"Recluse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me all the intelligence of what had happened at court since I had left it; and although I professed to have renounced the world, and to have become a recluse, a sitter in a corner, as it is called, yet still I found that I had an ear for what was passing in it. They informed me that the chief executioner had returned from his campaign against the Russians, and had ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... he poured out his soul with all the fervour and abandon of which only the shy are capable. Williams was afraid of his own past. It was not a hideously criminal one, for his life had been that of a bookworm and recluse. But out of that past Williams would conjure up the slightest incident—a trifling breach of manners, a mere word out of place, a moment in which he had lost control of his emotions, and the memory of it would put him into a cold sweat ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... a recluse, a dreamer, a kind of isolated philosopher, easy-going, content with but little, harboring ill-feeling against no man, and without even a grudge against heaven. I have constantly lived alone; consequently, a kind of torture takes hold of me when I find myself ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... in the net laid for him! When the moon entered the shadow, four masked robbers (Jocrisse was their leader!) climbed into the Baroness Landsknechtsschild's windows. The hermit in his observatory beheld this incursion, and, being a knight as well as a recluse, what else could he do but rush to the rescue of his fair neighbor? His telescope had told him she was fair. Jocrisse played his part admirably. At the approach of the deliverer the "robbers" took to their heels, and the ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... Hawthorne by the antediluvian print in the stone step at Smithell's Hall, in Lancashire, serves as the key- note of this romance; but the eccentric recluse, the big crab-spider, the orphaned grandchild, and even Bronson Alcott also appear in it. Alcott, however,—and his identity cannot be mistaken,—does not play the leading part in the piece, but comes in ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... of all instruments, and although on account of its nature it is excluded from the concert hall, it is the companion of the recluse. The latter says to himself: 'Here I can produce the feelings of my heart, can shade fully, drive away care, and melt away a tone through all its ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... of course, to get him under restraint before he could stain his hands with blood, but the matter was full of difficulty. He is a recluse in his habits, and would not see any medical man. Besides, it was necessary for our purpose that the medical man should convince himself of his insanity; and he is sane as you or I, save on these very rare occasions. But, fortunately, ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and involuntary shudder ran cold over the affrighted girl, as with a wild and appalled look she gazed on the recluse birds, which their arrival had disturbed; she clung eagerly to Gomez Arias, as they both sat down ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... from her latest recollection of him. The episode of that night under the bay tree had gone with her clear across the Atlantic. Even the influence of the wholly new environment, in which she had grown from a girl recluse to a woman, had not served for a long time to erase that ugly stain on her memory. Here and now was the man who served so to perturb her once—and she could look on him, with her more mature eyes, as an attractive, unlicked young cub. She surprised herself ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... even if he had daylight to befriend him, he declares, that with or without the Hermit's consent, he is determined to be his guest that night. He is admitted accordingly, not without a hint from the Recluse, that were he himself out of his priestly weeds, he would care little for his threats of using violence, and that he gives way to him not out of intimidation, but simply ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... where Johnnie was, Maggie had replied that she had gone nutting by previous engagement with Mr. Alvord, and as the party returned in the glowing evening they met the oddly assorted friends with their baskets well filled. In the eyes of the recluse there was a gentler expression, proving that Johnnie's and Nature's ministry had not been wholly in vain. He glanced swiftly from Burt to Miss Hargrove, then at Amy, and a faint suggestion of a smile hovered about his mouth. He was about to leave them abruptly when Johnnie interposed, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... the years slipped by, and his literary performance, consisting of desultory essays and several slight volumes of verse, was not enough to justify the prophecy. His life more and more became that of a bachelor recluse and valetudinarian. When he died, in 1881, at sixty years of age, after much suffering heroically borne, as pathetic entries in the last leaves of his Diary remain to show, there was a feeling that here was "one more faithful failure." But the quiet, brooding teacher in the Swiss city ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... governor, forcing a laugh; "who would believe that a mere recluse, a man almost dead, could have committed crimes so numerous, and ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... delight; Made me exult in labour, plann'd for you! Its progress from your inspiration grew: The toil was sweet, that your approvance cheer'd; For what your love inspir'd, that love endear'd. Nor unregarded by the fair, and great, Was your recluse in this sequester'd state; When I began, by just records, to prove How Cowper merited our country's love; The loveliest regent of poetic taste; First of the fair; with all attractions grac'd! Friend of the muses! ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... only inconvenience which the man of study suffers from a recluse life. When he meets with an opinion that pleases him, he catches it up with eagerness; looks only after such arguments as tend to his confirmation; or spares himself the trouble of discussion, and adopts it with very little proof; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... knowledge. Many, indeed, make their attainments the property of others, and are zealous in diffusing their own scientific views, or in dispensing instruction in their own departments. But there are also many solitary, recluse students; and it may be doubted whether, if a man who is earnestly engaged in any intellectual pursuit were shut out entirely from human society, and left alone with his books or with nature, his diligence would be relaxed, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... borrow Powell's Sermons from Ardbraccan or Dr. Beaufort; the Primate lent them to my father. There is a charge on the connection between merit and preferment, and one discourse on the influence of academical studies and a recluse life, which I particularly admire, and wish it had been ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... said I didn't care what means you used," corrected Moore, with delicate emphasis. He added, reflectively: "Blair has always been something of a recluse; but I've noticed that when a Puritan once feels a little of the warmth of the devil's presence that he's rather loath to step out into the cold again." The look of anger from Mrs. Latimer made him change both tone and words. "We have depended on you to get Charlie," he said, reproachfully. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... that any further attempt to reason with the recluse would be fruitlessly made, rose and followed her into a narrow, dark passage, at the end of which was a door ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... was he fallen asleep, when a figure entered the room: 'tis a girl all clothed and veiled in white; on her forehead a fillet of black and gold. She sees him. In amazement she lifts her white hand: 'Am I, then, such a stranger in the house already? Alas, poor recluse!... But I am ashamed, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... was a cheerful, lonely man—a recluse even when he allowed himself to be jostled and hurried along on the turbulent stream of humanity sweeping in opposite directions through Washington Street and its busy estuaries. He was in the crowd, but not of it. I had so little ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... general information (chiefly obtained, I believe, from books, which are his sole amusement, and with which he is amply furnished from the library at the Hall,) that I invited myself to come over and spend an evening with him. The old fox took the alarm at this. He told me that he was quite a recluse, and never received company; but that some evening, when I was quite alone, he would step in and take a cup of coffee with me—a luxury which he has never allowed himself for the last ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... But a grumpy recluse cannot worry his subordinates: whereas the man in whom the sense of duty is strong (or, perhaps, only the sense of self-importance), and who persists in airing on deck his moroseness all day—and perhaps half the night—becomes a grievous infliction. He walks the ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the eldest of the three brothers whom I have mentioned above as our neighbors, had not been remarkable during his lifetime, in consequence of his recluse habits, but became the more remarkable after his death, by leaving behind him a direction that common workingmen should carry him to the grave, early in the morning, in perfect silence, and without an attendant or follower. This was done; and the affair caused great excitement in the city, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... hesitation in respect to his duty. It is said that he had a brother who was a monk, or rather hermit, who lived a life of reading, meditation and prayer, in a solitary place not far from Falaise. Arlotte's father sent immediately to this religious recluse for his spiritual counsel. The monk replied that it was right to comply with the wishes of so great a man, whatever they might be. The tanner, thus relieved of all conscientious scruples on the subject by this high religious authority, and ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... age demands it, might relieve the pathetic; Charlotte's own innocence and piety might be made to soften her hard fate, with the assurance of a better life; Saville might become a wisely-resigned recluse; and while the sins of the fathers are not gently, though justly, visited on the children, the villain of the story meets ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... point of making some bitter reply about the undesirability of any guardianship assumed by Willis Morgan, squaw man, recluse, and recipient of common hatred and contempt. But he kept his ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... waywardness, Miss Wych at once gave up her recluse life; accepted invitations, and pulled Mr. Falkirk into a round of outdoor gaiety that nearly turned his head. Trying, perhaps, to test her discoveries, or to get rid of her thoughts; or to prove to herself conclusively ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... nephew: "It is a common proverb, Malice never spake well: what can you say against my kinsman the fox? All these complaints seem to me to be either absurd or false. Mine uncle is a gentleman, and cannot endure falsehood. I affirm that he liveth as a recluse; he chastiseth his body, and weareth a shirt of hair-cloth. It is above a year since he hath eaten any flesh; he hath forsaken his castle Malepardus, and abandoned all his wealth; he lives only upon alms and good men's charities, doing infinite penance for his sins; so ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... Jim," she said, "that I'm so busy this week. But we ought to meet at many places, unless you continue to play the recluse. Don't you ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... the contempt of either of these. A man may have as much wisdom in the possession of an affluent fortune, as any beggar in the streets; or may enjoy a handsome wife or a hearty friend, and still remain as wise as any sour popish recluse, who buries all his social faculties, and starves his belly while he well lashes ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... 1843. It might also be cited as another proof not only of De Quincey's very keen interest in all the leading questions of the time, but as an illustration of the John Bull warmth and heat which he, the dreamer, the recluse, the lover of abstract problems, could bring into such discussions. Here, at all events, his views were definite enough, and stated with a bold precision of English plainness that would have pleased the most pronouncedly Tory or Unionist newspaper ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... to credit fairyland. Arthur and Miss Wishart had gone on in front and were now strayed among boulders. She liked this trim and precise young man, whose courtesy was so grave and elaborate, while he, being a recluse by nature but a humanitarian by profession, was half nervous and half entranced in her cheerful society. They talked of nothing, their hearts being set on the scramble, and when at last they reached ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... Catholic priest, whose look and accent proclaimed him to be a Frenchman. He seemed about fifty years of age, and his bronzed faced, grizzled hair, and deeply-wrinkled brow, all showed the man of action rather than the recluse. Between these two passengers there was the widest possible difference. The one was almost a boy, the other a world-worn old man; the one full of life and vivacity, the other sombre and abstracted; yet between the two there was, however, a mysterious ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... that mean? Was the Arab magician, recluse in his wretched hut below the castle, prepared to serve her? Was it through him and Foresto that she might hope to escape or at least to manage some revenge? Thereafter she often watched the renegade's ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... these reminiscences, I cannot avoid noticing some of the useful impressions exerted by Percival upon the literary community amidst which he passed so large a portion of his life. To some the influence of such a recluse will doubtless seem insignificant. The reverse, however, I am persuaded, was the fact. Few students came to New Haven without bringing with them, imprinted on their youthful memories, some beautiful line of his poetry. Few had not heard of his universal scholarship and profound ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the property, a genial recluse, Mr. Robinson Cruse, who for eight years had led an almost solitary life, his nearest neighbor on the island being the sergeant in charge of Fort Gaines, which officer, I was informed, was seldom seen outside of his dismal enclosure. ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... with thrift passing over into avarice, and mental power degenerating into smartness; cold and hard under long repression of emotion, yet capable of passion and fanaticism; at worst, a mere trader, a crank, a grim recluse; at best, endowed with an austere physical and moral beauty. Miss Jewett preferred to touch graciously the sunnier slopes of this provincial temperament, to linger in its ancient dignities and serenities. Miss Brown has shown the pathos of its thwarted desires, its hunger ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... up—nobody could remember a time when it was not. And none knew why it was so closed; certainly not because of the occupant's dislike of light and air, for on those rare occasions when a hunter had passed that lonely spot the recluse had commonly been seen sunning himself on his doorstep if heaven had provided sunshine for his need. I fancy there are few persons living to-day who ever knew the secret of that window, but I am one, as you ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... at Ticonderoga. As a most natural sequence, even amid the hostile demonstrations of both French and Indians, Lord Howe and the young girl find time to make most deliciously sweet love, and the son of the recluse has already lost his heart to the daughter of a great sachem, a dusky maiden whose warrior-father has surrounded her with all the comforts ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... only invisible grain in the mill now. The peasants came no longer with their corn. She had enough to live on, and her long seclusion unfitted her for strange men in the mill, and people she must talk to. And so long was the habit of the recluse on her, that though her soul flew leagues her body never wandered more than a few hundred yards from her home. Some who had heard of her, and had glimpses of her, spoke to her when they met; but they could make no headway with this ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... heard little of Selby except as a literary recluse, whose only distraction from books was the operatic stage. But he heard much of Isaura; of the kindness which Madame de Grantmesnil had shown to her, when left by Selby's death alone in the world; of the interest which the friendship and the warm eulogies of one ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I could nearest spy, I digged about That place where I had seen him to grow out; And by and by I saw the warm recluse alone to lie, Where fresh and green He lived of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... that this saint was a native of Ireland; but the Scottish tradition affirms that he was born in Perthshire, and that he became a recluse in his native parish of Weem, where he built ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... last penny with those in distress. Their pay-nights were often a saturnalia of riot and disorder, dreaded by the inhabitants of the villages along the line of works. The irruption of such men into the quiet hamlet of Kilsby must, indeed, have produced a very startling effect on the recluse inhabitants of the place. Robert Stephenson used to tell a story of the clergyman of the parish waiting upon the foreman of one of the gangs to expostulate with him as to the shocking impropriety of his men working during Sunday. But the head navvy merely hitched up his trousers, and ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... imperfectly closed, or which had chinks in their sides, or even hid them in a drawer or a cupboard, I found the males arrived in numbers as great as when the object of their search lay in the cage of open wire-work freely exposed on a table. I have a vivid memory of one evening when the recluse was hidden in a hat-box at the bottom of a wall-cupboard. The arrivals went straight to the closed doors, and beat them with their wings, toc-toc, trying to enter. Wandering pilgrims, come from I know not where, across fields and meadows, they knew ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... The French politics, in the play, are to send the daughter of a King of France (the contemporary King Henri III was childless) to conduct a negotiation about 200,000 ducats, at the Court, steeped in peace, of a King of Navarre, a scholar who would fain be a recluse from women, in an Academe of his own device. Such was not the Navarre of Henri in his war with the Guises, and Henri did ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... occurred to me how absolutely absorbed I had become in the Martian investigation. Ordinarily a sociable person, in the past week I had become a recluse. College friends that I had seen almost daily since my return to Paris, I now completely neglected, even shunned, lest they should call at my rooms some evening when I was in wave contact with Mars. It also occurred to me that, as surely as my friendship and necessity for them was declining, ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... character if required to do so. Of course it is a sad and sorry thing to have to live among strangers, and to be forced to seek their patronage, and to conceal and constrain one's own personality— but God will help me. I must not remain forever a recluse, for similar chances have come my way before. I remember how, when a little girl at school, I used to go home on Sundays and spend the time in frisking and dancing about. Sometimes my mother would chide me for so doing, but I did not care, for my heart was too joyous, and my ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the Pope. These were the friends with whom he spent the real life of his latter days, and it is hardly surprising that under the influence of their companionship he should have become somewhat of a recluse, and lost touch with living ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... philosophical acuteness in which Johnson was certainly very deficient. Both of these great men, however, impress us by their deep sense of the evils under which humanity suffers, and their rejection of the superficial optimism of the day. Butler's sadness, undoubtedly, is that of a recluse, and Johnson's that of a man of the world; but the sentiment is fundamentally the same. It may be added, too, that here, as elsewhere, Johnson speaks with the sincerity of a man drawing upon his own ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Duke of Savoy. For thirty years she had not once gone out of her palace on the Arno, where, she painted, and wearing a wig, she played the guitar in her spacious white salon. She received the best society of Florence, and Miss Bell often called on her. At table this recluse, eighty-seven years of age, questioned the Countess Martin on the fashionable world of Paris, whose movement was familiar to her through the journals. Solitary, she retained respect and a sort of devotion for ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... his face. Pearl realized that, for the moment, at least, he had forgotten her presence, and in truth, his mind had traveled back over the years and he was living over again the experience which had made him a wanderer on the earth and finally a recluse in the lonely ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... dim close of day, The Captive loves alone to stray Along the haunts recluse and rude Of sorrow and of solitude; When he sits with moveless eye To mark the lingering radiance die, And lets distemper'd Fancy roam Amid the ruins of his home,— Oh give to him the flowing bowl, Bid it renovate his soul; The bowl shall better thoughts bestow, And lull to rest his ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... of Holman Sommers often enough, though he had never seen him. He had heard him described as a "highbrow" who wrote scientific articles, sometimes published in obscure magazines, read by few and understood by none. A recluse student, he had been described to Starr, who knew Todd Sommers by sight, and who had tagged the family as being too American for any suspicion to ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... four days had passed and the recluse had not returned her call. True, there had come to her hotel a wicker full of superb wild tree blooms, and, again, a tiny box, cunning in workmanship of scented wood, containing what at first glance she ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in their caps and rough dressing-gowns were at hand, but Hermann Grimm had rather the appearance of a well-groomed man of the world. His coat was fashionable, his abundant hair and flowing beard were carefully trimmed. He was not a recluse, though faithful to his heredity and devoted mainly to scholarly research. He was at ease in the clubs and also at Court and enjoyed the give and take of a social ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... ever-present breeze of Mackinac played in his long silvery hair, and his bright eyes roved along the wall of the old house; he had a broad forehead, noble features, and commanding presence, and as he sat there, recluse as he was,—aged, alone, without a history, with scarcely a name or a place in the world,—he looked, in the power of his native-born dignity, worthy ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... shook hands with him I could see in a glance that though he might be a recluse and an antiquary he had a lively and gentle heart; for if his face was yellow and his pupils sere there was a wonderfully shy and sympathetic mobility ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... Father Sergius's sixth year as a recluse, and he was now forty-nine. His life in solitude was hard—not on account of the fasts and the prayers (they were no hardship to him) but on account of an inner conflict he had not at all anticipated. The sources of that ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... years of miserable anxiety might have been spared to all who were interested—had the guardians and executors of my father's will thought fit to "let well alone"! But, "per star meglio" [2] they chose to remove my brother from this gentle recluse to an active, bustling man of the world, the very anti-pole in character. What might be the pretensions of this gentleman to scholarship, I never had any means of judging; and, considering that he must now, (if living at all,) at a distance of thirty-six years, be gray headed, I ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... in the icy, midnight moonbeams of the recluse of Christ's College! How preciously golden seem the links of our universal brotherhood, when the Fates are waving their dark wings around us, and menace us with their sundering! I am not sure, my worthy Wagonero, that, rather than see my own little cord finally cut, I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... description comes abruptly to an end, the rest of the letter being lost. On account of failing health and increased bodily languor, Miss Ferrier latterly lived a very retired life, seeing few but very intimate friends, and, as she said, "We are more recluse than ever, as our little circle is yearly contracting, and my eyes are more and more averse to light ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... somewhere on the opposite mountain of Minsi, the knowledge of its location having perished with the death of a recluse, who coined the metal he took from it into valuable though illegal dollars, going townward every winter to squander his earnings. During the Revolution "Oran the Hawk," a Tory and renegade, was vexatious to the people of Delaware Valley, and a detachment ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... of blood! Thy life of use And patient trust is more than mine; And wiser than the gray recluse This ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... quarters, too, the press had become the exponent of these sentiments. Possibly, in their beginnings, no person did more in the exertion of those means which have wrought into the heart of the English people such undying hatred to Negro Slavery than the amiable recluse whose writings can never die so long as lovers of poetry continue to live. Who has not at times turned away from the best-loved of the living poets, to regale himself with the compact, polished, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... away, out of sight of the rectory in a fold of the hill was this great gaunt building, erected, so popular gossip said, by one who had been crossed in love and desired to live the life of a recluse, a desire which was respected by the superstitious town-folk of Great Bradley. The Secret House had been built in the hollow which was known locally as "Murderers' Valley," a pretty little glen which many years before had been the scene of an outrageous crime. The house ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... one bird I seldom hear till June, and that is the cuckoo. Sometimes the last days of May bring him, but oftener it is June before I hear his note. The cuckoo is the true recluse among our birds. I doubt if there is any joy in his soul. "Rain-crow," he is called in some parts of the country. His call is supposed to bode rain. Why do other birds, the robin for instance, often make ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... country. We know something of how the knowledge of these anomalies in public life chafed the eager spirit of Nelson, but we can never know the extent of the suffering it caused except during the Neapolitan and Sicilian days. This lonely soul lived the life of a recluse for months at a time. The monotony of the weird song of the sea winds, the nerve-tearing, lazy creak of the wooden timbers, the sinuous crawling, rolling, or plunging over the most wondrous of God's works, invariably produces ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... not be wondered that I became a recluse. The recluse is usually one cast up from such bleak experiences of sin and grief that he fears to launch upon life again, and only seeks to hide him in any cavern that may be found along the shore that has received him. Thus it was with me, at least. I dreaded ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... you are responsible for all the extravagances of modern times, for the irreparable loss to virtue and society of the noble youth of your country. You hate the church of God because she is a witness against you. The priest, the nun, and the recluse are objects of your malice; for they are living examples of what you call impossible morals, and refuters of the code of low virtue you practise and preach. The faith of the Catholic laity, too, you endeavor to destroy, in order more securely to deceive your hearers, and to secure your children, ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... alone all these fifty years, alone and for himself, amassing learning, and compiling a fortune. He comes home now at night alone from the club, where he has been dining freely, to the lonely chambers where he lives a godless old recluse. When he dies, his Inn will erect a tablet to his honour, and his heirs burn a part of his library. Would you like to have such a prospect for your old age, to store up learning and money, and end so? But we must not ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the Adirondacks, was named for a recluse, who, in the early part of this century, occupied a lonely but strongly guarded cabin there. It was believed afterward that he was an English army officer, of noble birth, who had left his own country in disgust ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... not brought up to the profession of anchorite, but was formerly a shoemaker, and according to his own confession abandoned his trade because he could better indulge a lethargic habit in the character of religious recluse.] He had even a bad word for Tiberius, and reproached the emperor for throwing people over the cliff, though I think it a sport in which he would himself have liked to join. The only human creatures with whom he seemed to be in sympathy were the brigands of the main-land, of whom he spoke poetically ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... object of his life. The King was surrounded by Normans, the people among whom he had lived until called from his retirement to ascend the throne of England, and whom he loved far better than those over whom he reigned. He himself still lived almost the life of a recluse. He was sincerely anxious for the good of his people, but took small pains to ensure it, his life being largely passed in religious devotions, and in watching over the rise of the abbey ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... barriers; and people, not of his order, who occasionally presumed on his simplicity of life and habits, found themselves put distinctly ill at ease by a quiet, curious look in his eye. No man was ever more the recluse and at the same time the man of the world. He had had his bitter little comedy of life, but it was different from that of his brother Frank. It was buried very deep; not one of his family knew of it: Edward Lambert, and one or two others who had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sky shall you find it? The more solitary the recluse and the more confirmed and grounded his seclusion, the wider and more familiar becomes the circle of his social environment, until at length, like a very dryad of old, the birds build and sing in his branches and the "wee wild beasties" nest in his pockets. If he fails to be aware of the ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... a balance in its favour from the number of great men who have been convinced of its truth, after a serious consideration of the question. Grotius was an acute man, a lawyer, a man accustomed to examine evidence, and he was convinced. Grotius was not a recluse, but a man of the world, who certainly had no bias to the side of religion. Sir Isaac Newton set out an infidel, and came to be a very ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... powers—to the one board belonged the privilege of ordering and contriving measures; to the other, that of carrying them into execution. Theories, he said, which did not connect men with measures, were not theories for this world: they were chimeras with which a recluse might divert his fancy, but they were not principles en which a statesman would found his system. He maintained, that by the negative vested in the commissioners, the chartered rights of the company, on which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... influence of the sexes, so important to earth's moral good, can be fully exerted. The boy at school inclines to rough manners. What more effectual restraint upon this tendency, than the delicacy and gentleness which marks the little girl? She again, may become painfully diffident, and a recluse in her bearing, if not subjected to the society of the more confident sex. Encourage the boy to sit always by the fireside, and studiously shun conversation with the opposite sex, or put the girl forward and incite her to a ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... for his sins. That night he laid himself down to sleep under an apple-tree and dreamed a strange dream. At dawn he arose, armed himself and went on his way. He next came to a chapel "where was a recluse which had a window that she might look up to the altar, and all aloud she called Sir Lancelot, and asked him whence he came, what he was, and what he went to seek." He told her all his dreams and visions, which she expounded, and gave him pious counsel, but told ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... only in outside affairs and in his view of the world that lay outside the windows of his mind that Townsend found life a thing of odd discoveries, strange secrets, and thrilling hazards. His own existence, though in reality an exceedingly quiet one, indeed almost that of a recluse, was still to him a great adventure. There was always for him the possibility of the sudden appearance of the man in the black cloak with hat drawn over his brows, either looking, or saying "Beware!" I remember ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... he thought fit to claim her, by virtue of the marriage already had; but it was a present supply of her necessary wants, by which he acknowledged her as his wife, and engaged to furnish her with alimony, not ample indeed, but suitable to the recluse life which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... such is found in many ancient carvings and paintings accompanying various Saints. There is also a legend specially connecting this creature with S. Giles. In a retreat in a forest in the diocese of Nismes, the recluse, with one companion, is said to have lived on the fruits of the earth and the milk of a hind. Some dogs that were out hunting pursued this hind, and she took refuge in the dwelling of the Saint. The sportsman, Flavius Wamba, King of the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... only to bring out the fact that between these two men, so different in outward fates,—between "the adored, the incomparable Nelson" and the homely poet, "retired as noontide dew,"—there was a moral likeness so profound that the ideal of the recluse was realized in the public life of the hero, and, on the other hand, the hero himself is only seen as completely heroic when his impetuous life stands out for us from the solemn background of the poet's calm. And surely these two natures taken together make the perfect ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... democratic, and he could not make acquaintances below his own intellectual level. Solitude fostered a sensitiveness which to begin with was extreme; the lack of stated occupation encouraged his natural tendency to dream and procrastinate and hope for the improbable. He was a recluse in the midst of millions, and viewed with dread the necessity of going forth to fight ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... to know you!" exclaimed the woman. She seemed less of a recluse than at first. "I haven't been to a circus for years—not since I was a child," she continued, half sadly, Joe thought. "But I'm coming to-night!" she exclaimed. "I'll have the janitor look after my cats and dogs, ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... radicalism and his so-called fads were born of his high aspirations. He was not the recluse calmly spinning theories from a bewildering chaos of observations, and building up isolated facts into the unity of a great and illuminating conception in the silence and solitude of his library, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... to a shameful flight and hid myself in one of the mountains, where I met with a Religious who had withdrawn himself from the world. So I joined myself to him and complained to him of my case and acquainted him with all that had befallen me. Quoth the Recluse, 'Wottest thou why this befel thee and thou wast defeated?' Quoth I, 'I know not;' and he said. 'Because thou didst put thy trust in the multitude of thy warmen and reliedst not upon Allah the Most High. Hadst thou put thy trust in the Almighty and believed ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... certainly infused it into his work by a more subtle and sympathetic gift than even the magic-loving Scotch romancer owned. After this digressive prelude, the reader will be ready to hear me announce that "Fanshawe" was a faint reflection from the young Salem recluse's mind of certain rays thrown across the Atlantic from Abbotsford. ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... though by no means an unimportant part, of the greater whole. The classic movement, against which he set his face steadily, was not to be easily annihilated; it survived in Rome in such illustrious representatives as Canova, Thorwaldsen and Gibson. But Overbeck grew more and more the recluse; he shortly became a proselyte to the Romish Church, shut himself out from other associations, and thus after a time devoted his ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... sweet leisure in his fields, To virtuous minds retirement yields. The king, who had his foes believ'd, The loss of him ere long perceiv'd. To bring him back again intent, To his retreat alone he went: "My friend, you must return with me," He said, "your value now I see." "Forgive me," the Recluse replied; "Here I determine to abide. By sad experience well I know, Were I to court again to go, And all my best endeavors do, To serve my country, sir, and you, Art and intrigue so much prevail, Again I certainly should fail; Against your will and approbation, And the good wishes of the nation, ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... in a garden, while the lady, in an agitated disorder, peeped out of her lattice in "a most charming Dishabillee." Alas! there was a lock to the door of a garden staircase, and while the lady "was paying a Compliment to the Recluse, he was dextrous enough to slip the Key out of the Door unperceived." Ann Lang!—"a sudden cry of Murder, and the noise of clashing Swords," come none too soon to save those blushes which, we hope, you had in readiness for the turning of the page! Eliza ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... found himself again opposed by his London friends. Unable to secure a new Alice in Wonderland for his child readers, he determined to give them Kate Greenaway. But here he had selected another recluse. Everybody discouraged him. The artist never saw visitors, he was told, and she particularly shunned editors and publishers. Her own publishers confessed that Miss Greenaway was inaccessible to them. "We conduct all our business with her by correspondence. I have never seen ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... shaded hill I found "Rydal Mount" cottage. I was shown, at once, into the sitting-room, where I found him with his wife, who sat sewing beside him. The old man rose and received me graciously. By his appearance I was somewhat startled. Instead of a grave recluse in scholastic black, whom I expected to see, I found an affable and lovable old man dressed in the roughest coat of blue with metal buttons, and checked trousers, more like a New York farmer than an English poet. His nose was very large, his forehead a lofty dome of thought, and his long white locks ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... judgment of our press than for the enterprise which is born of competition, and, although that judgment has often to be framed under conditions which demand almost breathless rapidity, it does not always bear unfavorable comparison with the protracted meditation of the philosophic recluse. [Cheers.] ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... life was the retired and uneventful one of a peculiarly intense and abstracted student. It is hardly a figure of speech, but almost exactly the literal truth to say that he was born, and lived, and died, beneath the shadow of the Universities. He was not, indeed, quite so much of a recluse as his fellow-countryman Kant, the renowned Koenigsberg philosopher, who, though he reached the age of eighty, and had a reputation which filled all Europe, was never more than thirty-two miles away from the spot where his mother rocked him in his cradle. ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... the river out of his father's kingdom into a strange country, and he put on the garment of a recluse, and ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... this resolve I made the camels halt and tying up their forelegs ran back after the holy man and called out his name. He heard my loud shouts and awaited me forthright; and, as soon as I approached him I said, "When I had quitted thee a thought came into my mind; to wit, that thou art a recluse who keepest thyself aloof from earthly things, pure in heart and busied only with orison and devotion Now care of all these camels will cause thee only toil and moil and trouble and waste of precious time: 'twere better then to give them back and not run the risk of these discomforts and dangers. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... of George's uncle, who was a recluse living at Tunbridge. He was a scholar and a pedant, and concerned himself but little about his only child, whose fortune was inherited ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... harried by the constant trade winds, baked by the unclouded six months' sun, lost for a few hours in the afternoon sea-fog, and laughed over by circling guillemots from the Farallones. It was kept by a recluse—a preoccupied man of scientific tastes, who, in shameless contrast to his fellow immigrants, had applied to the government for this scarcely lucrative position as a means of securing the seclusion he valued more than gold. Some believed that he was ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... of the adventurous little band not now accounted for is Peter Bell, the former recluse. Peter was forward in the smoking car enjoying his old black pipe, which was his delight and solace and Miss Prescott's particular abomination. Among Peter's other peculiarities, acquired in a long and solitary life, was a habit he had of sometimes making, his remarks in verse. ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... and the Doctor. One would have said, to look at him, that he was not at the party by choice; and it was natural enough to think, with Susy Pettingill, that it must have been a freak of the dark girl's that brought him there, for he had the air of a shy and sad-hearted recluse. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... call, nothing would give her more satisfaction than a frequent renewal of their visits. Mrs. Wilson took so deep an interest in the misfortunes of this young female, and was so much pleased with the modest resignation of her manner, that it required little persuasion on the part of the recluse to obtain a promise of soon repeating her visit. Emily mentioned the request of John, and Mrs. Fitzgerald received it with a mournful smile, as she replied that Mr. Moseley had laid her under such an obligation in their first ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... addressed those universal human instincts which give us our ideas of national and individual freedom. The declaration that men are created equal excited no surprise then. They believed it without a thought that it had entered the mind of a fantastic recluse in the retirement of l'Hermitage, and, in obedience to that belief, they severed the ties of tradition and kindred, exposed their homes and the lives of those whose lives were dearer to them than their own to the rage of civil war, and placed all they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... the man of the island slowly. "After I knew I was ruined, I fled down here, where I was raised, and became a recluse on that island. It was cowardly of me, I know, but from now on I am going ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... married, in 1742, Henry, fourth Earl of Carlisle. She subsequently, after the death of Lord Carlisle (1758), married, as her second husband, Sir William Musgrave. She was a woman of considerable ability, and apparently, in later life, of eccentric habits—a "recluse in pride and rags." She was the reputed writer of some published poetry, and of 'Maxims addressed to Young Ladies'. Some of these maxims might have been of use to her grand-nephew: "Habituate yourself to that way of life most agreeable to the person to whom you are united; be content ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... were in arms against the Papal Government. The death of his own elder brother, followed in 1832 by that of Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt, made him chief of the house of Bonaparte. Though far more of a recluse than a man of action, though so little of his own nation that he could not pronounce a sentence of French without a marked German accent, and had never even seen a French play performed, he now became possessed by the fixed idea that he was one day to wear the French Crown. A few obscure adventurers ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... any account of it that has come down to us, was not a notable one, though he had a fair scholastic career and graduated at the age of nineteen in 1743. While popular after a fashion at college, he was a bit of a recluse and a diligent student of literature, with a predilection, it is said, for music, playing well on the violin. After graduating, he wisely spent two years in general reading before entering upon the study of the law, which he did in 1745 under James Gridley, ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... Whitefield, John and Charles Wesley, Romaine, Madan, Venn, and others preached. Among those who were converted by these sermons were the wife and sister of Lord Chesterfield; the latter, Lady Gertrude Hotham, opening her house for the preaching of the Gospel. Lady Huntingdon was no recluse. Uncompromising as she was in every matter where religious principle was involved, she was always ready to avail herself of the true privileges of pleasure which her rank and position enabled her to enjoy. In this way she cultivated the acquaintance of many of the distinguished personages ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... Cod), decapitate, chapter, biceps Cedo, cessum go concede, accessory Centum hundred per cent, centigrade *Civis citizen civic, uncivilized *Clamo shout acclaim, declamation *Claudo, clausum close, shut conclude, recluse, cloister, sluice Cognosco (see Nosco) *Coquo, coxi, coctum cook decoction, precocious *Cor, cordis heart core, discord, courage Corpus body corpse, incorporate Credo, credituin believe creed, discreditable Cresco, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... of their retreating robes. The youth here by my side cannot be weary of the fragments from the life of Sappho. He will not believe they are not addressed to himself, or that he to whom they were addressed could be ungrateful. A recluse of high powers devotes himself to understand and explain the thought of Eloisa; he asserts her vast superiority in soul and genius to her master; he curses the fate that casts his lot in another age than hers. He could have understood her; he would have ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... same view of the thing that another of the crew did; and had early resolved, so to conduct himself as never to run the risk of the scourge. And this it must have been—added to whatever incommunicable grief which might have been his—that made this Nord such a wandering recluse, even among our man-of-war mob. Nor could he have long swung his hammock on board, ere he must have found that, to insure his exemption from that thing which alone affrighted him, he must be content for the most part to turn a man-hater, and socially ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... new companions. Hay did not return more than twice, Pringle never at all, and there came a time when Archie even desisted from the Tuesday Club, and became in all things - what he had had the name of almost from the first - the Recluse of Hermiston. High-nosed Miss Pringle of Drumanno and high-stepping Miss Marshall of the Mains were understood to have had a difference of opinion about him the day after the ball - he was none the wiser, he could not suppose himself to be remarked by these entrancing ladies. At the ball itself ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Prancing in pride of earthly trust, His charger hurled him to the dust, And, by a base plebeian thrust, He died his band before. God judge 'twixt Marmion and me; He is a chief of high degree, And I a poor recluse; Yet oft, in Holy Writ, we see Even such weak minister as me May the oppressor bruise: For thus, inspired, did Judith slay The mighty in his sin, And Jael thus, and Deborah" - Here hasty Blount broke in:- "Fitz-Eustace, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... had been practically a recluse these past several years, had, nevertheless, the metropolite's inborn indifference to the passerby. He had scarcely noticed the steadily increasing group before the steps. Now he ignored them all. He was hungry. That invitation to ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Tourists often call in at the Monte de Piedad, looking for bargains in bricabrac, and sometimes real prizes are secured at very reasonable cost. A gentleman showed the writer an old, illuminated book, of a religious character, entirely illustrated by the hand of some patriot recluse, which was marked five dollars, and upon which probably four dollars had been loaned to the party who deposited it. The time for its redemption had long since expired, and our friend gladly paid the sum asked for it. He said he ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... Foreword Biographical Notice The Two Sisters The Siwash Rock The Recluse The Lost Salmon Run The Deep Waters The Sea-Serpent The Lost Island Point Grey The Tulameen Trail The Grey Archway Deadman's Island A Squamish Legend of Napoleon The Lure in Stanley Park Deer Lake ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... a family pervaded with religious and propagandist ideas, and having led a half-recluse life, Phillida Callender did not seem to Mrs. Hilbrough just the sort of person to entertain a ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... his stay at Ceuta beyond the general suggestion and encouragement to take up a life-profession of discovery, it was at any rate put into practice on his second and last return (1418). From that time to the end of his life he became a recluse from the Court life of Lisbon, though he soon gathered round himself a rival Court, ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... of their various personalities. There was obviously some subtle quality in Watts-Dunton’s nature that not only attracted to him great minds in the world of art and letters; but which seemed to hold captive their affection for a lifetime. Even an instinctive recluse such as Borrow, a man almost too sensitive for friendship, found in Watts-Dunton one whose capacity for friendship was so great as to override all other considerations. Watts-Dunton was “the friend of friends” to Rossetti, who wished to make ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... as a "man of good sense, with strong but cheerful expression." Whether Selkirk ever met Defoe is uncertain, though the character of Robinson Crusoe was certainly founded on his adventures in Juan Fernandez. In 1712 he returned to Largo, living the life of a recluse, and we must be forgiven for suspecting that he rather acted up to the part, since it is recorded that he made a cave in his father's garden in which to meditate. This life of meditation in an artificial cave was soon rudely interrupted by the appearance of a certain ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... of contemplation has been in history a height without sustaining breadth, a needle, not a cube. Genius has been tremulous, recluse,—has been cherished in solitude with Nature,—has been a feminine partiality among men, holding for gods its favorites, for dogs the refuse of mankind. It still counts the practical life an interruption. It is therefore only melancholy cheer, a forlorn ark with nine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... importance. And I must acknowledge, that, amongst some instances of importunity and coarse expressions of low-bred curiosity, I witnessed, on the part of many people of rank, a most delicate sensibility to the condition of the aged recluse. On sending in their cards, they would generally accompany them by some message, expressive of their unwillingness to gratify their wish to see him at any risk of distressing him. The fact was, that such visits did distress him much; for he felt it a degradation ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... "I am still a recluse, you see, but I am preparing to launch for the winter in a few days. Dick was detained in town by a bad fever:—you may suppose I was kept in ignorance of his situation, or I should not have remained so quietly here. He came last week, and the fatigue of the journey very nearly occasioned ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... the chairs, dim-eyed, upright, and stiff in her white shawl. She apologized for having waited seven years before calling.... "Never go anywhere.... Quite a recluse since my father's ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... days later, Cyril Waring met Elma Clifford once more, the first time for months, and had twenty minutes' talk in the tea-room alone with her. Contrary to his rule, he had gone to the Holkers' party that night, for a man can't remain a recluse all his life, no matter how hard he tries, merely because his brother's suspected of having committed a murder. In course of time, the attitude palls upon him. For the first year after Guy's sudden and mysterious disappearance, indeed, Cyril refused all invitations point-blank, except from the most ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... the pleasant kitchen, was tempted to linger. Sallie's conversation yielded, to the discerning, something of the rich essence of the past; and Agatha began to yearn for a better knowledge of the recluse who had been her friend, unknown, through all the years. But she remembered her industrious plans for the day and postponed her talk ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... the language of Hume, "They were struck with the extensive genius of the man, who, being educated amidst naval and military enterprises, had surpassed, in the pursuits of literature, even those of the most recluse and sedentary lives; and they admired his unbroken magnanimity, which, at his age, and under his circumstances, could engage him to undertake and execute so great a work, as his History of the World." ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... that; it leaves one vein for another of better flavour, but without moving too far from the inner depths, where the temperature is milder and greater safety reigns. A day is at hand, a dangerous day for the recluse obliged to quit its excellent retreat and face the perils of the surface. Eating is not everything: we have to get out of this. The larva, so well-equipped with tools and muscular strength, finds no difficulty in going where it pleases, by boring through ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... thing that one is reminded at times of Ballantyne's "Martin Rattler," written very much earlier, even down to to the presence of a "recluse". That doesn't mean you won't enjoy the book just as much as you might have enjoyed "Martin Rattler." Best, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... life was to be seen at the mill-house itself; smoke was rising from the extemporized chimney; for Bell, as I knew, had installed herself as nurse and was doing her best to render the last days of the old recluse more restful than they could have been during his more ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... Morality. Look at one of your industrious fellows for a moment, I beseech you. He sows hurry and reaps indigestion; he puts a vast deal of activity out to interest, and receives a large measure of nervous derangement in return. Either he absents himself entirely from all fellowship, and lives a recluse in a garret, with carpet slippers and a leaden inkpot; or he comes among people swiftly and bitterly, in a contraction of his whole nervous system, to discharge some temper before he returns to work. I do not care how much or how well he works, this fellow is an evil feature in other people's ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... much to tell, my love. I don't know whether the lady who has taken the house is young or old, handsome or ugly, married or single. She lives the life of a recluse; has never been seen, at least by any of us, to walk out. But she drives sometimes in a close carriage, and always with a thick veil hiding her face. She is tall, dresses richly, but always in black, although the fabric is not that usually worn as mourning. ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... characteristics of Mysticism. The title by which the book is known is really the title of the first section only, and it does not quite accurately describe the contents of the book. Throughout the treatise we feel that we are reading a defence of the recluse and his scheme of life. Self-denial, renunciation of the world, prayer and meditation, utter humility and purity, are the road to a higher joy, a deeper peace, than anything which the world can give us. There are many sentences ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... of her tone and her gratitude openly expressed, something disconcerting had come into her eyes and voice. She was more and more the lady and less and less the recluse, and as she receded and rose to this higher plane, the ranger lost heart, almost without knowing the ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Newman was certainly not one of the exceptions. From every point of view, except that of the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical historian, Newman's Anglican career was far more interesting and important than his residence at Birmingham. He will live in history, not as the recluse of Edgbaston, nor as the wearer of the Cardinal's hat which fell to his lot, almost too late to save the credit of the Vatican, when he had passed the normal limit of human life, but as the real founder ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... of such eager and unconcealed desire to rise and be at work. No doubt he was often pinched in his means; his health was weak, and he was delicate and fastidious in his care of it. Plunged in work, he lived very much as a recluse in his chambers, and was thought to be reserved, and what those who disliked him called arrogant. But Bacon was ambitious—ambitious, in the first place, of the Queen's notice and favour. He was versatile, brilliant, courtly, besides being his father's son; and considering how rapidly bold and brilliant ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... Cape Ann children shout in glee, Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse; Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose Go honking northward over Tennessee; West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie, And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung, And yonder where, gigantic, willful, young, Chicago sitteth at ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... in a well-ordered life. As with many other common blessings we forget its benefits. Nor are these benefits so evident until we see the blighting result in the life of the one who, for any reason whatsoever, has become a social recluse. We have known a few persons who have once been in society, but who have allowed themselves to remain away from all sorts of gatherings, for a number of years. In every case, the result has been openly noticeable. They have become boorish in manners, unsympathetic in nature, ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... the vicar. "A man. If I remember rightly, his name was Madley; an artist. He was a great recluse; seldom went out of the place, and—" the vicar hesitated and then broke into a little gush of candour "—and since you appear to have come for this information, and since it is better that the truth should be told than that garbled versions ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... our heads that we might as well pull it down, and so form a mound over the skeleton. Jack, therefore, with his axe, cut down the other door-post, which, when it was done, brought the whole hut in ruins to the ground, and thus formed a grave to the bones of the poor recluse and his dog. Then we left the spot, having brought away the iron pot, the pistol, and the old axe, as they might be of much use ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... But recluse though he was, he could not on occasion escape from hearing things. Things the newsboy shouted on the streets, things the men talked about on the drugstore corner when they ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... the widow Hawkins and her daughters. It is true he rapidly made the acquaintance of the whole church. Some very pleasant seasons he enjoyed with the young ladies at the various gatherings connected with it. He was rallied on his being so much of a recluse. Arch hints were conveyed that doubtless his home was specially agreeable. Was it Louisa or Charlotte? Both these young ladies would simper and look conscious when they were attacked on the subject; for both candidly believed they were liable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... elapsed since the first chest of the cargo of Useful Knowledge destined for the fortunate Maldives had been digested by the recluse Popanilla; for a recluse he had now become. Great students are rather dull companions. Our Fantasian friend, during his first studies, was as moody, absent, and querulous as are most men of genius during that mystical period of life. He was consequently ...
— English Satires • Various
... elegance and propriety reign within. The nuns, who are all of the noblesse, are many of them handsome, and all genteel, lively, and well bred; they have an air of the world, their conversation is easy, spirited, and polite: with them you almost forget the recluse in the woman of condition. In short, you have the best nuns at the Ursulines, the most agreeable women at the General Hospital: all however have an air of chagrin, which they in vain endeavour to conceal; and the general eagerness with which ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... indubitable; so easy to be proved, that no proof was desired. The act was base and treacherous, the perpetration insolent and open, and the example naturally mischievous. The minister, however, being retired and recluse, had not yet heard what was publickly known throughout the parish; and, on occasion of a publick election, warned his people, according to his duty, against the crimes which publick elections frequently produce. His warning was felt by one of his parishioners, as pointed particularly ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... Netherlands. But with a monthly allowance, and a military force not equal to his own estimates for the Netherland work, he was ordered to go forth from the Netherlands to conquer France—and with it the dominion of the world—for the recluse of the Escorial. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... you amaze me at your words; Think with your self, sir, what a thing it were To cause a recluse to remove her vow: A maimed, contrite, and repentant soul, Ever mortified with fasting and with prayer, Whose thoughts, even as her eyes, are fixd on heaven, To draw a virgin, thus devour'd with zeal, Back to the world: O impious deed! Nor by the Canon Law can it be done Without a dispensation ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare |
