"Ascetic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... go, then," was the placid suggestion of a third officer, a man with keen eyes, thin, almost ascetic, face, but there twitched a quaint humor about the lines of his lips. "That visit's ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... Exercise of Ethics is a fine defence of that training of the heart and mind which has no affinity with the morbid discipline of hair shirt and scourge. "The ascetic exercise of the monasteries," he says, "inspired by superstitious fear and the hypocritical disesteem of a man's own self, sets to work with self-reproaches, whimpering compunction and a torturing of the body. It is intended not to result in virtue but to make expiation for sins, and by self-imposed ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... an avatar in old Judaea; and, sure enough, one came. But they were looking for a national leader, a Messiah, to throw off for them the Roman yoke; or else for an ascetic like their prophets of old time: something, in any case, out of the way;—a personality wearing marks of avatarship easily recognisable. The one who came, however, so far from leading them against the Romans, seemed to have a good deal of sympathy with ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... might be profitable to the race. I am not afraid of the truth, if any one could tell it me, but I am afraid of parts of it impertinently uttered. There is a time to dance and a time to mourn; to be harsh as well as to be sentimental; to be ascetic as well as to glorify the appetites; and if a man were to combine all these extremes into his work, each in its place and proportion, that work would be the world's masterpiece of morality as well as of art. Partiality is immorality; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'to his own lusts.' The high moral character of Marcion was unimpeachable, and is recognized by the orthodox writers of the second century; the worst charge which they bring against him is disappointed ambition. He was an ascetic of the most uncompromising and rigorous type. I cannot but regard it as a significant fact that when Scholten wishes to fasten this denunciation on Marcion, he stops short at 'pervert the oracles of the Lord,' and takes no account of the concluding words 'to his own lusts,' though these contain ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... the stream of Lethe, in the stern and warlike chatelaine of Canossa. Unfortunately we know but little of Matilda's personal appearance. Her health was not strong; and it is said to have been weakened, especially in her last illness, by ascetic observances. Yet she headed her own troops, armed with sword and cuirass, avoiding neither peril nor fatigue in the quarrels of her master Gregory. Up to the year 1622 two strong suits of mail were preserved at ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... great public in general know of what the singer often suffers in the way of nervousness or stage fright before appearing in front of the footlights, nor that his life, outwardly so feted and brilliant, is in private more or less of a retired, ascetic one and that his social pleasures must be ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... of a state religion this occupies the ground, censuring free thought, burning writings, exiling, imprisoning or disturbing authors, and everywhere acting as a natural and official adversary. Moreover, by virtue of being an ascetic religion, it condemns not only the free and cheerful ways tolerated by the new philosophy but again the natural tendencies it sanctions, and the promises of terrestrial felicity with which it everywhere dazzles the eyes. Thus the heart and the head both agree in their opposition.—Voltaire, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... although caste was not abolished by the teachers of Buddhism, who retained and respected it as a social institution, it was practically annulled and absorbed in the religious character;—all who embraced the ascetic life being simultaneously absolved from all conventional disabilities, and received as members of the sacred community ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... by all religions to whoever fulfils at stray moments certain fanciful and often unnatural conditions, is unworthy of man and of God? Is it not a mockery to give to man impetuous senses and forbid him to satisfy them? Besides, what mean these ascetic objections if Good and Evil are equally abolished? Does Evil exist? If substance in all its forms is God, then Evil is God. The faculty of reasoning as well as the faculty of feeling having been given to man to use, nothing can be more excusable in ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... scrolls may have perished in the Puritan bonfire! Persons, the librarian of Balliol, sold old books to buy Protestant ones. Two noble libraries were sold for forty shillings, for waste paper. Thus the reign of Edward VI. gave free play to that ascetic and intolerable hatred of letters which had now and again made its voice heard under Henry VIII. Oxford was almost empty. The schools were used by laundresses, as a place wherein clothes might conveniently be dried. The citizens encroached on academic ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... his temperament, also finds the foundation of his judgment in exercise and caution. As a player of games he is rather poor, but makes up in enthusiasm for tennis what he lacks in skill. His habits are almost ascetic in their rigour. He drinks nothing, and the finest dinner a cook ever conceived would be wasted on him. A single course of the plainest food suffices his appetite, and he grows manifestly uneasy when faced with ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... out, it might as well never have dawned. Yet the one dear woman friend to whom in these latter years he had spoken freely, who knew him through and through—Helena Pitstone's mother—had taken for granted, in her quiet ascetic way, that he had indeed had his chance, and must accept for good and all what had come of it. It was because she thought of him as set apart, as debarred by what had happened to him, from honest love-making, and protected by his ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wives their husbands, lest they should be converted to monasticism by his persuasive words. After a few years at Citeaux St. Bernard established the monastery of Clairvaux, over which he ruled as abbot till his death. His ascetic life, piety, eloquence, and ability as an executive soon brought him into prominence. People visited Clairvaux from far and near to listen to his preaching and to receive his counsels. The monastery flourished under his direction and became the parent of no less than sixty-five ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... But the mental atmosphere in which those heroes lived and wrought was one of carelessness with regard to moral duties and religious aspirations, of exuberant delight in pleasure as an object of existence. The glorification of the body and the senses, the repudiation of an ascetic tyranny which had long in theory imposed impossible abstentions on the carnal man, was a marked feature in their conception of the world; and connected with this was a return in no merely superficial spirit to the antique paganism of Greece ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... which Stoicism at all times tends to fall, the tendency to cry, Abase yourselves! There was here the almost inhuman impassibility of one who had thought too closely on the paradoxical aspect of the love of posthumous fame. With the ascetic pride which lurks under all Platonism, [201] resultant from its opposition of the seen to the unseen, as falsehood to truth—the imperial Stoic, like his true descendant, the hermit of the middle age, was ready, in no friendly humour, to mock, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... (1390-1457), to whom Vasari gives so black a character. The portrait frescoes are from the Villa Pandolfini (previously Carducci), and among them are Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Dante—who is here rather less ascetic than usual—none of whom the painter could have seen. There is also a very charming little cupid carrying a huge peacock plume. But "The Last Supper" is the glory of the room. This work, which belongs ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... thing common to the whole Italian Renaissance was the worship of beauty. It was the aesthetic against the ascetic. In this exclusive study, that is, in art, the Italians speedily attained the highest perfection that has been reached by man. And it was reached almost simultaneously in many parts of Italy, Rome, Florence, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... gave way. Nothing could serve as a fulcrum for resisting decline, or producing recovery. In such a period despair wins control. The philosophy is pessimistic. The world is supposed to be coming to an end. Life is not valued. Ascetic practices fall in with the prevailing temper. Martyrdom has no great terrors; such as it has can be overcome by a little enthusiasm. Inroads of barbarians only add a little to the other woes, or hasten an end which is inevitable and is ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... amalgamated,(73) and the saint's day of St. Piran was moved from the 2d of May to the 5th of March. Yet although thus welded into one, nothing could well be imagined more different than the characters of the Irish and of the Cornish saint. The Irish saint lived a truly ascetic life; he preached, wrought miracles, and died. The Cornish saint was a jolly miner, not always very steady on his legs.(74) Let us hear what the Cornish have to tell of him. His name occurs in several names of places, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... firm. "And the young Greek brigand who stole my hat at the door is going to get a dollar! That, as our ascetic and honorable friend Goble would say, is the sort of little guy ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... by an infuriated mob. More powerful, and far more numerous than his followers, the Peterbrusians, were the Cathari and the Waldenses (founded by Peter Valdez A.D. 1177) who soon spread to Northern Italy and amalgamated with the sect of the Lombards. The Cathari advocated a simple and ascetic life, in accordance with the teaching of primitive Christianity, refrained from all ecclesiastical ceremonies and despised the sacraments, particularly baptism. More radical than later reformers, they rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation, and saw in the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... tone and content of this Informacon differ very little from the later Directions for Travellers which are the subject of our study. The advice given shows that the ordinary pilgrim thought, not of the ascetic advantages of the voyage, or of simply arriving in safety at his holy destination, but of making the trip in the highest possible degree of personal comfort and pleasure. He is advised to take with him two barrels of wine ("For ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... tall man with the lean, ascetic face moved about his new abode, arranging, changing, altering, hardly yet into his working-stride again, he gave the impression of almost spinster-like precision and nicety. For twenty years past, in a score of lodgings, garrets, flats, and rooms furnished ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... evening at home, she shed bitter tears on her pillow. Could he care for her really? She knew he did, and she suddenly suspected that it was a sort of pleasure, a kind of indulgence to him to play the ascetic when so near her, and at this fancy she felt a little momentary resentment. But as soon as she saw him again, a word or a smile was sunshine and life to her. She wanted so little, and she was again her happy ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... Asceticism. — N. asceticism, puritanism, sabbatarianism[obs3]; cynicism|!, austerity; total abstinence; nephalism[obs3]. mortification, maceration, sackcloth and ashes, flagellation; penance &c. 952; fasting &c. 956; martyrdom. ascetic; anchoret[obs3], anchorite; martyr; Heautontimorumenos[obs3]; hermit &c. (recluse) 893; puritan, sabbatarian[obs3], cynic, sanyasi[obs3], yogi. Adj. ascetic, austere, puritanical; cynical; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... proved them that - This good but wearisome ascetic; He jumped and thumped upon his hat, ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... this ascetic prospect] Hm! [He rises]. Ah, well: you must come and tell my wife and my young people all about it; and you will bring your daughter with you, of course. [He shakes hands with Savvy]. Goodbye. [He shakes hands with ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... up-stairs, while the shadows from three banisters passed over her face like the beat of wings. On the landing he paused strong in his renunciation, and gave her a look of memorable beauty. For all his culture, Cecil was an ascetic at heart, and nothing in his love became him like ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... country, from the Mohawk Valley to the Canadian line and to Lake Champlain, he had one name, The Shepherd of the North. From Old Forge to Ausable to North Creek men knew his ways and felt the beating of the great heart of him behind the stern, ascetic set of his countenance. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... he was more human than she had expected. Clarice Wilder had looked upon the Rev. Francis as a hermit, an ascetic, whose comprehension was limited; and her eyes grew keen as she watched ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... that an ascetic should be slain before his pre-ordained time was come, by his own son was imprisoned in a seven-walled prison as the due recompense of ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... was little suited to such an enterprise, for in appearance he was slight and pale, and in constitution delicate. Also, there was another reason against the thing. High Church and somewhat ascetic in his principles, in the beginning he had admired celibacy, and in secret dedicated himself to that state. But at heart Thomas was very much a man, and of late he had come to see that which is against nature is presumably not right, though fanatics may not hesitate to pronounce it ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... of Columbus is represented at the moment the land, and the glorious future of his great discovery, burst upon his delighted gaze. No ascetic monk, no curled cavalier, looks down from the pedestal. The apocryphal portraits of Europe may peer out of their frames in this guise, but it has been the artist's aim here to chisel a man, not a monk; and a noble man, rather than a cringing courtier. ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... become a better painter. We had the same kind of religious feeling, but I could give a crude philosophical expression to mine while he could only express his in action or with brush and pencil. He often told me of certain ascetic ambitions, very much like my own, for he had kept all the moral ambition of youth with a moral courage peculiar to himself, as for instance—'Yeats, the other night I was arrested by a policeman—was walking round Regent's Park barefooted to keep the flesh under—good ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... soul offers an analogy. The feeling that a conflict between sensuous and ascetic feelings, or selfish and moral impulses, or practical and intellectual ambitions, within us not merely lowers the claims of one or both parties and permits neither to come to quite free self-realization but also threatens the unity, the equilibrium, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... and profligacy was drawn by one whose love of truth rendered him incapable of deceit or of exaggeration. It was published at the time, and was unanswered, because unanswerable. It was not painted from imagination by an ascetic; but from life by an enlightened observer—not by the poor preaching mechanic when incarcerated in a jail for his godliness; but when his painful sufferings were past—when his Pilgrim, produced by the folly of persecutors, had rendered him famous through Europe—when his extraordinary pulpit ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of subject in that work is a mistake: it was too little consonant with the character, tastes, and ideas of the gentle, retiring, inexperienced writer. She wrote it under a strange, conscientious, half-ascetic notion of accomplishing a painful penance and a severe duty. Blameless in deed and almost in thought, there was from her very childhood a tinge of religious melancholy in her mind. This I ever suspected, and I have found amongst her papers mournful proofs that such was the case. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... by bribing the mistress of the chief of the king's cabal, England remained without a good government, and the colonies, despite bluster and threats, flourished in purity and peace. The English ministry dared not interfere with Massachusetts; it was right that the stern virtues of the ascetic republicans should intimidate the members of the profligate cabinet. The affairs of New England were often discussed; but the privy council was overawed by the moral dignity, which ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... yet his eye had in it mirth, And round the full bloom of the red rich mouth, No whit ascetic, ran a dim half smile. "Father, my charges three have futile fallen, And thrice, like some great warrior of the bards, Your conquering wheels above me you have driven. Brought low, I make confession. Once, in woods Wandering, we heard a sound, now loud, now low, ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... fifty-four candidates for six vacancies. The cook has run away and left us liable, which makes our committee very plaintive. Master Brook, our head serving-man, has the gout, and our new cook is none of the best. I speak from report,—for what is cookery to a leguminous-eating ascetic? So now you know as much of the matter as I do. Books and quiet are still there, and they may dress their dishes in their own way for me. Let me know your determination as to Newstead, and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... trip to America for a woman's sake, in order to collect money and marry her! Then he immediately began making excuses for his conduct. Nobody was going to know. Furthermore he did not pretend to be an ascetic, and Bertha Erckmann was certainly a tempting adventure in mid ocean. Upon recalling her, his imagination always saw a race horse—large, spare, roan colored, and with a long stride. She was an up-to-date ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... castes may become Brhmanas and reach the highest srama: 'by merely entering on the initiatory ceremony (dksh) a man becomes a Brhmana at once; by undertaking the kpla rite a man becomes at once an ascetic.' ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... remarkable that while the Mahommedan religion in general is sinking to corruption along the coast, there are ascetic sects rising up in the interior which unite its last zealous followers by a religious bond. From some of these sects travellers receive much ill-treatment and annoyance. On the 15th of July the doctor determined to visit a remarkable mountain which ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... social life wore no ascetic form, He loved all beauty, without fear of harm, And in his veins his ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... about the death of the Buddha (Vinaya Texts, iii. 241-250; J[a]taka, vi. 131), shortly afterwards, relying upon the feeling of the people in favour of asceticism, he brought forward four propositions for ascetic rules to be imposed on the order. These being refused, he appealed to the people, started an order of his own, and gained over 500 of the Buddha's community to join in the secession. We hear nothing further about the success or otherwise of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... the wholesome companionship of other girls, of course the ascetic impulse died a natural death; but the temper did not die. It only hid itself under that sense of propriety which is responsible for so much of our good behavior. When it did break loose, the child suffered afterward from the consciousness of ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... of Gordon as a gloomy ascetic, wrapped up in mystic thoughts, retiring from all communion with the world, and inspiring fear rather than affection. I can only describe him as he appeared to me. Far from being a gloomy ascetic, he always seemed to me to retain a boyish ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... she worked over the limp figure on the bed. Mechanically he picked up the fallen picture to replace it. There looked out at him the face of a man of early middle age, a face of manifest intellectual power, high-boned, long-lined, and of the austere, almost ascetic beauty which the Florentine coins have preserved for us in clear fidelity. Across the bottom was written in a peculiarly rhythmic ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... mediaeval knight, born out of his due time, ascetic both from reverence and disgust, to whom woman in the abstract was the one religion; in the concrete, the cause of fifty disenchantments ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... estate of the Jesuits—on the eastern portion of which their college was built in 1637— owes its saintly nomenclature to the learned order—no doubt desirous of handing down to posterity an enduring souvenir of a valiant ascetic, though youthful member of the fraternity. Its northern end reaches at right angles to Ste. Helene street in a line with the old tenement recently occupied by the late Narcisse Constantin Faucher, Esq., Barrister—recently leased by the late ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... career there was a very painful one. St. Thomas a Kempis, Drelincourt's Defence against Death, and Law's devotional works had all their part in kindling his piety into a flame. He was haunted with gloomy and superstitious fancies, and his religion assumed the darkest and most ascetic character. He always chose the worst food, fasted twice a week, wore woollen gloves, a patched gown, and dirty shoes, and was subject to paroxysms of a morbid devotion. He remained for hours prostrate on the ground in Christ Church Walk in the midst of the night, and continued ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... he said, they had not much difficulty in sloughing off persons who come with bad or low motives; and in this I should say he was right; for the life is strictly ascetic, and has no charms for the idler or for merely sentimental or romantic people. "If one comes with low motives, he will not be comfortable with us, and will presently go away; if he is sincere, he ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... money. At first, no suspicion whatever fell on the friars, who continued their offices of preaching, saying mass, confessing penitents, and giving ostentatious indications of their leading humble and ascetic lives. A diligent watch was instituted by the authorities, but as far as exterior observances went, there was no reason to believe that any suspicious persons from without ever entered the convent of the ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... Chardonnet provided, as in all other seminaries, that half an hour should be devoted every evening to what was known as spiritual reading. Before M. Dupanloup's time, the readings were from some ascetic book such as the Lives of the Fathers in the Desert, but he took this half hour for himself, and every evening he put himself into direct communication with all his pupils by the medium of a familiar ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... with the Court yet still somewhat aloof, apartado. like Gil Terron. Vicente regards himself as a rustico peregrino (III. 390), an ignorante sabedor (I. 373) as opposed to the ignorant-malicious or ignorant-presumptuous of the Court. But Vicente was no ascetic, his was a genial, generous nature, he liked to have enough to spend and give and leave in his will. Kindly and chivalrous, he was a champion of the down-trodden but had first-hand knowledge of the malice and intrigues of the peasants and of the ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... girlish youth, should have preserved his Cecilia-like virginity. He should have left marriage to those who were capable of nothing else; this would not have meant that he turn ascetic, for the ascetic is a voluptuary in disguise. He should simply have been married to his work. The wonder is, though, that once the thought of marriage was forced upon him, he did not marry a Hittite who delighted in pork-chops and tomato-sauce, ordered Guinness ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... watching Captain West. In a way he bears a sort of resemblance to several of Washington's portraits. He is six feet of aristocratic thinness, and has a very definite, leisurely and stately grace of movement. His thinness is almost ascetic. In appearance and manner he is the perfect ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the corner of the room there was a timid fire—of the kind usually met in English inns—imprisoned behind a grill that had been set up stoutly to confine a larger and rowdier fire. My antagonist was a tall lank man of pinched ascetic face and dark complexion, with clothes brushed to shininess, and he belonged to a brotherhood that lived in one of the poorer parts of London along the wharves. His sojourn at the inn was forced. For two weeks in the year, he explained, ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... served, and at dinner M. de Tourville was seen, according to the polished forms of society, humbling himself in all the hypocrisy of politeness; with ascetic good-breeding, preferring every creature's ease and convenience to his own, practising a continual system of self-denial, such as almost implied a total annihilation of self-interest and self-love. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... most absorbing interest of his life. When he was a professor at the Ferguson College teaching was with him a vocation rather than a profession, and, if one may judge by his practice, he believes that only those who are prepared to set an example of selflessness and almost ascetic simplicity of life can hope to promote the moral and social as well as the political advancement of India. It is on these principles that he founded five years ago the "Servants of India" Society, recruited in the first instance amongst a few personal followers and ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... now let me show you how completely you have been mistaken; you will find that the art you have been maligning is the greatest boon of our existence. There is some excuse for your strictures: how should you know any better, confirmed ascetic that you are, believing that virtue consists ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... by Dr. Graham of Ireland showed that there was less insanity among Roman Catholics than Protestants in Ireland, due to difference in type of religion, Protestants of Ireland being intensely morbid and ascetic in their Calvinism. (Congregationalist, Nov. 29, 1902, p. 781.) I should not be surprised, if investigation was made, that similar results would be seen in America not only between Protestants and Roman Catholics, but among ...
— The Defects of the Negro Church - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 10 • Orishatukeh Faduma
... as Miss Deacon said, to be growing through his skin; he had all the appearance of an ascetic whose body has been reduced to misery by long and grievous penance. People who chanced to see him could not help saying to one another: "How ill and wretched that Lucian Taylor looks!" They were of course quite unaware of the joy and luxury in which his ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... the painter; "the vicomte is, by the way, a man of serious ideas, an ascetic, who does not ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... his expression ({Arabic} a riddle), although it may offend readers. There is nothing more enigmatical to the Moslem mind than Christian Trinitarianism: all other objections they can get over, not this. Nor is he any lover of Islamism, which, like Christianity, has its ascetic Hebraism and its Hellenic hedonism; with the world of thought moving between these two extremes. The former, defined as predominant or exclusive care for the practice of right, is represented by Semitic and Arab influence, Kornic and Hadsic. ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... Joaquin Ortiz (1814-1892) page 289 imitated Quintana in form but not in ideas. Though a defender of neo-classicism, he did not entirely reject romanticism. Ortiz was an ultra-catholic, sincere and ascetic. His verses are impetuous and grandiloquent, but often lacking depth of thought (Poesias, ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Keats. Not that Oscar was going to die in the least. Life burned strong in him. There were sly times when he took what he had saved by his cheap meals and room and went to Boston with it, and for a few hours thoroughly ceased being ascetic. Yet Oscar felt meritorious when he considered Bertie and Billy; for, like the socialists, merit with him meant not being able to live as well as your neighbor. You will think that I have given to Oscar what is familiarly termed a ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... summons, wrenched himself from a murmuring home, and, starting by an early train, arrived half through the St. Michael's Day Service, it was to see Mr. Underwood looking indeed like some ethereal ascetic saint, with his bright eyes and wasted features, and to hear him preach in extempore—as was his custom—a sermon on the blessedness of angel helps, which in its intense fervour, almost rapture, was to many as if it came from a white-winged angel himself. Mr. Audley glided into his own place, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spoken to them, I knew them all—the Penfields, father and son, tall and lean with bony faces and sandy hair and eyebrows, and restless, pale blue eyes—Squire Land, small and ascetic, his lips constantly puckered as though he had tasted something unpleasant. Captain Proctor, stouter than when I had seen him last, with the benign good nature that comes of settled affairs and good living. Over them and over the town, ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... the preacher passes suddenly from the twelfth century to the nineteenth, from toiling and ascetic monks to cotton spinners and platform orators—the effect is electric—as though some old Benedictine rose from the dead and began to preach in the crowded streets of a city of factories. Have ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... with wisdom's fruits before his time, Taking his marriage as a thing of course, The King now meets, the first time in his life, A woman, female, nothing but her sex, And she avenges on this prodigy The folly of too staid, ascetic youth. A noble woman's half, yes all, a man— It is their faults that make them woman-kind. And that resistance, which the oft deceived Gains through experience, the King has not; A light disport he takes for bitter earn'st. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... years, Siva, mounted on his bull, with his spouse Parvati by his side, appears before the hermit, who is overjoyed at the sight of the deity. Siva bids him ask any boon and it should be granted. The royal ascetic desires to have a son. Then says Siva: "For thy long penance we grant thy request. Choose then—a son who shall always be with thee till death, but shall be the greatest fool in the whole world, or four ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... book-making he has simply got his fingers hold of the pen. He has next to run the gauntlet of the languages, sciences, and arts, to pass through the epoch of the scholar, with satchel under his arm, with pale cheek, an eremite and ascetic in the religion of Cadmus. At length, at about twenty years of age, he leaves the university, not a master, but a bachelor of liberal studies. But thus far he has laid only the foundation, has acquired only rudiments and generalities, has only served ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... at that time harping upon the long cherished idea that men can be divided into Hellenists and Nazarenes. Himself, for instance, he looked upon as a well-fed Hellenist, while Boerne was a Nazarene, an ascetic. It is interesting, and bears upon our subject, that most of the verdicts, views, and witticisms which Heine fathers upon Boerne in the famous imaginary conversation in the Frankfort Judengasse, might have been uttered by Heine himself. In fact, many of them ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... devious and criminal work, one brief tale will explain how his revolutionary activities were brought quickly to an end. There was in Moscow, so the story runs, a gentle, kindly, and influential member of Nechayeff's society. Of ascetic disposition, this Iwanof spent much of his time in freely educating the peasants and in assisting the poorer students. He starved himself to establish cheap eating houses, which became the centers of the revolutionary groups. ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... be a big meeting in our temple pavilion. We women are sitting there, on one side, behind a screen. Triumphant shouts of Bande Mataram come nearer: and to them I am thrilling through and through. Suddenly a stream of barefooted youths in turbans, clad in ascetic ochre, rushes into the quadrangle, like a silt-reddened freshet into a dry river-bed at the first burst of the rains. The whole place is filled with an immense crowd, through which Sandip Babu is borne, seated in ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... undertaken, by the joint labor of Gallus and Julian. [8] They respectfully conversed with the bishops, who were eminent for superior sanctity, and solicited the benediction of the monks and hermits, who had introduced into Cappadocia the voluntary hardships of the ascetic life. [9] As the two princes advanced towards the years of manhood, they discovered, in their religious sentiments, the difference of their characters. The dull and obstinate understanding of Gallus embraced, with implicit zeal, the doctrines of Christianity; which never influenced his conduct, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Ralph Peden lies couched in the sparce bells of the ling, just where the dry, twisted timothy grasses are beginning to overcrown the purple bells of the heather. Tall and clean-limbed, with a student's pallor of clear-cut face, a slightly ascetic stoop, dark brown curls clustering over a white forehead, and eyes which looked steadfast and true, the young man was sufficient of a hero. He wore a broad straw hat, which he had a pleasant habit of pushing back, so that his clustering ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... social amenities on the rangeside or in the bush, where women are scarce. Vane had lived in Spartan simplicity, practising the ascetic virtues, as a matter of course. He had had no time for sentiment, his passions had remained unstirred; and now he was seven and twenty, sound and vigorous of body, and, as a rule, level of head. At length, however, there was to be a change. He had earned an interlude of leisure, ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... rapidly, according to Matthew. Though, like John, he became an itinerant preacher, he departed widely from John's manner of life. John went into the wilderness, not into the synagogues; and his baptismal font was the river Jordan. He was an ascetic, clothed in skins and living on locusts and wild honey, practising a savage austerity. He courted martyrdom, and met it at the hands of Herod. Jesus saw no merit either in asceticism or martyrdom. ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... with Harvey Carr, wandering from one island to another either as trader or seaman. Of such money as he made he sent the greater portion to his sisters in the Colonies, retaining only enough for himself to enable him to live decently. He was not an ascetic, he drank fairly with his rough companions, gambled occasionally in a moderate manner with them, swore when the exigences of seafaring life demanded it, but no one had ever heard his name coupled ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... revolutionary and iconoclastic, as well as personally self-willed, passionate, and impulsive? Moreover, had not Mother Nature endowed him with the gifts of a seer and made him chivalrous as well as intensely sympathetic, while his early training inclined him to be serious, and even ascetic? Nor were the rebuffs he met with throughout his career calculated at this stage to make him court the applause of his fellow-men or be mindful of the world's censure or approval. Nor can one well quarrel with what ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... some of that long endurance of her life, in which exile, the body's weakness, and a sense of some 'divinest anguish' which clung about the world and all things living, had their share, she was able to put into ascetic and passionate verse. It is sad-coloured and desolate, but when gleams of sunlight or of starlight pierce the clouds that hang generally above it, a rare and stormy beauty comes into the bare outlines, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... a cherub's mouth, had not the full, sensuous lips a trick, under stress, of drawing firmly across the teeth. At times, so tightly did they draw, the mouth became stern and harsh, even ascetic. They were the lips of a fighter and of a lover. They could taste the sweetness of life with relish, and they could put the sweetness aside and command life. The chin and jaw, strong and just hinting of square aggressiveness, helped ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... bread and water—that would be penance with a vengeance! We felt WE could never do it. But the Story Girl did it. We admired and pitied her. But now I do not think that she either needed our pity or deserved our admiration. Her ascetic fare was really sweeter to her than honey of Hymettus. She was, though quite unconsciously, acting a part, and tasting all the subtle joy of the artist, which is so much more exquisite than ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... herself, however, upon her resolution, which she considers the accomplishment of an imperious duty; but she suffers continually, for she is not formed for those mystical contemplations, in the midst of which certain people, forgetting all affection, all earthly remembrances, are lost in ascetic delights. No; Fleur-de-Marie believes, prays, submits herself to the rigorous and harsh observance of her order; she pours out the most evangelical consolations, the most humble cares upon the poor sick women who are taken care of in the hospital ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... benignant countenance nothing save charity for all and general approval of the remarks of his subordinate. The audience stirred nervously, realizing that the critical moment had come. Father Frontford, pale, ascetic, austere, rose with ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... upon the world after he had created it and pronounced it good; but ascetic pietists, in their wisdom, cast their eyes over it, and substantially pronounce it a dead failure, a miserable production, ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... place. From the Intendencia he had gone straight on to the Avellanos's house to tell his brother-in-law, and though he stayed there no more than half an hour he had found himself cut off from his ascetic abode. Nostromo, after waiting there for some time, watching uneasily the increasing uproar in the street, had made his way to the offices of the Porvenir, and stayed there till daylight, as Decoud had mentioned in the letter to his sister. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... all well-conducted persons due deference must be shown to a religious guide, a king, an elder, an ascetic, a learned man, and one that practises austerities, by rising from the seat ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)
... tell; I wish she had: his book 's the eleventh commandment, Which says, 'Thou shalt not marry,' unless well: This he (as far as I can understand) meant. 'T is not my purpose on his views to dwell Nor canvass what so 'eminent a hand' meant; But certes it conducts to lives ascetic, Or ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... often with me to the Conservatoire. Comte de Beust brought Liszt to me one day. I wanted so much to see that complex character, made up of enthusiasms of all kinds, patriotic, religious, musical. He was dressed in the ordinary black priestly garb, looked like an ascetic with pale, thin face, which lighted up very much when discussing any subject that interested him. He didn't say a word about music, either then or on a subsequent occasion when I lunched with him at the house of a great friend and admirer, ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... cause to be careful of their money. Those who held this view belonged to the old, patriarchal class, the still flourishing remnant of the last generation, who prided themselves upon good management, good morals, and ascetic living; the class of people in whose marriage-contracts it was stipulated that the wife was to have meat twice a-day, excepting on fast days, a drive—the trottata, as it used to be called—daily, and ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... seemingly almost ascetic man sets before us of to-day an almost impossible standard of living. One idea mastered him—to give Africa to the world. His life was a success, as all lives must be which have a single aim. Life was clear, elemental almost to him, and to the man whose ambition ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... He it is who inspires the Guru's teaching. Every Guru on earth is a reflection of Mahadeva, and it is His life which he is commissioned to give out to the world. Yogi, immersed in contemplation, taking the ascetic form always—that marks out His functions. For the symbols by which the mighty Ones are shown in the teachings are not meaningless, but are replete with the deepest meaning. And when you see Him represented as the eternal Yogi, with the cord ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... upon. But, whilst much of my time is thus passed amongst the sorrowing and the sick, still there are hours of gaiety amongst the gloom—there are weddings, christenings, and merrymakings—there are happy faces to greet me as well as sad ones—and I am no ascetic. I take part in all the innocent amusements that are not inconsistent with my years or the gravity of my profession—but you ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... had no inducement for him. The great world outside could offer him nothing more than his wonted haunts in Shiraz. It is further said that he put on the garb of a Dervish; but he was altogether free of the Dervish's conceit. "The ascetic is the serpent of his age" is a saying put into ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... his chin. His features appeared to have been chiseled with great precision out of some pale, tan-colored marble; his nose was long and straight; his full eyelids gave him a slightly languorous look; but his lips, as sharply defined as a gem of carnelian, seemed somehow to be ascetic as well as sensual—virile as well as effete. Tall and spare, with small hands, he wore an outrageously inappropriate, ill-fitting sack suit. To Lilla it was as if some romantic young character from the tales of Scheherazade had been degraded for his gallantries ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... Saint Greal originally formed a distinct romance, but it was the dull production of some ascetic monk, who thought that the knights of the Round Table were too much occupied with secular pursuits, and who found no greater encomium to pass upon Sir Galahad, than to call him a "maid." But the idea of the Christian knighthood setting out to seek the Holy Cup was "marvellous ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... with all the noble attributes accredited to him in the Bible,—'stern and inflexible in his teaching, yet bowing before him whose message he had to promulgate.' A halo of grandeur surrounds the ascetic of the desert as he hurls anathemas upon the corruptors of Israel; or as, in the true spirit of the ancient prophets of his race, he rebukes Herod under the roof of that monarch's palace. No greater hero could a musician wish for as a source of inspiration, or as a means of exciting interest. ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... Hail, arch-ascetic, pious, good, and kind! Hail, Saint Valmiki, lord of every lore! Hail, holy Hermit, calm and pure of mind! Hail, First of ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... that, if excusable and natural on the score of youth, trenched beyond the borders of discipline, and the stories of life at the Academy that he recited for many years after he left were not exactly in harmony with the popular idea of the ascetic of Mount Carmel. ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... there was to fear from this ascetic, the Egyptian Governor-General Raouf, Gordon's successor, and stigmatised by him as the Tyrant of Harrar, became curious about him, and sent someone to interview and report upon this new religious teacher. The report brought back was that he was "a madman," ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... this with respect to the emotions of pleasurable excitement with which you left Lady M.'s ball? I am no fanatic, nor ascetic; and I can imagine it possible (though not probable) that among the visitors there some simple-minded and simple-hearted people, amused with the crowds, the dresses, the music, and the flowers, may have felt, even in this scene of feverish and dangerous excitement, something of "a child's ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... apprehension of the unsmiling gravity which is the essence of Quixotic humour; it seemed to him a crime to bring Cervantes forward smirking and grinning at his own good things, and to this may be attributed in a great measure the ascetic abstinence from everything savouring of liveliness which is the characteristic of his translation. In most modern editions, it should be observed, his style has been smoothed and smartened, but without any reference to the original Spanish, so that if he has been made to read more agreeably ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... moments a tall, spare figure appeared in the doorway, and paused an instant before entering. He had a keen, smooth-shaven, ascetic face, topped with a mass of ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... the noble roll of Italian women who have deserved well of Italy, the record of her visions and ecstasies may be read without contemptuous intolerance of hysterical disease. The rapturous visionary and passionate ascetic was in plain matters of this earth as pure and practical a heroine as Joan ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... as beautiful as that of a marble figure. Ah!... When he would accumulate the price of his return thither, he would certainly join his lot to that of a maiden with large eyes and a breath of roses, scarcely out of childhood. Meanwhile he lived like an ascetic fakir amongst the Westerners, unclean folks with whom he was willing to transact business but with whom he avoided all unnecessary contact. Ah, to return yonder! Not to die far from the sacred river!... ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... me. What does it matter? I love you; that is the important thing to me. I thank you for that eternal possession. Let it be a dream, austere and pure. Passion has its own ascetic cell, where it can fast and scourge itself. I ask you for nothing, Blanche. I am yours wholly. Do what you like ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter |
