"Austere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been part of wood or hillside. It was of stone, and built in many periods and in many styles which time had subtly blended so that it seemed a perfect thing without beginning, as long descended as the folds of downs which sheltered it. The austere Tudor front, the Restoration wing, the offices built under Queen Anne, the library added in the days of the Georges, had by some alchemy become one. Peace and long memories were in every line of it, and that air of a home which belongs only to places that have been loved for generations. It ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... France, that all ballads there have their air or tune, and that every dance has its own words, for if a new dance comes in, perhaps a fashionable one from Paris, words are fitted to it. Is there any trace of such an operatic, lyrical, dancing peasantry in austere Scotland? We find it ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... wrangled over charts; and the sun was overhead and the land close ahead before we found them. To a ship approaching, like the Casco, from the north, they proved indeed the least conspicuous features of a striking coast; the surf flying high above its base; strange, austere, and feathered mountains rising behind; and Jack and Jane, or Adam and Eve, impending like a pair of warts ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... why he was so rigorous in virtue as to be often thought austere, I answer it was because human nature required the exercise of justice, honor, and gratitude, by all who were clothed with authority to act in the name of the American people. If you ask why he seemed, sometimes, with apparent inconsistency, to lend his charities to the distant and ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... her prayer-book and the "Imitation of Christ." The notes she made in these books reveal her thoughts in that time, and will touch the uttermost depths of any nature nourished in that beautiful faith which is at once so tender and so austere. The prayer-book with those laconic entries on its fly-leaf, in which she set down the sad and eloquent chronology of her fate, the copy of the "Imitation" which she had read and marked during those weeks in prison—weeks, ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... more genial of eye and less professional of face. Here he could never be mistaken for anything else than the commander of a man-of-war—it was in his legs, in the shoulder he set to the wind, in the tone of his orders, in his austere urbanity to his officers. Yet there was something else in his eye, in his face, which all this professionalism could not hide, even when he was most professional—some elusive, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... most lofty and compassionate of moralists, let us turn to the problem of to-day. Here are nearly 2,000,000 women who, if the austere demands of faithful monogamy are to be obeyed, will never know the satisfaction of a certain physical need. Now it is the desire of every normal human being to satisfy all his instincts. And this is as true of women as of men. What I have to ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... dead body lay in austere dignity in the house in which he had saved his cousin's life and given him back his name and fortune together with the right to win the girl he himself had loved so well. The smile was still on his face and a ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... bronze Buddha himself. His long, thin hands were hid, crossed and slipped along the wrists within the loose apricot satin sleeves of his brocaded garment. His feet, in their black satin slippers and tight-fitting white muslin socks, were austere and aristocratic. Dong-Yung, when he was absent, loved best to think of him thus, with his hands ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... austere old patriarch. The brown face had been wrinkled bewilderingly by the heavy-handed years, but his eyes still glowed with something of the pride and spirit of his youth. Wrapped in a thick blanket of hand woven kapok, he confronted them with that air of dignity ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... of her country upon woman. Sparta required her women to bear arms in war. Rome called on hers for the austere virtues of heathenism. But America justly anticipates in this sex a union of grace with power, intellectual cultivation sustained by moral and religious attainments. During the French Revolution, we are told that the wives and daughters of the celebrated artists gave their jewels ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... capital, he raised a temple to Baal, where four hundred and fifty of his priests ministered. The priests of Jehovah who withstood these measures were driven out of the land, or into hiding-places. The austere and intrepid prophet Elijah found refuge in Mount Carmel. The people, on the occasion of a famine, which he declared to be a divine judgment, rose in their wrath, and slew the priests of Baal. In a war—the third of a series—which Ahab waged against Syria, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... for a defense, so Mr. Knowles uses his emphasis on the content of the Bible as a way of protecting himself from the deeper and more personal challenges of life. He is estranged from his family, and he is regarded as austere and unfriendly by his employees and many of his business associates. Personal relations frighten him, but by mastery of knowledge he gains superiority ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded in an austere tone, "what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?"—"Alas! gentlemen," cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, "I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... belief—and that in the sight of God it is not the truth or falsehood of our views, but the spirit in which we believe which alone is of vital consequence. His moral sense was not satisfied with a theory of religion founded upon the depravity of man and recognizing an austere and vengeful God, nor could he give his metaphysical assent to the doctrine of the Trinity. In the doctrines of liberal Christianity he found the resolution of his doubts, and from the moment he embraced the Unitarian faith he became a warm ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... enemy of Caesar, and committer of suicide, is not luckily chosen for his present office by the poet who has put Brutus into the devil's mouth in spite of his agreeing with Cato, and the suicide Piero delle Vigne into hell in spite of his virtues. But Dante thought Cato's austere manners like his own.] ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places, Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor, Hills of sheep, and the homes of the silent vanished races, And winds austere ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... weak-stirring in the arid mind, More tearless-weak to flash itself abroad Than the earth's life beneath the frost-scorched sod. My lips have drought, and crack, By laving music long unvisited. Beneath the austere and macerating rime Draws back constricted in its icy urns The genial flame of Earth, and there With torment and with tension does prepare The lush disclosures of the vernal time. All joys draw inward to their icy urns, Tormented by constraining rime, And there With undelight and throe prepare ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... went to Pennsylvania too often, and that without the permission of his congregations, etc. He did not sufficiently prepare the young for confirmation, by simple instruction in the Catechism; is too austere in his dealings with the people; does not always permit them to see him; does not maintain order at public worship; begins services an hour or two after the time fixed; has long hymns sung and preaches long, so that those who come ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... the dead saint as well as in the mosque. Here indeed it is always more secluded and more in shadow. It is more simple, too, at least up to the height of a man: on a platform of white marble, more or less worn and yellowed by the touch of pious hands, nothing more than an austere catafalque of similar marble, ornamented merely with a Cufic inscription. But if you raise your eyes to look at the interior of the dome—the inside, as it were, of the strange dervish hat—you will see shining between the ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... Ireland. We have never been able to find one; we want a man like the cardinal. But the Irish will have a native for their chief. We caught Churchill young, and educated him in the Propaganda; but he has disappointed us. At first all seemed well; he was reserved and austere; and we heard with satisfaction that he was unpopular. But, now that critical times are arriving, his peasant-blood cannot resist the contagion. He proclaims the absolute equality of all religious, and of the power of the state to confiscate ecclesiastical property, and not restore it to us, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... whom the virgin majesty of Eve, As one who loves and some unkindness meets, With sweet austere composure ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... not without its leaven. The rules of the House were strict, and enforced religious duties on its inmates, of a most severe and austere nature. All the Leprous brethren, whose health permitted, were required daily to attend Matins, Nones, ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope
... love me. What does it matter? I love you; that is the important thing to me. I thank you for that eternal possession. Let it be a dream, austere and pure. Passion has its own ascetic cell, where it can fast and scourge itself. I ask you for nothing, Blanche. I am yours wholly. Do what ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... overwhelming difficulties with which he was surrounded. Wretched client! unhappy advocate! what a combination do you form! But such is the condition of guilt—its commission mean and tremulous—its defence artificial and insincere—its prosecution candid and simple—its condemnation dignified and austere. Such has been the defendant's guilt—such his defence—such shall be my address to you—and such, I trust, your verdict. The learned counsel has told you that this unfortunate woman is not to be estimated at forty thousand pounds. ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... hinge of the whole complicated situation. Fortunate, indeed, was it that there was a man like the Iron Baron, who, by simple force of will, outwitted the enemies of Italy more thoroughly than even Cavour could do with all his astuteness. Austere, aristocratic, immovable from his purpose, indifferent to praise or blame, Ricasoli aimed at one point—the unity of the whole country; and neither Cavour's impatience for annexation to Piedmont, nor the scheme of Farini and Minghetti for averting the ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... shop, but an excellent thing for all that, and let none threaten it. Canvassing appears to be mixed up in the system; at least I hope I have shown that it will not do to reverse the process, for fear of changes leading to a sovereignty of the austere and antipathetic Intellect in our England, that would be an inaccessible tyranny of a very small minority, necessarily ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... upon her lap and glanced down a page or two, but without interest. At length external things were wholly lost to her, and she gazed across the water with continuance of solemn vision. Her face was almost austere in this mood ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... much of what people brought him—tea, sugar, white bread, milk, clothing, and fire-wood. But as time went on he led a more and more austere life, refusing everything superfluous, and finally he accepted nothing but rye-bread once a week. Everything else that was brought to him he gave to the poor who came to him. He spent his entire time in his cell, in prayer or in conversation ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... master, who had one time rescued him from a savage, baiting crowd in the bazaar and taking him into his service had made him his own particular servant; he equally loathed his master's austere bedroom and adjoining dressing-room, with simple furniture which had lately come from Bilid el-Ingliz, a dark, cold country across the sea, where it rains without ceasing. And he helped strip his master of the hateful, tight, hot European clothes ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... they, between them, make me no more ado than whip me thirteen and six out of my pinched pocket to pay thee out of danger. How many masters would do this for their servant? Nay, I'll be sworn I have paid the fines inflicted by austere Magistrates, when thou, Crab, hast surreptitiously slipped thy muzzle, otherwise thou hadst been executed; I have "tipped" angry constables when thou hast stolen out not "under control," otherwise thou hadst suffered ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... I opened the window and looked out, and could not think what change had come upon that austere field of mountains that it should thus sing and shine under the lofty heaven. I had seen her—Olalla! And the stone crags answered, Olalla! and the dumb, unfathomable azure answered, Olalla! The pale saint of my dreams had vanished for ever; and in her place I beheld this maiden ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you do for me. Your oth I will not trust: but go with speed To some forlorne and naked Hermitage, Remote from all the pleasures of the world: There stay, vntill the twelue Celestiall Signes Haue brought about their annuall reckoning. If this austere insociable life, Change not your offer made in heate of blood: If frosts, and fasts, hard lodging, and thin weeds Nip not the gaudie blossomes of your Loue, But that it beare this triall, and last loue: Then at the expiration of the yeare, Come challenge me, challenge me by ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... my tears, For hence, nor cheered, nor blinded, must I seek That larger dream that cannot fade; though years Of leaden days and leagues of by-path bleak Must intervene, with austere sadness gray, Fade dimmer! lest in agony I turn, And heartsick seek ye, though the Fates shriek "Nay!" And the wroth ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... representatives of the Latin race, but they are the least and the last of the Latins, and the Italians are the first. To his Italian origin Zola owed not only the moralistic scope of his literary ambition, but the depth and strength of his personal conscience, capable of the austere puritanism which underlies the so-called immoralities of his books, and incapable of the peculiar lubricity which we call French, possibly to distinguish it from the lubricity of other people rather than to declare it a thing solely French. In the face of all public ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... most ultra-respectable merchants of the time, ranked of high commercial standing and austere social prestige, was, for instance, Marshall O. Roberts. This was the identical Roberts so deeply involved in the great mail-subsidy frauds. This was also the same sanctimonious Roberts, who, as has been brought out in the chapters on the Astor fortune, joined with John ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... Within their austere walls no voices penetrate; A sacred silence only, as of death, obtains; Nothing finds entry here of loud or passionate; This quiet is the ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... influence disposed Robert Adam to the development of painted furniture with inlays of beautiful exotic woods, and many of his designs, especially for sideboards, are extremely attractive, mainly by reason of their austere simplicity. Robert Adam was no doubt at first led to turn his thoughts towards furniture by his desire to see his light, delicate, graceful interiors, with their large sense of atmosphere and their refined and finished detail, filled with plenishings which fitted naturally ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the most beautiful studies of childhood—Rebecca's artistic, unusual and quaintly charming qualities stand out midst a circle of austere New Englanders. The stage version is making ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... junction where the train stopped at noon, Naval occupation of the North proclaimed itself. A Master-at-Arms, austere of visage and stentorian voiced, fell upon the weary voyagers like a collie rallying a flock of sheep. A Lieutenant-Commander of the Reserve, in a tattered monkey-jacket, was superintending the unstowing of bags and hammocks ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... head—much, doubtless, to her unflinching will; but Katherine was hardly aware how far her strength had lain in the absence of temptation to any feminine weakness. Hitherto she had seen her object always in a clear untroubled air, and her work had gained something of her life's austere and passionless serenity. Now it was all different, and she was thinking of what had made ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... by a surly yell from her husband, stood in the door-way, thin-lipped and austere, and announced briefly that Sir Beverley had gone down towards the Vicarage; she didn't know ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... headland like a granite vault, its windows coldly glistening down on the frothy green gloom of the Atlantic far beneath, the country trap and lean black horse at the flapping gate, the undertaker's man (dissolute parasite of austere Death) slinking out of the house, and Thalassa waiting at the open door for him to approach—all these things were engraved on Mr. Brimsdown's mind, never to be forgotten. Who was it that had staged such a crime in such a proscenium, in that vast amphitheatre of black rocks which ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... sense; he loved life. How should he not have loved a life that his living made honourable? How should he not have loved all arts, in which his choice was delicate, liberal, instructed, studious, docile, austere? An amateur man he might have been called, too, because he was not discomposed by his own experiences, or shaken by the discovery which life brings to us-that the negative quality of which Buddhism seems to accuse all good is partaken by our happiness. He had ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... capacity for feeling and loving, than her husband knew. They gossiped together over the corpse, related anecdotes, with embellishments of her lingering decline, and its real or supposed cause. In short, they worked each other up to some indignation against the austere little man, who sat examining papers in an adjoining room, unconscious of what opprobrium he ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... on the extreme right was for the "prisoner's friend," that on the left awaited the Judge-Advocate. About five yards in front of the table, in the centre of an empty space, stood two more chairs turned towards it. Otherwise the room was as bare as a guard-room. And this austere meagreness gave it a certain dignity of its own as of a place where nothing was allowed to distract the mind from the serious business in hand. At the door stood an orderly with a red armlet bearing the imprint of the letters ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... takes himself too seriously as the man who is to show us "life as it is," is not content to acknowledge his limitations. When he pictures a situation in which there is nothing but a succession of problems and misunderstandings, he asks us to admire his austere faithfulness. Faithful he may be to his Art, as he understands it, but he is not faithful to reality, unless he is able to make us see ordinary people in the ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... austere, and so ponderous, and egotistical, and calm—yes, you are hatefully calm and placid, aren't ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... whom at first she had seen very seldom. There was not the old confidence between them. Maud shrank from any direct reference to the change in herself, and Miss Bygrave spoke no word which could suggest a comparison between past and present. Maud tried once more to draw near to the pale, austere woman, whose life ever remained the same. She was not repelled, but neither did any movement respond to her yearning. She always came away ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... of deportment, it is regulated by an etiquette which varies in different classes of society. As a rule, the old samurai were not given to smiling upon all occasions; they reserved their amiability for superiors and intimates, and would seem to have maintained toward inferiors an austere reserve. The dignity of the Shinto priesthood has become proverbial; and for centuries the gravity of the Confucian code was mirrored in the decorum of magistrates and officials. From ancient times the nobility affected a still ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... arms at Ashby de la Zouche. Such confusions are purposefully dream-like: the vision being a composite thing, as dreams are, haunted by the modern scene of the holiday in the park, the "gallant glorious chronicle," the Abbey, and that "old crusading knight austere," Sir Ralph. The seven narrators of the scheme are like the "split personalities" of dreams, and the whole scheme is of great technical skill. The earlier editions lacked the beautiful songs of the ladies, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... of opening the British Museum to respectable people on Sunday, has lately been the subject of some discussion. I think it would puzzle the most austere of the Sunday legislators to assign any valid reason for opposing so sensible a proposition. The Museum contains rich specimens from all the vast museums and repositories of Nature, and rare and curious fragments of the mighty works of art, in bygone ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... scorn all idea of his client having any desire to free himself of his wife so as to marry his pretty governess, or cousin, or whomever it was suggested he most particularly admired. Russell had arrived at quoting Scripture,—he was at his best, austere, eloquent, persuasive, an orator, a gentleman, a great advocate, and as sanctimonious as ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... reluctance. Lucien wore a white cravat with embroidered ends; his sister had seen that M. du Hautoy and M. de Chandour wore such things, and hastened to make similar ones for her brother. Here, no one appeared to wear white cravats of a morning except a few grave seniors, elderly capitalists, and austere public functionaries, until, in the street on the other side of the railings, Lucien noticed a grocer's boy walking along the Rue de Rivoli with a basket on his head; him the man of Angouleme detected in the act of sporting a cravat, with both ends adorned by the handiwork of some adored shop-girl. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... prerogative of every Island girl or woman, and it only comes to them as a vague far-off horror in an unknown world that there are places under the sun and the stars where such is not the case. The punishment is appalling in the very few cases where sin has lifted its head amongst these austere people. The lepers' hut of old was no such living death of isolation as surrounds an Island girl who has smirched her good name. Henceforth there is an atmosphere about her that never lifts—of horror for some, of tragedy for others, according ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... the betrothed bride of the gallant fellow who had fought with him in the Marchfield, in danger of being misunderstood and despised. If the finger of scorn were pointed at her, if a stain rested on her fair fame, the austere Wolff Eysvogel would hardly desire to make her his wife, and then this also ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... but austere and serious thoughts in all hearts when a sublime spirit makes its majestic entrance into another life, when one of those beings who have long soared above the crowd on the visible wings of genius, spreading all at once other wings which we did not see, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... raised to the archbishopric of Canterbury (1162), in the full expectation of having his support. He had been gay and extravagant in his ways, and zealous in behalf of whatever the king wished. But the brilliant chancelor became a strict and austere prelate, the champion of the clergy, with a will as inflexible as that of Henry. The only bishop that voted against him at his election, remarked that "the king had worked a miracle in having that day turned a ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... vapor stole off into thin air, or hung in isolated wreaths above the foliage on the hillside. Soon the conquering light brightly illumined a medieval castle commanding the surrounding country; the victorious breeze whispered loudly at its gloomy casements. A great Norman structure, somber, austere, it was, however brightened with many modern features that threatened gradually to sap much ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... well-fed, contented man. It was still early, so early that the pavements were dotted with theatre-going groups. He strode through and beyond them, along the lower end of the Avenue, and came under the arch, standing in chill, austere dignity at the edge of the wind-swept square. Over its fretted surface the electric lights shone coldly, and the deserted benches beyond brought to Thayer, fresh from the glow and good-fellowship of the club, a sudden depressing sense of his own aloofness ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... blue or gray, the dark, austere line of its summit limits the horizon. It stands against the west like a barrier. It seems to Cynthia Ware that nothing which went beyond this barrier ever came back again. One by one the days passed over it, and in ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... beautiful quarto were shown at one of the early Arts and Crafts Exhibitions. Some designs, purely decorative, are interspersed among the figure subjects. "Quick March," a toy-book (Warne), is also full of the peculiar "quality" which distinguishes Mr. Hallward's work, and is less austere than certain later examples. The very notable magazine, The Child's Pictorial, illustrated almost entirely in colours, which the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge published for ten years, contains work by this ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... refined and delicate appreciation of nature in all her forms and phases can be said to constitute a sensuous enjoyment. And then, again, he is pre-eminently not passionate. He is calm, balanced, self-controlled, sane, austere. The very qualities which are his characteristic glory make ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... Philosophy very often borrow the masking raiment of poesy. For even those hard-hearted evil men, who think virtue a school name, and know no other good but indulgere genio, and therefore despise the austere admonitions of the philosopher, and feel not the inward reason they stand upon, yet will be content to be delighted: which is all the good fellow poet seemeth to promise: and so steal to see the form of goodness (which ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... I done for you, England, my England, What is there I would not do, England, my own? With your glorious eyes austere, As the Lord were walking near, Whispering terrible things and dear, As the song on your bugles blown, England— Round the world ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... gathering. Society, as usual, in costly evening gowns and correct swallow-tails rubbed elbows with names famous in the world of Art and Letters. Everywhere were gay laughter and sparkling repartee. Even the austere-faced J. G. Winthrop unbent to the extent of grim smiles in response to the laudatory comments bestowed upon the pictured image of his idol, his ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... took on an austere look. It was an insult to the divine powers to assert that they had taken the part of a race horse. But he turned the point to his own ends. "It's quite wrong to abuse the noble animal; and that's one reason why I hold that racing is contrary to the Creator's intentions, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... Two flunkies in the Grand Duke's livery took my luggage, escorted me to the carriage and I was driven up to the old castle. The landau took me to a side entrance and I was promptly shown into an austere and unpretentious chamber. Scarcely had I entered when a quiet, elderly, benevolent-looking gentleman dressed in a shooting jacket appeared in another doorway, evidently much perturbed. I at once recognized him as the old Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerein. ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... such doctrines, and scantly with such men," said John. "They would 'make the heart of the righteous sad, whom God hath not made sad.' They show our loving and merciful Father as an harsh, stern ruler, 'an austere man,' meting out to His servants no more joy nor comfort than He can help. For joy that is put on is not joy. If it arise not of itself, 'tis not worth having. Paul saith, 'As sorrowful, yet alway ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... who are properly prepared for a career? Why do we hear of so few who make good and amount to something? If the girl has means and good social connections, she is often not ready to sacrifice social gayeties for the austere life of the student. If she is a poor girl, she frequently cannot afford to take up the subjects necessary for her higher development. Instruction is expensive here, and training for opera almost impossible. The operatic coach requires a goodly fee for his services. And when the girl has prepared ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... ambiguity, a thorough training in politics or metaphysics may be useful. Logic seems to me to serve, in some measure, both these purposes. The conduct of business, or experience, a sufficient time being granted, is indeed the best teacher, but also the most austere and expensive. In the seventeenth century some of the greatest philosophers wrote de intellectus emendatione; and if their successors have given over this very practical inquiry, the cause of its abandonment is not success ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... does not write seemingly in her own person, the subjects are such disguises as 'The Prisoner,' 'Honour's Martyr,' 'The Outcast Mother,' echoes of all the miseries and useless rebellions of the earth. She spells over the fading characters in dying faces, unflinchingly, with an austere curiosity; and looks closely into the eyes of shame, not dreading what she may find there. She is always arguing with herself, and the answers are inflexible, the answers of a clear intellect which rebels but accepts ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... lesson which has almost broken my heart. In looking over his father's papers, Ernest found a little journal, brief in its records indeed, but we learn from it that on all those wedding and birthdays, when I fancied his austere religion made him hold aloof from our merry-making, he was spending the time in fasting and praying for us and for our children! Oh, shall I ever learn the sweet charity that thinketh no evil, and believeth all things? ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... for that matter, a proof of our flat "modernity" in this order that the scant starch holding her together is felt to give her among us this antique and austere consistency. I don't talk things over with Lorraine for nothing, and she does keep for me the flashes of perception we neither of us waste on the others. It's the "antiquity of the age of crinoline," she said the other day a propos of a ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... flattery, to propitiate the King of Prussia; but her messages had drawn from him only dry and sarcastic replies. The Empress Queen took a very different course. Though the haughtiest of princesses, though the most austere of matrons, she forgot in her thirst for revenge both the dignity of her race and the purity of her character, and condescended to flatter the lowborn and low-minded concubine, who, having acquired influence by ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Catherine appears to us austere and exacting; unsparing in condemnation, and unrelenting in her demands on those she loves. Many of her letters are in a strain of exhortation that rises into rebuke. The impression at first is unpleasant. We are tempted to feel this unfailing ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... these lines knew Morny. Morny and Walewsky held in the quasi-reigning family the positions, one of Royal bastard, the other of Imperial bastard. Who was Morny? We will say, "A noted wit, an intriguer, but in no way austere, a friend of Romieu, and a supporter of Guizot possessing the manners of the world, and the habits of the roulette table, self-satisfied, clever, combining a certain liberality of ideas with a readiness to accept useful crimes, finding means ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... it must be confessed, felt none of the artist's pride in finding his art appreciated. He had always the South Shields chapel at the back of his mind, with its austere code and creed, and he felt keenly the degradation of lowering himself to the level of the play-actor; even though he was earning his bare existence—and had been doing all through the heart of barbarous Africa—by mumming and carolling ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... great frontier men have been unscrupulous. There is, however, an exception in history which may perhaps serve to prove the rule. The Puritans who colonized New England were frontier men, and were, I think, in general scrupulously honest. They had their faults. They were stern, austere men, tyrannical at the backbone when power came in their way, as are all pioneers, hard upon vices for which they who made the laws had themselves no minds; but they ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... of their mission; by which means, together with their apparently disinterested conduct, they soon collected a numerous set of followers, half Christians and half Pagans. Unluckily for the cause of Christianity, a different sect of the same religion, but with principles more austere and of course less tolerant of others that deviated from their own, speedily followed the Jesuits into the East. The Dominicans, meeting with some of the half-christianized converts, soon gave them to understand that nothing less than ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... world, in fact, had fallen between two stools. It had fallen between that austere old three-legged stool which was the tripod of the cold priestess of Apollo; and that other mystical and mediaeval stool that may well be called the Stool of Repentance. It kept neither of the two values ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... through his coat-skirt, and three horses shot under him; but no hurt, the Almighty's grace preserving him." [Feldzuge,i. 434.] This Moritz is the Third of the Brothers, age now thirty-three; and we shall hear considerably about him in times coming. A lean, tall, austere man; and, "of all the Brothers, most resembled his Father in his ways." Prince Dietrich is in Leipzig at present; looking to that contribution of 50,000 pounds; to that, and to other contributions ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the latter, in maintaining in some degree the worship of that filthy deity; for the Christian priests, while opposing à l'outrance, the superstitions and impure practices already adverted to, did not so do, as regarded the other customs equally repugnant to decency and true religion. Less austere to these, and consulting their own interests, they turned to their profit the ancient worship established by the Romans and strengthened by habit: they appropriated to themselves what they could not destroy, and, in order to attract to their side the ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... cryptic about her having "no doubt been too busy," and seemed to have nothing further to say. The face of the lounge stewardess wore a peculiar expression. A quiet, rather austere-looking woman, she always behaved like a mummy in the doctor's presence, standing behind him with folded hands and mute lips. But when he had gone she ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... evening bloom, The Old Town rises, street on street; With lamps bejewelled, straight ahead, Like rampired walls the houses lean, All spired and domed and turreted, Sheer to the valley's darkling green; Ranged in mysterious disarray, The Castle, menacing and austere, Looms through the lingering last of day; And in the silver dusk you hear, Reverberated from crag and scar, Bold bugles blowing points ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... between his fingers, as gracefully as the pierrots of Aubrey Beardsley play with feathers. Down below heavy feet pretended to dance to an impossible tune. Someone began a song, others followed suit, and before long the austere sanctity of the room was violated by the flat melodies of Hitchy-Koo. It was indeed an act of vandalism. But the rioters had forgotten that they were distinctly audible from without. In the Chief's absence they had thought a row ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... cold, that had been warm for so long. Flowers, bottles, plates, all sick-room litter was taken away; everything was harsh and austere. She lay raised on the bed, the sweep of the sheet from the raised feet was like a clean curve of snow, so silent. She lay like a maiden asleep. With his candle in his hand, he bent over her. She lay like a girl asleep and dreaming of her love. The mouth was a little open as if ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... of the first Madame de Nailles was a woman with neither elegance nor beauty. She never had left off her widow's weeds, which she had worn since she had lost her husband in early youth. In the eyes of Jacqueline her sombre figure personified austere, exacting Duty, a kind of duty not attractive to her. That very day it seemed as if duty inconveniently stepped in to break up a conversation that was deeply interesting to her. The impatient gesture that she made when her mother called her might have been interpreted into: ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... State, for on such occasions he led a small army. The lovely young Countess awaited him at the top of the Castle steps, and he greeted her with the courtesy of a polished man of the world, rather than with the more austere consideration of a great Churchman. Indeed, it seemed to the quick apprehension of the girl that as he raised her fair hand to his lips his obeisance was lower, more deferential, than their differing ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... not made to an insensible audience. There were few among them who did not feel that their fortunes were indissolubly connected with those of their commander; and while they had little to expect from the austere character of the governor, they were warmly attached to the person of their young chief, who, with all the popular qualities of his father, excited additional sympathy from the circumstances of his ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... and a man of conscience; he spends his money liberally, and does the work he has to do with the best of his ability; he improves the tone of society of those among whom he lives. His aspirations are of a healthy, if not of the highest, kind. Though never an austere man, he upholds propriety of conduct both by example and precept. He is generous to the poor, and hospitable to the rich; in matters of religion he is sincere, and yet no Pharisee; he is in earnest, and yet no fanatic. On the whole, the Archdeacon of Barchester ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... State. The "Hon. D. Chase" referred to was Salmon's uncle Dudley, then United States Senator from Vermont. Congress was now in session, and he had arrived in town. He was a man of great practical sagacity, and kept a true heart beating under an exterior which appeared sometimes austere and eccentric. He had the year before been a second time elected to the Senate; and when he was on his way to Washington, Salmon had gone over from Hanover to Woodstock to meet him. They occupied the same room at the tavern, and the uncle had given the nephew some very good advice. What he said ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... his early youth was supposed to have so dull and foolish a spirit as to be useless for all affairs public or private. For from his first years he never used to play or make merry, but was so void of all human pleasure that he kept his lips sealed in a perennial silence, and utterly restrained his austere visage from the business of laughter. But though through the years of his youth he was reputed for an utter fool, he afterwards left that despised estate and became famous, turning out as great a pattern of wisdom and hardihood ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... called his meeting, and knowing Mrs. Boyd's regard for figures, set down and added or subtracted, he placed a pad and pencil on the table before him. It was an odd group: Dan sullen, resenting the strike and the causes that had led to it; Ellen, austere and competent; Mrs. Boyd with a lace fichu pinned around her neck, now that she had achieved the dignity of hired help, and Edith. Edith silent, morose and fixing now and then rather haggard eyes on Willy Cameron's unruly hair. She seldom ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Arrian's Epictetus, Sabatier's life of Saint Francis, the Meditations of Antoninus, bound in paper, and a Jervas translation of Don Quixote. Here Mr. Jeminy was at home; in the evening he smoked his pipe, and read from the pages of Cervantes, whose humor, gentle and austere, comforted his mind so often vexed by the negligence of ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... groom, and stumped into the fortress, where he had a biscuit and a glass of sherry in the commandant's little parlour, and forth the two cronies sallied mysteriously side by side; the commandant, Colonel Bligh, being remarkably tall, slim, and straight, with an austere, mulberry-coloured face; the general stout and stumpy, and smiling plentifully, short of breath, and double chinned, they got into the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... device for inflicting personal distinction —prototype of the modern newspaper conducted by persons of austere virtues ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... this time, had gone up to bed, and her daughter and I were sitting alone, after supper, in the austere seclusion of the horse-hair parlour. Mrs. Hale glanced at me tentatively, as though trying to see how much footing my conjectures gave her; and I guessed that if she had kept silence till now it was because she had been waiting, ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... carried him into—and through—a gorge where day-long a shadowy gloom hung among the fern-fringed rocks, and where the austere wildness of dripping cliffs and forbidding woods seemed a stage set for dark and ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... hills about Battle Abbey. Southward, and the way of the setting sun, the Downs ran out in huge spurs, line behind line of them, into the shining splendour of the sea, to break off abruptly in the white cliffs of the Seven Sisters. The hills were bare and bleak in their austere yet rounded strength, stripped of trees, clothed only in resplendent gorse, here a squat haystack dumped upon a ridge against the sky, there a great patch of plough let ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... and then stood still to gaze at the facade of the Sytch Pottery. It was a long two-storey building, purest Georgian, of red brick with very elaborate stone facings which contrasted admirably with the austere simplicity of the walls. The porch was lofty, with a majestic flight of steps narrowing to the doors. The ironwork of the basement railings was unusually rich ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... sense, at least in the case of my own infants, and very young children, differed from that of grown-up persons. This was shown by their not disliking rhubarb mixed with a little sugar and milk, which is to us abominably nauseous; and in their strong taste for the sourest and most austere fruits, such ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... economy has been on a recovery trend during the past two years despite a serious armed conflict. The economy continues to improve thanks to austere government budgets, focused efforts to reduce public debt levels, and an export-oriented growth focus. Ongoing economic problems facing President URIBE range from reforming the pension system to reducing high unemployment. New exploration is needed to offset declining oil production. On the positive ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the frame and constitution of their minds. The lenient and liberal views of the erudite and accomplished master of the school of Alexandria, stand out in prominent and broad contrast with the harsh and austere doctrines ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... could develop a gift or succeed in the higher manner unless one lived in a garret and half starved. I never had the courage to try the regimen, but so deep was the impression that I never have been able to work except in austere surroundings, and I have worked in most abominably uncomfortable quarters with an equanimity that was merely the result of the deathless insistence of an old impression sunk deep ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... those ruffians of genius who wrought so much evil in the world. Paul, however, adored men of action, and he forgot the crimes and moral defects of Napoleon and Frederick in contemplating the splendour of their achievements. Austere though his own morals were, he nevertheless held that a man capable of great service to the State ought not to be debarred from performing it by his religious opinions or the lack of them, or by the nature of his private life. ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... serious armed conflict. In fact, 2007 is regarded by policy makers and the private sector as one of the best economic years in recent history, after 2005. The economy continues to improve in part because of austere government budgets, focused efforts to reduce public debt levels, an export-oriented growth strategy, improved domestic security, and high commodity prices. Ongoing economic problems facing President URIBE include reforming the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to be wondered that McLean's austere Scotch soul stood in danger of being thawed in the sunshine of Lit-lit's eyes. She was pretty, and slender, and willowy; without the massive face and temperamental stolidity of the average squaw. "Lit-lit," so called from her fashion, even as a child, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... began calling to him soundlessly, and broke off abruptly and stood there at the window for a time, motionless and thoughtful. She was a tall girl, of a broad-shouldered, athletic type, a college girl by the sign of the austere cut of her gown, but a western girl by the sign of the flying ends of the scarf about her throat, the unafraid looseness of her bright hair. Her face, lit by her amber eyes and crowned by those loose masses of hair, had a rare, ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... so—you mustn't!" The seconds ticked away. Save for the quick catch of suppressed sobs, not a sound was heard in the mean, austere little room; not an echo penetrated from the ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... BISTORT. The Roots. L. E. D.—All the parts of bistort have a rough austere taste, particularly the root, which is one of the strongest of the vegetable stringents. It is employed in all kinds of immoderate haemorrhages and other fluxes, both internally and externally, where astringency is the only intention. ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... women, very young matrons, enter in a group. They stand clear and fair, but this little group entirely lacks the austere precision of the procession of maidens just preceding them. They pause in the center of the stage; turn, one three-quarter, two in profile and the fourth full face; they stand, turned as if confiding in each ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... large flocks of old and young ascend to the regions above the timber-line, about thirteen thousand feet above sea-level, where they swarm over the grassy but treeless mountain sides in search of food. In October they retire to the plains, in advance of the austere weather of the great altitudes, and soon the majority of them hie to a blander climate than Colorado affords ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... remarkable fact, that the very finest epigram in the English language happens also to be the worst. Epigram I call it in the austere Greek sense; which thus far resembled our modern idea of an epigram, that something pointed and allied to wit was demanded in the management of the leading thought at its close, but otherwise nothing tending towards the comic or the ludicrous. The epigram I speak ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... altar-flame. It may prove that what seem to us the regrettable accidents of Browning's genius are no malfortunate flaws, but as germane thereto as his Herculean ruggednesses are to Shakspere, as the laboured inversions of his blank verse are to Milton, as his austere concision is to Dante. Meanwhile, to the more exigent among us at any rate, the flaws seem flaws, and ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... injustice has been done in regarding it merely as a degraded form of the earlier Buddhism—a rank off-shoot of the teachings of the Gautama Buddha, a system of idolatry and priestly power from which the austere purity of the earlier faith ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin |
