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More "Meditation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... worrying myself about the rivets. One's capacity for that kind of folly is more limited than you would suppose. I said Hang!—and let things slide. I had plenty of time for meditation, and now and then I would give some thought to Kurtz. I wasn't very interested in him. No. Still, I was curious to see whether this man, who had come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort, would climb to the top after all and how he ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... to look and listen, Warham," cried his companion; "it's no time for meditation. They're coming! hark!—" and with a single glance behind him—with eyes dilating with the novel apprehensions of receiving a garment, unsolicited, bestowed by the bounty of the county—he drove his spurs into the flanks ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... had to relinquish the task. At no period of his life was he wholly free from visions which had the reality of facts. Sometimes they occurred in sleep, and were prolonged with painful vividness into his waking moments. Sometimes they seemed to grow out of his intense meditation, or to present themselves before his eyes as the projection of a powerful inner impression. All his sensations were abnormally acute, and his ever-active imagination confused the border-lands of the actual and the visionary. Such a nature ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... mist,' a phenomenon occurring in Palestine in summer, and being, accurately, rolling masses of vapour brought from the Mediterranean, which counteract the dry heat and keep vegetation alive. The influences which refresh and fructify our souls must fall in many a silent hour of meditation and communion. They will effloresce into manifold shapes of beauty and fruitfulness, of which the Prophet signalises three. The lily may stand for beauty of purity, though botanists differ as to the particular flower meant. Christians should present to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... not vexed that Riasantzeff had not come. On the contrary, she wished to be alone, so that, undisturbed by his presence, she might give herself up to delicious meditation. To her, the sentiment that filled her youthful being was strange and sweet and tender. It was the consciousness of a climax, desired, inevitable, and yet disturbing, which should close the page of her past life and commence ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... first day of the week, which was so called because on that day the Lord arose from the dead. It was a day which has been observed by all Christians in especial remembrance of that event. John does not appear to have anticipated any such announcement, until he was suddenly startled from his meditation by a voice in trumpet tones, announcing itself by the titles of Christ, and commanding him to write to the churches what he saw. Hearing the voice, he turned to see who had spoken ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... He made no inquiry about Mr. Wendover, and she afterwards judged that that distracted gentleman had sought him out and sent him to her assistance; also that he himself was at that moment watching them from behind some column. He would have been hateful if he had shown himself; yet (in this later meditation) there was a voice in her heart which commended his delicacy. He effaced himself to look after her—he provided for ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... chief of which was to win Janet Hosmer. Drinking heavily ever since his rebuff, he had sunk into a condition of evil determination and recklessness that made him fit for any desperate act. After much meditation fed by whisky, he had evolved a plan that would bring him success. Thereupon he had loaded his car with a quantity of selected stuff and made ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... questions which had then disturbed her peace. From a point of clear vision, she saw the things themselves so different, that those questions were no longer relevant. The things themselves misconceived, naturally no satisfaction can be got from meditation upon them, or from answers sought to the questions they suggest. If it be objected that she had no better ground for believing than before, I answer that, if a man should be drawing life from the heart of God, it could matter little though he were unable to give a satisfactory account of ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... her quiver with anticipation. Whereupon she went out and came back in three days with five sheets of foolscap on which she had written an article beginning: "When Memory draws aside the curtains of her magic chamber, revealing the pictures meditation paints, and we see through the windows of our dreams the sweet vale of yesterday, lying outside and beyond; when stern Ambition, with relentless hand, turns us away from all this to ride in the sombre chariot of Duty—then it is that entrancing Pleasure beckons us back to sit by Memory's fire and ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... "In this my meditation I found that there were five principal heads, chiefly to be considered by the wise and prudent spectators of our Wisdom and Art. The first of which is Invocation of God. The second, Contemplation of Nature. The third, True ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... occupations for the baser side of the soul, at the expense of the loftier and more delicate sides. The poor young man wins his bread with difficulty; he eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing more but meditation. He goes to the spectacles which God furnishes gratis; he gazes at the sky, space, the stars, flowers, children, the humanity among which he is suffering, the creation amid which he beams. He gazes so much on humanity that he perceives its soul, he gazes upon creation to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... fitting together fragments struck out at intervals. The defect was aggravated or caused by the physical infirmities which put sustained intellectual labour out of the question. The laborious and patient meditation which brings a converging series of arguments to bear upon a single point, was to him as impossible as the power of devising an elaborate strategical combination to a dashing Prince Rupert. The reasonings in the Essay are confused, contradictory, and often childish. He was equally ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... Baptists he seemed so stolid and matter-of-fact, he was truly suffering storms of emotion. He fell a prey to old illusions; that unreasoning fear returned; he was thrown back into the state of terrified egoism which rendered lofty impersonal meditation beyond attainment. ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... moralise on this, and the purport and significance of it may be left for private meditation to enucleate and enjoy. But it cannot be fully appreciated, unless one remembers that the author of this and other charges against chivalry is also the historian of the feud between the Shepherdsons and the Grangerfords, equal in tragedy to the themes of the chansons de geste: of Raoul ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... one and thirty years is a great deal of sand in the hour glass. My health, I thank God, I find confirmed; and I do not fear that action shall impair it, because I account my ordinary course of study and meditation to be more painful than most parts of action are. I ever bare a mind (in some middle place that I could discharge) to serve her Majesty, not as a man born under Sol, that loveth honour, nor under Jupiter, that loveth ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... Satyavarman, being continually delighted with devout meditation, and seeing his sons fit for dominion, laid upon ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... friendly farewell gesture to his servant, the Prophet walked up and down for some time, with an air of deep meditation; then, approaching the box which contained the papers, he took out a pretty long letter, and read it over and over with profound attention. From time to time he rose and went to the closed window, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... sutra. The priests stood by in vigilant attention. As the last word reverberated on the bishop's lips they seized the sutra wrapped bamboo, slipped it in the long box—bum! the lock snapped. The congregation was tremendously impressed. For a decent time Shu[u]den remained in prayer and meditation. "The charm is complete. O'Iwa no longer wanders, to her own penance and the disaster of men. Henceforth he who says she does so lies. Hearken to the words of Shu[u]den. Admit none such to your company. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... comparison to which he might perpetually recur to try the analogous facts of other nations and the events passing under his own eye, a new light broke out and ran through the vast extents of history. The maturity of experience seemed to have been obtained by the historian in his solitary meditation. Livy in the grandeur of Rome, and Tacitus in its fated decline, exhibited for Machiavel a moving picture of his own republics—the march of destiny in all human governments! The text of Livy and Tacitus revealed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... teacher, who was so pleased with the fruits which she saw spring forth from the seeds of virtue that she had sown in the breast of her pupil, that she now began to leave her more to herself, and exhorted her to set apart some portion of each day to pray to her Prophet, and frequent meditation and recollection of the rules she had given her, that so her mind might never be suffered to grow forgetful of the truths she had treasured up. "For," said the provident Houadir, "when it shall please the Prophet to snatch me also ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... soul; and when it was ended, he gave it out that he intended, the ensuing week, to examine all those who meant to attend the Lord's table. Now I thought much of my good works, and at the same time was doubtful of my being a proper object to receive the sacrament; I was full of meditation till the day of examining. However, I went to the chapel, and, though much distressed, I addressed the reverend gentleman, thinking, if I was not right, he would endeavour to convince me of it. When I conversed with him, the first thing ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... attempted to convince the Brahmins that Brahma could not be a god, since he had created a wretched world. The Brahmins, however, received him with suspicion, so he retired to a lonely country where, with five disciples, he devoted himself to deep meditation ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... Everything changes a little the last two or three days of a voyage; the spell is broken and new combinations take place. Grace Mavis was neither on deck nor at dinner, and I drew Mrs. Peck's attention to the extreme propriety with which she now conducted herself. She had spent the day in meditation and judged it ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... into a common Thoroughfare through the Stadt House. I never passed by this door without seeing numbers of the Lower Orders of people gazing wistfully through the Rails upon the emblematic objects within, apparently in Melancholy Meditation, and reflecting upon the Ignominious Effects of deviating from ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... the middle of the room on his roll of bedding, and for a long time he remained there motionless, with his head bent, his worn hands idly clasped. A heavy footfall outside aroused him from his meditation. ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... to introduce this jocular note into our meditation, for we are honestly aggrieved that so many of the Christmas cards hark back to an old tradition that is gone, and never attempt to express any of the romance of to-day. You may protest that Christmas is the oldest thing in the world, which is true; yet it is ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... be Miss Edgeworth in 'Castle Rackrent,' was there anything to change a man's thought about the world or stir his moral nature, for they but play with pictures, persons, and events, that whether well or ill observed are but an amusement for the mind where it escapes from meditation, a child's show that makes the fables of his art as significant by contrast as some procession painted on an Egyptian wall; for in these fables, an intelligence, on which the tragedy of the world had been thrust in so few years, that Life had ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... during which the young girl is carefully secluded from her brothers and cousins and future lovers, and retires, as it were, into the nunnery of the woods, behind a veil of thick foliage. Thus she is expected to develop fully her womanly qualities. In meditation and solitude, entirely alone or with a chosen companion of her own sex and age, she gains a secret strength, as she studies the art of womanhood from ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found, And walked with inward glory crowned— Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. Others I see whom these surround— Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;— To me that cup has been ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... we see striking resemblances in all religions. Everywhere on earth we find religious ideas periodically afflicting and rejoicing the people; everywhere we see rites, practices often abominable, and formidable mysteries occupying the mind, and becoming objects of meditation. We see the different superstitions borrowing from each other their abstract reveries and their ceremonies. Religions are generally unformed rhapsodies combined by new Doctors of Divinity, who, in composing them, have used the materials ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... sharply, "and don't move. Pass it down." And by way of example he sat heavily on my periscope and stayed gazing at the ground like a fakir lost in meditation. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... let me go, Peregrine, for your goddess has the supper to prepare!" Reluctantly I obeyed her, and coming back, found the Tinker seated upon his anvil, lost in a profound meditation. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... resolute disposition, and would not consent to leave her mother; and an appeal to Chancery would show how unfit a person he was to have the responsible charge of a young woman. The night was passed in anxious meditation, and before the morning his plans were arranged. Nothing could be accomplished by force; he must therefore resort to address—he would be more than ever attentive, and trust to time and opportunity for the gratification of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... meditation. To anyone who could have seen him then, a bent frail figure just within the cottage door, with his white hair, white beard, and general appearance of gentle and resigned old age, he would have seemed nothing more than a venerable peasant, quietly satisfied with his ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... windmill, observes, with some concern, that as there was not the least breath of wind, he could not have the pleasure of seeing it turn round. Urged by this consideration, he puts himself into the attitude of a person wrapt in profound meditation; and, having continued a few seconds in this posture, runs to the miller with great eagerness and joy, and, telling him that he had found an expedient to make his mill work; very fairly unbuttons his breeches. Then presenting his posteriors to the sails ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... whinnied with unusual vehemence, and the King, taking this for yea, and not observing that she limped as she went, rode on to the Doves: the gentle gray-gowned Brothers who spent their days in pious works and their nights in meditation. Between the twelve hours of twilight and dawn they were pledged not to utter speech, but the King arriving there at noon they welcomed him with kind words, and offered him a bowl ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... O fearful meditation, where, alack! Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid? Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back, Or who his spoil of ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... hour of morning, the Deliverer would present himself. In a dream was heard a voice, saying, "I will send a deliverer to the new world who shall save my people from bondage, as my Son saved them from spiritual death." The night wore on in prayer and meditation, and the hours tolled heavily across the frozen wilderness, but, at the stroke of three, steps were heard in the snow and the door swung open. The man who entered was of great stature, with a calm, strong face, a powerful frame, and a ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Governor!' said he, with characteristic coolness. Then, after a brief meditation on this skilfully-planned revenge, he thought it wise to return to ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Peter is going off to cut hay. He has been speaking of it as going into the wilderness for meditation. But what he's really doing is taking a team and his tent and supplies and staying with that hay until it's cut, cut and "collected," to use the word which the naive Lady Allie ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... this extreme intellectual indulgence, in a life the primary purpose of which is not meditation, but action, impair the individual as to his normal usefulness, and thus diffuse by example a deteriorating influence upon the young, and misleading influence upon all, but it actually leads to false views of life, and an unsound philosophy such as transcendental idealism, pessimism, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... forest emotions. He must understand this passion to kill. One Sunday morning, when all the others went out for the drive of the deer,—necessary for the larder, as the drive the day before had failed,—Emerson asked me to take him out on the lake to some quiet place for meditation. We landed in a deep bay, where the seclusion was most complete, and he went into the woods to meditate. Presently we heard the baying of the hound as he circled round the lake, on the hillsides, for the deer at that season were reluctant to take to the water, and ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... of Phillips Brooks, and its ministrations, admirable as they are for the ordinary child, were inadequate for the wants of a thoughtful girl like Mary Pickard. The final effect was, she says, to throw her more upon herself and to compel her to seek, "by reading, meditation and prayer, to find that knowledge and stimulus to virtue which I failed to find in the ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... in deep meditation the door opened again. He looked up, and saw that it was Mr. Forbes ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... Cowperwood developed after a few days' meditation will be plain enough to any one who knows anything of commercial and financial manipulation, but a dark secret to those who do not. In the first place, the city treasurer was to use his (Cowperwood's) office as a bank of deposit. He was to turn over ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... also by the acquisition of the habit of thought regarding general courses of action. We can hardly expect meditation on the part of little children. But those who are older, those entering their teens, may and should be able to think things out, to plan out the day's actions, to determine their own ways of conduct. Children who have the custom of quiet, private prayer often develop ability to see their ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to discern resemblances in things (the main point), and yet steady enough to distinguish the subtle differences in them; as being endowed with zeal to seek, patience to doubt, love of meditation, slowness of assertion, readiness to reconsider, carefulness to arrange and set in order; and as being a man that affects not the new nor admires the old, but hates all imposture. So I thought my nature had a certain familiarity ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... DAY' through the Christian Year; being a Text of Scripture, with an Original Meditation and a Short Selection in Verse for Every ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... Rodriguez' eyes turned again to the flowers, and he felt his meditation, as youth will, and looking abroad he saw the wonder of Spring calling forth the beauty of Spain, and he lifted up his head and his heart rejoiced with the anemones, as hearts at his age do: but Morano clung to ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... life, in which old things shall pass away, and all things become new, and I shall forget the very names of Parent, Englishman, Citizen,—the very existence of that strange Babel of man's building, whose roar and moan oppress me every time I walk the street. Oh, for solitude, meditation, penance! Oh, to make up by bitter self-punishment my ingratitude to her who has been leading me unseen, for years, home to her bosom!—The all-prevailing mother, daughter of Gabriel, spouse of Deity, flower of the ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... to be looking, as in a kind of meditation, at nothing in particular. It was as a man who waits at his ease for some pleasant little event that will unroll by and by. He was in no ecstasy, and, it seemed, in no pain and in no fierce expectation; ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... Received the poem's pregnant seed, And looked with eager thought around If fuller knowledge might be found. His lips with water first bedewed,(51) He sate, in reverent attitude On holy grass,(52) the points all bent Together toward the orient;(53) And thus in meditation he Entered the path of poesy. Then clearly, through his virtue's might, All lay discovered to his sight, Whate'er befell, through all their life, Rama, his brother, and his wife: And Dasaratha and each queen At every time, in every scene: His people too, of every sort; The nobles of his princely ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... were drawn down in gloom. Mastering some black meditation in his brain, he answered Algernon's yells ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... They are, in general, kept in good repair, and consecrated to the purposes of public worship. In these edifices the people regularly assemble on the Sabbath day, which, by all classes, is sacredly set apart for rest from secular employment and for religious meditation and worship, to listen to the reading of the Holy Scriptures, and discourses from pious ministers ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... State of Ireland, its character and future, I have here written some kind of imaginative meditation. The State is a physical body prepared for the incarnation of the soul of a race. The body of the national soul may be spiritual or secular, aristocratic or democratic, civil or militarist predominantly. One or other ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... three letters of which were symbolic of the creative, preservative, and destructive principles of the Supreme Deity, personified in the three manifestations of Bramah, Siva, and Vishnu. This word was forbidden to be pronounced aloud. It was to be the subject of silent meditation to the ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... the lusts called the lusts of the body and the flesh, and must live spiritually; and they understand this to mean that they must discard worldly things, which consist chiefly in riches and honors; that they must walk continually in pious meditation on God, salvation, and eternal life; and must spend their life in prayers and in reading the Word and pious books. Such is their idea of renouncing the world, and living in the spirit and not in the flesh. But that this is not at all true ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... intellect." The philosopher was an enthusiastic lover of Athens, and he looked upon the whole city as his school. There alone he found instruction and occupation, and through its streets he would wander, standing motionless for hours in deep meditation, or charming all classes and ages by his conversation. Alcibiades declared of him that, "as he talks, the hearts of all who hear leap up, and their tears are poured out." The poet THOMSON, musing over the sages of ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... herself to meditation, with frowning brow and close-shut lips. She looked her full age, and a year or two more, as she lay thinking, with her head on her hand, and her elbow on the pillow. After committing herself to the physician (and to the ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... study to seek comfort and instruction from the pages of those choice volumes, which comprised his library. But Alfred was not a mere bookworm, a devourer of knowledge without purpose or without meditation of his own, he thought with a student's soul well and deeply upon what he read, and drew from his books those principles of philanthropy, and those high resolves, which did such honor to the Saxon monarch. He viewed with sorrow the degradation ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... subdue a certain obstreperous individual. We have already invited her to a moonlight party at Hunter's Rock, as you know. Once she is there we will see to the rest. Sorry you can't be with us, but that would give the whole plan away. A little meditation in spookland will do our friend good, and this time if she is wise she will keep her troubles to herself. Of course, if any one should see her going home in the wee small hours of the morning it might ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... he thought she had a cold. But he said no more; he went home to his bachelor apartment, and after he had helped himself to three full fingers of meditation, together with a little seltzer, he smiled faintly, and told himself that there was no use in debating the point—a man with brains is predestined to make progress. But he couldn't help reflecting that now, more than ever, if any echo of his New York ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... question of politics, the commodore has found that Lockwin is scarcely able to speak. He sinks in profound meditation, and is slowly recalled to ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... demonstrate supposition of sycophants of circuses, tangents and Diogenes and parallelogramy, to say nothing about the oxhides, corostics, and abstruse triangles!" Thus saying, the old lady leaned back in her chair, her knitting work fell in her lap, and for some minutes she seemed in meditation. ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... in his senses seek to bring to pass a condition of things which is thought to be already existing. Here we see once more the unbridgeable gulf between every form of "idealistic Monism"—Eastern or Western—and Christianity; for while, e.g., "the central idea of Indian piety is meditation, the absorption of the individual in the life-spirit, the experience of identity with the universality and oneness of the Godhead," on the other hand "Christianity is the religion of prayer—prayer is its ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... steepe and hy; On top whereof a sacred chappell was, And eke a little Hermitage thereby, Wherein an aged holy man did lye, 410 That day and night said his devotion, Ne other worldly busines did apply; His name was heavenly Contemplation; Of God and goodnesse was his meditation. ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... Grotius and Puffendorf assures us that Grotius took the hint of attempting a system of natural law from Lord Bacon's works; and certainly, he adds, none was more proper for such an undertaking. A clear head, an excellent judgment, profound meditation, universal learning, prodigious reading, continual application to study amidst many distractions and the duties of several considerable places, together with a sincere love to truth, are qualities which cannot be denied to that great man without ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... part of his life he did not attend communion. He thoroughly believed in the good which came from church-going in the army and he always arranged to have a service on Sundays during his campaigns. When at Mount Vernon, on days when he did not go out to the service, he spent several hours alone in meditation in his study. The religious precepts which he had been taught in childhood remained strong in him through life. He believed moral truths, and belief with him meant putting in practice what he professed. While he had imbibed much of the deistic spirit of the middle of the ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... served, accommodated his Songs to his present Circumstances: to this Solitude invited, and the extream leisure that attends that employment absolutely requir'd it: For as their retirement gave them leisure, and Solitude a fit place for Meditation, Meditation and Invention produc'd a Verse; which is nothing else but a Speech fit to be sung, and so Songs began: Thus Hesiod was made a Poet, for he acknowledges himself that he receiv'd ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... stoppage to change horses, Honor flung meditation to the winds, and turned her eyes and mind upon the life of the road. For, as day took completer possession of the heavens, it became evident that life, of a leisurely, intermittent sort, flourished even upon this highway to ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... have moored, the bamboo poles of fishermen are planted. Kites hover ready to snatch up fish from the nets. On the ooze at the water's edge stand the saintly-looking paddy birds in meditation. All kinds of waterfowl abound. Patches of weeds float on the water. Here and there rice-fields, untilled, untended,[1] rise from the moist, clay soil. Mosquitoes swarm over the ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... are quite dramatic; Hamlet or the melancholy Jacques could not have been more lost in gloomy meditation. If I may presume to ask the question, why will the Jacobis ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... spend four or five hours daily in Bible reading, meditation and prayer, so that whereas he had written a few months earlier: "Oh! dear mother, I wish I felt more what I write!" he was now daily becoming more earnest, patient and watchful, and was gradually putting on ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... remunerating them is by means of copyright. You cannot depend for literary instruction and amusement on the leisure of men occupied in the pursuits of active life. Such men may occasionally produce compositions of great merit. But you must not look to such men for works which require deep meditation and long research. Works of that kind you can expect only from persons who make literature the business of their lives. Of these persons few will be found among the rich and the noble. The rich and the noble are not impelled to intellectual exertion by necessity. ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... minutes after one. But you know I am a very inexact guesser at measures and distances, and may be mistaken in many miles; and you know how little I have attended to these airgonauts: only t'other night I diverted myself with a sort of meditation on future airgonation, supposing that it will not only be perfected, but will depose navigation. I did not finish it, because I am not skilled, like the gentleman that used to write political ship-news, in that style which I wanted to perfect my essay; ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Christians, both men and women, quitting the pleasures and trials of the busy world, withdrew one by one into the Egyptian desert, where the sands are as boundless as the ocean, where the sunshine is less cheerful than darkness, to spend their lonely days and watchful nights in religious meditation and in prayer. They were led by a gloomy view of their duty towards God, and by a want of fellow-feeling for their neighbour; and they seemed to think that pain and misery in this world would save them from punishment ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... woman to be more thoroughly discussed and better understood;—by making it more frequently the theme of rational meditation to the young and ardent, who, from the force of defective education, are apt to regard all "the sex," beyond a very limited circle, as mere accessaries to animal enjoyment,—whose peace they may wound without compunction, and whose happiness they may peril without reflection,—we ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... The gibbet, a mighty trouble in the rudiment of comprehension, nascent in his mind, still seemed to him an apparition; but a trouble overcome is strength gained, and he felt himself stronger. Had he been of an age to probe self, he would have detected within him a thousand other germs of meditation; but the reflection of children is shapeless, and the utmost they feel is the bitter aftertaste of that which, obscure to them, the man later on calls indignation. Let us add that a child has the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... minds, sure that an answer to this question exists, but uncertain where to look for it, the fact that one of the thinkers of the century has, in a recent “Evangel,” given to the world a definition of “Art,” the result of many years’ meditation, will be received with joy. “Art,” says Tolstoi, “is simply a condition of life. It is any form of expression that a human being employs to communicate an emotion he has experienced to ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... the old woman, who came out with her keys to guide us, said she had a cold and a cough: we begged that she would not trouble herself to go with us at all. The fact is, with all respect to nice old women, and the worthy race of guides in general, they are not favorable to poetic meditation. We promised to be very good if she would let us have the key, and lock up all the gates, and bring it back; but no, she was faithfulness itself, and so went coughing along through the dripping and drowned grass to open the gates ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... crunch against the frail ribs of the boat, as if eager to crush it and frustrate the generous purpose of its passengers. But the strong arm of O'Brian pushed a way through the ice, while Mary sat wrapped in her cloak and in busy meditation in ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... long hours of meditation germinated at last in the secret wish to go to market some morning in Evelina's stead. As this purpose rose to the surface of Ann Eliza's thoughts she shrank back shyly from its contemplation. A plan so steeped in duplicity had never before taken shape in ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... there is room enough to let the breath through, the tongue held firmly, and the jaw muscles set as if suffering from an acute attack of lockjaw. Each has his own favorite tension in the act of meditation, although we are most generous in the force given to the jaw and throat. The same superfluous tension may be observed in one engaged in silent reading; and the force of the strain increases in proportion to the ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... ketch him in some mo' devilment." In the bushes they waited. Soon the parson hove in view on a slowly pacing nag, with his hands folded on the pommel of his saddle and deep in meditation. Jeb stepped out into the road and the hidden men craned their necks from the bushes with ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... portions, and given over to so many objects? But the unvarying testimony is that no nurses accomplish more than the German deaconesses. No matter how busy they may be, the effort is made for each to have a quiet half hour for meditation and private devotion. Every afternoon the chapel is opened for this purpose, and all the sisters who can be spared meet here. A hymn is sung, and afterward each spends the time as she will in meditation, reading the Bible ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... from the divine height of scientific meditation are very exhausting; and, besides, I had apprehended perfectly the bare life of the cloister. When I made up my mind to carry out this new plan of life, I looked for quarters in the most out-of-the-way parts of Paris. One evening, as I returned home to the Rue des Cordiers ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... ignorant of the laws and constitution of my country. I expressed an act which I conceived to be of an atrocious and evil nature, and partaking of some of the moral evil consequences of that crime. What led me into that error? Nine years' meditation upon that subject. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... answered Bessie, laughing, "because you happen to prevent me." And she devoted much private meditation to this question of effecting a visit to the ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... royal prerogative. He could not sleep a wink for thinking about it, and he despatched troops of soldiers, one after another, with strict orders to arrest him, but all their search was in vain. At length, after long meditation, ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... off with him into his apartment in the merriest mood. He did not invite me to join his party, and I was well content to be left to wander for an hour in the quiet close of the great cathedral. For let me say that a young man who has been lately crossed in love is in a better mood for most unworldly meditation, than he is likely to be before or after. And if he would not be taken too strictly at his word in all he says to himself then, why, who would, pray, ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... tobacco and the biscuits are mere accessories. What I really mean to devote my morning to is meditation. One of the greatest mistakes we make nowadays is not giving sufficient time to quiet thought. We go hustling along through life doing things which ought not to be done in a hurry, and when physical exhaustion forces us to pause for a moment, we ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... vapors of the imagination. Nothing can be a disaster that leaves us to one another," was the text of Frederic's fond soothing; and by the time Mrs. Sutton descended from her chamber of meditation, to remind Imogene that the seeds of ague and fever lurked in the river-fogs, the couple from the piazza came into the lighted parlor, all smiles and animation, wondering, jocosely, what had become of the recent ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... to the river almost for the last time, it was not a Saturday, but a Thursday, and the West End seemed still a long way off. I had finished my round of cases, and had sat waiting in my dingy surgery for patients. But none had come, and in the enforced meditation that ensued, as I reviewed my past and my prospects, my soul sickened in me. I wanted to breathe more freely—I wanted more air and something more cheerful than the low surgery lamp and the dismal lights that wagged in ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... stood at Dante's bedside and wept, or had at least grown to the manly earnestness of the Eros of Praxiteles. Set in relief amid the coarser matter of the book, this episode of Cupid and Psyche served to combine many lines of meditation, already familiar to Marius, into the ideal of a perfect imaginative love, centered upon a type of beauty entirely flawless and clean—an ideal which never wholly faded from his thoughts, though he valued it at various times in ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... my mind which brings my sensations together and compares them may be called by any name; let it be called attention, meditation, reflection, or what you will; it is still true that it is in me and not in things, that it is I alone who produce it, though I only produce it when I receive an impression from things. Though I am compelled to feel or not to feel, I am free to examine more or ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... fugitives who had quitted the suburbs in the morning, who now approached as a last resource, to ask mercy and protection from his enemies in the camp. He turned towards Goisvintha as the idea crossed his mind, and observed that she was still occupied in meditation. Assured by the sight, that she had not yet observed the fugitive figure, he again directed his attention—with an excess of anxiety which he could hardly account for—in the direction where he had first beheld it, but it was no more ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... number, partakes of the indefiniteness of the Heraclitean flux. By such reflections we may conceive the Greek to have attained the metaphysical conception of eternity, which to the Hebrew was gained by meditation on the Divine Being. No one saw that this objective was really a subjective, and involved the subjectivity of all knowledge. 'Non in tempore sed cum tempore finxit Deus mundum,' says St. Augustine, repeating a thought derived from the Timaeus, but ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... veins Is as the glowing of a sacred fire. He walks with Shelley's spirit on the cliffs Of the Ethereal Caucasus, and o'er The summits of the Euganean hills; And meets the soul of Wordsworth, in profound And philosophic meditation, rapt In some great dream of love towards The human race. The cheery Spring may come, And touch the dreaming flowers into life, Summer expand her leafy sea of green, And wake the joyful wilderness to song, As a fair hand ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... short pipe, and relapsed into meditation. The long uphill road, ever climbing to where far off showed the tiny whitewashed buildings which were the railway station, seemed interminable this morning. The aged postman addressed strange objurgations to his aged horse and muttered reflections ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... loved too well to eat, is certain; but that his sensuality shortened his life, will not be hastily concluded, when it is remembered that a conformation so irregular lasted six-and-fifty years, notwithstanding such pertinacious diligence of study and meditation. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... was aroused from his meditation. He stood still before Baron von Stein, and looked with a stern air into his manly face. "I offered you twice the department of foreign affairs," he said, in his dry, abrupt manner. "Why did you ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... That modern meditation broke His spell, that penmen's pleadings dealt a stroke, Say some; and some that crimes too dire Did much to ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... dooryard, slow to pass a hay-wagon, gas for up the next hill, and repeat the round all over again. But she was joyous till noon; and with mid-afternoon a new strength came which, as rose crept above the golden haze of dust, deepened into serene meditation. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... after much meditation she humbly begged for answers to one or two questions. 'Was she to pay the servants' wages out ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tormenta esse solent"—arose terribly in their sight. It was at this moment that an unpopular pupil, named Kentigern—a new boy, apparently—a stranger who had not taken in good-fellowship to the rest of the school, but was addicted to solitary meditation, entered the guilty conclave. Their course was taken—they threw the fragments of the bird into his hands, and bolted. St Serf enters, and the crew are awaiting in guilty exultation the bursting of his wrath. ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... moments, or rather his long hours, of labor and of meditation, was subject to a peculiar spasmodic movement, which seemed to be a nervous affection, and which clung to him all his life. It consisted in raising his right shoulder frequently and rapidly; and persons who were not acquainted with this habit sometimes ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... chief. Hiawatha had long beheld with grief the evils which afflicted not only his own nation, but all the other tribes about them, through the continual wars in which they were engaged, and the misgovernment and miseries at home which these wars produced. With much meditation he had elaborated in his mind the scheme of a vast confederation which would ensure universal peace. In the mere plan of a confederation there was nothing new. There are probably few, if any, Indian tribes which have not, at one time or another, been members of a league or confederacy. It ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... not aim at singularity. I give you opinions which have been accepted amongst us, from very early times to this moment, with a continued and general approbation, and which indeed are so worked into my mind, that I am unable to distinguish what I have learned from others from the results of my own meditation. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... impossible. She felt he would not understand her. She felt also that he suffered. Now and then a great anxiety gripped her heart with a mysterious sense of guilt—as though she had betrayed him into the hands of an enemy. With his eyes shut he had an air of weary and pious meditation. She was a little afraid of it. Next moment a great pity for him filled her heart. And in the background there was remorse. His face twitched now and then just perceptibly. He managed to keep his eyelids down till he heard that the 'husband' was ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... streets of the dead. Here St. Philip Neri, the Apostle of Rome, the wise and liberal founder of the Oratorians, the still beloved saint of the Romans, was accustomed to spend whole nights in prayer and meditation. Demons, say his biographers, and evil spirits assailed him on his way, trying to terrify him and turn him back; but he overcame them all. Year after year he kept up this practice, and gained strength, in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... no time for peaceful meditation," said the captain; "you git aft and keep a sharp eye abeam, and if you see any boat creepin' through the fog, even if it's an innercent looking fishin' boat, you ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... and two, each couple holding a handkerchief between them in token of a united grief. The apex of the hill reached, the mourners turn into the house of prayer, wherein the eternal fire is burning, or take position beneath spreading palms for solitary meditation. The bearers deliver the corpse to the bearded functionaries at the entrance to the Tower, and these carry it within. The floor of the Tower is of iron grating with three circles whereon the corpses are placed. The inner circle is for children, the next for women, ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... back and forth with your hands clasped behind you your great deep eyes are filled with the mellow light that illumines them when they are turned inward exploring the treasures of your brain—leave you deep in the high joy of meditation upon ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... receipts, but which was in reality a box of surveying instruments, its outside covered with cabalistic signs bearing a family resemblance to a plane-table! The Hukeem was much given to solitary meditation, and generally sought mountain peaks for that purpose. On such occasions the plane-table afforded ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... there, for, lost in meditation, she had been sitting in the dark, and with reckless hospitality poked the fire ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... sanction that applause: And oft, slow pacing yon sepulchral gloom, With fond regret shall Meditation pause, And breathe these accents o'er ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... characteristic of the spiritual mind is the joyful advice of one who, having perfected herself in meditation, could ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... by the illusion of form, was he to fulfil the vow that he had made to pass a night and a day in perfect and unbroken meditation? Already the night was beginning! Assuredly, for sickness of the soul, for fever of the spirit, there was no physic save prayer. The sunset was swiftly fading out. He strove ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... forty-mile all-night walk from Bridgewater to Bristol, on the evening after first meeting Coleridge. He could not sleep after the intellectual excitement of the day, and through a summer night "divinely calm" he busied himself with meditation on the sad spectacle he had witnessed: a great mind ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... many succeeding years of life, and I believe generally, so far as the broken state of his health would allow it in his latter days, to the very end of it. He used constantly to rise at four in the morning, and to spend his time till six in the secret exercises of devotion, reading, meditation, and prayer, in which last he contracted such a fervency of spirit as I believe few men living ever obtained. This certainly tended very much to strengthen that firm faith in God, and reverent animating sense of his presence, for which he was ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... which emanate from Him. Nor was this idea confined to Jewish philosophy of the Greece-Arabic school. The German Cabbala, too, which owed nothing directly to that school, held that God was not rationally knowable. The result must be, not merely to exalt visionary meditation over calm ratiocination, but to place reliance on inward experience instead of on external authority, which makes its appeal necessarily to the reason. Here we see elements of revolt. For, as Dr. L. Ginzberg well says, 'while study of the Law was to Talmudists the very acme of ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... excitement. But one thing had arrested her attention. She had noticed that a young stocking-maker from the "Brig End," James Paton, the son of William and Janet there, was in the habit of stealing alone into the quiet wood, book in hand, day after day, at certain hours, as if for private study and meditation. It was a very excusable curiosity that led the young bright heart of the girl to watch him devoutly reading and hear him reverently reciting (though she knew not then, it was Ralph Erskine's Gospel Sonnets, which he could say by heart sixty years afterwards, as he lay ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... and that he had difficulties before him which required calm nerves, and that nerves are affected by the stomach. So, not to throw a chance away, he had the sense and the resolution to devote a few days to health and unwholesome meditation. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... the most imperfect and degraded, has something that ought to be sacred to us, for there is in all religions a secret yearning after the true, though unknown, God. Whether we see the Papua squatting in dumb meditation before his fetish, or whether we listen to Firdusi exclaiming: 'The heighth and the depth of the whole world have their centre in Thee, O my God! I do not know Thee what Thou art: but I know that Thou art what Thou alone canst be,'—we ought to feel that the place whereon we stand is holy ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... Wheelock's more practical interest in the unfortunate Aborigines. His grandson, Rev. William Patten, D.D., says,[5] "One evening after a religious conference with a number of his people at Lebanon, he walked out, as he usually did on summer evenings, for meditation and prayer; and in his retirement his attention was led to the neglect [from lack of means] of his people in providing for his support. It occurred to him, with peculiar clearness, that if they furnished him with but half a living, they were entitled to no more than half his ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... that meditation, which with the great number is a firm and constant quality of the mind, is in my case an instinct independent of the will and it seizes me like an access of passion. It comes to me at intervals in its own good time, in spite of me and in almost ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... pipe, impossible stories about Admirals. Couples tramped backwards and forwards, keeping step and balance without effort, in a confined space. Pigs grunted in the big pigstye. Belfast, leaning thoughtfully on his elbow, above the bars, communed with them through the silence of his meditation. Fellows with shirts open wide on sunburnt breasts sat upon the mooring bits, and all up the steps of the forecastle ladders. By the foremast a few discussed in a circle the characteristics of a gentleman. One said:—"It's money as does it." Another maintained:—"No, it's the way they ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... under her arch of withered flowers and silk? Night and day, she shields the precious eggs with her poor body spread out flat. Eating is neglected. No more lying in wait, no more Bees drained to the last drop of blood. Motionless, rapt in meditation, the Spider is in an incubating posture, in other words, she is sitting on her eggs. Strictly speaking, the word 'incubating' means ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... into books. In a few hours we can follow all that is recorded of the life of Jesus—the best that He did in years of teaching and suffering all ours for a day of reading, and the more deeply ours for a lifetime of reading and meditation! ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... for meditation, he contrived to reconcile himself to the intended visit. He felt that it was easy to secure the friendship of the whole of the Merton family; and that friendship might be more useful to him than the neutral part adopted by Lady Vargrave. He should, of course, be invited to the rectory; ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... easy to see why Catherine's plain speaking was not resented. She rarely begins with rebuke. The note of humility is first struck; she is always "servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ." Thence she frequently passes into fervent meditation on some special theme: the exceeding wonder of the Divine Love, the duty of prayer, the nature of obedience. We are lifted above the world into a region of heavenly light and sweetness, when suddenly—a blow from the shoulder!—a startling sense of return to earth. From the contemplation ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... unrest there over the coming visit of Mr. Blithers and the return of the Prince, both of whom are very much in the public eye just now. I prefer the quiet of the country to the excitement of the city, so I shall seek some remote village and give myself up to—shall I say prayerful meditation? Believe me, dear Rex, to be your most ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Application of these my Medicines. But, my beloved Son, Care must be taken to apply them within ten Hours after the Breath is out of the Body, while yet the Clay is warm with its late Life, and yet capable of Resuscitation. I find my Frame grown crasie with perpetual Toil and Meditation; and I conjure you, as soon as I am dead, to anoint me with this Unguent; and when you see me begin to move, pour into my Lips this inestimable Liquor, else the Force of the Ointment will be ineffectual. By this Means you will give me Life ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... philanthropists in many different countries are labouring simultaneously to promote this great end, we are justified in considering the present age as the harbinger of a better; and we may rejoice in the anticipation. The progressive improvement of the human family is a delightful subject for meditation, giving us, perhaps, a prelibation of the joys of futurity, and animating us to contribute our aid, trifling as it may be, to the melioration of the condition of ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... perhaps it's my childhood." She halted. When she went on her voice had an artificial sound, her words the bookish quality of emotional meditation. "My father was the tenderest man in the world, but he did feel superior to ordinary people. Well, he was! And the Minnesota Valley——I used to sit there on the cliffs above Mankato for hours at a time, my chin in my hand, looking way down the valley, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... never have done so." He was always Mr. Cook to her. She kept four days each year as solemn fasts, remaining in her own room. The days were those on which she lost her husband and three sons, passing them in reading her husband's Bible, prayer and meditation, and during bad weather she could not sleep for thinking of those at sea. For her husband's sake she befriended her nephews and nieces whom she never saw. Of her three sons, two entered the Navy. One, Nathaniel, was lost with his ship, the Thunderer, in a hurricane off Jamaica in 1780. The ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... on duty there as on the night when I had first made acquaintance with the green eyes of the woman of mystery; but I did not know the man and I walked on deep in meditation, until, arriving at the Red House, other and dreadful reflections were aroused by the ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... man have his own charge, and let not the spheres of duty be confused. When wise men are entrusted with office, the sound of praise arises. If unprincipled men hold office, disasters and tumults are multiplied. In this world, few are born with knowledge: wisdom is the product of earnest meditation. In all things, whether great or small, find the right man, and they will surely be well managed: on all occasions, be they urgent or the reverse, meet with but a wise man and they will of themselves be amenable. In this way will the State be eternal and the Temples ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... be alone, to sit quietly and think. She wanted to review once more, and with fuller self-consciousness, the circumstances which were shaping her future. But there was no leisure for such meditation; the details of life pressed upon her, urged her onward, as with an impatient hand. This sense of constraint became an irritation—due in part to the slight headache, coming and going, which reminded her of her bad night. Among the things she meant to do this morning was the ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... evening street, with the bustle and chatter and buffoonery of the inns at which he had lain on his way from Chatillon. He was in a mood to appraise at the highest all about him, from the demure maid who served them to the cloaked burghers who from time to time passed the window wrapped in meditation. From a house hard by the sound of the evening psalms came to his ears. There are moods and places in which to be good seems of the easiest; to err, ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... man, with a cascade of silvery beard which he affected to tolerate because the expenditure of time in shaving might be turned with profit into the channel of business or of worship; but his wife, noting how he stroked the beard at intervals of meditation, judged that he was moved by something like pride in its luxuriance. Then she chided ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... because he had given instructions for it whenever he paused. The communicator-operator at Luna City took pleasure in following instructions exactly. Dabney held up his hand again. Again he performed feats of meditation in plain view. ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... duly discharged his office as host for the time being, and left his guest to a pipe of tobacco and quiet meditation, Burl was about betaking himself to his labors in the field, when his little master came running out to his cabin with word that Miss Jemima wished to speak with him before he left the fort. Respectfully uncapping himself even before reaching her ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... sounds like to me," snarled Buck, after a moment of meditation. "It sounds as if she was going to get five thousand and you was looking after your little old ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... the banners hung from its roof; the Te Deums and De Profundis so often sung there; Bossuet uttering the funeral oration of the Prince of Conde; the shameless goddess of Reason profaning the sanctuary. I close my eyes in meditation, and seem to be present at the coronation, to see Pius VII. on his pontifical throne, and, before the altar, Napoleon crowning Josephine with his own hands, I hear the echo of distant litanies, of the trumpets, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... suspense. She spent nearly a week at Twickenham in this anxious state, and Belinda observed that she every day became more and more thoughtful and reserved. She seemed as if she had some secret subject of meditation, from which she could not bear to be distracted. When Helena was present, she exerted herself to converse in her usual sprightly strain; but as soon as she could escape, as she thought, unobserved, she would shut herself up in ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... action, and thus causes him to shrink back from the very deed to which the prophetic greetings stimulate him. So, again, in Hamlet, the intimations of the Ghost touching "the secrets of its prison-house" kindle the hero full of "thoughts beyond the reaches of his soul," which entrance him in meditation, unstring his resolution, and render him morally incapable of the office to which that same Ghost has ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... is required to solve an insolvable problem; unceasing meditation upon an object, impossible to understand, but in which however he thinks himself much concerned, cannot but excite man, and produce a fever in his brain. Let interest, vanity, and ambition, co-operate ever ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... as you think. You, now, rising at five or six, and running round all day, become so tired that you have to go to bed by nine; of course you have no time for reflection and meditation. I, on the contrary, take life easily,—write in the night, when everything is still and quiet,—take my sleep when all the noise of the world's waking-up is going on,—and after creation is fairly settled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a vertical line from the pupil of the eye, the interior group would represent a comprehensive understanding possessing sagacity and judgment, while the exterior would represent profound ingenious thought and originality, a capacity for discovering truth by reason and meditation, by analysis and synthesis, while the interior would discover it only by direct perception. In the exterior group would be included the misnamed organ of Wit or Mirthfulness, which is really a source ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... to render the doctrine of the Lord Jesus, and salvation by him alone, very odious and low: and also his ordinances, as hearing, reading, meditation, use of the scriptures, &c. telling poor sinners that these things are but poor, low, carnal, beggarly, empty notions; preached up by the clergymen, who are the scribes and pharisees of this generation; who have the letter, but not the Spirit of God in them; which ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... said.—[Aside.] Gad, and so must I too; for my people is dissatisfied, and my government in danger: But this is no place for meditation.—Ladies, I wait on ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... have for seeing me; of which some touched me nearly. I disregarded Simon's warnings, therefore, and repaired at the time appointed to the place—a clean, paved square a little off the Rue St. Denys, and entered from the latter by a narrow passage. It was a spot pleasantly convenient for meditation, but overlooked on one side by the House of the Little Sisters; in which, as I guessed afterwards, madame must have awaited me, for the square when I entered it was empty, yet in a moment, though no one came in from the street, she stood beside me. She wore a ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... let us advert for a moment to the plan of ancient discipline. The unwearied diligence of the ancient orators, their habits of meditation, and their daily exercise in the whole circle of arts and sciences, are amply displayed in the books which they have transmitted to us. The treatise of Cicero, entitled Brutus [a], is in all our hands. In that work, after commemorating the orators ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... "King," as I used to call him. Sometimes I tried my hand with a small rod of my own, but generally I preferred to sit on the grass some distance away. Then my reflections became really deep, and, without knowing what meditation meant, my soul was absorbed in prayer. Far-off sounds reached me, the murmuring of the wind, sometimes a few uncertain notes of music from a military band in the town a long way off; all this imparted a touch of melancholy to my thoughts. Earth seemed ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... Hastinapura, about sixty miles north of Delhi, were divided into two branches, the Kauravas and the Pandavas, each of which occupied the territory which had come down to it by inheritance. They lived together in peace and prosperity, worshipping the gods, studying the Vedas, and spending much time in meditation about higher things. But there came a change for the worse. The Kauravas, not content with their own territory, looked with jealous eyes upon that of their kinsmen, the Pandavas. Soon their covetousness ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... to it as the carpet, and hath laid open in the same page this half year. His candle is always a longer sitter up than himself, and the boast[72] of his window at midnight. He walks much alone in the posture of meditation, and has a book still before his face in the fields. His pocket is seldom without a Greek testament or Hebrew bible, which he opens only in the church, and that when some stander-by looks over. He has sentences for company, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... mind were those of meditation and inward thought, rather than of action. He delighted to express his opinions by an apothegm, illustrate them by a parable, or drive them home by a story. He was skilful in analysis, discerned with precision the central idea on which a question ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... before and the earlier part of that day. The plausible serenity of his manner was replaced by unusual gloom, and that abstraction which is produced by deep and absorbing thought. He seemed so completely wrapped up in constant meditation upon some particular subject, that he absolutely forgot to guard himself against observation or remark, by his usual artifice of manner. He walked alone in the garden, a thing he was not accustomed to do; and during these walks he would stop and pause, then go on slowly and musingly, ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... examine all those who meant to attend the Lord's table. Now I thought much of my good works, and at the same time was doubtful of my being a proper object to receive the sacrament; I was full of meditation till the day of examining. However, I went to the chapel, and, though much distressed, I addressed the reverend gentleman, thinking, if I was not right, he would endeavour to convince me of it. When I conversed with him, the first thing he asked me was, what I knew of ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... the pious wife at home. None of these things restrains her from taking that quiet walk up the aisle and occupying that seat in the corner of the pew, there to dismiss all thought of worldly care, and fit her good little soul for the pleasures of real worship, and that prayerful meditation and sweet communion with holy things that only such good little women know the blessings of;—none of these things at all. It is Mrs. Tom Pinch's bonnet that keeps her at home,—her last season's bonnet! Strike, but hear me, ladies, for the thing is simply so. Tom's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... that venison has made me sleepy. Secondly, I am just off to find a suitable and sheltered grove, within sound of the Atlantic, where I may spend an hour in meditation. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... a lady of fashion, Phedre, when it first appeared, was a complete failure. An extraordinary change then took place in Racine's mind. A revulsion of feeling, the precise causes of which are to this day a mystery, led him suddenly to renounce the world, to retire into the solitude of religious meditation, and to abandon the art which he had practised with such success. He was not yet forty, his genius was apparently still developing, but his great career was at an end. Towards the close of his life he produced two more plays—Esther, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... another mass, at which I can take the communion. I did not dare to do so at this mass, for the thought of speaking to monsieur so distracted my mind. I will be at monsieur's house by eight o'clock, when I have ended my meditation, if that hour does ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... feeling of melancholy which came over my mind, I resolved to kindle a fire; and having heaped dry sticks upon my hearth, and added a billet or two, I struck a light, and soon produced a blaze. Sitting down, I fixed my eyes upon the blaze, and soon fell into a deep meditation. I thought of the events of the day, the scene at church, and what I had heard at church, the danger of losing one's soul, the doubts of Jasper Petulengro as to whether one had a soul. I thought over the various arguments which I had either heard, or which had come spontaneously to my mind, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... given up worrying myself about the rivets. One's capacity for that kind of folly is more limited than you would suppose. I said Hang!—and let things slide. I had plenty of time for meditation, and now and then I would give some thought to Kurtz. I wasn't very interested in him. No. Still, I was curious to see whether this man, who had come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort, would climb to the top after all and how he would set ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... again they relapsed into meditation; their hearts beating happily, the Colonel's stout boot tapping contentedly upon ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... that a man may be granted a very deep insight into the nature and being of God by spiritual meditation. That a fire does burn in the Bible, we do not deny. Throughout all ages of the Jewish and Christian churches men have lit their spiritual torches at this fire, and in their light they have seen Him who is invisible. This fire still burns, and ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... joy and consolation amid his overpowering anxieties. Behold the secret of his sweet serenity, and his clear unclouded determination. He had placed it upon the small table at which he knelt, and was soon absorbed in meditation and intercession. ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... worst violations of good form to behave with levity in church. To devout people the church is the place for meditation and prayer, and nothing should be allowed to disturb the restful calm that is sought within its sacred walls. A well-bred agnostic will respect the religious sentiments of other people, whatever his own beliefs or disbeliefs in matters theological. If no higher law ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... hat and coat and sat down in the furthest corner; placing himself so, however, that neither eyes nor ears should be hindered in the exercise of their vocation, while his attitude might have suggested a fit of sleepiness, or a most indifferent meditation on things far distant, or possibly rest after severe exertion. Lois and her six scholars took their places at the other end of the room, which was too small to prevent every word they spoke from being distinctly heard ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... regard to the person of whom it was spoken, and the time in which it was writ, as in a few lines in a modern poem: "there is," continued he, "nothing so forced and constrained, as what we frequently meet with in tragedies; to make a man under the weight of a great sorrow, or full of meditation upon what he is soon to execute, cast about for a simile to what he himself is, or the thing which he is going to act: but there is nothing more proper and natural than for a poet, whose business is to describe, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... His meditation was interrupted by Mrs. Hampton's return. She carried a tray containing a glass of home-made wine, and a plate of frosted doughnuts. Grimsby was all alert ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... muses he, as he settles himself for a comfortable meditation. "He can go to sleep in the very teeth of mystery, and wake up, clear headed, in a fog. Now I can't sleep, and I've been awake longer than my allotted time, too. Shades of my ancestors! What a day! And, oh, my prophetic soul, what ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... one, about sunset, had been near the place where Mark was resting at the time he thought he saw the porcupine, a Fakir might have been seen sitting on the identical spot. He appeared to be in deep meditation, but, as soon as it was dark, he crept cautiously to the entrance of the cave into which Mark thought the porcupine ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... fact that Harper, or Harpstinah, was one of the Sioux women, who wore, as long as she could endure it, a necklace made of the hands and feet of Chippeway children? Here, in the silence of night, she turned often towards the bed, when the restless sleep of the child broke in on her meditation. She fancied I slept, but my mind was busy too. I was far away from the home of my childhood, and a Sioux woman, with her knife in her belt, was assisting me in the care of my only daughter. She thought Dr. T. was a "wonderful ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... fumed, and fussed,— He swore he'd "have that 'yster, or bust!" But, for all his oaths, he was quite nonplussed; So by way of variation, He sat him quietly down, for a while, To cool his anger and settle his bile, And to give himself up, in his usual style, To a season of meditation. ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... awhile in meditation. So did Captain von Poppenheim. He kicked a pebble. So did Captain von Poppenheim—only a smaller pebble. Discipline is very strict in ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... Father Membre had that morning withdrawn a league up the river to make what they called a retreat for prayer and meditation. The other Frenchmen were ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... blackens; battering rain-torrents dash, with thunder; almost drowning the organ's voice: and electric fire-flashes make the very flambeaux on the altar pale. So that the most, as we are told, retired, when it was over, with hurried steps, 'in a state of meditation (recueillement),' and said little or nothing. (Weber, Memoires concernant Marie-Antoinette ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of consolation for whoso is not afraid to understand, Iglesias moved onward. But so closely do things absurd and trivial jostle things august and of profound significance in daily happenings—he was speedily aroused from meditation and his attention claimed by example of quite another order of pathos to that suggested by the concluding verses of the Te Deum. Some little way ahead a brown-painted furniture van was backed against ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... manhood; my shyness was smothered, though not killed, by a kind of mechanical ease born of practice. After greeting Hammerfeldt I received the welcome of the company with a composed courtesy of which the Prince's approval was very manifest. Ceremonial occasions such as these are worthy of record and meditation only when they surround, and, as it were, frame some incident really material. Such an incident occurred now. My inner mind was still full of my sojourn with the Bartensteins, of the pathetic, whimsical, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... crimes—even his good actions. Thus his conduct during the last few months, his strange ways, his fancy for his child and for his wife, his assiduous tenderness toward her, were nothing more than the hypocritical meditation of a new crime—a mask which he was preparing ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... discussing the questions of the civil war, said: "The re-establishment of the Union is indeed hopeless. That being so,—if we come to that conclusion,—it behooves England, in concert, I hope, with the great Powers of Europe, to offer her meditation, and to ask these States to consider the great distress among the people of this country caused entirely by this unhappy civil ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... specimens have been collected by Messrs. Cuvier and Bronguiart; weeks might be passed in this museum by those partial to studying mineralogy, geology, and conchology, and subjects for examination and meditation would still not be exhausted. We will now turn into the gardens of the Luxembourg Palace; they are in the true French stiff style, but look at them in a slanting direction and all the formality is lost; the statues are seen intermingled with the trees, ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... was that Sir George laid hold of the kernel of a subject, and worked outwards—an expositor, not a controversialist. When evening waned he would turn to Epictetus, and then to a well-thumbed New Testament. It was the hour of meditation. ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... to walk alone, and at night, (while they are yet crowded) through the long lamp-lit streets of this huge metropolis. There, even more than in the silence of woods and fields, seems to me the source of endless, various meditation. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... world. The Hindu sages despised action as destructive of thought; and undoubtedly the cool secluded vale of life is good for the cultivation of letter-writing, in one who has the artistic hand, and to whom this method of gathering up the fruits of reading and meditation, the harvest of a quiet eye, comes easily. In many respects the letters of FitzGerald, like his life, are in strong contrast to Carlyle's; and FitzGerald was somewhat startled by the publication of Carlyle's ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... in these great truths which the Master spoke. Put a little bit of colouring matter into the fountain at its source, and you will have the stream dyed down its course for ever so far. See that Christ's words be lodged in your inmost selves, by patient meditation upon them, by continual recurrence to them, and all your life will be glorified and flash into richness of colouring and beauty by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... of his extant works which is philosophical in content is the small treatise "Hegyon ha-Nefesh," Meditation of the Soul.[148] It is a popular work, written with a practical purpose, ethical and homiletic in tone and style. The idea of repentance plays an important rle in the book, and what theoretical philosophy finds place therein is introduced merely as a background and basis for the ethical and ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... tarnished honour and degraded fortunes of his house, the destruction of his own hopes, and the triumph of that family by whom they had been ruined. To a mind naturally of a gloomy cast here was ample room for meditation, and the musings of young Ravenswood were deep ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... sat thus, absorbed in gloomy meditation, wind and rain without redoubled in fury. The rain-drops dashed against the window-panes, the storm swept with melancholy moaning through the branches of the trees. Anon there mingled with the violence of the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... of knowledge and understanding is the meditation on those things which one knows or understands. In reference to this, the text goes on: "thou shalt meditate upon them sitting in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... regularly marked by divisions of number, partakes of the indefiniteness of the Heraclitean flux. By such reflections we may conceive the Greek to have attained the metaphysical conception of eternity, which to the Hebrew was gained by meditation on the Divine Being. No one saw that this objective was really a subjective, and involved the subjectivity of all knowledge. 'Non in tempore sed cum tempore finxit Deus mundum,' says St. Augustine, repeating a thought derived from ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... splendors of the Transfiguration, his legs intertwisted and his tongue a-cheek, the editor spills his will along the paper and cuts it off in lengths to suit. And at intervals from behind the veil of the temple is heard the voice of the foreman demanding three inches of wit and six lines of religious meditation, or bidding him turn off the wisdom and whack up ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... was not thinking of playing him false. It was absurd. Dain and Lakamba were both too much interested in the success of his scheme. Trusting to Malays was poor work; but then even Malays have some sense and understand their own interest. All would be well—must be well. At this point in his meditation he found himself at the foot of the steps leading to the verandah of his home. From the low point of land where he stood he could see both branches of the river. The main branch of the Pantai was lost in complete darkness, for the fire at the Rajah's had gone out altogether; but up the Sambir ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... silence and bowed his head in meditation. For a quarter of an hour was no word spoken, for gravely Charlemagne considered every question placed before him, and weighed well his words; for once he had given pledge no power ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... in throwing sundry loving glances over at me. Nor did these weird shadows spare our Cousin Jehoiakim Johnson in the great old-fashioned arm-chair, where he had flung himself, seemingly wrapped in meditation most profound. They frolicked over his broad, square shoulders like the Liliputs upon Gulliver, dancing all sorts of fantastic dances, pulling at his ears, and tweaking his substantial nose, when a snore of most immense magnitude broke on our quiet ears. Then another ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... of the abode, said she "kep' hit bunin' fer comp'ny." She sat by it now, smoking as lazily as her chimney, in an old chair which creaked as if in pain when she rocked. She supposed herself to be in deep meditation, and regarded her corncob pipe not merely a solace but also as an invaluable assistant to clearness of thought. Aun' Jinkey had the complacent belief that she could reason out most questions if she could only ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... upon a chair, I remained for some time absorbed in meditation. My reflections, be sure, were of no consolatory kind. A thousand vague and lachrymatory fancies took possession of my soul—and even the idea of suicide flitted across my brain; but it is a trait in the perversity of human nature to reject the obvious and the ready, for the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... dean had read and re-read the two communications, she looked decidedly grave. After a brief interval of thoughtful meditation, she wrote Selina the ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... high hill of meditation he reviewed the history of the West. Based in bloody wars between the primitive races, and between the trappers and their allies, the land had passed through a thin adumbration of civilization as the stockmen drove ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... seen it on the master's face altogether too many times since the Morrison had come from the mill in the forenoon. It was not the look he wore when matters of business engrossed him. The old paymaster liked to see Morrison pondering on mill affairs; it was meditation that always meant solution of difficulties, and the solution was instantly followed by a laugh and ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... master sat motionless for some time, gazing at the floor as if in meditation. Then he rose, went to his book-case and took down a large thick volume, which he ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... his book and looked about him. He appeared to me to be on the watch in expectation of some threatened danger. At last I gave up the attempt to sleep as hopeless. There was something in the air of the place, I believe, which affected me. My young companion had been sitting for some minutes lost in meditation. ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... beheld you (unnoticed) musing on your present circumstances, apparently agitated by every emotion which would naturally fill the heart of one who has come to the resolution to risk his life for his country's freedom. You will excuse my mentioning, that from a deep, absent meditation, partly expressed by half-pronounced soliloquies, I beheld you start up, clap your hand upon your sword, and look so fiercely, that it almost frightened me. The scene, on your discovering me, immediately changed to something more tender; but I ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... companions. I recall one of my guests, the mother of many scattered children, whose one bright spot through all the dreary years had been the wedding feast of her son Mike,—a feast which had become transformed through long meditation into the nectar and ambrosia of the very gods. As a farewell fling before she went "in" again, we dined together upon chicken pie, but it did not taste like the "the chicken pie at Mike's wedding" and she was ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... passes under the name of her Revelations, in the solitude of these streets of the dead. Here St. Philip Neri, the Apostle of Rome, the wise and liberal founder of the Oratorians, the still beloved saint of the Romans, was accustomed to spend whole nights in prayer and meditation. Demons, say his biographers, and evil spirits assailed him on his way, trying to terrify him and turn him back; but he overcame them all. Year after year he kept up this practice, and gained strength, in the solitude and darkness, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... trifle of financial assistance she was accustomed to, and Mrs. Sawbridge was anxiously tactful about the disappointment. They paid a visit of inspection and farewell to the nursery before the departure. Then Lady Harman was left until lunch to resume her meditation upon this unprecedented breach that had opened between her husband and herself. She was presently moved to write a little note to Lady Beach-Mandarin expressing her intention of attending a meeting of the ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... artificial, less spontaneous, although here also the creative genius of a single man, as there of a nation, will oftentimes set its mark; and many a single word will come forth, which will be the result of profound meditation, or of intuitive genius, or of both in happiest combination—many a word, which shall as a torch illuminate vast regions comparatively obscure before, and, it may be, cast its rays far into the yet unexplored darkness beyond; or which, summing up ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... unsurpassed loveliness. Beneath lava rocks, black and sinister, that contrast strangely in their sombre hues with the brilliant tints of sea and sky, lie little beaches of glittering gravel that would afford delightful retreats for meditation, were it not for the dozens of half-naked brown-skinned imps, children of the fisher-folk of Torre del Greco, who wallow in the warm sand or rush with joyful screams into the tepid surf. The population must have increased not a little since those ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... something to increase his wavering; but there he walked, awakening the echoes as he paced up and down, until the church clock, striking the quarters for the second time since he had been there, roused him from his meditation. Shaking off his incertitude as the air parted with the sound of the bells, he walked rapidly to the house, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... greater part of the day, and when night came, having ascertained from Centeno that his execution was to take place on the following noon, he laid himself down to rest. He did not sleep long, however, but soon rose, and continued to traverse his apartment, as if buried in meditation, till dawn He then sent for a confessor, and remained with him till after the hour of noon, taking little or no refreshment. The officers of justice became impatient; but their eagerness was sternly rebuked by the soldiery, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... stroll? Exactly—er—yes! Pardon me, Princess, my mind often wanders, and I am afraid I am getting a little deaf as well. Yes, I find the night singularly conducive to meditation; one cannot be in a land like this under a sky like this"—and he pointed to the shining heaven—"without recalling the ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... men and women who withdrew from the desperate turmoil without to the sheltering walls of the monastery or the convent, invested with a sacrosanct character which was at least in part respected, found therein the opportunity for prayer, meditation and study which was denied them elsewhere. They could maintain a standard of piety, and keep a rudimentary education from altogether dying out. For centuries they were the only source of alms and succour to which ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Her capacity for silent meditation, during which she would sit before her fire, gazing far, smiling at her thoughts, into the glowing coals, had never left her. But there was a slight difference to be noted. She could not think of Ingram—the past, the present, or any future Ingram—without contraction of the brows. Smooth-browed ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... voluntarily confided to her the strange story of his life, a life hitherto unknown to her. She was not easily surprised, but she was greatly impressed, and when he finally rose from his chair and went out into the night Nan sat in meditation for some time before she followed him. ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... family. Some two years later, in the course of his travels, he reached New England, where he dwelt for a month among the Lenni-Lennaps, and there in an open desert, on a clear night of summer, while the moon was shining in splendour, he was wandering in solitary meditation when the luminary in question, which was in the crescent phase, came down out of heaven, and proved to be an arched bed, very luminous and wonderful, containing a vision of sleeping female beauty. This was the nuptial ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... daily bread, which hindered him from gaining ground, in despair at the influence exerted by money over mind, and given over to dire poverty, buried himself in a garret, to make thirty sous a day, the sum strictly answering to his needs. Meditation had leveled a desert all round him. He read the papers to be informed of what was going on. Pozzo di Borgo had once lived ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... to them and looking down—for he was upon his feet— cautioned them in a low voice to be patient and silent. Then covering his eyes with his hand, he stood for some moments in an attitude of meditation. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... know how small a part of ourselves that fraction may be which we have taken for the whole! We come to know ourselves by struggle and endeavor, more than by thought and meditation. We have only to do our work each day in hope and trust. We can only find rest in effort. It is not in repose, but in activity—not in joy, but in sorrow, that the soul comes to its second birth. Pepeeta needed labor and suffering, and ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Dacres sat in silence for a long time, breathing hard, and puffing violently at his cigar. Hawbury said nothing to interrupt his meditation. After an hour or so Dacres tramped off in silence, and Hawbury was left to meditate ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... despising mere personal beauty, and the other precious advantages with which you have been richly endowed by Heaven, you have devoted the course of your best years to the contemplation of the marvels of God, joining spiritual meditation to good works."—Dreux du Radier, vol. vi. pp. ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... virtue once spake to me on this wise: 'After I had made divine meditation my constant habit, and through the practice of it my soul had received her right quality, I once resolved to make trial of her, and put a check upon her, not allowing her to devote herself to her wonted exercises. I felt that she was chafing and fretting, and yearning for meditation with an ungovernable ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... connect himself to any church, he was deeply attached to the Society of Friends. He was frequently seen in their meeting-house. He usually occupied the rear bench, where he would sit with uncovered head, leaning upon his staff, wrapt in profound meditation. The following letter addressed to Mr. J. Saurin Norris shows that his character ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... devoting himself and his art to God, saying: Those who work for Christ, must dwell in Christ. Always, before commencing a picture which was to be consecrated to the honor of God, he prepared himself with fervent prayer and meditation, and then began in humble trust that 'it would be put into his mind what he ought to delineate;' he would never deviate from the first idea, for, as he said, 'that was the will of God.' This he said not in presumption, but in faith and simplicity ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... with the past—and of The present there is still for eye, and thought, And meditation chasten'd down, enough; And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought; And of the happiest moments which were wrought Within the web of my existence, some From thee, fair Venice! have their colours caught: There are some feelings Time can not benumb, Nor ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... vouchsafed to him since the day of her eldest son's death. "Would he come to her dressing-room at eleven o'clock? She wished to consult him upon special business." Brian sent word that he would be with her at that hour, and then fell into anxious meditation as he sat at breakfast, with Hugo at the other end ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... in my room above, In silent meditation of His love, My soul illumined with a rapture rare. It would be sweet, if even then, these eyes Might glimpse Him coming in the East- ern skies, And be caught up to meet Him in ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... introduce this jocular note into our meditation, for we are honestly aggrieved that so many of the Christmas cards hark back to an old tradition that is gone, and never attempt to express any of the romance of to-day. You may protest that Christmas is the oldest thing in the world, which is true; ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... into the first quiet woods on the way to my home, a great door swung to behind me and another life began, in which Rachel's figure and swarthy, heavy-featured face had long ceased to interfere with my meditation. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... clung to them, as we do to a habit; but now he felt that his eyes were opened; the silly, almost unfeeling letter of his father upon the occasion of his mother's death, opened his eyes. For a long while Jack was in a melancholy meditation, and then casting his eyes upon his watch, he perceived that it was almost dinner-time. That he could eat his dinner was certain, and he scorned to pretend to feel what he did not. He therefore dressed ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... broaching the question of politics, the commodore has found that Lockwin is scarcely able to speak. He sinks in profound meditation, and is slowly recalled to the ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... some way up the steep declivity of the mountain, Costal and his neophyte halted by one of these boulders. Now apparently absorbed in profound meditation, now muttering in a low tone, and in the language of his fathers, certain prayers, the Zapoteque awaited that hour when the moon should reach its meridian, in order to come to the grand crisis ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... time, although I did not retire for the night till I had seen Harry Oaklands, and given him an account of 468 our adventures. Wilford's fate affected him strongly, and, shading his brow with his hand, he sat for some moments wrapped in meditation. At length he said, in a deep low tone, "These things force thought upon one, Frank. How nearly was this man's fate my own! How nearly was I being hurried into eternity with a weight of passions unrestrained, of sins unrepented of, clinging to my guilty soul! God has been ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... institutions and prejudices, so fair a field for the practical introduction of those regenerating principles to which Herbert had devoted all the thought and labour of his life, that he resolved, after long and perhaps painful meditation, to sacrifice every feeling and future interest to its fulfilment. All idea of ever returning to his native country, even were it only to mix his ashes with the generations of his ancestors; all hope ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... lower and the light on the printed page became so dim that even the keen eyes of the young Shawanoe could not trace the words. He looked at the embers as if asking himself whether he should renew the blaze and continue reading. But the hour for meditation had come, and he closed the book. Looking fondly at the stiff, wooden cover, he touched his lips with infinite tenderness to it, and carefully placed it in the inner receptacle of his hunting-shirt, murmuring as ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... some sudden thought made the smile but an absent one, and he sat quite obviously plunged in meditation for a long minute. The clock and the fire ticked sleepily, and outside the high windows the first tentative flutter of snow was melting on bare boughs ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... scene is apt to be overlooked, and regard wanders involuntarily to the transactions of the tiring-room and the side-wings. Will the actor be recognisable? will he really have time to alter his costume? the spectators mechanically ask themselves, and meditation is occupied with such possibilities as a tangled string or an obstinate button hindering the performer. All this is opposed to the real purpose of playing, and injurious to the actor's art, to say nothing of the interests of the dramatist. Illusion is the special object of the theatre, and ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... a time, in a hut at a place called Namekata, in Hitachi, there lived an old priest famous neither for learning nor wisdom, but bent only on passing his days in prayer and meditation. He had not even a child to wait upon him, but prepared his food with his own hands. Night and morning he recited the prayer "Namu Amida Butsu,"[80] intent upon that alone. Although the fame of his virtue did not reach far, yet his neighbours respected and revered him, and often ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... his own fashion, earnestly inviting him to partake of the contents of a certain black bottle, in which, as they averred, he would find something far better worth seeking than the Unpardonable Sin. No mind, which has wrought itself by intense and solitary meditation into a high state of enthusiasm, can endure the kind of contact with low and vulgar modes of thought and feeling to which Ethan Brand was now subjected. It made him doubt—and, strange to say, it was a painful doubt—whether he had indeed found the Unpardonable Sin, and ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ponder over the meaning and the tendencies of things; it is for youth to act, to make history, to push things along; therefore let the papers record everything that passes; perhaps when the country is old, when the time comes for meditation, the London Times may be imitated, and even a weekly collection of essays, such as the Saturday Review or the Spectator, may be successfully started in the United States. Again, youth is apt to be jealous over ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... in the unfortunate Aborigines. His grandson, Rev. William Patten, D.D., says,[5] "One evening after a religious conference with a number of his people at Lebanon, he walked out, as he usually did on summer evenings, for meditation and prayer; and in his retirement his attention was led to the neglect [from lack of means] of his people in providing for his support. It occurred to him, with peculiar clearness, that if they furnished him with but half a living, they were entitled to no more than half his labors. And he concluded ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... pretty generally noticed, devise some light comfortable kind of 'wine-and-walnuts philosophy' for themselves, this of Supply-and-demand or another; and keep saying, during hours of mastication and rumination, which they call hours of meditation: "Soul, take thy ease; it is all well that thou art a vulture-soul;"—and pangs of dissolution come upon them, oftenest before ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... volume of selections from the best writers for Christian instruction, meditation, and ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... commonplaces of life were to me inexpressibly tame and joyless. And yet indolence, which belongs to the poetical character, was more inviting than that eager and uncontemplative action which can alone wring enterprise from life. Meditation was my natural element. I loved to spend the noon reclined by some shady stream, and in a half sleep to shape images from the glancing sunbeams. A dim and unreal order of philosophy, that belongs to our nation, was my favourite intellectual pursuit; and I sought amongst the Obscure and ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the heart, continually answered that the spirit had taken flight. At last, a spontaneous and solemn silence fell upon all in the room; the friar knelt beside the dead, and we all followed his example. Then after long and profound meditation he prayed, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... extravagant fury; what she requires every morning, every evening, and every night, is a break-neck chase, which she conducts with frenzy; a reckless game, in which she may break the bank; an uninterrupted German, which she leads until dawn. A stoppage of a single minute, a moment of rest, of meditation and reflection, would kill her. Never was an existence at once so busy and so idle; never a more ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... investigating a favourite science, they have wasted the lamp of life, forgetful of the midnight hour; or, when, lost in poetic dreams, fancy has peopled the scene, and the soul has been disturbed, till it shook the constitution, by the passions that meditation had raised; whose objects, the baseless fabric of a vision, faded before the exhausted eye, they must have had iron frames. Shakespeare never grasped the airy dagger with a nerveless hand, nor did Milton tremble when he led Satan far from the confines of his dreary prison. These were not the ravings ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... from all his anxiety and sorrow, he had pined in foreign parts for his human flock, as well as his bullocks and his turnips. He had also read, thought, and observed a great deal, and had left his long boyhood behind him, during a space for study and meditation such as he ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... grateful for her love. God also knows how unworthy he felt. This love is such a terrible thing. A maiden goes through the ways of life, in maiden meditation fancy free, pausing beside the brook to pluck the flowers which grow on its bank, and thinking of nothing but the simple girlish things which pertain to maidenhood. Then suddenly a shadow falls across her path. It is the shadow of the Man, and the love which shall raise her to heaven or drag her ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... (Native Races of Pacific, vol. i, p. 110), referring to the virtues of the Thlinkeet woman, "that it may be during this period of confinement that the foundation of her influence is laid; that in modest reserve and meditation her character is strengthened, and she comes forth cleansed in mind as ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... (And what if Monads of the infinite mind?) I haply journeying my immortal course Shall sometime join your mystic choir! Till then 410 I discipline my young and novice thought In ministeries of heart-stirring song, And aye on Meditation's heaven-ward wing Soaring aloft I breathe the empyreal air Of Love, omnific, omnipresent Love, 415 Whose day-spring rises glorious in my soul As the great Sun, when he his influence Sheds on the frost-bound waters—The glad stream Flows to the ray and warbles ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... time the Prince lived in a cave not far from Rajagha and studied the faith of India as it was then taught, but his studies brought him no nearer to gaining the truth. So he went into the wilderness, where, he believed, fasting and meditation might bring him the ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... the last days of his liberty—all this had strained and distracted his soul, and the peace of the prison life, with the certainty that no efforts of his own could help him now, quieted and strengthened him for the ordeal he foresaw. At this time, too, he used to spend two or three hours a day in meditation, and found the greatest benefit in following the tranquil method of prayer prescribed by Louis de Blois, with whose writings he had made acquaintance at Douai. Each morning, too, he said a "dry mass," and during ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... aspires: how he may best please Him who dwells there: and what he is to do so that his character and disposition may suit with God's disposition and character. Mental prayer, as I am wont to call it, is the constant meditation of such things as these. And mental prayer ought to be endeavoured after by all, though they have no virtues, because it is the beginning of them, and therefore the one interest of all men is at once ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
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