian imagination squeezes the world must seem to a speculative pantheist childish and poor, involving, as it does, a fatuous perversion of nature and history and a ridiculous emphasis ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the volume back in its place, pausing at the table as he returned to his chair to turn down the flame of the lamp. It was too bright for the judge's mood; it was inharmonious with the penitential night. Almost like a voice, strident and in discord above the sobbing music of an orchestra, thought the judge. The firelight was better for ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... high-walled brick church, and presently they walked side by side up the broad aisle so far that it seemed to Nan as if her aunt were aiming for the chancel itself, and had some public ceremony in view, of a penitential nature. They were by no means early, and the girl was disagreeably aware of a little rustle of eagerness and curiosity as she took her seat, and was glad to have fairly gained the shelter of the high-backed ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... moments. After the passion was finished—which lasted until near dawn, on account of so many pauses—he begged pardon of all for his omissions and neglect. He asked them to remember him in their masses and prayers. They recited the penitential psalms and other prayers, at the end of which, the sick man, very happy, conversed with his brethren with great affability. He charged them to keep their vows and the observance of the rules of the order. He persuaded them to persevere steadfastly in their purpose, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... serve both as a punishment to Galileo and as a warning to others. It was accordingly decreed that he should be condemned to imprisonment in the Holy Office during the pleasure of the Papal authorities, and that he should recite once a week for three years the seven Penitential Psalms. ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... eager and handsome. He was not addressing a woman worn out with admiration, but a girl just beginning a woman's life; and it did him no harm, at any rate, to speak in the character of master of Thorpe Ambrose. The penitential expression on Miss Milroy's face gently melted away; she looked down, demure and smiling, at the flowers in ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... hand to his breast. Wild creatures, once his loved companions, shun him as he, in turn, shuns the face of man. He disappears from the story, hand-in-hand with Miriam, bound, it would seem, upon a penitential pilgrimage, or to begin a new life in another hemisphere.—Nathaniel ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the voice of chanticleer Fulfilled what Christ had prophesied; And oh, that pitying look sincere From him whom thou hadst just denied! Thy burst of penitential grief! Heaven those tears did surely send. Tears give the burdened heart relief; Dry anguish ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass
... together, supervening in that hour of the spirit's default, may well have made me light-headed; nor was it easy to distinguish the tooth of self-reproach from that of genuine hunger. Stiff, qualmish, vacant of body, heart, and brain, I left my penitential boulder and crawled down to the road. Glancing along it for sight or warning of the runners, I spied, at two gunshots' distance or less, a milestone with a splash of white upon it—a draggled placard. Abhorrent thought! Did it announce the price upon the head of Champdivers? "At least I will see ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the third and fourth generation. They had accepted this idea of joint responsibility and vicarious atonement, turning in their unphilosophical way this law of nature into a principle of justice. Meantime the failure of all their cherished ambitions had plunged them into a penitential mood. Though in fact pious and virtuous to a fault, they still looked for repentance—their own or the world's—to save them. This redemption was to be accomplished in the Hebrew spirit, through long-suffering and devotion to the Law, with the Hebrew solidarity, by vicarious attribution ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... words of peace to hear From him to whom 'tis given To wake the penitential tear, And lead the ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... at Caen, about half-past two on July 31. The appearance was naked to the waist, his head bare, showing his beautiful yellow locks. He asked Bezuel to learn a school task that had been set him as a penalty, the seven penitential psalms: he described a tree at Caen, where he had cut some words; two years later Bezuel visited it and them; he gave other pieces of information, which were verified, but not a word would he say of heaven, hell, or purgatory; 'he seemed not ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... wad sing the Dies Irae, whiles," was all the information she could give on that point. One would think it scarcely possible that so penitential a chant could form the usual musical accompaniment to Sunday Mass! A teacher of music from a neighboring glen used to come over from time to time to practise ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... from the Fleet prison to St. Paul's Cathedral. The warden of the Fleet was there, and the knight marshal, and the tipstaffs, and "all the company they could make," "with bills and glaives;" and in the midst of these armed officials, six men marching in penitential dresses, one carrying a lighted taper five pounds' weight, the others with symbolic fagots, signifying to the lookers-on the fate which their crimes had earned for them, but which this time, in mercy, was remitted. One ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... now twelve years since the youth Ivan, graduated from his four penitential years of military schooling, had taken his first long flight from Moscow, northward, into the joyous unknown: twelve years since he had put behind him all that half-comprehended blackness of evil and grim unhappiness ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the score; so it came to pass that the garden is once more herbaceous, and far-famed as such. The father—a perennial gardener in more senses than one, long may he flourish!—has told me, chuckling, of many a penitential pilgrimage to the rubbish-heaps, if haply fragments could be found of the herbaceous treasures which had been ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... undeceived them of their errors, which so darkened their souls. They maintained, at their own cost, some huts where they retired for the necessary rest at night. When they took any slight and hurried refreshment, it was for their necessary relief and rest, since the rest of their time was broken with penitential exercises. By such unalterable and edifying procedure, they were gradually softening those hard rocks; and they already had many converts and baptized people. The other idolaters did not regard that desertion well, and one day when the father was going on his rounds to catechise them in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... difficult a pilgrimage, the more meritorious it was, especially if it led to some very holy place, such as Rome or Jerusalem. People might also become monks in order to atone for evil-doing. This system of penitential punishment referred only to the earthly life; it was not supposed to ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... and, by my exertions in his favour, made my brother my sworn foe, I returned to London. My husband's conduct was now changed; I had during my absence, received several affectionate, penitential letters from him; and he seemed on my arrival, to wish by his behaviour to prove his sincerity. I could not then conceive why he acted thus; and, when the suspicion darted into my head, that it might arise from observing my increasing ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... of voices blithe Of early day, the hissing scythe Across the dew drawn and withdrawn, The noisy peacock on the lawn, These, and the sun's eye-gladding gleam, This morning, chased the sweetest dream That e'er shed penitential grace On life's forgetful commonplace; Yet 'twas no sweeter than the spell To which I woke to say farewell. Noon finds me many a mile removed From her who must not be beloved; And us the waste sea soon shall part, Heaving for aye, without a heart! ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... not what further ill Effects the Epilogues I have been speaking of may in time produce: But this I am credibly informed of, that Paul Lorrain [3]—has resolv'd upon a very sudden Reformation in his tragical Dramas; and that at the next monthly Performance, he designs, instead of a Penitential Psalm, to dismiss his Audience with an excellent new Ballad of his own composing. Pray, Sir, do what you can to put a stop to those growing Evils, and you will ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... or a vulgar pronunciation in English; but in Irish gave rise to the antiquarian theory of Dr. Smith, who, in his History of Cork, concludes that the Round Towers were penitential prisons, because the Irish word for a penitential round ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... religious pharmacy infallible receipts for calming the conscience; the priests in every country possess sovereign secrets for disarming the wrath of Heaven. However true it may be that the anger of Deity is appeased by prayers, by offerings, by sacrifices, by penitential tears, we have no right to say that religion holds in check the irregularities of men; they will first sin, and afterward seek the means to reconcile God. Every religion which expiates, and which promises the remission of crimes, if it restrains any, it encourages the great ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... two, Charles and Mary Lamb! What peace is possible under the curse which even now is gathering against your heads? Is there peace on earth for the lunatic—peace for the parenticide—peace for the girl that, without warning, and without time granted for a penitential cry to heaven, sends her mother to the last audit?" And then, without treachery, speaking bare truth, this prophet of woe might have added—"Thou also, thyself, Charles Lamb, thou in thy proper person, shalt enter the skirts of this dreadful ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... left him with her reproaches; the associates of his reckless life, who had used and abused him, had found him no longer of service, or even amusement, and clearly there was nothing left to do but to hand him over to the state, and we took him to the nearest penitential asylum. Conscious of the Samaritan deed, we went back to our respective wives, and told his story. It is only just to say that these sympathetic creatures were more interested in the philanthropy of their ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... genealogical constructions she was brought into connection, as daughter, wife, or other relation, with any god that the particular conditions suggested. As the Assyrians grew morally she was endowed with all the highest virtues (so in the Penitential Psalms), and occupied so preeminent a position that under favorable circumstances she might perhaps have become the only god ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... of the noble basilica held a gloomy congregation. Three small candles were alone lighted on the high altar. No sweet voices sang melodious anthems or exulting hymns. The monks, in hoarse tones and monotonous harmonics, chanted the penitential psalms. Here and there knelt a figure clothed in mourning robes, and absorbed in secret prayer; but over the majority of the assembly either blank despondency or sullen ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... and of Zirbanit; sometimes at the rising of a particular constellation—as, for instance, that of the Great Bear, or that of the sons of Ishtar; sometimes at the moment when the moon "raised above the earth her luminous crown." On such a date a penitential psalm or a litany was to be recited; at another time it was forbidden to eat of meat either cooked or smoked, to change the body-linen, to wear white garments, to drink medicine, to sacrifice, to put forth an edict, or to drive out in a chariot. Not only ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... whole church was rich beyond expression. All that opulent devotion and inventive ingenuity could devise, in wood, bronze, marble, silver, gold, precious jewelry, or blazing sacramental furniture, had been profusely lavished. The penitential tears of centuries had incrusted the whole interior with their glittering stalactites. Divided into five naves, with external rows of chapels, but separated by no screens or partitions, the great temple ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... openly penitential utterance in his presence, and her cheeks were faintly reddened. It may have been this motion of her blood which aroused the sunken humanity within her; her heart leaped, and she cried "I can see her as I am, I can. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a mortified, semi-penitential air, that, on the first glance, rather mollified her. Still, however, she was not sufficiently clement to give him the least assistance in opening the conversation, by the suggestions of any of those nice little oily nothings with ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Lenten days came on, oh, how Katy longed to be in Silverton, to kneel again in its quiet church, and offer up her penitential prayers with the loved ones at home. At last she ventured to ask Wilford if she might go, her spirits rising when he did not refuse her ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... of imprisonment was it coincided, much to his own surprise, with the Jewish Penitential period, and the Day of Atonement came in the middle. A wealthy Jewish philanthropist had organized a prison prayer-service, and Elkan eagerly grasped at the break in the monotony. Several of the prisoners who posed as Jews with this same motive were detected and reprimanded; but Elkan ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... Volante, tenanted by fairy forms lightly and gaily dressed, with a pleasant smile on their lips and an encyclopedia of language beaming from the orbs above, would arrest the attention of the most inveterate old bachelor that ever lived; nay, it might possibly give birth to a deep penitential sigh and a host of good and sensible resolutions. Ordinary Volantes are the same style of thing, only not so gay, and the usual pace is from three to five and a half miles an hour, always allowing five minutes for turning at the corner of every street. If you are curious to know ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Waverley. Then appears Sir Eustace Dabrieschescourt, and she being young, in spite of her vow, marries him. And having repented and confessed she devoted her life to penance, being condemned daily to repeat the Gradual and the Penitential Psalms, and every year to go on pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas. This penance, with others, she performed during fifty-one years. She was married to Dabrieschescourt in the church of Wingham in Kent, and died here in Bedhampton, and was buried in the church of St Thomas, for the manor was ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... example and conduct, to palliate and overlook its enormity? Not so; sin, as sin, can never be sufficiently stamped with the brand of reprobation. But we must seek carefully to distinguish between the offence and the offender. Nothing should be done on our part, by word or deed, to mock the penitential sighings of a guilty spirit, or send the trembling outcast away, with the despairing feeling of "No hope." "This man receiveth sinners," and shall not we? Does He suffer the veriest dregs of human depravity to crouch unbidden at His feet, and to gaze on His forgiving countenance ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... was before him. In the narrow gut of the way a great black banner, borne on two poles, was lurching towards him. It was moving in the van of a dark procession of priests, who, with their attendants and a crowd of devout, filled the street from wall to wall. They were chanting one of the penitential psalms, but not so loudly as to drown the uproar ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... blaze of noon, and is worthy neither of praise nor blame, so far as he is concerned. It does not imply any love for holiness, or any hatred of sin. Nay, it may exist without any sorrow for sin, as in the instance of the hardened transgressor who writhes under its awful power, but never sheds a penitential tear, or sends up a sigh for mercy. The distinction between the human conscience, and the human heart, is as wide as between the human intellect, and the human heart.[2] We never think of confounding the functions and operations of the understanding with those of the heart. We know that an idea ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... described. Instead of the listlessness of Childe Harold, he is active and enterprising; such as the noble pilgrim would have been, but for the satiety which had relaxed his energies. There is also about him a solemnity different from the animation of the Giaour—a penitential despair arising from a cause undisclosed. The Giaour, though wounded and fettered, and laid in a dungeon, would not have felt as Conrad is supposed to feel in that situation. The following bold and terrific verses, descriptive of the maelstrom ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... day Major Van Zandt quietly kept out of the way, without obtrusively seeming to avoid her. Yet, when they met casually in the performance of her household duties, the innocent Mistress Thankful noticed, under her downcast penitential eyelids, that the eyes of the officer followed her intently. And thereat she fell unconsciously to imitating him; and so they eyed each other furtively like cats, and rubbed themselves along the walls of rooms and passages when they met, lest they should seem designedly to come ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... Prior, Pedro de Cordoba, had been increased until their community numbered twelve or fifteen men, the severity of whose rule had been much augmented in the New World in order to maintain the just proportion between their penitential lives and the hard conditions of the colony in which they lived. Their observation of what was happening around them and of the injustice and cruelty daily practised on the natives in defiance of the wishes ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... sitting back against the rocks, and Dante takes particular note of two figures supporting each other. He next discovers that one and all of these victims have their eyelids sewn so tightly together with wire that passage is left only for streams of penitential tears. ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... heart-broken; and her thoughts for a little while were all prayers. With each one of them she prayed her husband to go on loving her; to come back and bruise her limbs, to punish her with fierce glances and cutting words, to subject her to systematic penitential discipline, if only at the end of it all she ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... told. You remember that when I carried off Mary, I had no intention of leaving England whatever: my object was, after making her my wife, to open negociations with the old colonel, and after the approved routine of penitential letters, imploring forgiveness, and setting forth happiness only wanting his sanction to make it heaven itself, to have thrown ourselves at his feet 'selon les regles,' sobbed, blubbered, blew our noses, and dressed for dinner, very comfortable inmates ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... leading him thro' his own apartment to join the crowd of armed servants, who, as may be supposed, were unable to detect the supposed invaders of their repose. On the following morning the chevalier as agreed upon, wrote a penitential letter to madame, entreating her pardon for his improper attentions to her servant, whom she affected to dismiss with every mark of gravest displeasure. The weeping Abigail threw herself at the feet of her mistress: and the compassionate marquis (before whom the scene was enacted), touched with ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... import it because our moist, cold climate is not favourable for its growth. Nevertheless, it closely resembles the small purple vetch of our summer hedgerows at home. In France its pulse is much eaten during Lent—which season takes its name, as some authors suppose, from this penitential plant. Men become under its subduing dietary influence, "lenti et lenes." The plant is cultivated freely in Egypt for the sake of the seeds, which are flat on both sides, growing ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... maintained with as much felicity as erudition; and great must have been that erudition which could form a pretended language and its grammar, and fertile the genius which could invent the history of an unknown people: it is said that the deception was only satisfactorily ascertained by his own penitential confession; he had defied and baffled the most learned.[45] The literary impostor Lauder had much more audacity than ingenuity, and he died contemned by all the world.[46] Ireland's "Shakspeare" served ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... moment was swelling over Roma like a flood. If she could unburden her heart like that! If she could cast off all the trouble of her days and nights of pain! One of the confessional boxes had a penitential rod protruding from it, and going past the front of it she had seen the face of a priest. It was a soft, kindly, human face. She had seen it before somewhere—perhaps in ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... regarded the situation it illustrates as more significant than others of man's relation to Deity in his sense of sin and need for mercy, and as requiring, therefore, peculiar prominence in the total impression the oratorio should convey. If this was his aim, it is all accomplished. The penitential feeling embodied in the song is that which will longest linger in a remembrance of the work. The soft tone of the contralto voice, and the keenness of that of the violin, are accessories to the effect which the master well knew how to handle; but these judicious means ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... zhe never marriet again; zhe left te country and vas away many years ant I have nod zeen her zince. My fair kinswoman! Zhe hat a great wrong done her!" said the Jew, dropping his chin upon his chest and falling into sad and penitential reverie. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Alice, as if you were chanting one of the seven penitential psalms; and you, good Doctor, as if you ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... something more troublesome than he had conceived. She nursed him, she read to him, she anticipated his wants, and was solicitous about his feelings; but there had entered into the husband's mind the certainty that she judged him, and that her wifely devotedness was like a penitential expiation of unbelieving thoughts—was accompanied with a power of comparison by which himself and his doings were seen too luminously as a part of things in general. His discontent passed vapor-like through all her gentle loving ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... was the most exquisite, and her liberality was most spoken of. I know that in the most fashionable house of worship (the newspapers call it that) she was a constant attendant; that in her modest garb she never missed a Lenten service; and we heard that she performed a novena during this penitential season. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... see his brother in the intervals of attending Sir Thomas to the courts of law, but the chief present care was to get the boys into purer air, both to expedite their recovery and to ensure them against being dragged into the penitential company who were to ask for their lives on the 22nd of May, consisting of such of the prisoners who could still stand or go—for jail-fever was making havoc among them, and some of the better-conditioned ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... seen in certain places, as in the heathen times. The happy souls of departed Christians were invoked; it was believed that they were wandering about the world, or haunting their graves. There was a multiplication of temples, altars, and penitential garments. The festival of the purification of the Virgin was invented to remove the uneasiness of heathen converts on account of the loss of their Lupercalia, or feasts of Pan. The worship of images, of fragments of the cross, or bones, nails, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... innumerable dignitaries—abbots and priors, bishops, deans, doctors, and lesser clergy, shining in damask and satin, a right goodly company. For a while all eyes were so fixed upon this glittering array that there was scarce time to note the humble six, in their penitential robes, bare-footed, and carrying tapers, who appeared, attended by their jailers from the Fleet Prison, and were set upon the opposite platform, full ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... end.[63] His son, Henry the Fifth, crossed the Channel to conquer France, just at the very, the only time, when the Ottoman reverses gave a fair hope of the success of Christendom. When premature death overtook him, and he had but two hours to live,[64] he ordered his confessor to recite the Seven Penitential Psalms; and, when the verse was read about building the walls of Jerusalem, the word caught his ear; he stopped the reader, and observed that he had proposed to conquer Jerusalem, and to have rebuilt it, had God granted him life. Indeed, he had already sent a knight ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... and to cause some of the more practical neighbors seriously to doubt the young girl's commercial wisdom. But she was firm. Whether she thought her parents a necessity of respectable domesticity, or whether she regarded their presence in the light of a penitential atonement for some previous disregard of them, no one knew. Public opinion inclined ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... book of death, in which the names of those are written who are Atheists or very wicked; and a third book, of those whose judgment is suspended till the day of expiation, and whose names are not written in the book of life or death before that day. The first ten days of this month they call the penitential days; and all these days they fast and pray very much, and are very devout, that on the tenth day their sins may be remitted, and their names may be written in the book of life; which day is therefore called the day of expiation. And upon ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... lofty hill o'erlooks For leagues the forest-girdled plain, ere long A monastery stood. That self-same day In tears the penitential work began; In tears the sod was turned. The rugged brows Of March relaxed 'neath April's flying kiss: Again the violet rose, the thrush was loud; Mayday had come. Around that hallowed spot Full many a warrior met; some Christians vowed; Some muttering low ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... of the great White Fast, the judgment books were closed, to open no more for the rest of the year. Up till twilight there was yet time, but then what was written was finally sealed, and he who had not truly repented had missed his last chance of forgiveness. What wonder if early in the ten penitential days, the population of the Ghetto flocked towards the canal bridge to pray that its sins might be cast into the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... down and expiate Your crime with burning penitential tears— And if you 'scape the perils of the pass, And are not whelm'd beneath the drifted snows, That from the frozen peaks come sweeping down, You'll reach the bridge that's drench'd with drizzling spray. Then if it give not way beneath your guilt, When you have left it safely ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... which it was to be delivered. Two days previous to this, Galileo was summoned to appear at the holy office; and on the morning of the 21st, he obeyed the summons. On the 22d of June he was clothed in a penitential dress, and conducted to the convent of Minerva, where the Inquisition was assembled to give judgment. A long and elaborate sentence was pronounced, detailing the former proceedings of the Inquisition, and specifying the offences which he had committed in teaching heretical ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... reclaim; repent in sackcloth and ashes &c, (do penance) 952; learn by experience. Adj. penitent; repenting &c v.; repentant, contrite; conscience- smitten, conscience-stricken; self-accusing, self-convicted. penitential, penitentiary; reclaimed, reborn; not hardened; unhardened^. Adv. mea culpa. Phr. peccavi; erubuit [Lat.]; salva res est [Lat.] [Terence]; Tu l'as voulu [Fr.], Georges Dandin; and wet his grave with ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Penitential Rite of the Ancient Mexicans," Archaeological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Vol. ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... till sunset. All the followers of the Prophet were therefore busy with their devotions—holding a revival, as it were; hence there was no chance whatever to be presented to the Sultan, Abdul Aziz, it being forbidden during the penitential season for him to receive unbelievers, or in fact any one except the officials of his household. However, the Grand Vizier brought me many messages of welcome, and arranged that I should be permitted to see and salute his Serene Highness on the Esplanade as he rode ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... through life an act of repentance, once for all, will not do: we shall need repentance daily. When a man is admitted to the favour of God it is that his mouth should be stopped, it is that he should entertain penitential feeling as long as he lives—not the penitence of guilt, but the penitence of gratitude. The recollection, I am a sinner, will inspire and maintain such penitence; and a blessed end that man will make, who in the full ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... he said. "Sam Learoyd's a changed man. It were t' local preacher that done it. He gat him on to his knees anent t' penitential forms at after t' sarvice, an' there were a two-three more wi' him; an' t' preacher an' me wrastled wi' t' devil for their souls. I've niver seen sich tewin' o' t' spirit sin I becom a Methody. 'Twere a hot neight, and what wi' t' heat ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... was laughing very earnestly, as though the extra cachinnation was assumed for a purpose. "I suppose I ought to dress myself in ash cloth and sashes, shut myself up in my state room always when off duty, and shed penitential tears from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, and during the lone watches of the night, and in fortifying my soul against the monstrous sin of audacity. I will think ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... may be said to have been the first poet thrilled by Weltschmerz. "He produced hymns and songs, penitential prayers, psalms, and threnodies, filled with hope and longing for a blessed future. They are marked throughout by austere earnestness, brushing away, in its rigor, the color and bloom of life; but side by side with it, surging forth from the deepest recesses ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... the tenor of Sally's remarks, while she waited the few minutes, to the effect that it was a burning shame that she should take up Mrs. Vereker's time, a crying scandal that she should interrupt her knitting, and a matter of penitential reflection that she hadn't written instead of coming, which would have done just as well. To which Mrs. Vereker, with a certain parade of pretended insincerity (to make the real article underneath seem bona fides), replied with mock-incredible ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... fathers," he said, "loved good cheer and soft lodging, few miles of riding would carry them to the Priory of Brinxworth, where their quality could not but secure them the most honourable reception; or if they preferred spending a penitential evening, they might turn down yonder wild glade, which would bring them to the hermitage of Copmanhurst, where a pious anchoret would make them sharers for the night of the shelter of his roof and the benefit ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... and whose claims to religious authority the writer defends by precedents unnecessary to enumerate here. On the first Sunday in Lent, 1819, its proceedings were commenced at Avignon, by a solemn procession, which made the circuit of the principal streets of the town, singing penitential psalms, and halted on the hill of Notre Dame; where an inaugural sermon was delivered on a spot called Calvary, and supposed to represent that sacred place. The multitude, assembled by curiosity or a better feeling, was so great, that two of the missionaries found it expedient ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... as on soft gorgeous wings, If Time's least kiss had subtly disallowed Their beauty's sacred unisons?—Fair things Desire their revel-raiment be their shroud. Yet, fierce insurgent, cease vain wars to wage! Art thou so pure as to decline, forsooth, These penitential usages of age That expiate proud cruelties of youth, And bring thee to the last and perfect art, To love the ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... Mass, and the King and Queen, with both Houses of Parliament, were present. Once more (Shrove Tuesday, 1527) the great Cardinal came in dignity; it was to denounce the translation of the Bible and to condemn the Lutherans. Certain "heretics" were marched through the cathedral in penitential dresses, and carrying faggots, which they threw into the fire by the great rood at the north door, in which Testaments and Lutheran tracts were also burned. On this occasion, also, Fisher preached the sermon. ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... royal princes who had been taken at Agincourt; and that, whatever quarrel might arise with France, England should never make peace without holding Normandy. Then, he laid down his head, and asked the attendant priests to chant the penitential psalms. Amid which solemn sounds, on the thirty- first of August, one thousand four hundred and twenty-two, in only the thirty-fourth year of his age and the tenth of his reign, King Henry the Fifth ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... most poetic and easily understood side, I wished to give a specimen to the Spanish public of to-day, who had forgotten it; but, as I was a man of my epoch, a layman, not very exemplary as regards penitential practices, and had the reputation of a freethinker, I did not venture to undertake doing this in my own name, and I created a theological student who should do it in his. I then fancied that I could paint with more vividness ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... church in Crocusville. The back of the pine bench on which she sat had a penitential forward tilt that would have brought St. Simeon down, in jealousy, from his pillar. The preacher singled her out, and thundered upon her vicarious head the damnation of the world. At each side of her an adamant parent held her rigidly to the bar of judgment. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... their spoils and trophies? where The glorious dint a martyr's shield should bear? How chance no cheek among them wears The deep-worn trace of penitential tears, But all is bright and smiling love, As if, fresh-borne from Eden's happy grove, They had flown here, their King to see, Nor ever had ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... What a disappointment it was to us to find how soon our appetite had forsaken us, and that we had lost the power of enjoying the delicacies which we had most anticipated. And over-indulgence often brought sad results and was followed by a period of penitential fasting. And the appetites for sense gratification must always lead to this result. They not only crave things which "perish with the using;" temporarily at least, often permanently, the appetite itself ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... the Penitential Psalms, etc., by Hans Mielich. Vienna, too, can show a magnificent Missal by Georg Hoefnagel, bearing the dates 1582 to 1590. Venice is represented in the work of Benedetto Bordone and the Ducali. Florence in the splendid Missals, etc., ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... perpetrated sins that had glided through the lifetime of Mr. Smith. And could such beings of cloudy fantasy, so near akin to nothingness, give valid evidence against him, at the day of judgment? Be that the case or not, there is reason to believe that one truly penitential tear would have washed away each hateful picture, and left the canvas white as snow. But Mr. Smith, at a prick of Conscience too keen to be endured, bellowed aloud, with impatient agony, and suddenly discovered that his three guests were gone. There he sat alone, a silver-haired ...
— Fancy's Show-Box (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... moment, little sad remorseful penitential sobs, and died away softly across the prairie as a ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... the doing of penance, and through the door of reconciliation to admit to the communion of the sacraments those who have been cleansed by a salutary satisfaction." Brose says: "The amount of the penance must be adapted to the trouble of the conscience." Hence divere penitential canons were appointed in the holy Synod of Nice, in accordance with The diversity of satisfactions, Jovinian the heretic, thought, however, that all sins are equal and accordingly did not admit a diversity of satisfactions. Moreover, satisfactions should not be abolished in the Church, ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous
... plain and clear to their understanding; when they said their prayers at night and asked pardon for their offences, I would remind them of the sins of the past day, solemnly, but in perfect kindness, to avoid raising a spirit of opposition; penitential hymns should be said by the naughty, cheerful ones by the comparatively good; and every kind of instruction I would convey to them, as much as possible, by entertaining discourse—apparently with no other object than their present ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... been looking down again at the crystal while speaking; her attitude was penitential, but the faint smile on her lips adorably mischievous. Presently she glanced up at him to see how he was taking it. He must have been taking ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers |
