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More "Nunnery" Quotes from Famous Books



... A nunnery, glorying in so pure a foundress, grew and flourished, and for "two hundred years existed in the full observance of monastic discipline;" but on the coming of the Danes in the year 870, those sad destroyers of religious establishments laid it in a heap of ruins, in which desolate ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... taken trouble to go where he could see her, he at last made her come whithersoever it pleased himself. Her mother discovered this, and being a very virtuous woman, she forbade her daughter ever to speak to the merchant on pain of being sent to a nunnery. But the girl, whose love for the merchant was greater than her fear of her mother, went after him more ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... while half-a-mile away the parish church that was there before it—having been rebuilt indeed upon Saxon foundations in the days of William Rufus—yet lies among its ancient elms. Farther on, situate upon the slope of a vale down which runs a brook through meadows, is the stark ruin of the old Nunnery that was subservient to the proud Abbey on the hill, some of it now roofed in with galvanised iron sheets ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... girl of thirteen or fourteen years changes into a woman as the bud of the night becomes a flower in the morning. At this period of change, so full of mystery and romance, Maria Clara was placed, by the advice of the curate of Binondo, in the nunnery of St. Catherine [43] in order to receive strict religious training from the Sisters. With tears she took leave of Padre Damaso and of the only lad who had been a friend of her childhood, Crisostomo Ibarra, who himself shortly afterward went away to Europe. There ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... from the limb! The cat-bird croons in the lilac-bush! Through the dim arbor, himself more dim, Silently hops the hermit-thrush, The withered leaves keep dumb for him; The irreverent buccaneering bee Hath stormed and rifled the nunnery 30 Of the lily, and scattered the sacred floor With haste-dropt gold from shrine to door; There, as of yore, The rich, milk-tingeing buttercup Its tiny polished urn holds up, Filled with ripe summer to the edge, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... concluded his essay in the pooh-pooh tone of voice. He first gives a sketch of abnormalities in mortal experience, as in the case of mental epidemics, of witchcraft, of the so-called prophets in the Cevennes, of the Jansenist marvels. He mentions a nunnery where, 'in the sixteenth century,' there occurred, among other phenomena, movements of inanimate objects, pottery specially distinguishing itself, as in the famous 'Stockwell mystery'. Unluckily he supplies no references for these adventures.' ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... brain, but knows what he likes, and usually does it without wasting time on pros and cons. Consequently, I'm just as likely to end in prison as anywhere else, and take it without much concern as all in the day's work. You are more likely to end in a nunnery, as the most ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... few years of Nicholas Ferrar's death, some of his enemies had a pamphlet printed and distributed "not by hundreds, but by thousands, and given into the hands of the parliament men as they went daily to the House of Commons." The title was, "The Arminian Nunnery; a description of the newly erected Monastical Place, or the Arminian Nunnery at Little Gidding." The books were also given to the Puritan soldiers when near Gidding to excite them to offer violence to the family. But why should the title "Nuns of Little Gidding" be still the ...
— Little Gidding and its inmates in the Time of King Charles I. - with an account of the Harmonies • J. E. Acland

... education of young artists and the encouragement of their seniors. He was the principal director of a board of "publica beneficenza." He was the manager, and what we should call the trustee for the property of more than one nunnery. He was intimate with the Cardinal Legate, and a frequent and honoured guest at the palace. Of course in matters of orthodoxy and well-affected sentiments towards the Church and its government he was all that the agents of that government could desire. ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... exercises her authority in the Iron Fence Temple. Ch'in Ching-ch'ing (Ch'ing Chung) amuses himself in the Man-t'ou (Bread) nunnery. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... Cabot—their Christian names were Priscilla and Hortense—she found to be middle-aged maiden ladies, eminently prim and proper, and the educational establishment over which they presided a sort of Protestant nunnery ruled according to the precepts of the Congregational Church and the New England aristocracy. Miss Priscilla was tall and thin and her favorite author was Emerson; she quoted Emerson extensively and was certain that real literature died when he did. Miss Hortense was ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the dreary village,—decay without its grandeur, change without the awe of its solitude! On the site on which Drusus raised his Roman tower, and the kings of the Franks their palaces, trade now dribbles in tobacco-pipes, and transforms into an excellent cotton factory the antique nunnery of Konigsberg! So be it; it is the progressive order of things,—the world itself will soon be one excellent ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... its modern successor, and seemed the queen of the valley, although, on the opposite side of the river, the strong walls of Elcho appeared to dispute the pre-eminence. Elcho, however, was in that age a peaceful nunnery, and the walls with which it was surrounded were the barriers of secluded vestals, not the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... period for mourning was over, the relations of the marquise and Sainte-Croix were as open and public as before: the two brothers d'Aubray expostulated with her by the medium of an older sister who was in a Carmelite nunnery, and the marquise perceived that her father had on his death bequeathed the care and supervision of her to her brothers. Thus her first crime had been all but in vain: she had wanted to get rid of her ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... one Episcopalian, one Roman Catholic, one Methodist mission, one Congregational mission, one nunnery school, Sisters of St. Ann's, one private educational institute (by the author) for both sexes, and one Young ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... universally admired. The fact is, he was possessed of, at least, some requisites of a 'lover.' He had assiduity, flattery, fine clothes—and as much wit as the ladies he addressed. Accordingly he used to say—'Wit, flattery, and fine clothes are enough to debauch a nunnery!' This is certainly a fouler calumny of women ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... Marcella cared nothing for men's admiration, and yet, instead of retiring to one of those nunneries which are founded for her kind, she chose to rove the mountains, causing despair to all the shepherds. Zuleika, with her peculiar temperament, would have gone mad in a nunnery. "But," you may argue, "ought not she to have taken the veil, even at the cost of her reason, rather than cause so much despair in the world? If Marcella was a basilisk, as you seem to think, how about Miss Dobson?" Ah, but Marcella knew quite ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... who, centuries after, drew those obscene figures on the wall of your church—the devil, the nun, and the barred convent—when Julia, another Julia but the same soul, was denied to me and forced into a nunnery. For the frescoes, too, tell my history. I was that figure in the dark habit, standing a little back from the cross. Tell me, sir, did you never hear of Joseph ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... alterations in his play, in order to ridicule several dramatic performances, that appeared since the first writing it. Those of Mr. Dryden, which fell under his grace's lash, were the Wild Gallant, Tyrannic Love, the Conquest of Granada, Marriage A la-Mode, and Love in a Nunnery: Whatever was extravagant, or too warmly expressed, or any way unnatural, the author ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... these two months. We might as well have said that we would live on manna from heaven. The things we had fixed on were just the impossible things. Oh, that bread, with the fetid smell, which stuck in the throat like Macbeth's amen! I am not surprised, you recollect it! The hens had 'got them to a nunnery,' and objected to lay eggs, and the milk and the holy water stood confounded. But of course we spread the tablecloth, just as you did, over all drawbacks of the sort; and the beef and oil, as I said, and the wine ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... in no wise," answered Agatha, laughing again, though in a more subdued manner than before. "I never loved to dwell in a nunnery, and this house is little better. 'Satisfied!'" she said again, as though the word perplexed her. "I never thought of no such a thing. Doth Master Norman look satisfied? ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... not, sweet, I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind, To ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... is supposed, by way of penance for her yielding to the Conqueror, founded a nunnery at the village of Hatfield Peverell, mentioned above, and there she lies buried in the chapel of it, which is now the parish church, where her memory is preserved by a tombstone ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe

... hanged if I don't think it's a nunnery," he said. By and by he let his gaze wander back to the town, in which he detected an appearance of liveliness and bustle not usual in New England villages, large or small. The main street was dotted with groups of men and ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Orders of nuns, certain corresponding features were becoming usual. But little in the way of religious guidance could fall to the lot of a sisterhood presided over by such a "Prioress" as Chaucer's Madame Eglantine, whose mind—possibly because her nunnery fulfilled the functions of a finishing school for young ladies—was mainly devoted to French and deportment, or by such a one as the historical Lady Juliana Berners, of a rather later date, whose leisure hours produced treatises on hunting and hawking, and who would probably have on behalf ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... Hamlet now to the scene with Ophelia, where, 'in an ecstasy of divine inspiration, equally weak in reason, and violent in persuasion and dissuasion,' [12] he calls upon her to go to a nunnery, we must direct attention to the concluding part of an Essay [13] of Montaigne. It is only surprising that nobody should as yet have pointed out how unmistakeably, in that famous scene, the inconsistencies of the whimsical ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... lady-bells Of the nunnery by the Fosse:— Say the hinds, "Their silver music swells Like the blessed angels' syllables, At his birth who ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper

... there any hope for her? Could he not take her to some nunnery midway, and let her write to her uncle to ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... comes through environments of temptation unprotected from the assaults of the devil to glory and immortality will have a more exceeding and eternal weight of glory than she who has been shut in, as it were, by the walls of a nunnery." "If we could have kept the Negro from the Bible, kept the religion of Jesus Christ out of his heart, the massacre of November 10th might have the effect that those who planned it desired. But such demonstrations of barbarism will never be the means of vanquishing a trusting people. There's ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... Colonel and his sweet unselfish wife, with affection; and Sylvia, John's betrothed, with a strange passion, defend the old faith, Sylvia to the point of breaking with her lover and getting her to a nunnery—a business which will in the end, I should guess, lay a heavier burden upon the nuns than upon John. The indecisive battle sways hither and thither. It is the Doctor who sums up in a compromise which would shock the metaphysical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various

... dell—a deep hollow cup, lined with turf as green and short as the sod of this Common: the very oldest of the trees, gnarled mighty oaks, crowd about the brink of this dell; in the bottom lie the ruins of a nunnery. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... government; the church of S. Ambruogio at Pavia, built by Grimoald, King of the Lombards, who drove from the kingdom Aribert's son Perterit. This Perterit being restored to his throne after Grimoald's death built a nunnery at Pavia called the Monasterio Nuovo, in honour of Our Lady and of St Agatha, and the queen built another dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Pertica outside the walls. Cunibert, Perterit's son, likewise built a monastery and church to St George called di Coronato, in a similar style, on the spot where ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... of Aloysia, do you wish to know? She joined her sister Bridget in the nunnery, and after atoning by her tears and repentance for the material heresy of her youth, she lately fell a victim to fever, contracted by her in caring for the poor negro slaves of New Orleans. She preferred to die a saint than live ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... additional details: for instance, in the memoirs of the Countess Kaunitz, mother of the well-known statesman Kaunitz, we find an account of the severe whippings which were administered to her during her childhood spent in a nunnery. ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... plenty of sport in their visits to these fine sheets of water. In Cumberland there are several waterfalls, namely, Scale Force and Sour Milk Force, near Buttermere; Barrow Cascade and Lowdore Cascade, near Keswick; Airey Force, Gowbarrow Park; and Nunnery Cascade, Croglin. The highest mountains in the same county are,—Scaw Fell (Eskdale), 3166 feet, highest point; Helvellyn (Keswick), 3055; and Skiddaw (Keswick), 3022. The climate of Cumberland is various; the high land cold and piercing; ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... hurried to explain. "I never loved but once, and then would die for it." The jasmine trembled in its chaste white nunnery, and her lips were temptingly apart. He bent forward ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... months, they came back for his wife. Her they placed in the nunnery of the Carmelites—that prison where, but a few months before, a mob relieved the keepers of their vigils ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... moor, The grey moor sinks to the gleaming Skelt— Sudden and sullen, and swift and sure, The whirling water was round my belt. She breasted the bank with a savage snort, And a backward glance of her bloodshot eye, And "Our Lady of Andover's" flash'd like thought, And flitted St. Agatha's nunnery, And the firs at "The Ferngrove" fled on the right, And "Falconer's Tower" ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... women, of ages varying in the main from nineteen to one-and-twenty, though several were older, who at this date filled the species of nunnery known as the Training-School at Melchester, formed a very mixed community, which included the daughters of mechanics, curates, surgeons, shopkeepers, farmers, dairy-men, soldiers, sailors, and villagers. They sat in the large school-room of the establishment on the evening ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... monastery of the Carmelites, or White Friars, with the church and houses of the Knights Templars beyond it. Within the City, to the east, were the great establishments of the Austin Friars and St. Helen's nunnery, while east and west the churches spread—many of monastic origin—culminating in two of the most important buildings in Europe, the Tower of London and the palace of Westminster, each with its ecclesiastical dependencies, the whole dominated by the mediaeval spirit about ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... becke, then I haue thoughts to put them in imagination, to giue them shape, or time to acte them in. What should such Fellowes as I do, crawling betweene Heauen and Earth. We are arrant Knaues all, beleeue none of vs. Goe thy wayes to a Nunnery. Where's your Father? ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... Ministers of State and nobles of every rank, from the Prince who is the heir of the last of the Shoguns down to democratic Barons who prefer to be called "Mr.", I chatted with farmers' wives and daughters, I interrogated landladies and mill girls, and I paid a memorable visit to a Buddhist nunnery. I walked, talked, rode, ate and bathed with common folk and with dignitaries. I discussed the situation of Japan with the new countryman in college agricultural laboratories and classrooms, and, in ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... the place where such an ornament was made? Ickleton, in Cambridgeshire, appears to have been of some note in former days, as, according to Lewis's Topog. Hist., a nunnery was founded there by Henry II., and a market together with a fair granted by Henry III. As it is only five miles from Linton, it may have formerly borne the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various

... purse.[256] A woman guilty of adultery was at once sent to a monastery. After a space of two years her husband could take her back again, if he so wished, without prejudice. If he did not so desire, or if he died, the woman was shorn and forced to spend the rest of her life in a nunnery; two thirds of her property were given to her relatives in descending line, the other third to the monastery; if there were no descendants, ascendants got one third and the monastery two thirds; relatives failing, the monastery took all; ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... miraculously escaped their industry, being very richly laden with all the King's plate and great quantity of riches of gold, pearl, jewels and other most precious goods, of all of the best and richest merchants of Panama. On board of this galleon were also the religious women, belonging to the nunnery of the said city, who had embarked with them all the ornaments of their church, consisting in great quantity of gold, plate, and other ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... as best she might. The quarrel to her had been as the disruption of the heavens. She had declared to herself that she would bear it; but the misfortune to be borne was a broken world falling about her own ears. She had thought of a nunnery, of Ophelia among the water-lilies, and of an early death-bed. Then she had pictured to herself the somewhat ascetic and very laborious life of an old maiden lady whose only recreation fifty years hence should consist in looking at the portrait of him who had once ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... have in their old cellars! It's such fun drinking it out of great silver vessels as old as Methuselah. 'There's much treasure in the house of the righteous,' as David says; and any one who has ever sacked a nunnery knows that." ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... James, 'then will we take Mary and the weans to the nunnery in St. Mary's Wynd, where none will dare to molest them, and I shall go on to St. Andrews or Stirling, as may seem fittest; while we leave old Seneschal Peter to keep the castle gates shut. If the Hielanders come, they'll find the nut too hard for them to crack, and the kernel gone, ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the Siege Perilous. At last, one vigil of the great feast, a lady came to Arthur's court at Camelot and asked Sir Launcelot to ride with her into the forest hard by, for a purpose not then to be revealed. Launcelot consenting, they rode together until they came to a nunnery hidden deep in the forest; and there the lady bade Launcelot dismount, and led him into a great and stately room. Presently there entered twelve nuns, and with them a youth, the fairest that Launcelot had ever seen. "Sir," said the nuns, "we ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... carries it out—'if'!" exclaimed Marise, with a lurch of the shoulders and a flirt of her pudgy hand. "Soul of me! that's where the difference lies. Had it been the cracksman, there would have been no 'if'—it were done as surely as he attempted it. Name of misfortune! I had gone into a nunnery had I lost ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... could be supposed to attend to any thing else, when the lovely Harriet Byron continued in suspence, when the fate of Lady Clementina was undetermined, when it was not yet settled, whether she was to marry Grandison, retire to a Nunnery, or continue crack-brain'd all her lifetime. After all, I am well-pleased to see Grandison and Harriet fairly buckled. And I hope soon to hear, that the ceremony is performed between the Count de Belvedere and Lady Clementina. I am afraid there could have been no compleat happiness ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous

... find few friends. Be as it may, said Sir Lancelot, keep you still here, for I will forth on my journey, and no man nor child shall go with me. So it was no boot to strive, but he departed and rode westerly and sought seven or eight days, and at the last he came to a nunnery. And then was Queen Guinevere ware of Sir Lancelot as he walked in the cloister. And when she saw him there she swooned thrice, that all the ladies and gentlewomen had work enough to hold the Queen up. So when ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... embroidery, and so pictured lives which were lived in the days of knights and ladies drifted on. The sword and the needle expressed the duties, the spirit, and the essence of their several lives. The men were militant, the women domestic, and wherever in castle or house or nunnery the lives of women were made safe by the use of the sword the needle was devoting itself to comforts of clothing for the poor and dependent, or luxuries of adornment for the rich and powerful. So the needle lived on through all the civilizations of the ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler

... Ely. The Goldies were an old Manx family; Col. Goldie, his brother, of the Scotts Guards Regiment, being President of the House of Keys, the local parliament. Their residence in that island is "The Nunnery," near the town of Douglas, so called from the ruin close at hand of an ancient priory, said to have been founded by St. Bridget in the sixth century. Mr. Goldies' nephew is the present Sir George Dashwood Tanbman Goldie, Privy Councillor, K.C.M.G., F.R.G.S., &c, formerly of the Royal Engineers, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... is really a worthy vocation for me to go to Quedlinberg and become the shepherdess of that fearful flock of old maids who took refuge in a nunnery because no man desired them? No, your majesty, do not send me to Quedlinberg; it is not my calling to build up the worthy nuns into saints of the Most High. I am too unsanctifled myself to be an ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... We rose very early, and came through St. Quintin to Cambray, not long after three.—We went to an English nunnery, to give a letter to Father Welch, the confessor, who came to visit us ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... remained to take charge of the household and the newly-arrived family of grandchildren. She was one of those calm, quiet, big-souled women who in the early centuries would have been a saint, and in mediaeval times the abbess of a nunnery, but happening to be born in the nineteenth century, her mental outlook had a modern bias, and both her philanthropy and her religious instincts had developed along the latest lines of thought. She had schemes of her own ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... these deliberations gave surprise to the public; it was the seizure of the queen dowager the forfeiture of all her lands and revenue, and the close confinement of her person in the nunnery of Bermondsey. The act of authority was covered with a very thin pretence. It was alleged that, notwithstanding the secret agreement to marry her daughter to Henry, she had yet yielded to the solicitations and menaces of Richard, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... fringe! That is the burden of what I have to say to you this time; for indeed and indeed this is to be a fringe-and-tassel season, and you must cover yourself all over with fringe and the rest of yourself with tassels, or else "to a nunnery go." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various

... make the instrument of his wiles assume the figure of one of his reverence's family." The Chapter conducted itself in this case exactly in the same manner as hereditary princes do whose fathers live too long. But what served more completely to confuse the case was a report from the nunnery. The nuns had assembled in the refectory, and were busied in dressing up a Madonna for the next festival, hoping to surpass by its magnificence their rivals the black nuns, when suddenly the old porteress entered, told the licentious story, and added, that the Dominican, whose ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... near it, or in connexion with it, and standing upon the level field, which belonged to it, its own domain, the whole scene together brought to our minds an image of the retiredness and sober elegance of a nunnery; but this might be owing to the greyness of the afternoon, and our having come immediately from Glasgow, and through a country which, till now, had either had a townish taint, or at best little of rural beauty. While we were looking at the house we overtook a foot-traveller, who, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... person sending shall forfeit 100l. which[y] shall go to the sole use and benefit of him that shall discover the offence. And[z] if any parent, or other, shall send or convey any person beyond sea, to enter into, or be resident in, or trained up in, any priory, abbey, nunnery, popish university, college, or school, or house of jesuits, or priests, or in any private popish family, in order to be instructed, persuaded, or confirmed in the popish religion; or shall contribute any thing towards their maintenance when abroad by any pretext ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... disquiet. Here was the struggle of the natural human impulse against the constraint of ascetic vows; the irresistible yielding to nature and to the call of a passion interwoven with the very fibres of humanity. The sombre Boston parlor vanished, and he seemed to be in some old-world nunnery with the unknown lovers. He felt all their guilty bliss and their scalding remorse. He sighed so deeply that the soft laugh behind him seemed almost an echo. Turning quickly, he found Berenice watching him with a ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... that we may not travel well together: at this station let us stop, freely forgiving each other for mutual misliking; to your books, to your business, to your fowling, to your feasting, to your mummery, to your nunnery—go: my track lays away from the highroad, in and out between yonder hills, among thickets, mossy rocks, green hollows, high fern, and the tangled hair of hiding river-gods; I meet not pedlers and bagsmen, but stumble upon ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... husband were honoured as founders of the Benedictine monastery at Coventry, which rose upon the ruins of an earlier house of Benedictine nuns founded by Osburg, a lady of the royal house, nearly two hundred years before. This nunnery had been destroyed in the Danish wars about the year 1016. Consequently, if any legend, or ceremony, was known or practised at Coventry in connection with some traditional patroness, the name of Godgifu was ready to hand to be ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... the scene of this ancient drama acted by the clerks of London, but some traces of the association of the fraternity with the neighbourhood can still be found. The two famous conventual houses, for which Clerkenwell was famous, the nunnery of St. Mary and the priory of St. John of Jerusalem, founded in 1100, have long since disappeared. Clerks' Close is mentioned in numerous documents, and formed part of the estate belonging to the Skinners' Company, where Skinner Street now runs. Clerks' Well was close to the modern ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... the country which had formerly been granted by the king's predecessors;" and, being firmly established in the monastery, he turned his attention to the improvement of the town. He founded a hospital for the sick in Spitalfield; built St. Martin's church and St. Michael's nunnery, at Stamford—besides settling a yearly sum upon the church of St. John Baptist,[7] Peterburgh—covering the monastery with lead, and founding the chapel ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips

... be a chance of repudiating it as a forgery. Also he instructed his agents at Rome to persuade the Pope to give him a dispensation for re-marriage, without a divorce, if Katharine retired into a nunnery; [Footnote: L. & P., iv., 2157, 2161. Brewer, ii., 312, 313, and note. Such a marriage was admissible according to some of the Lutherans.] or even for an openly bigamous union. Moreover about the same time, Henry openly ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... said I, "means the head of the wood. I suppose that in the old time the mountain looked over some extensive forest, even as the nunnery of Pengwern looked originally over an alder-swamp, for Pengwern means ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... the cheerful residence of elegant sufficiency, in which I was to sing to my De Vallance? Eustace only speaks of his own adventures. Oh, this merchant's daughter of St. Helier; I wish she had been locked up in a nunnery. Doubtless, she is young and beautiful; but prosperity is a becoming ornament. I will take courage, and ask ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... was of Castile, his Dam from Aragon) Then, for accomplishments of chivalry, In case our Lord the King should go to war again, He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery, And how to scale a fortress—or a nunnery. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... a nunnery,' the King said; 'for before three months are out we will have many nunneries ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... illustrated by the literary history of Lenglet du Fresnoy. He opened his career by addressing a letter and a tract to the Sorbonne, on the extraordinary affair of Maria d'Agreda, abbess of the nunnery of the Immaculate Conception in Spain, whose mystical Life of the Virgin, published on the decease of the abbess, and which was received with such rapture in Spain, had just appeared at Paris, where it excited ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... in itself no loss to Anne. Her experience of the nunnery at Boulogne, where had been spent three days in expectation of the King, had not been pleasant. The nuns had shrunk from her as a heretic, and kept their novices and pensionnaires from the taint of communication with her; and all the honour she might have deserved ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... occasioned by orders given to Mr. Grimes to go on with the building instantly, unless he intended to withdraw from the job. "I don't think, Grimes, that I can call a place of Christian worship a nuisance," said the Vicar. To this Grimes rejoined that he had known a nunnery bell to be stopped because it was a nuisance, and that he didn't see why a Methodist chapel bell was not as bad as a nunnery bell. Fenwick had declared that he would fight if he could find a leg to stand upon, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... beauty. To-night—gazing at her face, reflected, intent and mournful, in the mirror—she saw that position more clearly, in all its aridity, than she had ever seen it. What was the use of being pretty? No longer use to anyone! Not yet twenty-six, and in a nunnery! With a shiver, but not of cold, she drew her wrapper close. This time last year she had at least been in the main current of life, not a mere derelict. And yet—better far be like this than go back to him whom memory painted ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... at sojournyng In a nunnery here besyde; My two sonnes shall wyth her go, And there they ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick

... 13 churches, chapels, hospitals, convents, beside one nunnery, namely the ecclesia major or cathedral, the Jesuits' college, which are the chief, and both in sight from the harbour: St. Antonio, St. Barbara, both parish churches; the Franciscans' church, and the Dominicans'; and 2 convents of Carmelites; a chapel for seamen ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier

... for one galleon, which miraculously escaped, richly laden with all the king's plate, jewels, and other precious goods of the best and richest merchants of Panama: on board which were also the religious women of the nunnery, who had embarked with them all the ornaments of their church, consisting in much gold, plate, and other things ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... pretty Character! a Woman of my Beauty, and five Thousand Pound, marry a Merchant—a little, petty, dirty-heel'd Merchant; faugh, I'd rather live a Maid all the days of my life, or be sent to a Nunnery, and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... then black, and the Lion lay dying. He made his will, a generous and charitable one, confessed his sins, was houselled and anhealed, and died on Passion Tuesday, April 6th. His brain and bowels were buried at Charroux, his heart at Rouen, and his body at his father's feet, in penitence, in the nunnery of Fontevrault. Hugh was on his way to the Cathedral at Angers to take duty the next day, Palm Sunday, when Gilbert de Lacy, a clerk, rode up to him and told him of the king's death and of the funeral next day in Fontevrault. Hugh groaned deeply and announced at Angers that he should set ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... protects them a little. It is not as in the old days of heathen against Christian. There is this to be said for Cnut, that he will have no monastery or nunnery harried if his ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... angels in roundels with scrolls. The caps have the same kind of foliage as is seen at Curzoia and Sebenico. The Austrian-Lloyd office is on the ground floor of a tower of the Venetian period, now a nunnery. It has a trefoiled ogee-window and a great balcony above it, with trellises behind which the nuns can take the air without being seen, recalling those of Sicilian nunneries. All ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... and picture for ourselves their home. Chixon, Chikesonds, or Chicksands Priory, Bedfordshire, as it now stands,—what a pleasing various art was spelling in olden time,—was, in the reign of Edward III., a nunnery, situated then, as now, on a slight eminence, with gently rising hills at a short distance behind, and a brook running to join the river Ivel, thence the German Ocean, along the valley in front of the house. The neighbouring scenery of Bedfordshire ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... had dawned, Morgan le Fay arose and, taking her horse, departed unattended from Camelot. All that day and most of the night she rode fast, and ere noon the next day, she was come to a nunnery where, as she knew, King Arthur lay. Entering into the house, she made herself known to the nuns, who received her courteously and gave her of their best to eat and to drink. When she was refreshed, ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay

... confessor who occupied an arm-chair in the church would have somewhat of novelty to enliven what some priests have stated to be the most wearisome of the work, namely, the hearing of confessions in a nunnery. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... to his people. The wine made in England was sweetened with honey, and probably flavoured and coloured with blackberries.[328] At the dissolution of the monasteries there was a vineyard at Barking Nunnery. 'We might have a reasonable good wine growing in many places of this realme', says Barnaby Googe, about 1577, 'as doubtless we had immediately after the Conquest, tyll, partly by slothfulnesse, partly by civil ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... syde of the toune to garde and defend, who on some onset behaving themselfes gallantly the Captain got that great plot of ground which goes now under that name gifted him by the toune, who after mortified to a nunnery neir hand, who at present are in possession of it. The church we fand to smell ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... I don't mind dropping in as I come home, to tell you about it. One of them Catholic Nunnery schools, I expect, which it's sudden death to a man but to set ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... accomplish the thirty miles that lay between; so utterly is that unearthly strength, before which lance-shafts were as reeds, and iron bars as silken threads (remember the May night in Meliagraunce's castle), enfeebled and broken down. He stands in the nunnery-church at Almesbury; he hears from the queen's maidens of the prayer that was ever on her lips through those two days when she lay a dying, how "she besought God that she might never have power to see Sir Launcelot with her worldly eyes." Then, says the chronicler, "he saw her visage; ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... of her, and the bad Queen Eleanor was certainly made jealous. But I am afraid—I say afraid, because I like the story so much—that there was no bower, no labyrinth, no silken clue, no dagger, no poison. I am afraid fair Rosamond retired to a nunnery near Oxford, and died there, peaceably; her sister-nuns hanging a silken drapery over her tomb, and often dressing it with flowers, in remembrance of the youth and beauty that had enchanted the King when he too was young, and when his ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... within herself again, 'Will the child kill me with her foolish prate?' But openly she spake and said to her, 'O little maid, shut in by nunnery walls, What canst thou know of Kings and Tables Round, Or what of signs and wonders, but the signs And ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... the Danube, at the sky, and at the sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep! How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter the waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the faraway blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in the mist of their summits... There was peace and happiness... "I should wish for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there," thought Rostov. "In myself alone and in that sunshine there is so much happiness; but here... groans, suffering, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... thine own Ophelia, Come back to earth with heaviness o' grief Thy madness ne'er begot, for I have seen The efforts of a lisping, smirking maid, As graceful as a bean-pole, and as lean. Attempt to paint the sorrow of my heart. Oh, I would get me to a nunnery. ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall

... dissector has, to my knowledge, affirmed that Hamlet's advice to Ophelia, "Get thee to a nunnery," and his assertion, "I have heard of your paintings, too," prove that Ophelia was an artist and a nunnery a favorable place in which to set up a studio. Yet I think I could make this assumption as convincing as many that have been "proved" by the post obitum atomizers of the great ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... reared in a manner as near to that of the nunnery as tribal conditions would permit, it was with a great and maidenly anxiety that she peeped out at the man who had surely come for her, at the husband who was to teach her all that was yet unlearned of life, at the masterful being whose word was to be her law, and who was to mete and bound her ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... should be doing their greater work of reproducing a race. Even an open-air cell seems to me out of place in our century. It will be entirely out of fashion in time, doubtless, as the mediaeval cell has gone along with the old castle life, whose princely mode of doing things made a nunnery the only respectable hiding-place for the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... awful happenings he had witnessed from the buffoon who had hidden under the table, to dispose their plans for the future (for Ottavio and Anna, marriage in a year; for Masetto and Zerlina, a wedding instanter; for Elvira, a nunnery), and platitudinously to moralize that, the perfidious wretch having been carried to the realm of Pluto and Proserpine, naught remained to do save to sing the old song, "Thus do the wicked find their end, dying ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... took place, and four figures in dark coats stole down the stairs. Though the building of the College might be absolutely modern, the garden was a relic of mediaeval days. It had formerly belonged to the nunnery of St. Mary's, and had adjoined the Abbey. Parts of the crumbling old wall were still left, and a flagged path led from a sun-dial to some ruins. In the day-time it was a cheerful place, and a blaze of color. The girls had never before ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... burn them,' she says. 'No, wait, I'll tear them to bits now myself and put them in the stove here.' And then she started pulling them to pieces, taking ever so many pages at a time and throwing them in the stove. 'Don't be so excited, Lovise,' said the Captain. 'The Nunnery,' she said—that was one of the books. 'But I can't go into a nunnery. There's nothing I can do. When I laugh, you think I'm laughing,' she said to the Captain, 'but I'm miserable all the time and ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... irresponsibility. But Henry was determined to have such a sentence as would preclude all doubts of the legitimacy of his children by the second marriage, and was as anxious to shift the responsibility to Clement's shoulders as the Pope was to avoid it. Clement next urged Catherine to go into a nunnery, for that would only entail injustice on herself, and would involve the Church and its head in no temporal perils.[594] When Catherine (p. 214) refused, he wished her in the grave, and lamented that he seemed doomed through her to lose the spiritualties of his Church, as he had lost its temporalties ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... difficulty dragged himself in to Ravensburg. For three months he lay ill, and death came very close. As its unearthly glow irradiated the world around him, reversing its light and shade, the visions of the nunnery recurred. He vowed that if his life were still his to give, it should be given to God's service; and on recovering ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... that contain prayers, passages from the Bible, and images of the Star of David, http://www.visionartonline.com, which was blocked in Websense's "Sex" category; and the home page of Tenzin Palmo, a Buddhist nun, which contained a description of her project to build a Buddhist nunnery and international retreat center for women, http://www.tenzinpalmo.com, which was categorized as ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

... have known * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * What they say of the example, so holy, so pure, That Ninon gives to worldlings all, By dwelling within a nunnery's wall. How many tears the poor lorn maid Shed, when her mother, alone, unafraid, Mid flaming tapers with coats of arms, Priests chanting their sad funereal alarms, Went down to the tomb in her winding sheet To serve for the ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... has done me the favour of allowing me to build a nunnery for ladies here at the foot of Monte Cavallo, by the broken portico, where it is said that Nero saw Rome burning, so that the wicked footprints of such a man may be trodden out by others more honest of ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... humble blooms; with the low paling fence that separated it from the adjoining house-yards it looked like a toy-garden or the background of a puppet-show, and in its way it was as quaintly unreal to the young girl as the nunnery itself. ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... retribution were beginning already; I began crying and trembling with terror. I felt as though the ceiling would fall upon me, that I should be dragged off to the police-station at once, that you would grow cold to me—all sorts of things, in fact! I thought I would go into a nunnery or become a nurse, and give up all thought of happiness, but then I remembered that you loved me, and that I had no right to dispose of myself without your knowledge; and everything in my mind was in a tangle—I was in despair ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... and while he abides here, I will never consent to leave his feet. When he goes hence, if it be to bless mankind again, I shall find the longest life too short to pour forth all my gratitude; and for that purpose I will dedicate myself in some nunnery of my native land. But should he be taken from a world so unworthy of him, soon, very soon, I shall cease to feel its aspersions in ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... and her husband were honoured as founders of the Benedictine monastery at Coventry, which rose upon the ruins of an earlier house of Benedictine nuns founded by Osburg, a lady of the royal house, nearly two hundred years before. This nunnery had been destroyed in the Danish wars about the year 1016. Consequently, if any legend, or ceremony, was known or practised at Coventry in connection with some traditional patroness, the name of Godgifu was ready to hand to be identified with it. Through the monastery Coventry first rose ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... Grushenka. "Give him a present, he's poor, you know. Ah, the poor, the insulted!... Do you know, Mitya, I shall go into a nunnery. No, I really shall one day, Alyosha said something to me to-day that I shall remember all my life.... Yes.... But to-day let us dance. To-morrow to the nunnery, but to-day we'll dance. I want to play ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Episcopalian, one Roman Catholic, one Methodist mission, one Congregational mission, one nunnery school, Sisters of St. Ann's, one private educational institute (by the author) for both sexes, ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... the declaration of independence, and enjoy their freedom with republican zest, but the young matrons usually abdicate with the first heir to the throne and go into a seclusion almost as close as a French nunnery, though by no means as quiet. Whether they like it or not, they are virtually put upon the shelf as soon as the wedding excitement is over, and most of them might exclaim, as did a very pretty woman the other ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... young women, of ages varying in the main from nineteen to one-and-twenty, though several were older, who at this date filled the species of nunnery known as the Training-School at Melchester, formed a very mixed community, which included the daughters of mechanics, curates, surgeons, shopkeepers, farmers, dairy-men, soldiers, sailors, and villagers. They sat in the large school-room of the establishment on the evening ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... gentlemen children and others both of man kind and woman kind, be brought up in virtue, learning and in the English tongue and behaviour, to the great charge of the said houses; that is to say, the woman kind of the whole Englishry of this land, for the more part, in the said nunnery, and the man kind in the other said houses."[35] This petition received but scant consideration, and no wonder; because, although the Archbishop of Dublin had agreed to it, he wrote on the same day to ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... appeared. He found a suitable tool in Gabriel de Spinosa, a native of Toledo. This man resembled Sebastian, was naturally bold and unscrupulous, and was easily persuaded to undertake the task of personating the missing monarch. The monk, Dos Santos, who was confessor to the nunnery of Madrigal, introduced this person to one of the nuns, Donna Anna of Austria, a niece of King Philip, and informed her that he was the unfortunate King of Portugal. The lady, believing her father-confessor, loaded the pretender with valuable gifts; presented ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... necessary expenses. It was too late that night to go out with the child, so I prepared some food for its nourishment and kept it till the next day, resolved to go after dusk and see the Lady Superior at one of the nunneries, but to my chagrin I discovered that the nunnery was closed, and I was obliged to return home with the babe, which, by-the-by, continued to roar lustily all the way, and so attracted public attention to me (its presumptive mother) that I wept as bitterly as the child itself, and was heartily sorry ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer

... civic buildings (guildhalls); fortifications (castle, city walls, bars); religious buildings (Minster; St. William's College; St. Mary's Abbey; Friaries; St. Clement's Nunnery; ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson

... to lend her tongue to the language—or something like it—of a besotted fish-wife; so! very well, and just as it is the case with that particular old Hock you youngsters would disapprove of, and we cunning oldsters know to contain more virtues in maturity than a nunnery of May-blooming virgins, just so the very faults of a royal lady-royal by birth and in temper a termagant—impart a perfume! a flavour! You must age; you must live in Courts, you must sound the human bosom, rightly to appreciate ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... certain. Its ruins are situated on a high rocky point; and, doubtless, many a vow was made to the shrine by the distressed mariners, who drove towards the iron-bound coast of Northumberland in stormy weather. It was anciently a nunnery; for Virca, abbess of Tynemouth, presented St. Cuthbert (yet alive) with a rare winding- sheet, in emulation of a holy lady called Tuda, who had sent him a coffin: but, as in the case of Whitby, and of Holy Island, the introduction of nuns at Tynemouth, in the reign of Henry VIII, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... convent—and no one could prevent her taking possession of the child; but she feared lest an overwhelming natural affection might drag her back to the carnal world, which she had for ever renounced, so she would have Mary brought up in a neighboring nunnery, and led to Heavenly joys, not to earthly misery—to be the wife of no sinful husband, but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... old to perform the office of a bailiff, and had retired to the parent abbey. The brothers therefore renounced their first scheme of taking Silkstede in their way, and made for Romsey. There, under the shadow of the magnificent nunnery, they dined pleasantly by the waterside at the sign of Bishop Blaise, patron of the woolcombers of the town, and halted long enough to refresh Ambrose, who was equal to very little fatigue. It amused Stephen to recollect how mighty a place he had once thought ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... is an island in Lochlomond, where the clan of MacGregor were wont to be interred, and where their sepulchres may still be seen. It formerly contained a nunnery: hence the name of Inch-Cailleach, or the island of ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... at a short distance from Torquemada, she ordered the corpse to be carried into the court-yard of a convent, occupied, as she supposed, by monks. She was filled with horror, however, on finding it a nunnery, and immediately commanded the body to be removed into the open fields. Here she encamped with her whole party at dead of night; not, however, until she had caused the coffins to be unsealed, that she might satisfy herself of the safety of her husband's relics; although it was very difficult ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... of a controversial character; the author was a stout Huguenot, fond of denouncing the Pope; oftentimes alarmed at plots against himself on account of his religion, and now publishing a letter of remonstrance to his three daughters who, in opposition to his will, had entered a nunnery in Paris. Other works relate to architecture and fortifications, the languages, arts, and noble exercises taught in his Academy, or contain advice to travellers, or deal with political affairs. Mr. Pepys records in his diary, under date the 28th May ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... he go to the devil and learn sense, and added that if the famous magic steed, or ring of invisibility were to be found in the desert regions of these Indian provinces, he would use them for a peep into the palace of the Viceroy, or the nunnery of the Dona of the Lily. No ambassador would he trust. For himself he would see how much or how little of madness was back of the message of the blossom, or the guerdon of the ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan

... journey which the Queen had undertaken under a vow for the recovery of her husband's health, and which she had been encouraged to carry into effect by the Archbishop of Tyre for a political purpose. It was then, and in the chapel at that holy place, connected from above with a Carmelite nunnery, from beneath with the cell of the anchorite, that one of the Queen's attendants remarked that secret sign of intelligence which Edith had made to her lover, and failed not instantly to communicate it to her Majesty. The Queen returned from her pilgrimage ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... old, from the limb! The catbird croons in the lilac bush! 25 Through the dim arbor, himself more dim, Silently hops the hermit-thrush, The withered leaves keep dumb for him; The irreverent buccaneering bee Hath stormed and rifled the nunnery 30 Of the lily, and scattered the sacred floor With haste-dropt gold from shrine to door; There, as of yore, The rich, milk-tingeing buttercup Its tiny polished urn holds up, 35 Filled with ripe summer to the edge, The sun in his own wine to pledge; And our tall elm, this hundredth ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... recluse, bird of the cloister, Margot of the Nunnery, sable-frocked Abbess, Church fowl of the lustrous coat, ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France

... I said, "that I have the effrontery to go to that nunnery—for it is no more nor less than that—and ask the Lady Abbess to lend me one of her nuns to write at my dictation, you ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton

... thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... miracles.—(Hist. lib. xiv. p. 41.) The Chapel dedicated to our Lady of Loretto, (sometimes called Alareit,) stood beyond the eastern gate of Musselburgh, near the Links; and the name for the locality is still retained. It was connected with the Nunnery of the Sciennes, and became one of the most noted shrines in Scotland, during the reign of James the Fifth. Lesley says, that the King, previously to his marriage, having sailed for France, (24th July 1536,) the vessel in which he had embarked, after sailing by the north of Scotland, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... favored city of Romanism. Tell me why these learned professors do not teach their own people? Florry, papal institutions in America are but branches of the Propaganda. They but come to proselyte. I have heard it repeatedly averred of a certain nunnery, 'that no efforts were made to affect the religious views of the pupils.' Yet I know that such is not the case. They are far too politic openly to attack the religion; yet secretly it is undermined. I will ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... nobles of every rank, from the Prince who is the heir of the last of the Shoguns down to democratic Barons who prefer to be called "Mr.", I chatted with farmers' wives and daughters, I interrogated landladies and mill girls, and I paid a memorable visit to a Buddhist nunnery. I walked, talked, rode, ate and bathed with common folk and with dignitaries. I discussed the situation of Japan with the new countryman in college agricultural laboratories and classrooms, and, in a remote region, beheld what is ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... known as "the Nunnery," or Abbots Salford), not far from Evesham, is another mansion remarkable for its picturesqueness as well as for its capacity for hiding. It not only has its Roman Catholic chapel, but a resident priest holds services there to this day. Up in the garret is the "priest's hole," ready, it would ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea

... fishermen took the eldest Antipholis and Dromio away from her, she entered a nunnery, and by her wise and virtuous conduct she was at length made lady abbess of this convent, and in discharging the rites of hospitality to an unhappy stranger she had ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... there was a little Incident in Life, which gave me great Diversion. The Earl, who had always maintain'd a good Correspondence with the fair Sex, hearing from one of the Priests of the Place, That on the Alarm of burning the Town, one of the finest Ladies in all Spain had taken Refuge in the Nunnery, was desirous ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe

... been ordered to marry the Duc de Carolan on the 15th. Unless she consents, she is on the 14th to be sent to the nunnery of Saint Marie, the strictest in France, where they will somehow or other wring consent from her before many weeks are over. They have done so in scores of cases like hers. I promised to tell you, and I have done so. But I don't see that ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... sound argument for the celibacy of the clergy); the old Colonel and his sweet unselfish wife, with affection; and Sylvia, John's betrothed, with a strange passion, defend the old faith, Sylvia to the point of breaking with her lover and getting her to a nunnery—a business which will in the end, I should guess, lay a heavier burden upon the nuns than upon John. The indecisive battle sways hither and thither. It is the Doctor who sums up in a compromise which would shock the metaphysical theologian, but may suffice for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various

... is a little case containing a curiously fashioned and exquisitely worked ring, and a large gold cross and chain, that I found while searching among the ruins of the nunnery at Louisburg. I have no doubt they belonged to the superior of the convent. These baubles answered her purpose by withdrawing the eyes of the profane from her care-worn and cold features; they will serve mine also, by showing how little you require the aid of art ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... you been secretly converted to the Church of Rome, and are you going into a nunnery? ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard

... innocence, you say, you will not, upon any account, hazard. But would you consent that your daughter should, by universal acclamation, be proclaimed the most accomplished woman in Europe, upon the simple condition, that she should pass her days in a nunnery?" ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... stained glass to a former vicar (d. 1858); to General Miles (d. 1860), and, in the tower, to one Robert Archer, for thirty-six years parish clerk. N. from the main street, near the river Lea, stood a small Benedictine nunnery. It originally belonged to the Canons of Cathele, but Henry III. turned them out and gave the property and rights to the "Prioress and Nuns of Cesthont". The college, a famous institution, stands near the church; it was founded in 1768 by ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins

... though the retribution were beginning already; I began crying and trembling with terror. I felt as though the ceiling would fall upon me, that I should be dragged off to the police-station at once, that you would grow cold to me—all sorts of things, in fact! I thought I would go into a nunnery or become a nurse, and give up all thought of happiness, but then I remembered that you loved me, and that I had no right to dispose of myself without your knowledge; and everything in my mind was in a tangle—I was in despair and did not know what to do or think. But the sun rose and ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... the line turned my way inquiringly. He did not have to wait long for what was to come, nor did I. Another gate farther along in the nunnery wall opened and out came six more soldiers, bearing another of these narrow-shouldered coffins, and accompanied by a couple of nurses, an officer and an assistant surgeon. At sight of them the soldiers brought ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... risen, the sunshine of pardon breaks through the clouds. If only it were all over! Such excitement is infectious! (To IDA.) You see you do not yet have to think of entering a nunnery. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... advance. Near and parallel to Offa's is the shorter and mysterious Watt's dike. Chirk is the only Denbighshire castle comparatively untouched by time and still occupied. Ruthin has cloisters; Wrexham, the Brynffynnon "nunnery"; and at both are collegiate churches. Llanrwst, Gresford and Derwen boast rood lofts and screens; Whitchurch and Llanrwst, portrait brasses and monuments; Derwen, a churchyard cross; Gresford and Llanrhaiadr (Dyffryn Clwyd), stained glass. Near ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... at last. "The Countess, to her aunt in a nunnery and relating to wool knitting. See, is this the sort ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... said scornfully to Katharine, 'it were better thou hadst never been born than have meddled between kings and ministers and faiths and nuns. You are not made for this world. You talk too much. Get you across the seas to a nunnery.' ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... But I must say to the Muse of fiction, as the Earl of Pembroke said to the ejected nuns of Wilton, "Go spin, you jades, go spin!" Perhaps she has no tow on her rock.[160] When I was at Kilkenny last year we went to see a nunnery, but could not converse with the sisters because they were in strict retreat. I was delighted with the red-nosed Padre, who showed us the place with a sort of proud, unctuous humiliation, and apparent dereliction of the world, that had to me the air of a ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... not, (sweet,) I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind To war ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... Perilous. At last, one vigil of the great feast, a lady came to Arthur's court at Camelot and asked Sir Launcelot to ride with her into the forest hard by, for a purpose not then to be revealed. Launcelot consenting, they rode together until they came to a nunnery hidden deep in the forest; and there the lady bade Launcelot dismount, and led him into a great and stately room. Presently there entered twelve nuns, and with them a youth, the fairest that Launcelot had ever seen. "Sir," said the nuns, "we have brought ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... ring the lady-bells Of the nunnery by the Fosse:— Say the hinds their silver music swells 'Like the blessed angels' syllables, At His ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... sweet, I am unkind,— That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind To war and ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... the boundary with Norfolk. Of the two parish churches that of St Mary has a fine Perpendicular tower, and that of Holy Trinity a round tower of which the lower part is Norman. St Mary's was attached to a Benedictine nunnery founded in 1160. The ruins of the castle date from 1281. They are fragmentary though massive; and there are traces of earth-works of much earlier date. The castle was a stronghold of the powerful family of Bigod, being granted to Roger Bigod, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... which was finished by him with unremitting diligence, and therefore held to be a very beautiful painting. Not long after this, he undertook to execute for the men of the Company of S. Maria della Neve, situated behind the Nunnery of S. Ambrogio, a little panel with three figures—Our Lady, S. John the Baptist, and S. Ambrogio; which work, when finished, was placed in due time on ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... with a class of persons devoted to the service of a god, as vestals or hierodules. The vestals were vowed to chastity, lived together in a great nunnery, were forbidden to open or enter a tavern, and together with other votaries ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... by Signor Jouanny. On his arrival he falls in love with Jouanny's daughter, Lucretia, runs away with her, and secretly marries her. Galeas' mother, angered at the match, practises to convey Lucretia to a nunnery and get her son married to an earl's daughter; but Galeas defeats his mother's machinations by killing himself and Lucretia. There is a second plot to this odd play, but enough has been said. The meeting between Galeas and Jouanny is the ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... all over Europe, and found that she was really more appreciated than her sisters. The castle, the abbey, the inn, the lone ale-house on the Berkshire moors, all made her welcome. Finally she settled in Ireland, where, according to a protestant libel, she took the black veil in a nunnery. ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... invalidate his proposed marriage with the duchess. Having established her right, she takes the only step that can with certainty free both herself and Bertoldo from the bond they had created, by retiring into a nunnery. ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... in two days, he and the faithful seven accomplish the thirty miles that lay between; so utterly is that unearthly strength, before which lance-shafts were as reeds, and iron bars as silken threads (remember the May night in Meliagraunce's castle), enfeebled and broken down. He stands in the nunnery-church at Almesbury; he hears from the queen's maidens of the prayer that was ever on her lips through those two days when she lay a dying, how "she besought God that she might never have power to see Sir Launcelot ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... beside me; I from whom the Moorish pirates tore her, on the beach beside Tetuan; I who, centuries after, drew those obscene figures on the wall of your church—the devil, the nun, and the barred convent—when Julia, another Julia but the same soul, was denied to me and forced into a nunnery. For the frescoes, too, tell my history. I was that figure in the dark habit, standing a little back from the cross. Tell me, sir, did you never hear of ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... Minster. Although nothing now exists except the church, a few broken walls, and a modernised house, formed out of one of the principal entrances to what was once an extensive range of monastic buildings; yet at the time of which we treat, the ruins of the nunnery, founded by Sexburga, the widow of Ercombert, King of Kent, extended down the rising ground, presenting many picturesque points of view from the small but highly-cultivated pleasure grounds of Cecil Place. Nothing could be more beautiful than the prospect from a rude terrace ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... they returned, by the underground way, a passage over a mile in length, leading from the Nunnery of the White Ladies at Whytstone in Claines, to the Church of St. Mary and St. Peter, the noble Cathedral within the walls ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... with royal blood, the very least disaster being poor Lady Mary Grey's! Kept in ward for life! It is a cruel matter. I would that I had known the cipher at first. Then she might either have been disposed of at the Queen's will, or have been sent safe to this nunnery at Soissons." ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Make a nunnery out of me if you must; clutch at me for sanctuary, if you want to; I'll stand for it! But if you'll listen to me you'll give up romantic martyrdom and sackcloth, put on your best frock, smile on Hamil, and go and ask your mother for a bright, shiny, ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... O'Connor, fooling with a nunnery either here or in Spain. The Portuguese are not so bigoted as the Spaniards across the frontier, but there is not much difference, and if anyone is caught meddling with a nunnery they would tear him to pieces, especially in Oporto, ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty

... is a friar of a neighbouring convent is my friend; you have already been diverted by the manners of a nunnery; let us see whether there is less hypocrisy among the ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... the religious Orders. So insistent did the problem become to his mind that he found himself continually leading the conversation round to it from one side or another. Mary O'Dwyer told him that she also had a sister in a nunnery. ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... Ambitious, with more offences at my becke, then I haue thoughts to put them in imagination, to giue them shape, or time to acte them in. What should such Fellowes as I do, crawling betweene Heauen and Earth. We are arrant Knaues all, beleeue none of vs. Goe thy wayes to a Nunnery. Where's your Father? Ophe. At ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... when that they had supp-ed well, Certain withouten lease, Cloudeslie said: "We will to our King, To get us a charter of peace; Al-ice shall be at our sojourning, In a nunnery here beside, And my two sons shall with her go, And ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various

... of association of ideas in the same matter. One Sunday night I left Noumea in the carriage of Dr. F...... who was going to visit a nunnery five leagues from there. At the moment of our arrival the doctor asked what time it was. 'Half-past two,' I said, looking at my watch. As we stopped in the convent court in front of the chapel I heard the lusty conclusion ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... were—almost too happy—though as pure and guiltless as if they had been hours spent within a nunnery of the strictest rule, and in the presence of a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... 'Just a nunnery, then—no more nor less than that. The "Sacred Heart" at Namur, or the Sisters of Mercy here at home in Bagot Street, I believe, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... Government. Priors Akefield and Drax are historical, and as the latter really did commission a body of moss- troopers to divert an instalment of King James's ransom into his own private coffers, I do not think I can have done him much injustice. As the nunnery of St. Abbs has gone bodily into the sea, I have been the less constrained by the inconvenient action of fact upon fiction. And for the Hospital of St. Katharine's-by-the-Tower, its history is to be found in Stowe's ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... fighting of champions, moving of cattle, flying of birds, and swimming of fish, which were so artfully represented, as if they had been alive. She died 23rd Henry II. anno 1176, by poison (as was suspected) given her by Queen Eleanor, and was buried in the Chapter-house of the Nunnery of Godstow." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various

... Lancelot fled to his castle in the north, where the King in vain besieged him. Meanwhile Modred had stirred up a revolt, and leaguing himself with the Saxon invaders, had usurped Arthur's throne. On his march southward to resist his nephew, Arthur halts at the nunnery of Almesbury, and in the Guinevere idyll the moving story of their last farewell is told. Then the King advanced to meet Modred. The description of that "last weird battle in the west" is given in The Passing of Arthur, and leads up to the impressive line with ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... upper park of Windsor, and sold some part to his people. The wine made in England was sweetened with honey, and probably flavoured and coloured with blackberries.[328] At the dissolution of the monasteries there was a vineyard at Barking Nunnery. 'We might have a reasonable good wine growing in many places of this realme', says Barnaby Googe, about 1577, 'as doubtless we had immediately after the Conquest, tyll, partly by slothfulnesse, partly by civil discord long continued, ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... see it on any child's face fresh out of the convent; it does not last a month!' was the still displeased, rather jealous answer. 'That little thing—I believe they call her Nid-de-Merle—she has only just been brought from her nunnery to wait on the young Queen. Ah! your gaze was perilous, it is bringing on you one of the jests ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the middle of a flat country, and as we approached it the great wall of the cathedral rose above dirty and broken cottages, and great masses of masonry extended from the cathedral into the town; and these were the nunnery, its schools and laundry; altogether they seemed like one ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... But I don't mind dropping in as I come home, to tell you about it. One of them Catholic Nunnery schools, I expect, which it's sudden death to a man but to set his ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... so practical men or physicians. The physician Wyer tells some plain stories to show what did come of it from the sixteenth century onwards. In his Fourth Book he quotes a number of nuns who went mad for love. And in Book III. he talks of an estimable Spanish priest who, going by chance into a nunnery, came out mad, declaring that the brides of Jesus were his also, brides of the priest, who was a vicar of Jesus. He had masses said in return for the favour which God had granted him in this speedy ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... he may be said to have endured his life rather than to have lived it. His father assassinated by night in the Rue Barbette in Paris by order of Duke John; his mother a perennial fount of tears, dying of anger and of grief in a Franciscan nunnery; the two S's, standing for Soupirs (sighs) and Souci (care), the emblems and devices of her mourning, revealing her ingenious mind fancifully elegant even in despair; the Armagnacs, the Burgundians, the Cabochiens, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... by the plague, and with difficulty dragged himself in to Ravensburg. For three months he lay ill, and death came very close. As its unearthly glow irradiated the world around him, reversing its light and shade, the visions of the nunnery recurred. He vowed that if his life were still his to give, it should be given to God's service; and on recovering he ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... doleful meal, while the faded Cristine sat like a sphinx staring into vacancy. I spoke of England and of her friends, of Paris and Versailles, of Avignon where she had spent some years, and of the amenities of Florence, which she considered her home. But it was like talking to a nunnery door. I got nothing but "It is indeed true, sir," or "Do you say so, sir!" till my energy began to sink. Madame perceived my discomfort, and, as she rose, murmured an apology. "Pray forgive my distraction, but I am poor company when my father is ill. I ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... villains; and he was told that Monsieur Cournal had engaged them. To the question what was to be done with Madame Cournal, another answered that she was to be waylaid as she was coming from the Intendance, kidnapped, and hurried to a nunnery ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... thanks; Major B—— has just given me a new writing block. A cake and mincepies are, however, always most welcome. How greedy one does become after a time! Such a horrid blustery day, and heavy rain coming down this morning. We had Holy Communion at 8 a.m. in a ruined nunnery with our Cowley Father officiating. Only 3 turned up from the whole Battalion. Our General has had to go away this morning into hospital with fever. Mr. Laing, whom your cousin M—— D—— asked about, is now in bed with the same ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie

... Vesta—'Sancta Maria, libera nos a poenis inferni'—Montfanon always added when he spoke of it, and he pointed out the Arch of Titus, which tells of the fulfilment of the prophecies of Our Lord against Jerusalem, while, opposite, the groves reveal the out lines of a nunnery upon the ruins of the dwellings of the Caesars. And, at the extreme end, the Coliseum recalls to mind the ninety thousand spectators come to see ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... can I,' returned the Countess. 'There is such a choice! Suicide, gambling, a nunnery, a volume of memoirs, or politics - the ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... outbursts can be traced even in these books. When an officer finds the Sisters of a nunnery in want, his ready help is accompanied by the words: "This little kindness is the act of German barbarians, who refuse all thanks. As long as we are here, each barbarian soldier will give up a little, so that you may have their savings every three days, and ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... Phyllis matter-of-factly. "In fact, Clarence remarked the last time I saw him that you had the most unusual kind of charm he had ever seen. He said you were like a sorceress brought up in a nunnery. While I think of it, Joy dear, Clarence and Gail are two of the most confirmed head-hunters I know. They ought to marry each other and keep it in the family, but they won't. I'm not worried about anything Gail can do, but do please keep your fingers crossed when ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer

... appears to have belonged to a palace of the Cippico, with two contemplative lions and half-length angels in roundels with scrolls. The caps have the same kind of foliage as is seen at Curzoia and Sebenico. The Austrian-Lloyd office is on the ground floor of a tower of the Venetian period, now a nunnery. It has a trefoiled ogee-window and a great balcony above it, with trellises behind which the nuns can take the air without being seen, recalling those of Sicilian nunneries. All the ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... lost all hopes of ever returning to that capital, advised his wife to retire with his daughter into a nunnery, and to send Torquato to Rome. Our young poet suffered much in parting from his mother and sister; but, fulfilling the command of his parents, he joined his father in October, 1554. On this occasion he composed a canzone, in which he compared himself to Ascanius escaping from Troy ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... am sure. We have never liked one another. But I have something on my conscience, and I may not have another opportunity of speaking to you. I don't suppose you have heard that very shortly I intend to enter a nunnery at Roehampton." ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... of a venerable abbess, who threw the light of Christian goodness over that benighted land about a century ago, and must have impressed the heathens in the neighbourhood with an exalted notion of the virtues of a nunnery:— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... the nunnery gate, As the darkness fell over the village, Would a swart savage crouch and await, With the patience of devilish hate, A chance to kill ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir

... best she might. The quarrel to her had been as the disruption of the heavens. She had declared to herself that she would bear it; but the misfortune to be borne was a broken world falling about her own ears. She had thought of a nunnery, of Ophelia among the water-lilies, and of an early death-bed. Then she had pictured to herself the somewhat ascetic and very laborious life of an old maiden lady whose only recreation fifty years hence should consist in looking at the portrait of him ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... "means the head of the wood. I suppose that in the old time the mountain looked over some extensive forest, even as the nunnery of Pengwern looked originally over an alder-swamp, for Pengwern means ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... that's their casuistry; which arguments you may imagine to refer, as your fancy pleases, to the village curate, or the tonsured priest of the monastery over the hill. For the tonsured priest, and the monastery, and the nunnery, and the mass, and the Virgin Mary, have grown to be a very great power indeed in English lanes. Between the Roman missal and the chapel hymn-book, the country curate with his good old-fashioned litany is ground very small indeed, and grows ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... Deare loving sweet lady, i hope you are well. Do not go to london, for they will put you in the nunnery; and heed not Mrs. Lucy what she saith to you, for she will ly and ceat you. go from to another Place, and we will gate wed so with speed, mind what i write to you, for if they gate you to london they will keep you there; and so let us gate wed, and we will both go. so ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... for a great nosegay dropped into her lap and a voice, bold and gay as usual, said lightly: "Here she is, as pretty and pensive as you please. Is the world hollow, our doll stuffed with sawdust, and do we want to go into a nunnery today, Cousin?" ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... met Gabrielle Hewish. I suppose I should really call her by that name, for her marriage took the colour out of it as surely as if she had entered a nunnery, and adopted the frigid and sisterly label of some female saint. Nobody had ever heard of her husband before she married him, and nobody ever heard of Gabrielle afterwards, except those who were acquainted with the story of Arthur Payne, as I was, and, ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young

... Omer's, Miss Sophia Francis's Nun of Misericordia (1807) and Miss Wilkinson's Apostate Nun, would have sufficed to people a convent. Perhaps The Convent of the Grey Penitents would have been a suitable abode for them; but most of them were, to quote Crabbe, "girls no nunnery can tame." Lewis's Venetian bravo was boldly transported to other climes. We find him in Scotland in The Mysterious Bravo, or The Shrine of St. Alstice, A Caledonian Legend, and in Austria in The Bravo of Bohemia or The Black Forest. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... arrived to that part of the letter which named the Count of Clarinau, but he stopped, and was scarce able to proceed, for the charming Calista was his sister, the only one he had, who having been bred in a nunnery, was taken then to be married to this old rich count, who had a great fortune: before he proceeded, his soul divined this was the new amour that had engaged the heart of his friend; he was afraid to be farther convinced, and yet a curiosity to know how far he had proceeded, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... inflicted during a combat with Mandricardo; and she had been thrown by the loss into such anguish of mind that she would have died on his sword but for the intervention of the hermit now with her, who persuaded her to devote the rest of her days to God in a nunnery. She had now come into Provence with the good man for that purpose, and to bury the corpse of her husband in the chapel ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... they lived for her. She seemed to need things kindling in her imagination or in her soul before she felt she had them. And she was cut off from ordinary life by her religious intensity which made the world for her either a nunnery garden or a paradise, where sin and knowledge were not, or else an ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... their rescue. "Ah, Mr. Engineer, have mercy on my poor Lazarists! The good souls are given to prayer and meditation; and your locomotives do make such a hideous din!" So Mr. Engineer is fain to try the neighbouring convent. New difficulties there. The next attack is made upon a little nunnery founded by the Princess de Bauffremont. But I have neither time nor space for episodical details. It suffices for our purpose to state that the construction of railways will be a terribly long-winded affair, and that in the meantime trade ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... O Nicias, that, with the aid of God, I will snatch this woman Thais from the unclean affections of the world, and give her as a spouse to Jesus Christ. If the Holy Spirit does not forsake me, Thais will leave this city and enter a nunnery." ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... 'tis so my dearest dear Papa, We one and all seem quite to be upset, 'Tis hotter than last summer was by far, At least so everybody says, but yet Much hotter than last June it could not be, And that's what I think, what do you think, pet? To sit indoors 'tis like a nunnery, With nought to do but tamely sit and knit, In fact I never ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... could not leave their cells were able to join in the service. St. Mary's Hospital, at Chichester, is an excellent example, as it retains its wooden cells, which are still used by the inmates. It was formerly a nunnery, but in 1229 the nuns departed and the almswomen took their place. It is of wide span with low side-walls, and the roof is borne by wooden pillars. There are eight cells of two rooms each, and beyond the screen ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... wife, he was quartered in Ireland, at Clonmel, where was a nunnery, in which, as pensioner, resided Miss O'Neill, or as she was called in the country, Peg O'Neill—the heiress of whom ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu

... the period for mourning was over, the relations of the marquise and Sainte-Croix were as open and public as before: the two brothers d'Aubray expostulated with her by the medium of an older sister who was in a Carmelite nunnery, and the marquise perceived that her father had on his death bequeathed the care and supervision of her to her brothers. Thus her first crime had been all but in vain: she had wanted to get rid of her father's rebukes and to gain his fortune; as a fact the fortune was diminished by reason of her ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... a quiet modest mansion, and, though white-washed, being an old building, and no other house near it, or in connexion with it, and standing upon the level field, which belonged to it, its own domain, the whole scene together brought to our minds an image of the retiredness and sober elegance of a nunnery; but this might be owing to the greyness of the afternoon, and our having come immediately from Glasgow, and through a country which, till now, had either had a townish taint, or at best little of rural beauty. While we were looking at the ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... be brought from Carlisle he will assuredly slay us. Let us go at once, leaving my dear wife and my two youngest sons in a convent here; but I would fain take my eldest boy with me. If all goes well he can bring good news to Alice in her nunnery, and if all goes ill he shall bring her my last wishes. But I am sure I am not meant to die by the law." His brethren approved the plan, and they took fair Alice and her two youngest children to the nunnery, and then the three famous archers with the little ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt









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