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A Kempis   Listen
A Kempis

noun
1.
German ecclesiastic (1380-1471).  Synonym: Thomas a Kempis.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"A Kempis" Quotes from Famous Books



... detachment. But on the other hand, for intense and prolonged meditation, for the communing with one's innermost soul on the immense principles of life and nature, for the production of such deep soul-searching work as we see in the compositions of a Kempis, Dante, Milton, and Wordsworth, absolute solitude for some seasons is essential. There must be complete freedom from the daily distractions ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... forth the fruit of the Spirit." He valued also Bishop Pearson's work on the Creed, and the standard work on the Thirty-nine Articles by the lately-retired Bishop of Winchester. "The Imitation of Christ," by Thomas a Kempis, was a favourite book, and one which he gave away largely. "Christ's Mystical," by Hall, and "The Deep Things of God," by Hill, were also much valued, and given away to his friends, as well as Clark's "Scripture Promises," and Wilson on "Contentment." ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... preposterously called Theology: but for devotional aids, for pious meditations, for inspiring hymns, for purifying and glowing thoughts, we have still to wait upon that succession of kindling souls, among whom may be named with special honour David and Isaiah, Jesus and Paul, Augustine, A Kempis, Fenelon, Leighton, Baxter, Doddridge, Watts, the ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... de generibus et speciebus? Ex uno Verbo omnia, et unum loquuntur omnia. Cui omnia unum sunt, quique ad unum omnia trahit et omnia in uno videt, potest stabilis corde esse."—THOMAS A KEMPIS. ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes

... of God to men, and of their power to respond to the Divine call. The thoughts to which he gave expression were not original, but simply distillations from the words of Madam Guyon, Fenelon, Thomas a Kempis and St. John; and yet they were not mere repetitions, for they were permeated by the freshness and the beauty of his ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... house. I only ask for last kind words from you. We were neighbours for long, but I received more than I could give. Now the day has dawned and the lamp that lit my dark corner is out. A summons has come and I am ready for my journey.' And it is our own mood, when it is furthest from 'a Kempis or John of the Cross, that cries, 'And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well.' Yet it is not only in our thoughts of the parting that this book fathoms all. We had not known that we loved God, hardly it may be that we believed in Him; yet looking backward upon our life we discover, ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore

... name is spoken with abhorrence by millions within the empire and without it, still reads, as his favorite author, the philosopher of Concord. He told me that the first book which he ever translated into Russian was Thomas a Kempis's "Imitation of Christ"; and of that he gave me the Latin original from which he made his translation, with a copy of the translation itself. But he also told me that the next book he translated was a volume of Emerson's ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... Pierre did not let anyone know of his arrival, he went nowhere and spent whole days in reading Thomas a Kempis, whose book had been sent him by someone unknown. One thing he continually realized as he read that book: the joy, hitherto unknown to him, of believing in the possibility of attaining perfection, and in the possibility of active brotherly love among men, which Joseph ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... was no crotcheting or Berlin-wool work in hand; and with the exception of a handsome copy of "Izaak Walton," there were no books on her table but a Bible, Book of Common Prayer, and a very shabby Thomas a Kempis. ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... adapted to every want of the human soul, and are a fruitful source of sanctification. Who can read without spiritual profit such works as the almost inspired Following of Christ by Thomas a Kempis; the Christian Perfection of Rodriguez; the Spiritual Combat of Scupoli; the writings of St. Francis de Sales, and a countless host ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... and Abraham both died in 1652. They did not depart before publishing (1628), in grand format, a desirable work on fencing, Thibault's 'Academie de l'Espee.' This Tibbald also killed by the book. John and Daniel Elzevir came next. They brought out the 'Imitation' (Thomae a Kempis canonici regularis ord. S. Augustini De Imitatione Christi, libri iv.); I wish by taking thought I could add eight millimetres to the stature of my copy. In 1655 Daniel joined a cousin, Louis, in Amsterdam, and ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... thousand kindnesses, which I cherish," he added in a lower tone, "above all human circumstances. Would you deign to let this volume lie upon your table," and he offered Sybil an English translation of Thomas a Kempis, illustrated by some masterpieces. In its first page was written ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... has received to-day the beautiful present of the new edition of your book. She will enjoy it immensely. I hope to send you, when I get to London, a little work called the "Mirror of Monks." Let not the title alarm you. It is in the manner of a Kempis, and is original, as well as excellent and lofty. I have had much Scotch reading. The "Life of Dr. Lee;" Macdonald's "Love, Law, and Theology;" last, not least, Lady Nairne. I am equally struck with her life, and her ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... Carrie's room to tell her about the Thornes, and lay our plans together, but she was reading Thomas a Kempis, and did not seem inclined to be disturbed, so ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... or so of work for a Polish-Catholic farmer ... who locked me out of his house, when he and his family went to mass the one Sunday I was with him. He asked me if I wanted a book to read. As the only book he possessed was Thomas a Kempis' Imitation of Christ, I took it, and learned Christian humility, reading it, in the orchard. Surely this farmer was a practical Christian. He believed in his fellow man and at the same time gave him no opportunity to abuse his faith ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... how many prayer books our booksellers supply to Christian people who are not Churchmen. Evidently the book is in use as a private manual with thousands, who own no open allegiance to the Protestant Episcopal Church. They keep it on the devotional shelf midway between Thomas a Kempis and the Pilgrim's Progress, finding it a sort of interpreter of the one to the other, and possessed of a certain flavor differencing it from both. This is a happy augury for the future. Much latent heat is generating ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... place their religion in books, some in images, some in the pomp and splendour of external worship, but some with illuminated understandings hear what the Holy Spirit speaketh in their hearts'—THOMAS A KEMPIS. ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... poema is merely an enlarged dolora. Campoamor disliked Byron and he disliked still more the sonorous emptiness that is characteristic of too much Spanish poetry.[4] In philosophy he revered Thomas a Kempis; in form he aimed at conciseness and directness rather than at artistic perfection. His poetry lacks enthusiasm and coloring, but it has ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various

... thinks, of the nature of personal calculations. We should endeavour not to love ourselves at all. We shall not succeed in it, but we should make the nearest approach to it possible. Nothing less will satisfy him, as towards humanity, than the sentiment which one of his favourite writers, Thomas a Kempis, addresses to God: Amem te plus quam me, nec me nisi propter te. All education and all moral discipline should have but one object, to make altruism (a word of his own coming) predominate over egoism. If by this were only meant ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... pleasure. Hooker I found a wonder, both for excellency of style and richness of sentiment; and his piety and wisdom, his candor and his charity, have never been surpassed since the days of Christ and His Apostles. And Hoadley too I liked, and Butler, and Thomas a Kempis, and William Law. And then came Bolton and Howe, and Doddridge and Watts. Then Penn, and Barclay, and Clarkson, and Sewell, and Hales, and Dell caught my attention, giving me interesting revelations of ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... pleasure that they give a thousand other men pain. Men you never heard of, and who would not know you if they met you, gnaw their hearts at the mere mention of your name. Desire, then, to be unknown, as A Kempis says. O teach me to love to be concealed, prays Jeremy Taylor. Be ambitious to be unknown, Archbishop Leighton also instructs us. And the great Fenelon took Ama nesciri for his crest and for his motto. ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... lodge an arrow in our sides by a very odd remark upon Thomas a Kempis: which is, that a man of any conceivable European blood—a Finlander, suppose, or a Zantiote—might have written Tom; only not an Englishman. Whether an Englishman could have forged Tom, must remain a matter of doubt, unless the thing had ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... of an Egyptian scribe in the time of Thotmes III., who described the comical miseries of his campaign with as clear an appeal to universal human nature as Horace used in his 'Iter Brundusium;' and the maxims of Confucius are as comprehensible as the bitter-sweetness of Thomas a Kempis. De Quincey distinguishes between the literature of knowledge and the literature of power. The definition is not exact; but we may say that the one is a statement of what is known, the other is an emanation from the man himself; or that one may add to the sum of human knowledge, and the other addresses ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... a miniature Thomas a Kempis, "for the edification of children;" two catechisms; a little work entitled "Treasure for those who desire God," and other works of similar character. A list, not complete, but containing all the books I have been able ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... back the priest; "but, as Mrs. O'Leary has the religion which includes the best of philosophy, so our a Kempis had more than Diogenes. Philosophy is good to argue one into self-regulation; but religion is better, because it first secures the virtue and then makes you happy in it. 'Unless a man be at liberty from all things ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach

... year 1140. We hear of another at Louvain, about a century later in date, with initials in blue and gold throughout, which had taken three years in copying. Deventer was known as 'the home of Minerva' before the days of St. Thomas a Kempis. The Forest of Soigny provided a retreat for learning in its houses of Val-Rouge and Val-Vert and the Sept-Fontaines. The Brothers of the Common Life had long been engaged in the production of books before they ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... Lord, and He heard me." The closing chapters of the Gospels, 2 Corinthians, and how many other parts of the New Testament were blessings indeed! Jeremy Taylor's "Life of Christ," and "Holy Living and Dying," Thomas a Kempis, most of all of course the Prayer-book, and such solemn holy memories of our dear parents and uncles, such blessed hopes of reunion, death brought so near, the longing (if only not unprepared) for the life to come: I could not be unhappy. Yet I ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... even in so-called Christian homes, when any of the ladies round the table last read, and how often they have read, Grace Abounding, The Saint's Rest, The Religious Affections, Jeremy Taylor, Law, a Kempis, Fenelon, or such like, and they will smile to one another and remark after you are gone on your strange taste for old-fashioned and long-winded and introspective books. "Julia has buried her husband and married her daughters, and since that she spends her time in reading. She is always ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... rationalistic tendencies from education and conviction, she found herself in spiritual accord with the pious introversion of Thomas a Kempis and Madame Guion. She was fond of Christmas Eve stories, of warnings, signs, and spiritual intimations, her half belief in which sometimes seemed like credulity to her auditors. James Russell ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... with, string. "Beauties of the Spectator", "Rasselas", "Economy of Human Life", "Gregory's Letters",—she knew the sort of matter that was inside all these; the "Christian Year"—that seemed to be a hymn-book, and she laid it down again; but "Thomas a Kempis"—the name had come across her in her reading, and she felt the satisfaction, which every one knows, of getting some ideas to attach to a name that strays solitary in the memory. She took up the little, old, clumsy book with some curiosity; it had the corners turned down in many ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... for once made a revolution to the nadir." In Edinburgh, which Burns reached in November, 1786, he was introduced by Blacklock to all the literati, and within a fortnight he was writing to a friend: "I am in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas a Kempis or John Bunyan; and you may expect to see my birthday inscribed among the wonderful events in the Poor Robin and Aberdeen Almanacks, along with the Black Monday and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... Bob; judging by you, I had no idea I was coming among such apostolic manners, or I'd have taken a course of A Kempis. Are there any prayer-meetings near by, where I ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... upon him, and do him good. The ancients practiced the memory in this way. After a course of meanderings through a garden, each object represented and recalled some piece of knowledge which it was important the pupil should retain in his mind. "Few persons," says Thomas a Kempis "are made better by the pain and languor of sickness; as few great pilgrims become eminent saints." Here lies your bachelor now. He has always felt that when he got sick he could get his gruel stewed as well by the hired girl of his ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... From "The Imitation of Christ." Altho commonly ascribed to Thomas a Kempis, there has been much controversy as to the real authorship of this famous work. Many early editions bear the name of Thomas, including one of the year 1471, which is sometimes thought to be the first. As against his authorship it is contended that he was a professional copyist, and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... devout Hindu, a university graduate, a barrister and a leader of the Hindu community, requested me to purchase for him a pocket copy of Thomas a Kempis' "Imitation of Christ." He possessed a large copy, but desired a small one which he could carry with him and could use for devotional purposes on his journeys. Some of his friends sought other copies through him. ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... when the long continuance of the Great Schism had so injured Church discipline that the clergy and ecclesiastics were in the worst state of all, especially the monastic orders, who owned no superior but the Pope, and between the two rivals could avoid supervision altogether. Such men as Thomas a Kempis, or the great Jean Gerson, were rare indeed; and the monasteries had let themselves lose their missionary character, and become mere large farms, inhabited by celibate gentlemen and their attendants, or by the superfluous ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... selected, intended to impart "light and comfort amid the shadows of declining years." The selections are made with excellent taste, being for the most part extracted from the best authors in the religious literature of England and America. Among them we observe the names of Fenelon, Thomas a Kempis, Jeremy Taylor, Bunyan, Madame Guyon, Bishop Hall, Milton, Southey, and Wordsworth; and of American writers, Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Willis, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... and legend present. And there is not a town in India to-day where there are not found these men of power and influence who are studying eagerly the life of Jesus, are pondering over the Gospel narratives; and are reading such books of Christian devotion as Thomas a Kempis's "Imitation of Christ." This last-named book is now being translated by a Brahman gentleman, a friend of the writer, and published by a Hindu firm for its Hindu readers! I have known such men for many years, and am assured that their tribe is increasing; they are men ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... footsteps die away down the long corridor. It was then about ten o'clock, or a little after. For a time I paced up and down the room, and then, carrying the lamp to the head of my bed, I lay down without undressing, reading St. Thomas a Kempis, and praying from my heart that the night might ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... not all. After appealing to the senses, it was necessary to address themselves to the intellect—and this was the method adopted by the reverend fathers. A single book—but one—was left, as if by chance, within reach. This book was Thomas a Kempis' "Imitation." But as it might happen that M. Hardy would not have the courage or the desire to read this book, thoughts and reflections borrowed from its merciless pages, and written in very large characters, were suspended ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... leaders, seers. Confucius, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, the mediaeval philosophers, the Egyptian, Persian, and Arabian thinkers, Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, Eckhart, William of Occam, Bede, Thomas a Kempis, Francis Bacon, Kant, John Stuart Mill, Spencer,—with what dignity the processional moves down the years! The sum of human knowledge is vast; but how much more vast seem the achievements of each of these men, when we realize how few his years, and how many the obstacles ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... to that paid to poets and thinkers. Yet it is because they tell us what they have seen and touched, not what they have heard,—what they have lived and shown forth in acts that bear testimony to their words, that they have this power. Such were St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas a Kempis, and many a humbler name whose life's story has come into our hands; such were the Apostles, and, preeminently, Christ. It is the reality of the life in them, personal, direct, fundamental, that preserves their ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... to bloom with verdure. She and Crossthwaite used to sit and read to me—from the Bible, from poets, from every book which could suggest soothing, graceful, or hopeful fancies. Now out of the stillness of the darkened chamber, one or two priceless sentences of a Kempis, or a spirit-stirring Hebrew psalm, would fall upon my ear: and then there was silence again; and I was left to brood over the words in vacancy, till they became a fibre of my own soul's core. Again and again the stories of Lazarus and the Magdalene alternated with Milton's ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... the Brotherhood of the Common Life, and from its circle proceeded that immortal book, the Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis, keeping alive in the hearts of choice spirits of every generation the thoughts and sentiments of the men of whom its author was the interpreter. For a community of women of similar aims and purposes it needed only that Groot should ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... insight, sobriety of style, and a catholicity of outlook that is refreshing. The author has few quotations but he knows the saints and mystics of the centuries—Augustine, Nicholas of Cusa, Thomas a Kempis, von Huegel, Finney, Wesley and many more. The ten chapters are heart searching and the prayers at the close of each are for closet, not pulpit. I felt the nearness of God while ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer

... Netherlands the wealth of the Church had led to grave abuses as well as to a loss of respect for ecclesiastical authority, the latter of which was fostered in the minds of some by the spirit of mysticism that flourished in the land of St. Thomas a Kempis. ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... his unfortunate tragedy, he directed his poetical pursuits to a different species of composition. He now finished his translation in verse, of the "Imitation of Jesus Christ," by Thomas a Kempis. This work, perhaps from the singularity of its dramatic author becoming a religious writer, was attended with astonishing success. Yet Fontenelle did not find in this translation the prevailing charm of the original, which consists in that simplicity and naivete which are lost in the pomp ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... gossip by the time that the king had returned from chapel. Back into wardrobe and drawer went the flaring silks and the feathered hats, and out once more came the sombre coat and the matronly dress. Scudery and Calpernedi gave place to the missal and St. Thomas a Kempis, while Bourdaloue, after preaching for a week to empty benches, found his chapel packed to the last seat with weary gentlemen and taper-bearing ladies. By midday there was none in the court who had not heard the tidings, save only Madame de Montespan, who, alarmed ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and we would watch the moon lighting up Hermon whilst the after-dinner pipe was being smoked. A pianette from Damascus enabled us to have a little music. Then I would assemble the servants, read the night prayers to them, with a little bit of Scripture or of Thomas a Kempis. The last thing was to go round the premises and see that everything was right, and turn out the dogs on guard. And so to bed. Richard used to ride down into Damascus every few days to see that all was going well; so I was ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins



Words linked to "A Kempis" :   cleric, churchman, divine, ecclesiastic



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