Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Alms   /ɑlmz/  /ɑmz/   Listen
Alms

noun
1.
Money or goods contributed to the poor.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Alms" Quotes from Famous Books



... the beggar received a dole at Westminster at the obsequies of Edward's little sons; yea, though he and all his brethren of the dish had all the winter before had alms given them to purchase their prayers for ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... for the Duomo was raised in Como and its districts. Boxes were placed in all the churches to receive the alms of those who wished to aid the work. The clergy begged in Lent, and preached the duty of contributing on special days. Presents of lime and bricks and other materials were thankfully received. Bishops, canons, and municipal magistrates ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... when now I stood so near them, that their semblances Came clearly to my view. Of sackcloth vile Their cov'ring seem'd; and on his shoulder one Did stay another, leaning, and all lean'd Against the cliff. E'en thus the blind and poor, Near the confessionals, to crave an alms, Stand, each his head upon his ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... had terrible opportunities of collecting information. I have followed his version (chapter iv.) very closely on this subject.] Meanwhile his sanctity increased, and the labour and charity of the brothers were assisted by the alms of godly ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... woman with three mammae, two ordinarily formed and a third forming a triangle with the others and resembling the breasts of a fat man. In the village of Phullendorf in Germany early in this century there was an old woman who sought alms from place to place, exhibiting to the curious four symmetrical breasts, arranged parallel. She was extremely ugly, and when on all fours, with her breasts pendulous, she resembled a beast. The authors have seen a man with six distinct nipples, arranged as regularly as those of a bitch ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... resource: for, conciliation failing, force remains; but, force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left. Power and authority are sometimes bought by kindness; but they can never be begged as alms by an impoverished and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... dispenses alms To outcasts, bread, and healing balms; While old Mammon knows himself The greatest ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... upon him and upon our humanity. "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them," is the divine precept, which, if we follow it as we ought, will lead us to search for our fallen comrades in the alms-houses and penal institutions and reformatories, and sometimes in the outhouses or cellars of private homes, to our shame, where errors of judgment or cruelty have placed them, and to transfer them to places of larger liberty and hopes of happiness and recovery. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... home from Egypt blinded with the ophthalmia of that arid soil. Some of the young men in Lucille's town, who had joined Napoleon's army, came back darkened by that fearful affliction, and Lucille's alms and Lucille's aid and Lucille's sweet voice were ever at hand for those poor sufferers, whose common misfortune touched so thrilling a chord of ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... monastery connected with it. The monks became very fond of him, and made him a member of the Congregation Cassinensi; the poet Tasso also was a member of this fraternity. This membership gave him the right to share in the masses, prayers, and alms of the community, and after his death the same offices for the repose of his soul would be performed as if he had been ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement

... Give alms of thy goods, and never turn thy face from any poor man; and then the face of the Lord shall not be turned away ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England

... sister-wives for that in truth she is the mother of Prince Khudadad and of him thou surely hast heard." Hereupon the surgeon accompanied the cavalcade; and, when the lady dismounted at a cathedral-mosque and gave alms of Ashrafis[FN246] and gold coins to all around (for the King had enjoined her that until Khudadad's return she should deal charity to the poor with her own hand, and pray for the youth's being restored to his home in peace and safety), the mediciner ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... the Squire, when all this news came upon him, as he was walking arm-in-arm with Mr. Dale to inspect some proposed improvement in the Alms-house, "this is all your fault. Why did not you go and talk to that brute of a boy, and that dolt of a woman? You've got 'soft sawder enough,' as Frank calls ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... had taught our folk nothing. Now my people see their work, and go away thinking. They do not think of the Heavenly Ones altogether. They think of the fire-carriage and the other things that the bridge-builders have done, and when your priests thrust forward hands asking alms, they give unwillingly a little. That is the beginning, among one or two, or five or ten—for I, moving among my people, know what is in ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling

... grove of olives, and, after our tent was pitched, walked upward through the orchards to the Ras-el-Ain (Promontory of the Fountain), on the side of Mount Gerizim. A multitude of beggars sat at the city gate; and, as they continued to clamor after I had given sufficient alms, I paid them with "Allah deelek!"—(God give it to you!)—the Moslem's reply to such importunity—and they ceased in an instant. This exclamation, it seems, takes away from them the power of demanding a ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... had twice sniffed at the alms tossed him without touching the gift, still continuing to follow Jean, now tugging at her apron-string and now licking her hand, McClure, a man of the country, began to suspect that the dog was a messenger from one of the lost Garland boys whom they had missed so narrowly the other day in the heather ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... prisons with criminals, but our hospitals with cripples. Those who have for a time infested the publick walks with their insults, quickly disturb them with their lamentations, and are soon reduced from bullies to beggars, and obliged to solicit alms from those they used to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson

... of a monk, as Jacobi describes it, is restricted to bare necessaries, and these he must beg—clothes, a blanket, an alms-bowl, a stick, a broom to sweep the ground, a piece of cloth to cover his mouth when speaking lest insects should enter it [Footnote ref 2]. The outfit of nuns is the same except that they have additional ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... defend the Faith, they stand for the recitation of the Creeds. They stand at the reading of the Gospel in the Communion Service to "show reverent regard for the Son of God above all other messengers, although speaking as from God also." They rise at the presentation of the alms and oblations, because the offering is their gift to God and to show their participation in the act. They stand as the clergy enter or leave {105} the church in token of respect for ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester

... whose silence was bought by permission to charge the highest prices. These methods of dealing conciliated public opinion in favor of Gaubertin, while Madame's praise was on every lip; for besides the payments she disbursed for work, she gave away large sums of money in alms. ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... of shapeless walls, of mud hovels, gray and dusty looking as the soil, together with some fragments of turreted walls, in whose shelter about a thousand humble huts raised their miserable adobe fronts, like anaemic and hungry faces demanding an alms from the passer-by. A shallow river surrounded the town, like a girdle of tin, refreshing, in its course, several gardens, the only vegetation that cheered the eye. People were going into and coming out of the town, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... the involuntary indifference which these consequences produced. When her friend was all the world to her, she found she was not as necessary to her happiness; and her delicate mind could not bear to obtrude her affection, or receive love as an alms, the offspring of pity. Very frequently has she ran to her with delight, and not perceiving any thing of the same kind in Ann's countenance, she has shrunk back; and, falling from one extreme into the other, instead of a warm greeting ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft

... resemblance to "Hareton Earnshaw, 1500"—but the "wilderness of crumbling griffins and shameless little boys" are nowhere to be found. Neither do we notice "the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house and a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way as if craving alms of the sun," and, to my thinking, this fine old farm of Sowdens is far too near the mills of Haworth to represent the God-forsaken, lonely house of Emily's fancy. Having seen the place, as in duty bound, one returns more than ever impressed by ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... spitefully: "Yes, we all know that thou hast become the Icefirth sheep-drover; and we all know that thou hast come to claim some share of the sheep, as any other beggar might. Kinsman Thorbiorn, thou hadst better give him some little alms ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... the Boys' Orphan-House, and gave for the necessities of the poor saints, in August, 1838, 100l. more; for she had been made willing to act out those precious exhortations: "Having food and raiment let us be therewith content." "Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth." "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller

... imparting to others a truth with facility Is proportion'd forever with painful exactness To the portable nature, the vulgar compactness, The minuteness in size, or the lightness in weight, Of the truth he imparts. So small coins circulate More freely than large ones. A beggar asks alms, And we fling him a sixpence, nor feel any qualms; But if every street charity shook an investment, Or each beggar to clothe we must strip off a vestment, The length of the process would limit the act; And therefore the truth that's summ'd up in ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... aim at that, and I do not know that they aim at happiness. It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for him, and when they are good for other people as well they are thought virtuous: if he finds pleasure in giving alms he is charitable; if he finds pleasure in helping others he is benevolent; if he finds pleasure in working for society he is public-spirited; but it is for your private pleasure that you give twopence to a beggar as much as it is for my private ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... general economic status of the deaf, a second source of information, at the bottom of the scale, as it were, is to be found in the proportion of the deaf cared for in public alms-houses. Though a much greater proportion of the deaf are discovered here than of the general population, the deaf do not on the whole constitute a large part of the alms-house population of the country. In 1910 the census reported 540 deaf-mutes to be in alms-houses, or six-tenths of one ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best

... bypaths through absolutely unknown country, until at sundown we happened to reach the main road just as an elegant travelling coach came in sight. I humbled my pride so far as to pretend I was a travelling journeyman, and begged the distinguished travellers for alms, while my friend timidly hid himself in the ditch by the roadside. Luckily we decided to seek shelter for the night in an inn, where we took counsel whether we should spend the alms just received on a supper or a bed. We decided for the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... had made him feel like an unpleasant cross between an alms-giver and a bully. "Now," said he, with forced but resolute cheerfulness, "we will eat, drink ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... to my way of thinking; and we put up a money-box in the nursery, in imitation of the alms-box in church. I am ashamed to confess that I was guilty of the meanness of changing a sixpence which I had dedicated to our "charity-box" into twelve half-pence, that I might have the satisfaction of making a dozen ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... leaders through a very labyrinth of narrow, unpaved streets, roofed here and there with frayed and tattered palmetto-leaves that offer some protection, albeit a scanty one, against the blazing sun. At one of the corners where the beggars congregate and call for alms in the name of Mulai Abd el Kader Ijjilalli, I catch a glimpse of the great Kutubia tower, with pigeons circling round its glittering dome, and then the maze of streets, shutting out the view, claims me again. The path is by way of shops containing every sort ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... will comfort and strengthen my heart. The happiness of my life is gone forever; but I may, perhaps, be happy in my unhappiness, and I will now try to become so by consoling the unhappy, by assisting the suffering, and by giving an asylum to the disowned and proscribed. To dry tears, to distribute alms, and to scatter joy and happiness around me—that shall be the balm with which I will heal the wounds of my heart. You are right; I will not retire from the world, but I will compel it to respect me; I will not flee ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... of Men! Whose love helped them and thee, and hath its meed. Rajas and maharajahs, warriors, aids,— All thine are thine for ever. Krishna waits To greet thee coming, 'companied by gods, Seated in heaven, from toils and conflicts saved. Son! there is golden fruit of noble deeds, Of prayer, alms, sacrifice. The most just Gods Keep thee thy place above the highest saints, Where thou shalt sit, divine, compassed about With royal souls in bliss, as Hari sits; Seeing Mandhata crowned, and Bhagirath, ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... is blind also) had given the Blind Man a Dog, who led him out in the morning to a seat in the sun under the crab-tree, and held his hat for wayside alms, and brought him safely ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing

... Milton's works are under a monopoly. Milton's granddaughter is starving. The reader is pillaged; but the writer's family is not enriched. Society is taxed doubly. It has to give an exorbitant price for the poems; and it has at the same time to give alms to the only surviving descendant of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... festivals were perquisites, and who, maimed or deformed, knelt on the stone floor close to the entrance, while with keenly observant, ubiquitous eyes they proffered their aves and their petitions for alms with the same exemplary patience and fervor—"Per l'amor di ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... that he will roast in hell as a penance—by being cowardly and certainly shameless into the bargain? I have another conception of God,' he used to say, 'for in my opinion one evil does not correct another, nor is a crime to be expiated by vain lamentings or by giving alms to the Church. Take this example: if I have killed the father of a family, if I have made of a woman a sorrowing widow and destitute orphans of some happy children, have I satisfied eternal Justice by letting myself be hanged, or by entrusting ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... to numerous and very well known infant asylums, never failed to attend mass at one o'clock on Sundays, gave alms for herself directly, and for the world by means of an abbe, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant

... and economy the administration of her husband's house, he abandons himself to become the prey of rapacious midnight and mid-day robbers. The result is, that he contracts debts, is stripped of his property, and his wife and children are sent to the alms-house, whilst he, ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... helmet now shall make a hive for bees, And lovers' songs be turned to holy psalms; A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees, And feed on prayers, which are old age's alms: But though from court to cottage he depart, His saint is sure ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... see what He has made of a human being who trusted Him like a child, who has never known what happiness in this world meant, nor demanded it, who has never received love from anyone but his mother and, although maimed and crippled, has worked hard until the end, never stretched out his hands for alms, never stolen or coveted his neighbours' possessions, who has ever given away the half of what he had... see what He has made ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... church of S. Giovanni Elemosinario at Venice showing the saint of that name enthroned, and giving alms to a beggar, belongs to the close of 1533 or thereabouts, since the high-altar was finished in the month of October of that year. According to Vasari, it must be regarded as having served above all to assert once for all the supremacy of Titian over Pordenone, whose ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... beggar asked an alms One day at an abbey-door, Said Luther; but, seized with qualms, The abbot ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... long, over which was a close gallery of similar length. Here was also a royal library. Three pipes supplied the palace with water, one from the white conduit in the new park, another from the conduit in the town fields, and the third from a conduit near the alms-houses in Richmond. In 1650, it was sold for 10,000l. to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various

... conducted me into a spacious yard, round which are suites of rooms, built in the manner of alms-houses, a plan which cannot be too much commended, because it sufficiently detaches the tenants of each, secures to every set their peculiar comforts, and may be rendered the means of separating virtue from vice. In the middle of the area stand ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... science, you are not for a moment to suppose that this implied any aberration of intellect. She believed these things in common with those around her, for she seldom spoke to anybody except crazy old dervishes, who received her alms, and fostered her extravagancies, and even when (as on the occasion of my visit) she was brought into contact with a person entertaining different notions, she still remained uncontradicted. This entourage and ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... you take And divide all that you hold Among the soldiers of the guard And great shall be your reward. 540 For of the income you obtain By whatever means you may The churches have but little gain, And from alms you still abstain: How you spend it who shall say? 545 For the conquest of Africa Give a tithe of your possessions, Give it, if you can, with pleasure, For the less you have of treasure The less ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente

... the man here. [Francis goes out.] My very servants shun my company. I held my purse to a beggar yesterday Who lay and bask'd his sores in the hot sun, And the gaunt pauper did refuse my alms. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... of New England to the freed Negro: not alms, but a friend; not cash, but character. It was not and is not money these seething millions want, but love and sympathy, the pulse of hearts beating with red blood; a gift which to-day only their own kindred and ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... by all-devouring Time into his wallet as mere "alms for oblivion"; yet amongst all the sea-dogs who ever sailed beneath "the blood-red flag" no one ever less deserved that fate. Campbell, in "Ye Mariners of England," groups "Blake and mighty Nelson" together as the ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... one mode of obtaining a revenue was by the breach of the very covenants which were meant to prevent extortion, peculation, and corruption? What sort of body is the India Company, which, coming to the verge of bankruptcy by the robbery of half the world, is afterwards to subsist upon the alms of peculation and bribery, to have its strength recruited by the violation of the covenants imposed upon its own servants? It is an odd sort of body to be so fed and so supported. This new constitution of revenue ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... appeared to Anna his wife, saying, 'Fear not, neither think that which you see is a spirit. For I am that angel who hath offered up your prayers and alms before God, and am now sent to tell you that a daughter will be born unto you.... Arise, therefore, and go up to Jerusalem; and when you shall come to that which is called the Golden Gate (because it is gilt with gold), as ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin

... of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousand-fold Relief Societies;—though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... thing Old age gained upon him, and he hardened, he grew stiff in mind, just as his fingers had stiffened. He had never married, and now he lived alone in O., in a little house not far from that of the Kalitines, looked after by an old woman-servant whom he had taken out of an alms-house. He walked a great deal, and he read the Bible, also a collection of Protestant hymns, and Shakspeare in Schlegel's translation. For a long time he had composed nothing; but apparently Liza, his best pupil, had been able to arouse him. It was for her that he had written ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... could procure, was expended in the massy ornaments of his bed and chariot; [52] and while they affected to maintain the prosperity of their ancient fortune, they quarrelled for the division of fifteen thousand ducats, the first alms of the Roman pontiff. After the necessary preparations, John Palaeologus, with a numerous train, accompanied by his brother Demetrius, and the most respectable persons of the church and state, embarked in eight vessels ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... am speaking of Colonel Gardiner's charity in this respect, I must not omit that of another kind, which has indeed engrossed the name of charity, excellent as it is, much more than it ought—I mean alms-giving for which he was very remarkable. I have often wondered how he was able to do so many generous things in this way. But his frugality fed the spring. He made no pleasurable expense on himself, ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge

... chronicler, and a Protestant, thus testifies, 1542:—"And since this time (the Reformation) a great change has come over all things. In place of piety, we have profanity; in place of reverence, sacrilege and the plundering of God's churches; in place of alms-deeds, stinginess and selfishness; in place of feasts, greed and gluttony; in place of festivals, labour; in place of obedience and humility of children, obstinacy and self-opinion; in place of honour and veneration ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... worked all day, lacking three hours [in constructing a rustic seat at the foot of our hill]. I went on the hilltop with my husband for a long time. Ineffable felicity.—A perfectly lovely day. I read "Christ the Spirit." Rose had a discourse from the Sermon on the Mount; the four verses about giving alms. We have very nice discourses [my mother's]. Una went to church.—Mr. George Bradford came to see us. Una and Julian went to the Emersons' in the evening.—Read again "Leamington Spa." Inimitable, fascinating.—Thanksgiving Day. We invited Ellery Channing, but ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... from time to time, a glance into the interior of the church. Baroness Dinati was now taking up the collection for the poor, holding the long pole of the alms-box in her little, dimpled hands, and bowing with a pretty smile as the ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... short-lived blaze of fanaticism, for its results have lasted from the twelfth century to our own; and although we may well believe that the day is past for serving Christ by going barefoot and living on alms, the spirit of Saint Francis's doctrine, charity, purity, self-abnegation, might do as much for modern men as for those of six hundred years ago. Believing all this, we were not sorry that our uncompromising friend had stayed behind, and it was in a reverent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... has been regained to offices, of hours; to ceremonies, of incense; to reliques, of shrines; to the confessed, of absolutions; to priests, of habits; to preachers, of pulpits; to ecclesiastics, of pre-eminences; to scriptures, of interpreters; to hosts, of communions; to the poor, of alms; to the wretched, of hospitals; to virgins, of monasteries; to fathers, of convents; to the clergy, of orders; to the defunct, of obsequies; to tierces, noons, vespers, complins, ave-maries, and matins, the privileges ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... earliest pieces of presentation silver were made for use in churches, and they were given by groups as well as by individuals. Representative of this type is a silver alms plate[1] with the following ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor

... prohibition in both Testaments, we ordain that manifest usurers shall not be admitted to communion, nor, if they die in their sins, be admitted to Christian burial, and that no priest shall accept their alms.'[2] Meanwhile, Alexander III., having given much attention to the subject of usury, had come to the conclusion that it was a sin against justice. This recognition of the essential injustice of usury marked a turning-point in the history of the treatment of the subject; ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien

... was their deliverer in all desperate cases; and when the weariness of confinement under our chilly vaults began to fill them with ennui, his mind, brutal even in jest, would cure them by arranging for their pleasure shows worthy of a den of thieves. Sometimes poor mendicant monks collecting alms would be terrified or tortured for their benefit; their beards would be burned off, or they would be lowered into a well and kept hanging between life and death until they had sung some foul song ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... me the poor man's crust. That is no true alms which the hand can hold. He gives nothing but worthless gold Who gives from ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston

... the loaf into four parts, and gave the saint one, with a halfpenny. The saint thanked him, and having gone a little further along the road seated himself like another beggar in the way of the soldier. When Brother Merry came up the saint again asked alms of him, and the old soldier again gave him another quarter of the loaf and ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous

... I, this morning, announce myself in favor of any plan of religious attack that succeeds—any plan of religious attack, however radical, however odd, however unpopular, however hostile to all the conventionalities of Church and State. We want more heart in our song, more heart in our alms-giving, more heart in our prayers, more heart in our preaching. Oh, for less of Abimelech's sword, and more of Abimelech's ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... for it, and if you wish to show your independence, you should do so completely.' 'I am so poor,' was the reply, 'as to be in want, and being afraid lest I should die and the sacrifices not be offered to my ancestors, I accept the grain as an alms. But the spirits and the dried flesh which you offer to me are the appliances of a feast. For a poor man to be feasting is certainly unreasonable. This is the ground of my refusing your gift. I have no thought of asserting my independence [3].' To the same effect is the account ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge

... seated ourselves in a cafe, an awful group of beggars stood before us—so suddenly that they appeared to have come up through a trap-door—and demanded alms. They would not go without money, and when they got it they took it as a right. It would not do for one of us to "settle" with them for the whole party, for no sooner had I given them a coin than they turned to Jones, and when done with him, coolly set ...
— The Foreign Tour of Messrs. Brown, Jones and Robinson • Richard Doyle

... by a full-blooded hand, would make a fine book. One pleasant story at least is related of him, that on being beset by some begging friars who prefaced their mendicancy with the words, "God give you peace," he answered, "God take away your alms"; and, on their protesting, reminded them that such peace was the last thing he required, since should their pious wish come true he would die of hunger. One of the daughters of this fire-eater married John Shelley, and thus became an ancestress ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... to Oxford, after dinner we proceeded on our journey, and passed through Ewhelme, a royal palace, in which some alms-people are supported by ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... Church was concerned, the activity was not always wholesome. If religion was kept alive in Man in those evil days, and the soul hunger of the poor Manx people was satisfied, it was not by the masters of the Manx Church, the Pharisees who gave alms in the streets to the sound of a trumpet going before them, or by the Levites who passed by on the other side when a man had fallen among thieves. It was partly by dissent, which was begun by Wesley in 1775 (after Quakerism had been suppressed), and ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine

... mind my slipping out for half a minute to the Alms House to leave a few gum-drops ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various

... foot of this bridge they met an old blind man, who asked alms of them; the caliph turned about, and put a piece of gold into his hand. The blind man instantly caught hold of his hand, and stopped him; "Charitable person," said he, "whoever you are, whom God hath inspired to bestow alms on me, do not refuse the favour I ask of you, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... handed an alms to each beggar in turn; but when she came to St. George she started and laid her hand on her ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel

... a time, Scrooge, when the message of good-will was so widely interpreted in action, or when it took hold of so many kinds of men. Perhaps you wouldn't mind my reading another little bit from St. Augustine: 'Two are those to whom thou doest alms; two hunger, one for bread, the other for righteousness. Between these two famishing persons thou, the doer of the good work, art set. The one craves what he may eat, the other craves what he may imitate. ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers

... track branched, a man in the guise of a mendicant was sitting. He begged for alms, and Cuthbert ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... just government, when the good old Teutonic laws, and the Roman law also, was trampled underfoot amid the lawless strife of ambition and fury. Under their shadow sprang up the towns with their corporate rights, their middle classes, their artizan classes. They were the physicians, the alms-givers, the relieving officers, the schoolmasters of the middle-age world. They first taught us the great principle of the division of labour, to which we owe, at this moment, that England is what she is, instead of being covered with a horde of peasants, each making ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... Ladywood Lane, being in Edgbaston parish, was pretty well built upon, owing to its being the nearest land to the centre of the town not burdened with town rating. There was a very large and lumbering old mansion on the left, near where Lench's Alms-houses now stand. Mr. R.W. Winfield lived at the red brick house between what are now the Francis and the Beaufort Roads. Nearly opposite his house was a carriage gateway opening upon an avenue of noble elms, at the end of which was Ladywood House, standing in a ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... and all who assisted them at the solemn ceremonies were assured that they would receive particular favours from their dead relatives. Vast numbers of beggars constantly went about the country. If those mendicants were refused alms, they told the people that their souls would pass into the bodies of rats, mice, snakes, toads, and such other creatures as they knew the Chinese abhorred. Those mendicants told fortunes, and, if report speaks true, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... Alone Sole, solitary Alms Eleemosynary Age Primeval Belief Credulous Blame Culpable Breast Pectoral Being Essential Bosom Graminal, sinuous Boy, boyish Puerile Blood, bloody Sanguinary, sanguine Burden Onerous Beginning Initial Boundary Conterminous Brother Fraternal ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... wheels carried us farther and farther away from a familiar world to one of yesterday. White-robed warriors of the desert, with lances, bent their brows upon us as they rode away towards the endless sands, and vagabonds of Egypt begged for alms. In about three-quarters of an hour we had passed the lofty barriers of Jebel Shamsan and its comrades, and were making clouds of dust in the streets of Aden. In spite of the cantonments, the British Government House, and the European Church, it was an Oriental town pure and simple, where the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... each bough; The frolicsome squirrels, that scampered at case 'Mid lithe leaves and soft moss that smiled down below: Heaps piled up of mangoes, all fragrant and rich; Guavas pink-cored, such a wealth of sweet alms Presented by bright maids, whose sweet ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various

... carry a bell and ring it constantly to give notice of his approach. Special leper-houses were built near every town, where such unfortunates might obtain accommodation. They were allowed to beg, but it was considered dangerous to go very near them, so that in most cases alms or food would be thrown to them only, instead of being put into ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... waiting repeated his splendid qualities, and as he left his sleeping-room in full dress, several Brahmans rehearsed the praises of the gods. Presently he bathed, worshipped his guardian deity, again heard hymns, drank a little water, and saw alms distributed to the poor. He ended this ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... actually, to have to look to another for absolutely everything of that kind. That is no easy matter for any man to do. I assure you it stretches every vein in his heart before he will be brought to yield to that. What! for a man to deny, reject, abhor, and throw away all his prayers, tears, alms, keeping of Sabbaths, hearing, reading, and all the rest, and to admit both himself and them to be abominable and accursed, and to be willing in the very midst of his sins to throw himself wholly upon the righteousness and ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... lards with flourishes his long harangue: 'Tis fine, say'st thou. What! to be prais'd, and hang? Effeminate Roman! shall such stuff prevail, To tickle thee, and make thee wag thy tail? Say, should a shipwreck'd sailor sing his woe, Wouldst thou be mov'd to pity, and bestow An alms? What's more prepost'rous than to see A merry beggar? ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... what chain of circumstances she was driven to seek alms in the public streets. I might have done so perhaps by inquiry, but to what purpose? She died in peace, with friendly hands and friendly hearts near her, and Jack buried her in his own grave in Highgate Cemetery, at his own expense; and ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various

... Alhambra. Worse than hovels, they are the lairs of wild beasts, foetid and oppressive, inhabited by debased creatures, with the low forehead, the copper skin, and the shifty cruel look of the Spanish gipsy. They surround the visitor in their rags and tatters, clamouring for alms, and for exorbitant sums proposing to dance. Even in the slums of great cities I have not seen a life more bestial. I tried to imagine what sort of existence these people led. In the old days the rock-dwellings among the cactus served the gipsies for winter ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... narrower ways, quite overhung the pavement. The streets were very clean, very sunny, very empty, and very dull. A few idle men lounged about the two inns, and the empty market-place, and the tradesmen's doors, and some old people were dozing in chairs outside an alms-house wall; but scarcely any passengers who seemed bent on going anywhere, or to have any object in view, went by; and if perchance some straggler did, his footsteps echoed on the hot bright pavement for minutes afterwards. Nothing seemed to be ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... she earns two shillings, the price of one embroidered frock. She has always more than she can do, for the women of Sockna consider garments made by her, "holy robes," and keep them all their life-time. For the rest, she, poor thing, lives on alms. She asked, of course, many questions about women in Christian lands, and was very much surprised to hear that the supreme ruler of England was a woman. The Maraboutess observed, however, in her character as such, "What a pity she (the Queen of England) was not the daughter of ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... powers the means of one's subsistence) one should rather live upon broken grains of corn, ripe beans, dry cakes of seeds from which the oil has been pressed out, pot-herbs, half-ripe barley, flour of fried pulses, fruits, and roots, obtained in alms.[764] Reflecting upon the characteristics of time and place, one should according to one's inclinations observe, after proper examination, vows and rules about fasts. One should not suspend an observance that has been begun. Like one ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... out upon the road, and took with him twenty knights. And as he went he did great good, and gave alms, feeding the poor and needy. And upon the way they found a leper, struggling in a quagmire, who cried out to them with a loud voice to help him for the love of God; and when Rodrigo heard this, he alighted from his beast and helped him, and placed him upon the beast before him, and ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... to make a jeering remark to the effect that the alleged piety of the Dooley family had not penetrated to the Archey Road representative, when a person, evidently of wayfaring habits, entered and asked for alms. Mr. Dooley arose, and, picking a half-dollar from the till, handed it to the visitor with great unconcern. The departure of the wayfarer with profuse thanks was followed by a ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne

... of Our Lady going into the Temple, ascending the steps, with many figures worthy of praise, such as a gentleman in antique dress, who, having dismounted from his horse, with his servants waiting, is giving alms to a beggar, quite naked and very wretched, who may be seen asking him for it with pitiful humility. In this place, also, are various buildings and most beautiful ornaments; and right round the whole ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... give them the fields, why not the flowers? If every man, woman, or child coming in should, on the way to the depot, gather an armful of wild flowers to distribute in the tenements, a mission work would be set on foot with which all the alms-giving of this wealthy ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... play; Or let the hand of a just law shake him Till his ill-gained dollars shall roll away. Let no man dwell under a mountain of plunder, Let no man suffer with want and cold; We want right living, not mere alms-giving; We want just ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... the smiles of knaves Tent in my cheeks; and school-boys' tears take up The glasses of my sight! a beggar's tongue Make motion through my lips; and my arm'd knees, Who bow'd but in my stirrup, bend like his That hath receiv'd an alms!—I will not do't; Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth, And by my body's action teach my mind ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... verily, I say that I would that ye should do alms unto the poor; but take heed that ye do not your alms before men to be seen of them; otherwise ye have no reward of your Father ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... the nature of this festival was a tribute to the influence of Savonarola. Children went about the streets, chanting hymns instead of the licentious songs which Lorenzo dei Medici had written for the purpose. They begged alms for the poor, and their only amusement was the capannucci, or Bonfire of Vanities, for which they collected the materials. Books and pictures, clothes and jewels, false hair and ointments were piled in great heaps round a kind of pyramid some ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... his father's house still stands a group of gray buildings, worn, bleached, and washed like skeletons by the storms and suns of eight centuries: a chapel with pointed windows and low square tower, a hall and the alms-houses of the ancient guild. In the second story of the hall was the endowed grammar school of Stratford, restored by Edward VI. in 1553, and the uncouth, venerable desk at which Shakespeare is said to have studied is included among the few unauthenticated ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... never Vext.—The old play-writers are distinguished by an honest boldness of exhibition,—they show everything without being ashamed. If a reverse in fortune is to be exhibited, they fairly bring us to the prison-grate and the alms-basket. A poor man on our stage is always a gentleman; he may be known by a peculiar neatness of apparel, and by wearing black. Our delicacy, in fact, forbids the dramatizing of distress at all. ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... but there is no doubt that the poor are completely unconscious of their own picturesqueness. Those of them who can be induced to sit do so with the idea that the artist is merely a benevolent philanthropist who has chosen an eccentric method of distributing alms to the undeserving. Perhaps the School Board will teach the London gamin his own artistic value, and then they will be better models than they are now. One remarkable privilege belongs to the Academy model, that of ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... dainties, been the patron of the indigent, the admiration of the wise and brave, the darling of the chaste and fair—was now fain to herd with beggars, gladly to partake of their coarse offals, and thankfully to receive their twice-given alms...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous

... waste of time," he thought, though he did not fail to appreciate the Baroness's human dignity. The eight hours a month were a complete torture to him. And yet he found that twenty marks an hour was too much; he said so. The suspicion that she was giving him alms made him ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... cannot carry loot, and it is one of the most primitive instincts of animal nature to destroy rather than to leave that by which others may profit. Even the pavement artist will destroy his work rather than allow some poor wretch to sit beside his pictures and collect an alms. And there is great joy in destroying that which men are too coarse to appreciate, in feeling that they have in their power that which, something tells them, belongs to a refinement they cannot attain. That was the keynote of the excesses of the French Revolution, for nothing ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar

... the most eminent among them was in his walks solicited by a beggar for alms. "Money," he replied, "I have none," but taking his pen and ink from his girdle, which are the insignia of the profession (without which they never went abroad), he took a piece of paper, and wrote some word or other upon it. The poor man received it with gratitude, and sold it to the ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... we mean by "almsgiving"? A. By almsgiving we mean money, goods, or assistance given to the poor or to charitable purposes. The law of God requires all persons to give alms ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous

... the bowl— My pipe and I alone,— I sit and muse with idler views Perchance than I should own:— It might be worse to own the purse Whose glutted bowels gripe In little qualms of stinted alms; And so I smoke ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... every Parish-Church shall, some one Sunday, or other Festival day, every month, go about the Church, and make request to every of the Parish for their charitable Contribution to the Poor; and the sum so collected shall be put in the Chest of Alms for that purpose provided. And for as much as the Parish-Clerk shall not hereafter go about the Parish with his Holy Water as hath been accustomed, he shall, instead of that labour, accompany the said Church-Wardens, and in a Book Register the name and Sum of every man that ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... est—You know the canon—a traveller must eat what food his hard fate sets before him. I grant you all a dispensation to eat flesh this day, conditionally that you, brethren, say the Confiteor at curfew time, that the knight give alms to his ability, and that all and each of you fast from flesh on such day within the next month that shall seem most convenient;—wherefore fall to and eat your food with cheerful countenances, and you, Father ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... exactly the situation we must accept in connection with many of Christ's precepts. Giving alms. Loving enemies. Refusing to judge. Refusing to swear, etc., etc. These are all clear Christian duties. But law cannot deal with them. All this seems to me quite plain. In common honesty, however, I must confess that it is not clear to me that the spirit ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray

... except trouble. I have done everything except ask alms. I have learned, Fleda, that death is not the worst form in ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... old adage repeated: "There must be a religion for the people." There are men who wish to give the people a religion which they themselves do not possess, acting like a man who, at once poor and ostentatious, should give alms with counterfeit money. And what result do they attain? We must have a religion for the people, say the politicians, that they may secure the ends they have in view, and conduct at their own pleasure the herds at their disposal. We must have a religion ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... eyes, rather narrow and tending upwards at the outer corners, which gave her face a not altogether pleasant expression. Still, they were fine eyes, and when she went round soliciting alms, most of the men put a hand into their breeches pocket and dropped a coin into her ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... her humility, she sold her jewels and the costly robes with which she used to grace King Athelstan's Court, and gave the money freely to the poor; she relieved the lame and the blind, the widow and the fatherless, and all those that came to ask alms; and built a large hospital for aged and sick people, that they might be comforted in their sickness. Thus she laid up for herself treasure in heaven, which will be paid ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various

... dole although I deale my alms ill, Narcissus cannot love with any damzell; Although, for most part, men to love encline all, I will not, I, this is your ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... not a mendicant (Bhikshu) simply because he asks others for alms; he who adopts the whole law is a Bhikshu, not he ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... Naragansetts, the Mohicans, the Pecots—have any existence but in the recollection of man. The Lenapes, who received William Penn, a hundred and fifty years ago, upon the banks of the Delaware, have disappeared; and I myself met with the last of the Iroquois, who were begging alms. The nations I have mentioned formerly covered the country to the sea-coast; but a traveller at the present day must penetrate more than a hundred leagues into the interior of the continent to find an Indian. Not only have these wild tribes receded, but they are ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... two that were possessed of the Devil, whose names were Geoffrey Boder and Jeanne La Petite; and the girdle of Saint Mary being shown on the high altar, they were allowed to touch the same, whereon they were healed straightway. And the Queen, with her own hands, gave them alms, a crown; and her oblation to the image of Saint Mary in the said church, being a festival, was a crown (her daily oblation being seven-pence the day); and to the said holy girdle a crown, and to the holy relics, yet another. Then came ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... bridge, and at other times concealed himself in the mosses and moors. Here the lapwings, flitting and crying above him, were like to have drawn the English soldiers to his retreat. His wife gave him two great bags, like those which beggars carried; in these he would place the alms which were given to him, and in this disguise he had many narrow escapes. Once he saw some dragoons on the road behind him, but he was too old and too ill to run. He was obliged to sit down and cough, and one of the dragoons who were in search of him actually gave him some money ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... helm from his head. Then Colgrevance saw that he might not escape; then he said: Fair sweet Jesu, that I have misdone have mercy upon my soul, for such sorrow that my heart suffereth for goodness, and for alms deed that I would have done here, be to me alygement of penance unto my soul's health. At these words Lionel smote him so sore that he bare him to the earth. So he had slain Colgrevance he ran upon his brother as a fiendly man, and gave him such ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... and hesitated; he was an elderly man and cautious. "I beg your pardon, madam," he began, "for venturing to say as much, but I think it might be best to let her alone. She'll grow tired of stopping there. And if her motive is to attract pity, and get alms sent out, why the fact of speaking to her might make her bold enough to ask for them. If she comes there to-morrow again, it might be best for the master to ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... times are hard, pity is too expensive for a poor man. Ask alms of the different people ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald

... structure in yellow brick, consisting of a handsome chancel, the stump of a tower, and one aisle just weather-tight and usable, but, by its very aspect, begging for the completion of the beautiful design that was suspended above the alms-box. ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... poor lad painfully limping along with the help of a stick. He was a bright lad, who unbound his leg and showed me a large swelling above the knee. He spoke to me, though I did not understand him, but with sturdy independence did not ask for alms, and when I had seen his leg he bound it up again and limped on. Meeting him a little later at an inn, where he was sitting at a table with nothing before him to eat, I gave him a handful of cash which I had put in my pocket for him. He thanked me by raising ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... a fish of as sorry aspect as may readily be scared up. Generally speaking, he is repulsive as to hat, abhorrent as to vesture, squalid of boot, and in tout ensemble unseemly and atrocious. His appeal for alms falls not more vexingly upon the ear than his offensive personality smites hard upon the eye. The touching effectiveness of his tale is ever neutralized by the uncomeliness of his raiment and the inartistic besmirchedness of his ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... affectionate intercourse and passionate fidelity! Harry would have died for his patron, and was held as little better than his murderer: he had sacrificed, she did not know how much, for his mistress, and she threw him aside; he had endowed her family with all they had, and she talked about giving him alms as to a menial! The grief for his patron's loss; the pains of his own present position, and doubts as to the future: all these were forgotten under the sense of the consummate outrage which he had to endure, and overpowered by the ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... peace, too, now that at last something was decided. Her future, for better or worse, would no longer be that helpless waiting which had been hers for so long. And out of her happiness came a desire to do kind things, to pat children on the head, to give alms to ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... which Akbar corrupted into Peshawar, or the frontier fort. As the capital of King Kanishka it was in the second century of the Christian era a great centre of Buddhism (page 164). Its possession of Buddha's alms bowl and of yet more precious relics of the Master deposited by Kanishka in a great stupa (page 203) made it the first place to be visited by the Chinese pilgrims who came to India between 400 and 630 A.D. Hiuen Tsang tells ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... business except with reference to self, and for this reason were stupid and like merely sensual corporeal spirits. On this account wheresoever they went they were sent away. Some time afterwards they were seen reduced to a destitute state and asking alms. Thus it was made clear that those who are in the love of self, however from the fire of that love they may seem to speak in the world wisely, speak merely from the memory, and not from any rational light. Therefore in the other life, when they are no longer permitted ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... boast—referring, of course, to sundry German fanatics of the time—followers of one Kniperdoling, a crazy enthusiast, not to the respectable English Baptist denomination; but that nevertheless every man ought, of such things as he possesseth, liberally to give alms to the poor. That, you see, is the doctrine of the Church of England, and that, I've no doubt, is the doctrine that Mr. Le Breton pointed out to your boys as the true Christian communism of St. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... seeking alms, one who was a thing of shreds and patches and broken shoes. His rags seemed to adhere to him by the power of cohesive friction rather than by any visible attachments; it might have been years since he ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... It is horrible in one class to live without this consciousness of a mutual obligation, and mutual responsibility. All that we get, we get on trust, as trustee for them. I remember that Thring says somewhere, that "no beggar who creeps through the street living on alms and wasting them is baser than those who idly squander at school and afterwards the gifts received ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson

... that our legitimate claims did not amount to anything approaching the sum which we demanded and obtained. The excuse made for the notoriously unjust Halifax award was that we had obtained a large sum under false pretenses, and that an offset should be made. Pass around the hat, ask alms if you will, but don't acknowledge that we received this Geneva award under ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... holy man in the East. The Harrison Road fakir, who passed on his way along the crowded pavement unconcerned and practically unobserved, was white with ashes and was beating a piece of iron as a wayward child might be doing. He was followed by a boy, but no effort was made to collect alms. It is true philosophy to be prepared to live in such a state of simplicity. Most of the problems of life would dissolve and vanish if one could reduce one's needs to the frugality of a fakir. I have thought often of him since I returned, in London, to all the arrears of work and duty and the liabilities ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... you speak, sweet, I'd have you do it ever; when you sing, I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms; Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs, To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you A wave o' the sea, that you might ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... stern look Odysseus answered him, and said: "What possesses thee, fellow, that thou seekest a quarrel with me? Thou art, as I perceive, a beggar like me, and I grudge thee not anything which thou mayest receive in the way of alms from those who sit here. There is room on this threshold for us both. But I warn thee not to provoke me to blows, for old as I am I will set a mark upon thee which thou wilt ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell

... accord would require her chaplains plainly and freely to tell whatsoever they saw in her amiss. Also, how bountiful she was to the poor, passing not only the poor example of other queens, but also the revenues almost of her estate: insomuch that the alms which she gave in three-quarters of a year, in distribution, is summed to the number of fourteen or fifteen thousand pounds; besides the great piece of money which her Grace intended to impart into four sundry ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... saw a Mandarin, even on a tea-chest, without his fan? In China and Japan to this day every one has a fan; and there are fans of all sorts for everybody. The Japanese waves his fan at you when he meets you, by way of greeting, and the beggar who solicits for alms has the exceedingly small coin "made on purpose" for charity presented to him on the ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... satisfied. He has a fine and perhaps half-unconscious loyalty to the great man from whose shoulders he surveyed the world. His is an ego that brushes itself off readily after a fall and asks for no alms ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... virtue, he was greatly generous. If he took with his right hand he gave with his left; and Mahommedan as well as Copt and Armenian, and beggars of every race and creed, hung about his doors each morning to receive the food and alms he gave freely. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them; otherwise, ye have no reward of your ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May

... mendicant dervishes of Tehran are of wild look, with matted locks, and with howling voice go about demanding, not begging, alms. They regard a giver as under some obligation to them, for affording him the means of observance of a duty imposed by religion. These stalk along defiantly, carrying club or axe, and often present a disagreeable appearance. ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon

... Tudor himself was a pious man, as piety was reckoned: punctual in observances, commended and complimented by Popes. His chapel in Westminster Abbey is evidence of his zeal in one direction; he gave alms with a business-like regard to their post-mortem efficacy. Throughout his reign the Popes made much talk of a new crusade, and Henry seems to have been the one European monarch who took the idea seriously. It is true that when Alexander VI. appealed in 1500 for funds to that end, the English ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... sorrow, it would have soon become plain to his acute and watchful nurse that some hidden trouble was gnawing at his heart, for he was taciturn, abstracted and sometimes morose. He manifested no curiosity as to the benefactor upon whose charity he was living, but received the alms bestowed by that unknown hand as children receive the gifts of God—unsolicited, uncomprehended ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... time, offerings of money flowed in. Those who had and those who lacked knocked at M. Myriel's door,—the latter in search of the alms which the former came to deposit. In less than a year the Bishop had become the treasurer of all benevolence and the cashier of all those in distress. Considerable sums of money passed through his hands, but nothing could induce him to make any change whatever in his mode of life, or add anything ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... one who already possesses all things? All things that a son has belong to his father, yet who does not know that in spite of this a son can make presents to his father? All things belong to the gods; yet we make presents and bestow alms even upon the gods. What I have is not necessarily not mine because it belongs to you; for the same thing may belong both to me and ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... make us desire life? Divisions in the Church, bloody wars, men slaughtered, women violated, cruel murders, and multitudes reduced to beggary; Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia pillaged; the heirs of the most noble families reduced to the necessity of living on alms, if it can be called living to drag out their days in misery, wishing for death, which alone can put an end ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... played; then came the shadows of evening, stealing on in all their beauty. But what were they to us, amid those mutations of fortune, which, at one moment, made us princes, and placed palaces at our control, and, at another, debased us below the veriest beggar, that craves the stinted alms of charity from door ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... The Convent of the Poor Sisters of Nazareth is in a large brick building on the south side of the road. This was built in 1857 for the convent purposes. It is the mother-house of the Nazareth nuns, so that the numbers continually vary, many passing through for their noviciate. The nuns collect alms for the aged poor and children, and many of the poor are thus sustained. Besides this, there are a number of imbecile or paralytic children who live permanently in the convent. The charity is not confined to ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton



Words linked to "Alms" :   alms-giving, alms dish, plural form, plural, donation, contribution



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org