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noun
Votary  n.  (pl. votaries)  One devoted, consecrated, or engaged by a vow or promise; hence, especially, one devoted, given, or addicted, to some particular service, worship, study, or state of life. "You are already love's firm votary." "'T was coldness of the votary, not the prayer, that was in fault." "But thou, my votary, weepest thou?"






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Votary" Quotes from Famous Books



... sunshine against an old grey tomb of carved stone. Two angels with spread wings upheld the defaced inscription. Above it, over it, round it, like desire impotently defying death, a flood of red roses clambered and clung. Were they trying to wake some votary who slept below? A great twisted sentinel cypress kept its own dark counsel. Against its shadow Fay's figure in her white gossamer gown showed more ethereal and exquisite even than in memory. She seemed at one with this wonderful, passionate southern spring, which trembled between rapture ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... rashness; repent her insults; implore my forgiveness; beg to be reinstated in my favour, and that I will bury in oblivion the remembrance of her heinous offence against thee, and against me, thy faithful votary. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... pleasure of his acquaintance; he appeared grossly stupid, not in his perfect wits, and interested in nothing but small change; for that he had a great avidity. In the course of time he proved to be a chicken- stealer, and vanished from his perch; and perhaps from the first he was no true votary of forest freedom, but an ingenious, theatrically-minded beggar, and his cabin in the tree was only stock-in-trade to beg withal. The choice of his position would seem to indicate so much; for if in the forest there are no places still to be discovered, ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... man of obesity, clad in very flowing robes, and an immense crown, in the act of casting a ring into a black little stream ornamented by six rushes and two swans, with this inscription beneath: 'Venice wedding the Adriatic through the person of her Doge.' A wit having suggested to this votary of the muse that he should compose an epic on the royal canine of Venice, he is now zealously devoting himself to the task, as the literary public are respectfully ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... and delicate. One votary was having a violet-ray facial treatment, the next an oil shampoo. Boys wheeled about miraculous electrical massage-machines. The barbers snatched steaming towels from a machine like a howitzer of polished nickel and disdainfully flung them away after a second's use. On the vast ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... ... you destroy the merit of it entirely in me by attributing my anxiety to the animating prospect of possessing Mrs. Custis, when—I need not tell you, guess yourself. Should not my own Honor and country's welfare be the excitement? 'Tis true I profess myself a votary of love. I acknowledge that a lady is in the case, and further I confess that this lady is known to you. Yes, Madame, as well as she is to one who is too sensible of her charms to deny the Power whose influence he feels and must ever ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... Arrius—prudent, and of the class which, while enriching the altars at Praeneste and Antium, was of opinion, nevertheless, that the favor of the blind goddess depended more upon the votary's care and judgment than upon his gifts and vows. All night as master of the feast he had sat at table drinking and playing; yet the odor of the sea returned him to the mood of the sailor, and he would not rest until he knew his ship. Knowledge leaves no room for chances. Having begun ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... art of smoking better than his Highness. His richly carved silver sheesha borne by a glossy Nubian eunuch, in a scarlet and golden dress, was a picture for Stephanoff. The Chibouquejee of the Viceroy never took less than five minutes in filling the Viceregal pipe. The skilful votary is well aware how much the pleasure of the practice depends upon the skill with which the bowl is filled. For myself, notwithstanding the high authority of the Pacha, I give the preference to Beirout, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various

... time reporter, interviewer, manager, agent, who had the command of the principal "dailies," would write her up and work her, as it were, scientifically—the attraction of all this was too obvious to be insisted on. Matthias had a mean opinion of Tarrant, thought him quite second-rate, a votary of played-out causes. It was his impression that he himself was in love with Verena, but his passion was not a jealous one, and included a remarkable disposition to share the object of his affection with the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... fortnight since I beheld that memorable spectacle. I was on my way home, having dined with a friend, who, though not an habitual votary of Bacchus, occasionally sacrifices to the god with intense and absorbing zeal. After dinner we adjourned to the Opera, having only determined to renew at supper our intimacy with certain flasks of Champagne, which lay in their icy baths coolly expecting our ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various

... so singular a nature, that, though the pride commonly called honour has, and I trust ever will, prevent me from disgracing my name by a mean or cowardly action, I have been already held up as the votary of licentiousness, and the disciple of infidelity. How far justice may have dictated this accusation, I cannot pretend to say; but, like the gentleman to whom my religious friends, in the warmth of their charity, have already devoted me, I am made worse than I really am. However, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... should take the form required by the religion of the worshipper. Hence the Christian sees Christ and enters heaven; Mahomed was caught up to the Paradise of the true believers; the anthropomorphic Jehovah permitted only a back view to His votary; the Egyptian Pharaohs beheld their gods alive and moving on the earth. The witch also met her god at the actual Sabbath and again in her dreams, for that earthly Sabbath was to her the true Paradise, where there was more pleasure than she could express, ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... intervene between the dates, taken roughly, of Scott's worst novel and Thackeray's best, the flood tide of romanticism had risen to its highest point, and had then ebbed very low, on both sides of the British Channel. And we can see that the younger writer was no votary of the older school of high-flying chivalrous romance, with its tournaments, its crusaders, its valiant warriors, and distressed maidens. His youthful aversion for shams and conventionalities, his strong ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... same time inflict chastisements and punishments upon the crossgrained and disobedient; and as for the incurably vicious, put them beyond the pale altogether. The result will be, that the decent and conscientious citizen will listen to the voice of reason, while the worthless votary of pleasure is chastened by pain like a beast of burden.... Law has a coercive function, appealing to force, notwithstanding that it is a reasoned conclusion of practical wisdom and intelligence. The interference of persons is odious, when it stands out against ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... Suevi, but their language more resembles the British. [257] They worship the mother of the gods; [258] and as the symbol of their superstition, they carry about them the figures of wild boars. [250] This serves them in place of armor and every other defence: it renders the votary of the goddess safe even in the midst of foes. Their weapons are chiefly clubs, iron being little used among them. They cultivate corn and other fruits of the earth with more industry than German indolence commonly exerts. [260] They even explore ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... article of political or local interest. But more frequently there appeared in its first column an effusion of no local color, but full of sentimental or moral reflections. In this day's issue there was a long letter, dated New York, from one who claimed to be "Beauty's Votary." This expressed the writer's disappointment that an interesting "Piece" inserted in the "Gazette" a fortnight earlier had presented in its conclusion "an unexpected shocking Image." The shock to the writer it appears was the greater, because ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey

... though I would fain be spared the trouble. I doubt not it is some soft votary of Flora; and I am not in the vein for ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... advantage over the masked votary of Jad-ben-Otho in that the moment he saw the priest he knew his intention concerning him, and therefore was not compelled to delay action. And so it was that before the priest could determine on any suitable line of conduct ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... an aporroia ton astron, an effluence of the stars: it comes direct from the first and ultimate God, the Alpha and Omega, who is beyond the Planets. Though the Kosmokratores cast us to and fro like their slaves or dead chattels, in soul at least we are of equal birth with them. The Mithraic votary, when their wrathful and tremendous faces break in upon his vision, answers them unterrified: ego eimi symplanos hymin aster, 'I am your fellow wanderer, your fellow Star.' The Orphic carried to the grave on his golden scroll the same boast: first, ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... occasionally to sacrifice a pigeon, a fowl, or a duck, and of course they eat these birds. No Hindu eats any meat but the flesh of sacrifices; for he considers it as a sin to kill any animal for the purpose of indulging his appetite; but, when a sacrifice has been offered, the votary may without blame eat what the Deity does not use. We observed, that even the Rajputs in Nepal were so fond of animal food, that, to the utter astonishment of our low country Hindus, they drank the blood of the sacrifices as it flowed from ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... during some passages, was enough of itself to make you hold your breath; and a sudden stroke of genius lit her face into a very heaven with its lightning. It seemed to me that in her I should find one who would truly sympathize with me, one who looked on the art not as a connoisseur, but a votary. ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... Towers the vast fabric on the desert soil; O'er many a league the ponderous domes extend. And deep in earth the ribbed vaults descend; 70 A thousand jasper steps with circling sweep Lead the slow votary up the winding steep; Ten thousand piers, now join'd and now aloof, Bear on their branching arms the ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... by the exclamations of surprise drawn from a group of scientists who, after all, were prepared for anything; and Professor Bottazzi confesses that it was then that, to quote his own words—measured words, as beseems a votary of science, but expressive—he felt "a shiver all ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... been a philosopher, and the best we do is often that for which our age and our friends care the least; but they who have once tasted the delights of a cultivated mind would not exchange them for the gifts of fortune, and to have beheld the fair face of wisdom is to be forever her votary. Words spoken for the masses grow obsolete; but what is fit to be heard by the chosen few shall be true and beautiful while such minds are found on earth. In the end, it is this little band—this intellectual aristocracy—who move and guide the ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... lamented his want of wealth. His first wish was aggrandisement; and the means that led towards this end were secondary considerations. Haughty, yet trembling to every demonstration of respect; ambitious, but too proud to shew his ambition; willing to achieve honour, yet a votary of pleasure,— he entered upon life. He was met on the threshold by some insult, real or imaginary; some repulse, where he least expected it; some disappointment, hard for his pride to bear. He writhed beneath ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... sailing or had sailed on the sweet fleuve du tendre. For instance, I met one old canon bound to a venerable dame by a tie of many years' standing. I also met a young prelate with a pink-and-white complexion and eyes expressive of anything but holiness; he was a desperate votary of the fair sex, and swaggered about paying his homage right and left. Will it be believed, this gay apostle actually told me, without circumlocution, that in the monastery of Tor di Specchi there dwelt a young lady who was in love with me? I, who of course ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... The sable votary of St. Francis made his bow, and opening the lid of his basket, pulled out a cabbage with a long stalk and four or five flagging leaves, but no heart to it. "Superior send present to Inglez capitown." And having laid it carefully on the carronade slide, fumbled in his pocket for some time, and ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... produces the same effect—the same power is wielded for the same purpose, as in the Halls of Congress. Even the preliminary nominating conventions, before they dare name a candidate for the highest office in the gift of the people, must ask of the Genius of slavery, to what votary she will show herself propitious. This very year, we see both the great political parties doing homage to the slave power, by nominating each a slaveholder for the chair of State. The candidate of one party declares, "I should have opposed, and would continue to oppose, any scheme ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... of place or fortune she puts some impossible hunger in the soul of the victim which leads him at last to his own destruction. With all the world conquered there is still some mystic island of which she whispers, and to gain this her votary risks ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... and congenial growth only in the first of these forms. There alone the imagination of the votary is free, there alone it is not fettered by a ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... his faculties. It would have been like a seeing eye without a shining light. The power would have lain dormant for want of a suitable object. Ask the Botanist, the Naturalist, the Chemist—ask the votary of any science, what makes accumulated knowledge possible; he will tell you, it is the similarity which enables him to classify, accompanied by the diversity which enables him to distinguish. Wanting ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... that unpopular character, a miser. Your miser may be looked up to, in a way, as an ideal votary of Mammon, but he is never loved. On his vast possessions, mainly in coal-fields, he was even more detested than the ordinary run of capitalists. The cottages and farmhouses on his estates were dilapidated and insanitary beyond what is endurable. Of his many mansions, some were kept in ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... through life, was Charles Lamb, one of the most charming of English essayists. He was an old bachelor, who lived alone with his sister Mary a lovable and intellectual woman, but subject to recurring attacks of madness. Lamb was "a notched and cropped scrivener, a votary of the desk," a clerk, that is, in the employ of the East India Company. He was of antiquarian tastes, an ardent play-goer, a lover of whist and of the London streets; and these tastes are reflected in his Essays of Elia, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... signify that this holy doctrine still abides with them, and that this alone accompanies them in another life? For as 'tis not the length of the beard or the coarseness of the habit which makes a philosopher, so neither will these frequent shavings, or the mere wearing of a linen vestment, constitute a votary of Isis. He alone is a true servant or follower of this goddess who, after he has heard, and has been made acquainted in a proper manner with the history of the actions of these gods, searches into the hidden truths which lie concealed under them, ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge

... none among the public characters of his time; and if, instead of being cut off by the hand of violence in the morning of life, he had been permitted to attain a length of days at all approaching to the fourscore years of his father, it is probable that the votary of letters would have been lost to us in the statesman or the soldier. Queen Mary, who sought by her favor and confidence to revive the almost extinguished energies of his father, and called forth into premature distinction the aspiring boyhood of his son, would have ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... such comparisons. Nothing could present a greater contrast than the disorderly, vigorous Raoul to Felix de Vandenesse, who cared for his person like a dainty woman, wore well-fitting clothes, had a charming "desinvoltura," and was a votary of English nicety, to which, in earlier days, Lady Dudley had trained him. Marie, as a good and pious woman, soon forbade herself even to think of Raoul, and considered that she was a monster of ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... the burial of him under that name, were meant to denote the reception of the individual human life into the universal nature life. The doctrine has been implicitly held wherever pantheism has found a votary, from Anaximander, to whom finite creatures were "disintegrations or decompositions from the Infinite," to Alexander ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... demonstration is complete. Here the influence of the eighteenth century is very strongly marked. Beyle had drunk deeply of that fountain of syllogism and analysis that flows through the now forgotten pages of Helvetius and Condillac; he was an ardent votary of logic in its austerest form—'la lo-gique' he used to call it, dividing the syllables in a kind of awe-inspired emphasis; and he considered the ratiocinative style of Montesquieu almost as good as that of ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... only in variety and far superior in scientific precision. Mr. Spayth's book is accordingly addressed to a comparatively narrow circle of readers; but those who are competent to judge of its merits will find it a work of great value. The author, who is an enthusiastic votary of the game, and has no superior among our American amateurs, offers a judicious selection from the treatises of such foreign writers as the severe and critical Anderson, the brilliant but capricious Drummond, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... willingness to abandon all preconceived notions, however cherished, if they be found to contradict the truth. Believe me, a self-renunciation which has something noble in it, and of which the world never hears, is often enacted in the private experience of the true votary ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... writ without any real passion, are the most nauseous of all conceits; and I have often thought that no man can be a proper critic of love-composition, except he himself, in one or more instances, have been a warm votary of this passion. As I have been all along a miserable dupe to love, and have been led into a thousand weaknesses and follies by it, for that reason I put the more confidence in my critical skill, in distinguishing foppery ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... airy halls, One who owns thee duly calls! Breathe along the brimming bowl, And instruct the fearful soul In the shadowy things that lie Dark in dim futurity. Come, wild demon of the air, Answer to thy votary's ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... on her knees before a marble altar, where burned a lamp at the feet of a statue of the Virgin; and no painting in Europe stamped itself so indelibly on my memory as the picture of that beautiful votary. Her delicate hands were crossed over her heart,—her large, liquid, black eyes, raised in adoration,—her full, crimson lips parted as she repeated the 'Ave Maria' in the most musical voice I ever heard. Just above the purplish folds of her abundant hair drooped pomegranate boughs ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... dim And deep than that of Isis. For what are Dragons, Laidly Worms, And such-like mythic scourges, Compared with microscopic germs 'Gainst which the war he urges? Hygeia, goddess, saint, or nymph, We trust there's no big blunder, And hope your votary's magic lymph May prove no nine days' wonder. We dare not trust each pseudo-seer Who'd powder, purge, or pill us; But pyramids to him we'll rear Who ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various

... struck twelve with a melancholy clang. It roused the Student Hieronymus from his dream; and rang in his ears, like the iron hoofs of the steeds of Time. Themagic hour had come, when the Divinity of the lamp most willingly revealed herself to her votary. The bronze figures seemed alive; a white cloud rose from the flame and spread itself through the chamber, whose four walls dilated into magnificent cloud vistas; a fragrance, as of wild-flowers, filled ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... as lovely as he is sound. But perhaps it is by the perfection of soundness of his lighter and archer masterpieces that he is poetically most wholesome for us. For the votary misled by a personal estimate of Shelley, as so many of us have been, are, and will be,—of that beautiful spirit building his many-colored ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... marble statue, maids divine, Xenocles raised, one tribute unto nine. Your votary all admit him: by this skill He gat him fame: and you ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... urgent. We should have noted that, while he was just as fearful to be reminded of the galley and the tall dark ganger with the red, red mouth and the merciless thong, he also viewed with alarm the possibility of any distraction from his work. The galley-slave was become a votary. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... he never again hear the clarion cry of Pallas? Why then had he turned him from Pallas and worshipped at the shrine of the false Idalian Queen? Thus it was that she kept her oaths; thus she repaid her votary. ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... satellite, parasite, sycophant, dependant, vassal, minion, sponger, toady, heeler, toadeater, fawner, votary. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... actually declared him to be—a rude fellow and a bore. But the danger of their profligacy was a more delicate and ominous text for censure. In the peril of any public exposure was involved an additional complication of guilt. Perez was not the only favoured votary of the versatile siren. His rival, or rather his partner, was—Philip of Spain! The revelation of promiscuous worship, threatened by Escovedo, sounded like a knell to Perez and the princess. Was it a mad defiance, or a profound prescience, of the consequences, which, when ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... might dedicate her to the service of some god as a vestal or a hierodule; or give her as a concubine. She had no choice in these matters, which were often decided in her childhood. A grown-up daughter might wish to become a votary, perhaps in preference to an uncongenial marriage, and it seems that her father could not refuse her wish. In all these cases the father might dower her. If he did not, on his death the brothers were bound to do so, giving her a full child's share if a wife, a concubine or a vestal, but one-third ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... come unconsciously, as results of conformity to the will of God, sought not for any end but itself."—"It cannot indeed be denied that these two, culture or the love of beauty, religion or the love of godliness, appear in individuals, in races, in ages, as rival, often as conflicting, forces. The votary of beauty shrinks from religion as something stern and ungenial, the devout Puritan discards beauty as a snare; and even those who have hearts susceptible of both find that a practical crisis will come when a choice must be made whether of the two they will serve. The consciousness of this disunion ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... voluntary nor constant, and was considered rather annoying than agreeable to the possessors of it. The gift was possessed by individuals of both sexes, and its fits came on within doors and without, sitting and standing, at night and by day, and at whatever employment the votary might chance to ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... significant and unforgettable a figure as Apollo or his sister, as Zeus, Athena, and the other greater gods. If ever, while that phase of religion lasted, his character had been obscured and his features dimmed, he would have been recreated by every new votary: poets would never have tired of singing his praises, or sculptors of rendering his form. When, after the hero had been the centre and subject of so much imaginative labour, the belief in his reality lapsed, ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... concern, and narrows into a personal affair between an individual and his Maker, in which the issue at stake is but his private salvation. Religion in this shape is quite consistent with the most selfish and contracted egoism, and identifies the votary as little in feeling with the rest of his kind ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... queen of dread desire! By all the dreams that throng Love's golden ways, By all the honied vows thy votary pays, By sacrificial wine, and holy fire! Thou who hast made my heart thy living lyre, Hast thou no gift for me, nor any grace? Why hast thou turned the light of Love's sweet face From me, the sweetest singer of ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... As a votary, always, in the first instance, of a general impression, I walked all round the outer enceinte—a process on the very face of it entertaining. I took to the right of the Porte de l'Aude, without entering it, where the old moat has been filled in. The filling-in of the moat has created a grassy ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... Hist." p. 431). Licinius, however, renewed the war against Constantine, who immediately embraced Christianity, thus securing to himself the sympathy and assistance of the faith which now for the first time saw its votary on the imperial throne of the world, and Licinius, by allying himself with Paganism, and persecuting the Christians, drove them entirely over to Constantine, and was finally defeated and dethroned, A.D. 324. From that date Christianity was supreme, and became ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... design'd an humble Votary in the House of Devotion, but fancying my self not endu'd with an obstinacy of Mind, great enough to secure me from the Efforts and Vanities of the World, I rather chose to deny my self that Content I could not certainly promise my self, than to languish (as I have seen ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... sufficiently indicated—a travelling preacher of great fame among the Methodists. What puzzled us was the fact that his face appeared turned from, instead of to, the camp-meeting at Stamford. However, as this new votary of the wandering life drew near the little green space where the guide-post and our wagon were situated, my six fellow-vagabonds and myself rushed forward and surrounded him, crying out with united voices, "What news? What news from the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... who is allowed full liberty of speech, being himself a universal butt. His attempts at wit, which are rarely very successful, and his allusions to the pleasures of the table, of which he is a confessed votary, are absurdly contrasted with the sententious solemnity of the despairing hero, crossed in the prosecution of his love-suit. His clumsy interference in the intrigues of his friend only serves to augment his difficulties, and occasions many an awkward dilemma. On the ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... is depicted with a bouquet of flowers or a basket of peaches of immortality, is stated to have been a grand-nephew of Han Yue (A.D. 768-824), the great statesman, philosopher, and poet of the T'ang dynasty, and an ardent votary of transcendental study. His own name was Ch'ing Fu. The child was entrusted to his uncle to be educated and prepared for the public examinations. He excelled his teacher in intelligence and the performance of ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... oh! ye Muses, keep your votary's feet From tavern-haunts where politicians meet Where rector, doctor, and attorney pause, First on each parish, then each public cause: Indited roads and rates that still increase; The murmuring poor, who will not fast in peace: Election ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates hold them; not because their verity is testified by portents and wonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring these convictions into contact ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... lions" of its prime (too often behanged with a calf-skin on their recreant limbs) are down among the dead and the jackal-pack which has now taken up the howling could no longer have caused Thackeray to fear or can excite the righteous disgust of that votary ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... bear-bull, and a Saint-Bernard-man. I have already described the Ape-man, and there was a particularly hateful (and evil-smelling) old woman made of vixen and bear, whom I hated from the beginning. She was said to be a passionate votary of the Law. Smaller creatures were certain dappled youths and my little sloth-creature. But enough ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... freeborn bosom dear; And hailed thee, not perchance without a tear. Now to my theme—but from thy holy haunt Let me some remnant, some memorial bear;[cw] Yield me one leaf of Daphne's deathless plant, Nor let thy votary's hope ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... flourishes secular poetry, clothing itself in rhyme and metre, adopting every current form of poesy, and treating of every appropriate subject. Its first votary was Solomon Gabirol, that ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... up an unmeaning conversation. In the lefthand corner, seated on an ottoman, and regarding the others as if a barrier were placed between them, are two men designated gamblers. Your Southern gentleman is, with few exceptions, a votary of the exciting vice; but he who makes it his profession severs the thread that bound him to society. And there sits not far from these members of the sporting fraternity, the tall, slender figure of a man, habited in the garb of a quaker. He regards everything about him with the eye of a philosopher, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... the only noise of traffic; the glass of the window-sash has not been washed since it was put in apparently. The clerk is not writing, and has evidently no other use for his steel pen than spearing flies. Brown is out, says this young votary of commerce, and will not be in till half past five. We remark upon the fact that nobody ever is "in" these dingy warehouses, wonder when the business is done, and go out into the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... end of them—nor limits to your admiration. Be it summer or winter, there is food for sustenance, and for the gratification of the most exquisite palate. To contemplate SUCH a performance, the thorough-bred book-votary would travel by torch-light through forty-eight hours of successive darkness!...: But the horses are again neighing—for their homes. You must rouse the slumbering post-boy: for "The bell of ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... ardor is heightened religious tone is lowered. The Puranic votary clinging to his one idea of god curses all them that believe in other aspects of the divinity. Blind bigotry fills the worshipper's soul. Religion becomes mere fanaticism. But there is also tolerance. Sometimes in one and the same Pur[a]na rival forms are ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... silence, without trace of scorn in his face, for it is again the worship of the Creator by the created. They are both fulfilling the first law of the East—prayer to God; and whether the shrine be Jerusalem, Mecca, or Lhassa, the sanctity of worship surrounds the votary, and protects the pilgrim. ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... previous to the date of these representations, which is about 1600 B.C. They are interesting to compare both with the much more ancient figures from the Spanish cave and with modern female costume. The first (Plate VIII) is a figure in coloured pottery (faience), representing either a votary or priestess of a goddess to whom snakes were sacred. The petticoat of this lady is very modern, being long, decorated with flounces (a series of five) and bell-shaped. The dress is further remarkable for a tight ring-like girdle which greatly compresses the waist and emphasises the ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... of power. He was then, if I may use the expression, two individuals in one: the Republican general, who was obliged to appear the advocate of liberty and the principles of the Revolution; and the votary of ambition, secretly plotting the downfall of that liberty and ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... coarseness of manner and brutality of intellect than for refinement or learning, Count Renneberg, on the contrary, was an elegant and accomplished gentleman—the Sydney of his country in all but loyalty of character. He was a classical scholar, a votary of music and poetry, a graceful troubadour, and a valiant knight. He was "sweet and lovely of conversation," generous and bountiful by nature. With so many good gifts, it was a thousand pities that the gift of truth had been denied him. Never did treason look more ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... or two just twinkling on thy brow Suffices thee; save that the moon is thine No less than hers, not worn indeed on high With ostentatious pageantry, but set With modest grandeur in thy purple zone, Resplendent less, but of an ampler round. Come, then, and thou shalt find thy votary calm, Or make me so. Composure is thy gift; And whether I devote thy gentle hours To books, to music, or to poet's toil, To weaving nets for bird-alluring fruit, Or twining silken threads round ivory reels When they command whom man was born ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... recovered. Your brother in high glee at Burke. Burke stated the Chancellor to be like to the God Priapus, and Pitt the carpenter. He run his idea to a charming extravagance, and finished by declaring that "he could not be a votary to Priapus, the false ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... devil, if there be one," said Varney, within himself, "for once help a votary at a dead pinch, for my boat ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... whom we used to have on deck to dance for us. Gad! what figures they cut! The captain and I had a standing wager of five of the new guineas as to which of the rascals could hold out longest, promising a measure of rum to the victorious votary of Terpsichore. When I had lost a score of guineas I found that the captain was in the habit of priming his man before he came upon deck. Naturally, being filled with Dutch ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... Court, they offered to Bassompierre the lieutenancy of Guienne and the baton of a marshal. These honours were, however, declined—not from ambition, for Bassompierre, although brave in the field, was an ardent votary of pleasure, and the Court was his world; but he was wise enough to feel that he did not possess the necessary talent for so perilous a post as that which his friends would fain have assigned to him; and he was the first to ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... more fitted to be a votary of the temple than one of its officers. However, Monsieur Love, let there be no mistake between us; I do not come here to form a marriage, but to prevent one. I understand that Monsieur the Vicomte de Vaudemont has called into request your services. I am one of the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... "You have become old, madame," he said, coldly—"old enough to tread in the new path you have so wisely prepared for yourself. You who have so long been the votary of love, are now old enough and plain enough to become a model of virtue. Accept this order of virtue and modesty, promised you by the Empress of Austria. The king will not divorce his wife, and as this is supposed to be solely your work, the empress will ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... pilgrims humbly touch Those shrines to which they bow so much, And clouds in courtship flock, and run To be the mask unto the sun, So I concluded it was true I might at distance worship you, A Persian votary, and say It was your light show'd me the way. So loadstones guide the duller steel, And high perfections are the wheel Which moves the less, for gifts divine Are strung upon a vital line, Which, touch'd ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... was dead, the Nazar'ene came and seized his seat beneath the sun, "The votary of the Riddle-god, whose one is three ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... Truth-speaking, skilled in arms, sagacious, just; Terrible to his foes, fortunate, lord Of many conquered towns; a godlike man, Princeliest of princes—Nala—one that hath A countenance like the full moon's for light, And eyes of lotus. This true offerer Of sacrifices, this close votary Of Vedas and Vedangas, in the war Deadly to enemies, like sun and moon For splendor—by some certain evil ones Being defied to dice, my virtuous Prince Was, by their wicked acts, of realm despoiled— Wealth, jewels, all. I am his woful wife, The ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... Hannay? There was a strange cult in the ancient world, the worship of Magna Mater—the Great Mother. To enter into her mysteries the votary passed through a bath of blood——I think I am passing through that bath. I think that like the initiate I shall be renatus in ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... way to her place among the nations. For the present, it is not to be denied, certain odd phases of the process are more visible than the result, to arrive at which it seems necessary that, as she was of old a passionate votary of the beautiful, she should to- day burn everything that she has adored. It is doubtless too soon to judge her, and there are moments when one is willing to forgive her even the restoration of St. Mark's. Inside as well there has been a considerable ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... his name, no one exactly knew why, with the cause of High-Church, and elected him the hero and the leader of the movement for the restoration of the exiled family. Bolingbroke committed Scotland to the care of the Earl of Mar, a Jacobite, a personal friend of James Stuart, and a votary of High-Church. It can hardly be supposed that in making such an appointment Bolingbroke had not in his mind the possibility of a rising of the Highland clans against the Hanoverian succession. But it is none the less evident that Bolingbroke was as ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... in the minds of many persons greater respect than a miniature copy of the same work; but the ideas contained in the one are no better or more impressive than the same contained in that of the other; save the feeling with which the larger one inspires the votary who looks no farther than the outside of the page. The series of forty landscapes alluded to in the above digression, if viewed at the focal distance of eighteen inches, will appear as large as those twice the size, viewed at their proportionate increased distance. An elaborately finished ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... forefeet, the arrangement of the design being very much the same as that of the relief on the Lion Gate at Mycenae, only with the figure of the goddess taking the place of the sacred pillar. In her hands the goddess holds something which may be either a weapon or a sceptre, and before her stands a male votary in an attitude of adoration. In the background is a shrine with sacred columns, in front of which rise the 'horns of consecration,' which were characteristic of Minoan temples, as apparently also of other Eastern religious structures. The second discovery was a clay matrix, formed from ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... thee, girl? Those prints of brutal osculation? Great grief! that lowlife and that churl! That Telephus abomination! Can him, O votary of Venus, Else everything is off ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams

... the king, bowing respectfully to Theresa, with all that captivating grace of address for which he was distinguished, 'if every frozen statue were as lovely and attractive as this, I should forget to wish for their animation; and become myself a votary of the ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore

... the government be strictly republican. It is evident that no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the Revolution; or with that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government. If the plan of the convention, therefore, be found to depart from the republican character, its advocates must abandon it as ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... visit terminated there was another orgy, in which Harry Mortimer introduced his Aunt Clara to this amiable family circle. Mesmerism was now quite unnecessary, Harry being as willing a votary to the worship of Priapus as could possibly be desired by his ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous

... but elevating and refining, there can be no doubt, and that they served a high purpose is equally clear. No one, who has read in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius the initiation of Lucius into the Mysteries of Isis, can doubt that the effect on the votary was profound and purifying. He tells us that the ceremony of initiation "is, as it were, to suffer death," and that he stood in the presence of the gods, "ay, stood near and worshiped." Far hence ye profane, and all who are polluted by sin, was the motto of the Mysteries, and Cicero testifies that ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... music which retains the sweetness but has lost what Wordsworth calls the gushes of the summer strains. There is still an ode to Venus; its prayer not now "come to bless thy worshipper"; but "leave an old heart made callous by fifty years, and seek some younger votary." There is an ode to Spring. Spring brought down from heaven his earliest Muse; it came to him charged with youthful ardours, expectations, joys; now its only message is that change and death attend all ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... Love) of the Borghese Gallery, to the Herodias of the Doria Gallery, to the Flora of the Uffizi. Here, even when the beautiful Venetian courtesan is represented or suggested, what the master gives is less the mere votary than the priestess of love. Of this power of domination, this feminine royalty, the Venus Anadyomene still retains a measure, but the Venus of Urbino and the splendid succession of Venuses and Danaes, goddesses, nymphs, and heroines belonging to the period of the fullest maturity, show ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... praise to Erinna, who, with her three hundred verses, challenged the fame of the brightest light of Greece, and counterbalanced with her one small volume, called the "Elecate," the ponderous "Iliad" of the great Homer. Aristophanes celebrates Carissena, a votary of the same profession, as a woman of great excellence and learning; and the same may be said for Teano, Merone, Polla, Elpe, Cornificia, and Telesilla, to the last of whom, in honour of her marvellous talents, a most beautiful statue was set up in ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... of Mainz was an image of the Virgin, on whose feet were golden slippers, the gift of some wealthy votary. Of this image the following ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... of course more ardent than their husbands in undertaking these pious enterprises, and they take care to bring with them all their children, however young; for the efficacy of the rites does not depend upon the age of the votary, so that people whose careful mothers have obtained for them the benefit of the pilgrimage in early life, are saved from the expense and trouble of undertaking the journey at a later age. The superior veneration so often excited ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... is in Rene, what a sense of air and space in Paul and Virginia, and what must they have been to a generation that had just emerged from the close parlours of Richardson, the best of the sentimentalists of the pre-revolutionary type? May we not say, too, in parenthesis, that the man is the votary, not of wisdom, but of a bald and shapeless asceticism, who is so excessively penetrated with the reality, the duties, the claims, and the constant hazards of civilisation, as to find in himself no chord responsive to that sombre pensiveness into which Obermann's ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley

... few tragedies know how to be. Setebos is mean, revengeful, fitful, spiteful, everything but good and noble; and his votary will live to hope that he will either be conquered by a mightier ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... "facon de parler," by which he imposed on the common herd like you and me; he told "the truth" (in allusion to the title of his book, which was called "The Truth") in secret to his disciples. For he was really a votary of that famous philosophy in which all things are said to be relative; nothing is great or small, or heavy or light, or one, but all is in motion and mixture and transition and flux and generation, not "being," as we ignorantly affirm, ...
— Theaetetus • Plato

... ere it blow, Even so by love the young and tender wit Is turned to folly; blasting in the bud, Losing his verdure even in the prime, And all the fair effects of future hopes. But wherefore waste I time to counsel the That art a votary to fond desire? Once more adieu! my father at the road Expects my coming, there to see ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... had a real and pernicious effect on the government of the empire. The vehement zeal of the Christians, who despised the worship, and overturned the altars of those fabulous deities, engaged their votary in a state of irreconcilable hostility with a very numerous party of his subjects; and he was sometimes tempted by the desire of victory, or the shame of a repulse, to violate the laws of prudence, and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... John Russell on his approaching union with Lady Fanny Elliot. His lordship is such a persevering votary of Hymen, that we think he should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... more value to the passing remarks of strangers, than the feelings of one who was beginning to believe he had found one pure votary of nature and of truth. It is well. I have ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz



Words linked to "Votary" :   non-Christian priest, bacchante, vestal virgin, bacchant, priest, religious, adherent



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