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More "Recluse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... still a recluse, you see, but I am preparing to launch for the winter in a few days. Dick was detained in town by a bad fever:—you may suppose I was kept in ignorance of his situation, or I should not have remained so quietly here. He came last week, and the fatigue of the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... that which I proclaim my readiness, though not my willingness, to do, I can only say, that you are the first who has doubted the faith of Hugo de Lacy."—And while the proud Baron thus addressed a female and a recluse, he could not prevent his eye from sparkling, and ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... friend from the West," said Eden easily. "I won't introduce you, because he doesn't like people. He's a recluse. Good-bye. I can't be sure about Tuesday. I'll go with you if I have time after my lesson." She nodded, left him, and went over to the seat littered with newspapers. The young man went up ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... to me how absolutely absorbed I had become in the Martian investigation. Ordinarily a sociable person, in the past week I had become a recluse. College friends that I had seen almost daily since my return to Paris, I now completely neglected, even shunned, lest they should call at my rooms some evening when I was in wave contact with Mars. It also occurred to me that, as surely ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... music-stand contained no music of later date than the compositions of Haydn and Mozart. Whatever I examined besides, told me, with the same consistency, the same strange tale. The owner of these possessions lived in the by-gone time; lived among old recollections and old associations—a voluntary recluse from all that was connected with the passing day. In Miss Welwyn's house, the stir, the tumult, the "idle business" of the world evidently appealed in vain to sympathies which grew no longer ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... by the same cloud of dismay. I smothered in small halls situated over saloons and livery stables, travelling by freight-train at night in order to ride in triumph as "Orator of the Day" at some county fair, until at last I lost all sense of being the writer and recluse. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... at that hour and season) to be gone out to dinner, and nobody seemed to be giving the dinners they had gone to. On the doorsteps there were lounging footmen with bright parti-coloured plumage and white polls, like an extinct race of monstrous birds; and butlers, solitary men of recluse demeanour, each of whom appeared distrustful of all other butlers. The roll of carriages in the Park was done for the day; the street lamps were lighting; and wicked little grooms in the tightest fitting garments, with twists in their legs answering to the twists in their minds, hung about ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... oppression. Here, one man has been thrown into prison on the charge of high treason; when all they proved against him was the remark, that if the king had signed the Quebec bill, he had broken his coronation oath. There, another, a poor harmless recluse, as I have ever supposed him, is dragged from his hut in the mountains and imprisoned to await his trial for an alleged murder, committed long ago, and in another jurisdiction; when his only crime, with his prosecutors, probably, is his bold denunciations of their tyranny, unless, as some suspect, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... (worthy the name!), never reached the same power of expressing the rapturous rejoicing of celestial beings, but his conception of the angelic nature remains unapproached, unapproachable: it is only his, for it was the gentle, passionless, refined nature of the recluse which stamped itself there. Angelico's angels are unearthly, not so much in form as in sentiment; and superhuman, not in power but in purity. In other hands, any imitation of his soft ethereal grace would become ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... of George's uncle, who was a recluse living at Tunbridge. He was a scholar and a pedant, and concerned himself but little about his only child, whose fortune ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... Arthur Stanley—the aged and the young—the Jewish recluse and Christian warrior—knelt side by side on the cold earth, which concealed the remains of one to both so inexpressibly dear. The moonlit shrubs and spangled heaven alone beheld their mutual sorrow, and the pale moon waned, and the stars gleamed paler and paler in ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... howling wilderness; rotten borough, Old Sarum. exclusion, excommunication, banishment, exile, ostracism, proscription; cut, cut direct; dead cut. inhospitality[obs3], inhospitableness &c. adj.; dissociability[obs3]; domesticity, Darby and Joan. recluse, hermit, eremite, cenobite; anchoret[obs3], anchorite; Simon Stylites[obs3]; troglodyte, Timon of Athens[obs3], Santon[obs3], solitaire, ruralist[obs3], disciple of Zimmermann, closet cynic, Diogenes; outcast, Pariah, castaway, pilgarlic[obs3]; wastrel, foundling, wilding[obs3]. V. be secluded , ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... (chiefly obtained, I believe, from books, which are his sole amusement, and with which he is amply furnished from the library at the Hall,) that I invited myself to come over and spend an evening with him. The old fox took the alarm at this. He told me that he was quite a recluse, and never received company; but that some evening, when I was quite alone, he would step in and take a cup of coffee with me—a luxury which he has never allowed himself for the last ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... said, "that I'm so busy this week. But we ought to meet at many places, unless you continue to play the recluse. Don't you ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... touch the hem of their retreating robes. The youth here by my side cannot be weary of the fragments from the life of Sappho. He will not believe they are not addressed to himself, or that he to whom they were addressed could be ungrateful. A recluse of high powers devotes himself to understand and explain the thought of Eloisa; he asserts her vast superiority in soul and genius to her master; he curses the fate that casts his lot in another age than hers. He could have understood her; he would have been to her a ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... as if she were Circe; and Alphonso of Castille fancied he could have given useful advice. But she does not go unprovided; she has hellebore at the bottom of the cup. Solitude would ripen a plentiful crop of despots. The recluse thinks of men as having his manner, or as not having his manner; and as having degrees of it, more and less. But when he comes into a public assembly he sees that men have very different manners from his own, and ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that she was his great-niece. For Honorius Hatchard, in the early years of the nineteenth century, had enjoyed a modest celebrity. As the marble tablet in the interior of the library informed its infrequent visitors, he had possessed marked literary gifts, written a series of papers called "The Recluse of Eagle Range," enjoyed the acquaintance of Washington Irving and Fitz-Greene Halleck, and been cut off in his flower by a fever contracted in Italy. Such had been the sole link between North Dormer and literature, a link piously ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... with a bitter thrill of speech; "ah, what do I know of life? I am only a recluse, a dreamer, a visionary! You must learn of life from the men who have lived, Patricia. I haven't ever lived. I have always chosen the coward's part. I have chosen to shut myself off from the world, to posture in a village all my days, and to consider ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... suit of dark material, a sailor hat, tan gloves with big welts on the back and stout, low-heeled Oxfords. This was the young woman who had come five thousand miles to improve her health! This was the child of the Orient, and in the Orient, woman is a hothouse flower. This was the timid young recluse to whom the soft-spoken diplomats were to carry a few roses ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... Knowing her Spanish parentage, we can better understand why she was such an ardent Roman Catholic. Strange that one so loyal to the forms of her religion should have been the innocent cause of the English Reformation! The injured queen, divorced, remained in England, a religious recluse, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... that Milton might have known better than, with his puritanical connections, to have taken to wife a daughter of a cavalier house, to have brought her from a roystering home, frequented by the dissolute officers of the Oxford garrison, to the spare diet and philosophical retirement of a recluse student, and to have looked for sympathy and response for his speculations from an uneducated and frivolous girl. Love has blinded, and will continue to blind, the wisest men to calculations as easy and as certain ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... capture of the Hindu capital, Dvarasamudra; but the portion of the force to which the brothers belonged suffered a defeat, and they fled to the mountainous tract near Anegundi. Here they met the holy Madhava, who was living the life of a recluse, and by his aid they established the ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... Johnnie was, Maggie had replied that she had gone nutting by previous engagement with Mr. Alvord, and as the party returned in the glowing evening they met the oddly assorted friends with their baskets well filled. In the eyes of the recluse there was a gentler expression, proving that Johnnie's and Nature's ministry had not been wholly in vain. He glanced swiftly from Burt to Miss Hargrove, then at Amy, and a faint suggestion of a smile hovered about his mouth. He was about to leave them ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... serve him. As for solitary habits, the world is right in condemning a man who, out of pure affectation or eccentricity, shuts himself up alone, loses his friends, and sets society against him. Those, however, who act in this way naturally, because their profession obliges them to lead a recluse life, or because their character rebels against feigned politenesses and conventional usage, ought in common justice to be tolerated. What claim by right have you on him? Why should you force him to take part in those vain pastimes, which his love for a quiet life induces ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... and fly to the jungle, where they wander about for years as ascetics, wearing a single garment, subsisting on the most elementary food, and developing their spiritual consciousness. John remained a recluse until he reached the age of about thirty years, when he emerged from the wilderness to preach the "Coming of the Lord," in obedience to the movings of the Spirit. Let us see where he was, and what he did, during the fifteen years of his ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... good-bye. But it is needless to multiply examples; the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When we came to Apemama, of so many white men who have scrambled for a place in that rich market, one remained—a silent, sober, solitary, niggardly recluse, of whom the king remarks, "I think he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Heaven is to be obtained by implicit obedience under most trying circumstances, and the more cruel the despotism they unmurmuringly submit to, the greater will be the accumulation of good works. But cursed to the lowest depths of Purgatory is that recluse who dares to murmur even in his inmost thoughts; and if he so far forgets his duty as to murmur aloud, then all the powers of the Church are ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... almost my judge," she said, with a desperate air. "I must speak now, in virtue of the right that all calumniated beings have to show their innocence. I have been, I am still (if a poor recluse forced by the world to renounce the world is still remembered) accused of such light conduct, and so many evil things, that it may be allowed me to find in one strong heart a haven from which I cannot be driven. Hitherto I have always considered self-justification ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... recluse, Hawthorne was an anchorite. He brought up his children in such purity and simplicity as is scarcely credible,—not altogether a wise plan. It was said that he did not even take a daily paper. In the following year Martin F. Conway, the first United States representative ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... their forelegs ran back after the holy man and called out his name. He heard my loud shouts and awaited me forthright; and, as soon as I approached him I said, "When I had quitted thee a thought came into my mind; to wit, that thou art a recluse who keepest thyself aloof from earthly things, pure in heart and busied only with orison and devotion Now care of all these camels will cause thee only toil and moil and trouble and waste of precious time: 'twere better then to give them back and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... country we are travelling in: "Poor Erasmus truckled all his life for a hat. If he could only have been made a cardinal! You see the longing for it in his very features, and can't help regarding him with mingled respect and pity." Of Thomas a Kempis, the recluse of Deventer: "A fine fellow, but hazy, and weak betimes. He and his school tend (as some one has well said) to make humility and humiliation change places." Finally, of the Bible: "The three best translations of the Bible, in my opinion, are, in order of merit, the English, the ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... gentleman, and recluse readily welcomed two such promising guests for the winter. A charming woman of twenty-six, with a mind as well as emotions, and a man not much older, who was both a philosopher and an artist, promised no end of diversion for ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... monarchy. The day following the authorities freed him on the ground that he was demoralizing the prisoners. Time has dealt lightly with him, and no one can read of his latter days—his brilliancy all eclipsed—a recluse except for his love and companionship for children—unmoved. In his day he was a power and in no small degree did he contribute to the living monument of great men—The Union ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... The latter, however, was boarded up—nobody could remember a time when it was not. And none knew why it was so closed; certainly not because of the occupant's dislike of light and air, for on those rare occasions when a hunter had passed that lonely spot the recluse had commonly been seen sunning himself on his doorstep if heaven had provided sunshine for his need. I fancy there are few persons living to-day who ever knew the secret of that window, but I am one, as ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... he found himself again opposed by his London friends. Unable to secure a new Alice in Wonderland for his child readers, he determined to give them Kate Greenaway. But here he had selected another recluse. Everybody discouraged him. The artist never saw visitors, he was told, and she particularly shunned editors and publishers. Her own publishers confessed that Miss Greenaway was inaccessible to them. "We conduct all our business with her by correspondence. I have never seen ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... delicately organized as Etienne marriage must come as a slow and gentle inspiration, communicating new powers to his being and vivifying it with the fires of love. As he had said to the father, to impose a wife on Etienne would be to kill him. Above all it was important that the young recluse should not be alarmed at the thought of marriage, of which he knew nothing, or be made aware of the object of his father's wishes. This unknown poet conceived as yet only the beautiful and noble passion of Petrarch for Laura, of Dante for Beatrice. Like ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... of an individual soul's being, which no association with others can do away; but there is no reason why we should add to that burden of personality which the Bishop of Oxford, in one of his most striking sermons, has shown to be truly 'an awful gift.' And say, youthful recluse (I don't mean you, middle-aged bachelor, I mean really young men of five or six and twenty), have you not sometimes, sitting by the fireside in the evening, looked at the opposite easy chair in the ruddy glow, and imagined that easy chair occupied by a gentle companion—one who would bring ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... once, into the sitting-room, where I found him with his wife, who sat sewing beside him. The old man rose and received me graciously. By his appearance I was somewhat startled. Instead of a grave recluse in scholastic black, whom I expected to see, I found an affable and lovable old man dressed in the roughest coat of blue with metal buttons, and checked trousers, more like a New York farmer than an English poet. ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... in the smoking-room at a late hour—the centre of a group of eminent men entranced by the brilliancy of my conversation. And now—! I was nothing but a small, dull, soup-stained, sticking-plastered, nerve-racked recluse. Nerves, yes. I assured myself that I had not seen—what I had seemed to see. All very odd, of course, and very unpleasant, but easily explained. Nerves. Excitement of coming to Keeb too much for me. ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... had been somewhat of a mystery ever since he had taken the house, three years before. Yet, being apparently comfortably off, subscribing to every charity, and a regular attendant at Middleton church, the simple country-folk had grown to tolerate him, even though he was somewhat of a recluse. Country-folk are very slow to accept the stranger ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... often look at things very differently from the manner in which the individuals, of whom the mass may be composed, would look at them when alone. In books, too, man must be studied, but more especially face to face, in constant, earnest observation. The preacher must get out and about. A recluse he cannot afford to be. Pale-faced piety cultivated in the cloister may be admirably adapted for Sunday exhibition, but is apt to prove rather ineffective when brought into active service in week-day tasks. Wisdom ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... the course of instruction in that institution was not in harmony with his tastes, he soon withdrew, applying himself afterwards to the study of the French and German languages (a ready fluency in both of which he finally acquired), and especially to the art dearer than all other studies. A recluse, owning and soliciting no guidance but that of his text-book, in the quiet of the woods, or, if that were inaccessible, the retirement of his chamber, he devoted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... long list. But nearly all these men were men of affairs, of action. Given a good literary style they could hardly have been other than interesting, they had so much to say that they gained from external sources. Even FitzGerald—the one recluse—had all the treasures of literature constantly passing into his study. Cowper had but eighteen books altogether during many of his years in Olney, and some of us who have lent our volumes in the past ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... are those of a recluse. When he comes home from the bustle of the city, it would be a great annoyance to have company around him: in fact, I do not care for it, and, I dare say, we shall get on merrily ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... was a recluse, he was by no means an ascetic. He was marked by deep gravity of countenance coupled with a kindly humorous disposition. No one knew where he came from, or why he had taken up his abode in such a lonely spot. Many of the ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... gone from Gramarye, and Anthony reigned in his stead, the duty, when it arose, fell to his lot. Never relishing the idea, he would not have believed that it could become so odious. Ere it had taken shape, it loomed vexatious. Looking it in the face, he found it repulsive. No recluse could have been more reluctant to leave his hermitage. Major Anthony Lyveden felt ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... when politics were non-existent, she would not have rested content with the idea only that they ought to have been rife. If the Prior of the Carthusians had pleased her, she would have become a sincere recluse. M. de Luynes initiated her into politics, the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Holland corresponded with her upon them, and Chateauneuf amused her with them. She gave herself up to their pursuit because she abandoned herself, without reserve, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... in a letter to Hector, on March 7 of this year, described Congreve as 'very dull, very valetudinary, and very recluse, willing, I am afraid, to forget the world, and content to be forgotten by it, to repose in that sullen sensuality into which men naturally sink who think disease a justification of indulgence, and converse only with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... before us a month or two ago the case of a gentleman living in a country town—a quiet, shy, studious recluse—born on this fatal day. By some mischance he happened to pick up a journal in which was an article on the Government by Mr. ARNOLD WHITE. He read it. He was so terrified that he expired from heart failure. That sounds to you incredible, but real ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... shall I harness myself to a history of this venerable Abbess? But then I must procure the volume by Joseph de Loignac, her first biographer, the notice by the Recluse of Marlaigne, the pamphlet by Monseigneur de Ram, the narrative by Papebroech; above all I must have at hand the translation, made by the Carmelites of Louvain, of the Flemish manuscript written while the Mother was still alive, by her daughters. Where ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... proposes something, though nothing is concluded. We must wait for the second part, which he has promised: perhaps, on his amendment, he may obtain that entire pardon which is now denied him; in the mean time, neighbor, keep him a recluse ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... case! Such minutiae of erudition might be fascinating to others; it was not for him. His large-heartedness, his sympathy, his wealthy and generous spirit could not be condensed into a bookworm, or a recluse. They rather equipped him to become a watchman, that he might declare what he saw. He needed the whole Republic to range up and down in. His ringing words might be heard on our Western frontier; but before their echoes ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... possible," said she; "I understood it all. But I must not do anything more to-day, for every day I grow weaker. We must be better acquainted, and a poor sick recluse may certainly claim forbearance. We meet to-morrow evening, at the same hour; ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... fairyland. Arthur and Miss Wishart had gone on in front and were now strayed among boulders. She liked this trim and precise young man, whose courtesy was so grave and elaborate, while he, being a recluse by nature but a humanitarian by profession, was half nervous and half entranced in her cheerful society. They talked of nothing, their hearts being set on the scramble, and when at last they reached the highway and the farm where the Glenavelin traps had been put up, they found themselves a clear ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... Luke and Cecile Shepard Mr. Northrup appeared very well indeed at dinner that night in the Corner House. They learned he could be very entertaining if he wished; that he had not forgotten how to interest women if he had been a recluse for so long; and that even Tess and Dot found something about him to admire. The former said afterward that Mr. Northrup had a voice like a distant drum; Dot said he had a "noble looking forehead," meaning that it was very high ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... speaking, for the first time beyond perfunctory salutations, with the captain, a taciturn recluse of a man, furious just now at some unexpected litigation connected with his cargo and horribly inconvenienced by the loss of his stewardess. Two ladies waiting, literally, on the wharf, have been promised accommodation in the ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... had known that temptation and conquered it. After her reception as a Dominican Tertiary, she had possessed the extraordinary resolution to live for three years the recluse life, not in the guarded peace of a convent, but in her own room at home, in the noisy and overcrowded house where a goodly number of her twenty-four brothers and sisters were apparently still living. And these had been years of inestimable preciousness; but they came to an end at ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... in a well-ordered life. As with many other common blessings we forget its benefits. Nor are these benefits so evident until we see the blighting result in the life of the one who, for any reason whatsoever, has become a social recluse. We have known a few persons who have once been in society, but who have allowed themselves to remain away from all sorts of gatherings, for a number of years. In every case, the result has been openly noticeable. They have become boorish in manners, unsympathetic ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... mind, and looked out into the unknown. Amid stiff, abrupt sentences I wandered; and, presently, I had no fault to charge against their abrupt tellings; for, better far than my own ambitious phrasing, is this mutilated story capable of bringing home all that the old Recluse, of the vanished house, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... the Lady, whose existence grew more and more mysterious, went back for a few days to her house at Neuilly. She would vanish, would reappear, living like a recluse, almost in entire solitude, receiving none of ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... so happily in each other's love. No father, mother, wife to either, no kindred upon earth. The elder a bold, frank, impetuous, chivalric adventurer; the younger a gentle, studious, book-loving recluse; they lived upon the ancestral estate like mated birds, one always on the wing, the ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... old Christian came out, stood by the shoulder of the horse and rested his hand on Marks' knee. It was strange familiarity for such an acrimonious old recluse, and even at the distance the attitude of Woodford's ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... It might also be cited as another proof not only of De Quincey's very keen interest in all the leading questions of the time, but as an illustration of the John Bull warmth and heat which he, the dreamer, the recluse, the lover of abstract problems, could bring into such discussions. Here, at all events, his views were definite enough, and stated with a bold precision of English plainness that would have pleased the most pronouncedly Tory or Unionist ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... in the young soldier the same recluse and dreamer of Brienne. In boyhood parlance today, he "flocked by himself," building air castles which in part ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... French politics, in the play, are to send the daughter of a King of France (the contemporary King Henri III was childless) to conduct a negotiation about 200,000 ducats, at the Court, steeped in peace, of a King of Navarre, a scholar who would fain be a recluse from women, in an Academe of his own device. Such was not the Navarre of Henri in his war with the Guises, and Henri did not ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... studied human nature so superficially as to fail to comprehend the snares and pitfalls which men's egregious vanity sometimes spring prematurely; and rumour quotes me aright, in proclaiming me a recluse when the curtain falls and the lights are extinguished. To-day I deviated from my usual custom in compliment to the representative of my country, who sends you—so his card reads—'charged with an explanation of his unavoidable absence.' As minister-extraordinary, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... time and by a wholly chance happening, the mystery was out at last. Professor Nicolovius, the bland recluse of Mrs. Paynter's, and Henry G. Surface, political arch-traitor, ex-convict, and falsest of false friends, were ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... assumed by the daughter of a recluse naturalist in the valley of Virginia. She had known no life but that of the open country, where she ran wild all summer, aiding her father in collecting plants and butterflies. At twenty she had never seen a city, and her social contacts had been limited to the country folk, ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... powers—to the one board belonged the privilege of ordering and contriving measures; to the other, that of carrying them into execution. Theories, he said, which did not connect men with measures, were not theories for this world: they were chimeras with which a recluse might divert his fancy, but they were not principles en which a statesman would found his system. He maintained, that by the negative vested in the commissioners, the chartered rights of the company, on which stress had been ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Presley's morbidly keen observation, the general impression of the shepherd's face was intensely interesting. It was uncommon to an astonishing degree. Presley's vivid imagination chose to see in it the face of an ascetic, of a recluse, almost that of a young seer. So must have appeared the half-inspired shepherds of the Hebraic legends, the younger prophets of Israel, dwellers in the wilderness, beholders of visions, having their existence in a continual dream, talkers with ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... in mid-August that the aged Steinway was choked to death in his rubbishy old house in East Thirty-ninth Street, where by the current rumour of the neighbourhood, he kept large sums in cash. Suspicion fell upon the recluse's nephew, one Maxwell, who vanished with the discovery of ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... friend in order to enjoy the pleasure of his society. When in office he proposed to pay him a pension of L300 a year out of the secret service money, but Pope declined the offer. Statesmen and men of active pursuits cultivated the society of the poetical recluse, and Pope, whose compliments are monuments more enduring than marble, has recorded ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... you say, Mr. Fuller," said the old man, who had a bearing of sad and gentle dignity, and gave, in a curious and not easily explainable way, the idea that he spoke but seldom and was something of a recluse. "There's a deal in what you say, Mr. Fuller, but the fiddle is not a thing as can be played like any ordinary instryment. A fiddle's like a wife, in a way of speaking. You must offer her all you've got. If she catches you going about ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... perceptions, and with a mental and moral constitution which tended always, with the certainty of a physical law, to the beautiful, the pure, and the sublime, he led what many might call an ideal life. Yet was he far from being a recluse, or from being disposed to an excess of introversion. On the contrary, he was a popular, high-spirited youth, almost passionately fond of society, maintaining an unusual number of warm friendships, and unsurpassed by any of the young men ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... up with attention; the flush of joy which mantles in his countenance—the start—the throb—the almost delirious outburst of hysteric exultation with which, when the whole truth was made known, he clasped the two messengers of glad tidings to his breast, with an energy that almost choked the aged recluse! "Ride, ride this instant to the Margravine—say I have wronged her, that it is all right, that she may come back—that I forgive her—that I apologize if you will"—and a secretary forthwith despatched a note to that effect, which was carried off ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... house stood four-square, with a patched-up conservatory on one wing. In the front room they found the recluse's body decently disposed, with an undertaker's assistant in charge. From the greenhouse ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... place. Even yet, I don't know very much. He's the last of an old family, who made their money in real estate, and are supposed to have kept most of it. He's a widower with one daughter. His wife died about ten years ago, and since then he has been a sort of recluse, and has the reputation of being queer. He has been abroad a good deal, and it is only during the last year that he has lived continuously at this place next door, which is called Elmhurst. That's about all I've been able to find out. He certainly lives a retired life, for his place ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... awakened all my ardor. What a blissful period of my existence was it that I passed beneath his roof. Another being seemed created within me, or rather, all that was amiable and excellent was drawn out. I was as recluse as ever I had been at the convent, but how different was my seclusion. My time was spent in storing my mind with lofty and poetical ideas; in meditating on all that was striking and noble in history or fiction; in studying and tracing all that was sublime and beautiful ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... hardy weeds can thrive. Here in some damp mouldy chambers dwells a hermit, for nearly all the classic mountains of Southern Italy are tenanted by an anchorite, generally an old and ignorant, but pious peasant, of the type of Pietro Murrone, the holy recluse of the Abruzzi, who was finally dragged from his cell to be invested forcibly with the pontifical robes and tiara as Celestine the Fifth. The present hermitage on Mont' Epomeo dates however from comparatively modern times, for its first occupant is said to have been a German nobleman, a certain ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... did not come, and Eveley felt that perhaps he was reconciled, and had returned to his old pursuit of secluded ballroom corners. But Nolan assured her of the injustice of this. Lem had forsaken all his former haunts, and had become a recluse, brooding alone in his ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... Luella Gloaming was naturally glum, So she married young Grouch, the recluse; For she says when she's sad, she just looks at his face— Then she can't help but laugh ...
— Why They Married • James Montgomery Flagg
... all instruments, and although on account of its nature it is excluded from the concert hall, it is the companion of the recluse. The latter says to himself: 'Here I can produce the feelings of my heart, can shade fully, drive away care, and melt away a tone through all its swellings,'" This critic ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... speaking. In a very short while she looked as much at home in the presence of the ladies as Petronella herself. Kate found indeed that the city-bred maiden was more advanced in many things than the recluse of the Gate House. She set herself busily to the task of drilling both her companions in the arts of dancing, deportment, the use of the globes, and of playing upon the harpsichord; and found in both apt and eager pupils. ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... supersession by some more public administration. Modern religion admits of no facile flights from responsibility. It permits no headlong resort to the wilderness and sterile virtue. It counts the recluse who fasts among scorpions in a cave as no better than a deserter in hiding. It unhesitatingly forbids any rich young man to sell all that he has and give to the poor. Himself and all that he has must be alike ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... greatest in Spaine. That the Queene hath given no rewards to any of the captains or officers, but only to my Lord Sandwich; and that was a bag of gold, which was no honorable present, of about; 1400l. sterling. How recluse the Queene hath ever been, and all the voyage never come upon the deck, nor put her head out of her cabin; but did love my Lord's musique, and would send for it down to the state-room, and she sit in her cabin within hearing of it. But my Lord ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... visit him, and fearing a doubtful reception he carried with him a pamphlet he had written in 1889, an eulogium of the painter. On the way he asked his fellow-travellers for Cezanne's address, but in vain; the name was unknown. In Aix he met with little success. Evidently the fame of the recluse had not reached his birthplace. At last Bernard was advised to go to the Mayor's office, where he would find an electoral list. Among the voters he discovered a Paul Cezanne, who was born January 19, 1839, who lived at 25 Rue Boulegon. Bernard lost no time and reached a ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... here," Melrose continued—"your presence, as Undershaw has no doubt told you—of course he has told you, small blame to him—was extremely distasteful to me. I am a recluse. I like no women—and d——d few men. I can do without them, that's all; their intimate company, anyway: and my pursuits bring me all the amusement I require. Such at any rate was my frame of mind up to a few weeks ago. I don't apologize ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not to-night," answered the recluse. "Your young eyes will wax heavy with these midnight vigils. You must sleep, my boy, and to-morrow I will communicate ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the marquise; for, having got M. de Nocheres who no doubt regretted her prolonged retreat—to entrust him with a commission for his granddaughter, he came to the convent parlour and asked for the fair recluse. She, although she had never seen him, recognised him at the first glance; for having never seen so handsome a cavalier as he who now presented himself before her, she thought this could be no other than the Marquis de Ganges, of whom people had ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... fell upon the trio. Darrin had never heard, before, of the Earl of Denby. Later he learned that the Earl had led a recluse's life among books until the war began. About that time he had married a young noblewoman, and the pair had gone promptly into effective war work, though not in ways that caused their portraits to be published in ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... consoling work, idle thoughts cannot gain mastery over him: selfish wishes or desires are kept at bay. Art is truth: and truth is religion: and its study and practice a daily work of pious duty. What are the world's struggles, brawls, successes, to that calm recluse pursuing his calling? See, twinkling in the darkness round his chamber, numberless beautiful trophies of the graceful victories which he has won:—sweet flowers of fancy reared by him:—kind shapes of beauty which ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... seems very solitary with the two of us living in its great rooms. I, who am getting an old fellow, and you a student and a recluse—no, don't deny it, for nowadays I can barely persuade you to attend even the Bench or a lawn-tennis party. Well, fortunately, we have power to add to our numbers; or at least you have. I ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... "neat-handed Phillis," to milk the cows and churn the butter, while she sat rapt in contemplation of the stars above or the snakes below. It was not until after our arrival at Tampico that I had the mortification to discover that the interesting creature, the charming recluse, is seventy-eight, and has just buried her seventh husband! I accept the account doubtingly, and henceforth shall endeavour to picture her to my mind as an ancient enchantress, dwelling amongst serpents, and making her venomous ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... of a scholarly recluse near New Haven. She marries a clever student, who becomes a sensational preacher, then farmer, then an army officer. His wife passes through many stages of belief and emotion, emerging at last into the sunshine.—W. M. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... all," muttered he, as he wandered aimlessly from one deserted room to another: "the very house seems under a spell. Sybil, sitting like a recluse in her own rooms, growing pale, and wild-eyed, and spectre-like, every day. Evan, in his room, sick with drink, and verging on the D. T. Mother, gliding like a stately ghost from the one to the other, or closeted in her own room; she has not been down stairs to-day. Burrill, the ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... sometimes, even, when her father's turn came round, keeping for him the whole flock of the commune," was fulfilling her sixteenth year. It was Joan of Arc, whom all her neighbors called Joannette. She was no recluse; she often went with her companions to sing and eat cakes beside the fountain by the gooseberry-bush, under an old beech, which was called the fairy-tree: but dancing she did not like. She was constant at church, she delighted in the sound of the bells, she went often to confession and communion, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... here presented with a striking picture of the temper and credulity of the times in which he lived. We plainly see from the contemporary evidence of Wierus, that such things were believed of him by his neighbours; and at that period it was sufficiently common for any man of deep study, of recluse habits, and a certain sententious and magisterial air to undergo these imputations. It is more than probable that Agrippa was willing by a general silence and mystery to give encouragement to the wonder of the vulgar ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... Voltaire could have written. And, what is still better worth observing, Voltaire's books would not have been the powers they were, but for this constant desire of his to come into the closest contact with the practical affairs of the world. He who has never left the life of a recluse, drawing an income from the funds and living in a remote garden, constructing past, present, and future, out of his own consciousness, is not qualified either to lead mankind safely, or to think on the course of human affairs correctly. Every page ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... intimate with every body in the village. But he surprised nobody, no questions were asked about him, because he lived like the rest of the world. But that two men should come into a strange country, and partake of none of the country diversions, seek no acquaintance, and live entirely recluse, is something so inexplicable as to puzzle the wisest heads, even that of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Mrs. Parry was rather discomfited. "There may be nothing in it, and Franklin seems to be decent enough in his life, though a bit of a recluse. I've nothing to say ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... him start a little; evidently no thought of yielding had come to him before. We were passing the house that used to belong to that strange book-lover and recluse, Beckford. I looked up at the blank windows, and thought of that curious, self-centred life in the past, surrounded by every luxury, able to indulge every whim; and then I looked at my companion's pale, tortured face, ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... "Dame," said the good man, "if it be so as thou sayest, ye must needs suffer it; for against thy lord and against his barons ye may do nought perforce." "Sir," said the good lady, "thou sayest sooth: but if it please God, I were fain to be a recluse nigh unto thee; whereby I may be at the service of God all the days of my life, and that I may have comfort of thee." "Dame," said the good man, "that would be over strange a thing, whereas thou art too young a lady and too fair. But I will tell thee what thou shalt do. Hard by my hermitage ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... although that judgment has often to be framed under conditions which demand almost breathless rapidity, it does not always bear unfavorable comparison with the protracted meditation of the philosophic recluse. [Cheers.] ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... prejudice to surmount. Philip remembered the garden-party, and saw that they could never be surmounted. The Deemster who slapped the conventions in the face would suffer for it. He would be taboo to half the life of the island—in public an official, in private a recluse. An icy picture rose before his mind's eye of the woman who would be his wife in her relations with the ladies he had just left. She might be their superior in education, certainly in all true manners, and in natural grace and beauty, in sweetness and charm, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... see Philip here to-night," Mary was saying, while Eve fastened for her the clasp of a refractory bracelet. "We were afraid he was becoming quite a recluse, and that must be so bad ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... wife's approval; and the next morning our disconsolate hero was on his way to the "hermit" of the cave. The holy recluse had been long famed through that region for his kindness and attention to the wants of those who sought help and counsel; and Michael thought no harm could come of it, even though he might be unable to circumvent the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... institutions dear to many, have no doubt given impressions unfavorable to Thoreau's thought and personality. One hears him called, by some who ought to know what they say and some who ought not, a crabbed, cold-hearted, sour-faced Yankee—a kind of a visionary sore-head—a cross-grained, egotistic recluse,—even non-hearted. But it is easier to make a statement than prove a reputation. Thoreau may be some of these things to those who make no distinction between these qualities and the manner which often comes as a kind of by-product of an intense devotion of a principle ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... the Brahmanas their divinely-inspired theology or body of doctrine. To them were afterward added the Sutras, literally "Strings of pithy sentences" regarding laws and ceremonies. Still later the Upanishads were composed, treating of God and the soul; the Aranyakas, or "Tracts for the forest recluse;" and, after a very long interval, the Puranas, or "Traditions from of old." All these ranked, however, not as divinely-inspired knowledge, or things "heard from God" (sruti), like the Vedas and Brahmanas, but only as sacred ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... is it?" he remarked; "the old man they say acts so queerly, and has kept to himself up there on his estate for years, living the life of a recluse among his books and papers. There must be some good reason for his acting that way. He's met with some sort of terrible disappointment in life it may be; but then that's ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... whom there were a large number, were apparently free to move from one neighbourhood to another, but the woman recluse, or "anchoress," seldom or never left the walls of her cell, a little house of two or three rooms built generally against the church wall, so that one of her windows could open into the church, and another, veiled by a curtain, looked on to the outer world, where she held converse with and gave ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... Sextum, a pretty village between six mountains, pop. 2600, and 2985 ft. above the sea-level. From Seez the road passes the village of Villard-Dessus, and then crosses the Recluse by a lofty bridge near an escarpment of gypsum, called the Roche Blanche, supposed to be the place noticed by Polybius, where Hannibal posted himself to protect his cavalry and beasts of burden. 3m. beyond is St. Germain; the last inhabited village ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... marvellous combination of circumstances a number of fragments of the Royal Archives of Memphis have been preserved from destruction with the rest, containing petitions written on papyrus in the Greek language; these were composed by a recluse of Macedonian birth, living in the Serapeum, in behalf of two sisters, twins, who served the god as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... young soldier the same recluse and dreamer of Brienne. In boyhood parlance today, he "flocked by himself," building air castles which in part were to ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... Knight of the Garter. I wondered if posterity would care much for George the Fourth, or Third, or Second, or First, whose portraits I had just been gazing at; I was sure that a good many would remember the recluse scholar of Pembroke Hall, the Cambridge Professor of Modern History, who cared for nothing but ancient history; who projected twenty great poems, and finished only one or two; who spent his life in commenting ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... the pleasure of his society. When in office he proposed to pay him a pension of L300 a year out of the secret service money, but Pope declined the offer. Statesmen and men of active pursuits cultivated the society of the poetical recluse, and Pope, whose compliments are monuments more enduring than marble, has recorded ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... "Virginia," was mainly due to a straitened income and the gout. Nor was his seclusion unenlivened by friendship. The Burneys, in particular, visited him from time to time; and Fanny has left us descriptions of scenes of almost uproarious gaiety, enacted at Chesington by this gloomy recluse and his young friends. But we shall hear more of Chesington ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... the first bishop of Saintes, and St. Eustelle lived a recluse in her cavern, where miracles were long afterwards performed by her, and where she expired at the same moment that her holy companion suffered the martyrdom which secured him a crown of glory ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... me how absolutely absorbed I had become in the Martian investigation. Ordinarily a sociable person, in the past week I had become a recluse. College friends that I had seen almost daily since my return to Paris, I now completely neglected, even shunned, lest they should call at my rooms some evening when I was in wave contact with Mars. It also occurred to me that, ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... no one; I am a recluse," murmured Irma, with eyes smiling through down dropped lashes; "but, if you care, you may come, a week from to-day, and breakfast with me here! Dear old Raffoni will play propriety. As for the singing, I am pledged to be mute, parole d'honneur. But you must be in my first audience. I must ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... be. I, to whom nature had denied the impromptu faculty; who, in public, was by nature a cypher; whose time of mental activity, even when alone, was not under the meridian sun; who needed the fresh silence of morning, or the recluse peace of evening, to win from the Creative Impulse one evidence of his presence, one proof of his force; I, with whom that Impulse was the most intractable, the most capricious, the most maddening of masters (him before me always ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Whether their enforced isolations taught them to brood, or whether they were brooders by nature, it is difficult to say. I think they were all easterners, and this would explain away certain characteristic shynesses of temper and of expression in them. Ryder, as we know, was the typical recluse, Fuller in all likelihood also. Martin I know little of privately, but his portrait shows him to be a strong elemental nature, with little feeling for, or interest in, the superficialities either of life or of art. Of Blakelock I can say but little, for I do not know him ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... moral constitution which tended always, with the certainty of a physical law, to the beautiful, the pure, and the sublime, he led what many might call an ideal life. Yet was he far from being a recluse, or from being disposed to an excess of introversion. On the contrary, he was a popular, high-spirited youth, almost passionately fond of society, maintaining an unusual number of warm friendships, and unsurpassed by any of the young ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... branches, subsist on jungle birds, beasts, roots, and fruits, and wear a scanty covering made from the inner bark of a species of Artocarpus. They are expert hunters, and have most ingenious methods of capturing both the elephant and the "recluse rhinoceros." They are divided into tribes, which are ruled by chiefs on the patriarchal system. Of their customs and beliefs, if they have any, almost nothing is known. They are singularly shy, and shun intercourse with men of other ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... In the most exciting parts of Wordsworth—and these sonnets are not very exciting—you always feel, you never forget, that what you have before you is the excitement of a recluse. There is nothing of the stir of life; nothing of the brawl of the world. But Milton though always a scholar by trade, though solitary in old age, was through life intent on great affairs, lived close to great scenes, watched a revolution, and if not ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... day making discoveries about life, and about myself. I had naturally some elements of the recluse, and would never, of my own choice, have lived in a crowd. I loved quietness. The noise of machinery was particularly distasteful to me. But I found that the crowd was made up of single human lives, not one of them wholly uninteresting, when ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... to behold the eye-sparkle of pure admiration between young man and maid? 'They worship, truly, they know not what.' In bowing down to their ideal, they bow to the real human—the purified man or woman of the better land. The recluse is ever the true prophet and seer, in this as in still higher matters. Your modest-eyed student, stealing glances of unfeigned admiration at ordinary maidens, is not such a simpleton as some suppose. His seclusion has cleared his vision. He ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... so much the appearance or the customary demeanor of the recluse that made strangers turn about to stare at him as he passed, and that made them remember how he looked when he was gone from their sight. The one was commonplace enough—I mean his appearance—and his conduct, unless one knew the underlying motives, was merely that of an unobtrusive, ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... was the Frog. From the ardour of my greediness I closed my teeth upon it, and the child died on the spot. The holy man discovered the fact, and from regret for his son, attacked me, and I, turning toward the open country, fled with speed, and the recluse pursued me and cursed me, and said: 'I desire of my Creator that He will make thee base and powerless, and cause thee to be the vehicle of the Frog-king. And, verily, thou shalt not have power to eat Frogs, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... changed was the soul of the young recluse and mystic. The consciousness of God had vanished from it; the visions of the spiritual world no longer visited it; he ceased to pray in secret, and the petitions which he offered at the family altar were so dull and spiritless as even to excite the observation and comment ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... to use in the days when Jacqueline was a model of elegance: "Oh, how fine you are!" Then again, Madame d'Avrigny, notwithstanding the good manners on which she prided herself, could not conceal that the obligation of sending home the recluse to the ends of the earth, at a certain hour, made trouble with her servants, who were put out of their way. Jacqueline seized on this pretext to propose to give up the Monday music-lesson, and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... accustomed to hard labor will endure more fatigue, than those of sedentary or enervated habits, needs no argument to prove. That the arm of the blacksmith acquires strength beyond the arm of the literary recluse, is ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... Austin was gracious enough to approve. This was a certain Mr Roger St Aubyn, a man of taste and culture, who possessed a very rare collection of fine pictures and old engravings which nobody had ever seen. St Aubyn was, in fact, something of a recluse, a student who seldom went beyond his park gates, and found his greatest pleasure in reading Greek and cultivating orchids. It was by the purest accident that the two came across each other. Austin was lying one afternoon on a bank of wild hyacinths just outside Combe Spinney, lazily ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... of Archie's hermitage. An unusual sign of life was to be seen at the mill-house itself; smoke was rising from the extemporized chimney; for Bell, as I knew, had installed herself as nurse and was doing her best to render the last days of the old recluse more restful than they could have been during his more ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... long time since both women have been listened to. What is the subject of their talk? The old woman brings news of the outer world, relates stories, curious incidents of married and unmarried life, tales of wicked wives and wronged husbands. The recluse laughs: "os in risus cachinnosque dissolvitur"; in a word, the old woman amuses the anchoress with fabliaux in an embryonic state. This is a most remarkable though little known example, for we can here observe fabliaux in a rudimentary stage, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... the telephone and called up New Scotland Yard. There followed some little delay before the requisite information was obtained. Finally, however, we learned that the Professor was something of a recluse, having few acquaintances, and ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... Prince owed to his stay at Ceuta beyond the general suggestion and encouragement to take up a life-profession of discovery, it was at any rate put into practice on his second and last return (1418). From that time to the end of his life he became a recluse from the Court life of Lisbon, though he soon gathered round himself a rival Court, of ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... they could have come in, as the Scots came, on their own terms. For an Englishman to write the history of Ireland without prejudice he must be either a cosmopolitan philosopher, or a passionless recluse. Froude was an ardent patriot, and his early studies in hagiology had led him to the conclusion, not now accepted, that St. Patrick never existed at all. His scepticism about St. Patrick might have been forgiven to a ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... displayed its melancholy splendors above the hills of Montmartre. Jacques remained pensively at his window listening to the winged chorus of spring harmony which added to his sadness. Seeing a raven fly by uttering a croak, he thought of the days when ravens brought food to Elijah, the pious recluse, and reflected that these birds were no longer so charitable. Then, not being able to stand it any longer, he closed his window, drew the curtain, and, as he had not the wherewithal to buy oil for his lamp, lit a resin taper that he ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... disappeared under that hospitable doorway, I flashed through the mind of Denis that Eames was a confirmed recluse; he might not like being disturbed ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... not methinks be an useless Comparison between the Condition of a Man who shuns all the Pleasures of Life, and of one who makes it his Business to pursue them. Hope in the Recluse makes his Austerities comfortable, while the luxurious Man gains nothing but Uneasiness from his Enjoyments. What is the Difference in the Happiness of him who is macerated by Abstinence, and his who ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... and mother, shadowed by the same cloud of dismay. I smothered in small halls situated over saloons and livery stables, travelling by freight-train at night in order to ride in triumph as "Orator of the Day" at some county fair, until at last I lost all sense of being the writer and recluse. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... I said I didn't care what means you used," corrected Moore, with delicate emphasis. He added, reflectively: "Blair has always been something of a recluse; but I've noticed that when a Puritan once feels a little of the warmth of the devil's presence that he's rather loath to step out into the cold again." The look of anger from Mrs. Latimer made him change ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... letter to Hector, on March 7 of this year, described Congreve as 'very dull, very valetudinary, and very recluse, willing, I am afraid, to forget the world, and content to be forgotten by it, to repose in that sullen sensuality into which men naturally sink who think disease a justification of indulgence, and converse only with those who hope to prosper by indulging them ... ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... as the 'nervous exhaustion' of his style. It were useless to pretend that Gissing belongs of right to the 'first series' of English Men of Letters. But if debarred by his limitations from a resounding or popular success, he will remain exceptionally dear to the heart of the recluse, who thinks that the scholar does well to cherish a grievance against the vulgar world beyond the cloister; and dearer still, perhaps, to a certain number of enthusiasts who began reading George Gissing as a college night-course; who closed Thyrza and Demos ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... their winter quarters. They choose some secluded wood for a roosting-place, and thither all the crows for many square miles of country betake themselves at night, and thence they disperse in all directions again in the early morning. The crow is a social bird, a true American; no hermit or recluse is he. The winter probably brings them together in these large colonies for purposes of sociability and for greater warmth. By roosting close together and quite filling a tree-top, there must result ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... behold him at twenty-five, a student and scholarly recluse, delving all day in accounts and dispatches, grubbing in books at night, and walking an hour before sunrise in the park every morning. It was about then that he accepted the invitation of Mrs. Taylor ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... shudder ran cold over the affrighted girl, as with a wild and appalled look she gazed on the recluse birds, which their arrival had disturbed; she clung eagerly to Gomez Arias, as they both sat ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... verses that she had written, when first perceiving that life was to be her portion, where her own intended feelings were ascribed to a maiden who had taken the veil, believing her crusader slain, but who saw him return and lead a recluse life, with the light in her cell for his guiding star. She smiled sadly to find how far the imaginings of four and twenty transcended the powers of four and thirty; and how the heart that had deemed itself able to resign was chafed at the appearance of compulsion. She felt that the right ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... grunter; they represented the demon forces forever in collision with beauty, virtue, and the gentle uses of life; they made a fine contrast in the picture with the wandering minstrel, the soft-lipped princess, the pious recluse, and the timid Israelite. That was a time of color, when the sunlight fell on glancing steel and floating banners; a time of adventure and fierce struggle,—nay, of living, religious art and religious enthusiasm; ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... of making some bitter reply about the undesirability of any guardianship assumed by Willis Morgan, squaw man, recluse, and recipient of common hatred and contempt. But he kept his counsel, and ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... of your mansion are battened to; Your faded wife is a close recluse; And your "finished" daughters will doubtless do Dutifully all that is willed of you, And marry ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... age when normal girls were playing with their dolls these precocious children were writing poems and stories. Their father developed the ways of a recluse and never took his meals with his children. Living in this dream world of their own, these children could not understand normal girls. They were terribly unhappy at school and came near to death of homesickness. Finally Emily and Charlotte found a congenial school and ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... cabin. But after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to grow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as if, when the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. And, by and by, it came to pass, that he was almost continually in the air; but, as yet, for all that he said, or perceptibly did, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... |a[.n]kha (conchshell used for blowing as a horn), kala (time) |Protection, blessing, or invocation to secure protection | |sempana | | |sampanna |Sati, self-sacrifice on the tomb of a lord or husband | |bela | | |vel (sudden death?) | | | |J. and Bat. bela. |Recluse, devotee | |biku | | |bhikshu (a religious mendicant) | | | |Kw. wiku; Siam. phiku, a devotee, beggar. |Mystic words prefixed to prayers and invocations | |Om, hong[39] | | |om (a mystic word prefacing all prayers); hum (a mystic | | |syllable ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... been a recluse, a dreamer, a kind of isolated philosopher, easy-going, content with but little, harboring ill-feeling against no man, and without even having a grudge against heaven. I have constantly lived alone, consequently, a kind of torture takes hold of me when I find ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... cat-war. Ratopolis beleaguer'd sore, Their whole republic drain'd and poor, No morsel in their scrips they bore. Slight boon they craved, of succour sure In days at utmost three or four. 'My friends,' the hermit said, 'To worldly things I'm dead. How can a poor recluse To such a mission be of use? What can he do but pray That God will aid it on its way? And so, my friends, it is my prayer That God will have you in his care.' His well-fed saintship said no more, But ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... little studio, cold and cheerless under its glass ceiling, the empty fireplace, the wind blowing as it blows outside, and making the candle flicker, the only light that shone upon that vigil of a penniless recluse, reflected upon scattered sheets all covered with writing,—in a word, that atmosphere of inhabited cells wherein the very soul of the inhabitants exhales,—enabled de Gery to comprehend at once the impassioned Andre Maranne, his long hair thrown back and flying in the wind, his somewhat ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... sudden turn was the new Vicomte, the dreamer and the recluse, caught up by the career of events, as a straw is borne away by a torrent, when the French lords marched with their vassals to Harfleur, where they were soundly drubbed by the King of England; as afterward ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... saw the young vagrant in his tattered clothes, knocking at the gate and delivering, with a blush, his letter of recommendation to the fair recluse, in the lonely path that leads from the house to the church. They were so present to our fancy, that it seemed as though they were expecting us, and that we should see them at the window or in the garden walks of Les Charmettes. We ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... open door, and we can hear the breathing of the corpulent recluse. As soon as he has carried away the enormous overcoat that sheathes him, like the hide of a pachyderm, and is disappearing, Brisbille begins to roar, "What a snout! Did you see it, eh? Did you see the jaws he swings from his ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... freedom of opinion, and to overawe us by open acts of oppression. Here, one man has been thrown into prison on the charge of high treason; when all they proved against him was the remark, that if the king had signed the Quebec bill, he had broken his coronation oath. There, another, a poor harmless recluse, as I have ever supposed him, is dragged from his hut in the mountains and imprisoned to await his trial for an alleged murder, committed long ago, and in another jurisdiction; when his only crime, with his prosecutors, probably, is his bold denunciations of their ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... marry one of the Greys, if possible; and third, that there was some secret between his father and his sister Hannah; something which had made them what they were; something which had given his father the name of the half-crazy hermit, and to his sister that of the recluse; something which he must never try to unearth, lest it bring disquiet ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... suggestions, had conceived a great wish to meet the marquise; for, having got M. de Nocheres who no doubt regretted her prolonged retreat—to entrust him with a commission for his granddaughter, he came to the convent parlour and asked for the fair recluse. She, although she had never seen him, recognised him at the first glance; for having never seen so handsome a cavalier as he who now presented himself before her, she thought this could be no other than the Marquis de Ganges, of whom people had so ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... temptation. He had arranged, he said, "to have a good time of it in Paris"; and he proposed that Amelius should be his companion. The suggestion produced not the slightest effect; Amelius talked as if he was a confirmed recluse, in the decline of life. "Thank you," he said, with the most amazing gravity; "I prefer the company of my books, and the seclusion of my study." This declaration was followed by more selling-out of money in the Funds, and by a visit to a bookseller, which left a handsome pecuniary result ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... peculiarity, though in a less degree, attends Mr. Wordsworth's style, whenever he speaks in his own person; or whenever, though under a feigned name, it is clear that he himself is still speaking, as in the different dramatis personae of THE RECLUSE. Even in the other poems, in which he purposes to be most dramatic, there are few in which it does not occasionally burst forth. The reader might often address the poet in his own words with ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... night in his house, killed a fowl, prepared millet, and feasted him. He also introduced to him his two sons. 4. Next day, Tsze-lu went on his way, and reported his adventure. The Master said, 'He is a recluse,' and sent Tsze-lu back to see him again, but when he got to the place, the old man was gone. 5. Tsze-lu then said to the family, 'Not ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... company. It was no wonder, therefore, that an ardent character like Julian, influenced by these charms, as well as by the secrecy and mystery attending his intercourse with Alice, should prefer the recluse of the Black Fort to all others with whom he had become acquainted ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... inquired the way to his Commandant's bungalow, and now stood on the threshold, scarcely able to believe the evidence of his senses. Strange developments must have taken place during his absence, if Lenox—the woman-hater, the confirmed recluse—were ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... in the middle of the Weald upon the northern edge of a small wood where a steep brow of orchard pasture goes down to a little river, a Recluse who is of middle age and possessed of all the ordinary accomplishments; that is, French and English literature are familiar to him, he can himself compose, he has read his classical Latin and can easily decipher such Greek as he has been taught in youth. He is unmarried, he is by birth a gentleman, ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... thing that one is reminded at times of Ballantyne's "Martin Rattler," written very much earlier, even down to to the presence of a "recluse". That doesn't mean you won't enjoy the book just as much as you might have enjoyed "Martin Rattler." Best, as always, as ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... began with swingeing blows on both sides; prayers and psalms mingling with the battle-song of the heathen. Here a monk fell wounded, there one lay dead, there again lay a fine and delicate-looking youth, felled by the heavy fist of a recluse. A hermit wrestled hand to hand with a young philosopher who, only yesterday had delivered his first lecture on the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... we have for it, there is a balance in its favour from the number of great men who have been convinced of its truth, after a serious consideration of the question. Grotius was an acute man, a lawyer, a man accustomed to examine evidence, and he was convinced. Grotius was not a recluse, but a man of the world, who certainly had no bias to the side of religion. Sir Isaac Newton set out an infidel, and came to be a very ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... pleasure and amusement. To speak of pleasure and amusement to this unfortunate man, was in his present state to insure a refusal, and so it of course happened. Father d'Aigrigny did not at first try to gain the recluse's confidence, nor did he speak to him of sorrow; but every time he came, he appeared to take such a tender interest in him, and showed it by a few simple and well timed words. By degrees, these interviews, at first so rare, became more frequent and longer. Endowed ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Dickinson has much of the witchcraft and subtlety of William Blake. Many verses of the shy recluse, whom Mr. Higginson so happily has introduced to the world, are not only daring and unconventional, but recklessly defiant of form. But, as her editor has well said, "When a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence." Emily Dickinson ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... themselves passed through the very incidents I relate; but, for the most part, no work has hitherto recorded them. If I have hold them truly, I have added somewhat to the stock of books which should enable a recluse, shut up in his closet, to form an idea of what is passing in the world. It is inconceivable, meanwhile, how much, by this choice of a subject, I increased the arduousness of my task. It is so easy to do, a little better, or a little worse, what twenty authors have ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... have involved the country. We know something of how the knowledge of these anomalies in public life chafed the eager spirit of Nelson, but we can never know the extent of the suffering it caused except during the Neapolitan and Sicilian days. This lonely soul lived the life of a recluse for months at a time. The monotony of the weird song of the sea winds, the nerve-tearing, lazy creak of the wooden timbers, the sinuous crawling, rolling, or plunging over the most wondrous of God's works, invariably produces a sepulchral impression ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... part, shall not stir from the Altenburg, where I am reckoning on finishing my Elizabeth, and on living more and more as a recluse—indeed, even a little like a bear—but not in the style of those estimable citizens of the woods, whom the impresarii of small pleasures degrade by making them dance in the market-places to the sound of their flutes and drums! I shall rather choose a model ideal of a bear—be sure of that—and ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... and Hawthorne has certainly infused it into his work by a more subtle and sympathetic gift than even the magic-loving Scotch romancer owned. After this digressive prelude, the reader will be ready to hear me announce that "Fanshawe" was a faint reflection from the young Salem recluse's mind of certain rays thrown across the Atlantic from Abbotsford. But this ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... Butte possess that Patrick Mullen rifle? If so did he know anything about the whereabouts of my father? It is not uncommon for people suffering from a mental breakdown to flee to the country or wilderness and there live the life of a recluse, and from my father's last letter it was evident that he had had a nervous breakdown from anxiety and brooding over the loss of my mother, to whom he evidently was devotedly attached. It might, therefore, be possible that ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... shipped with Captain Barrett for another voyage. When he came back from that in a month's time, he bought a small house and had it hauled to the "Cove," a lonely inlet from which no other human habitation was visible. Between his sea voyages he lived there the life of a recluse; fishing and playing his violin were his only employments. He went ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... accustomed to carry with them to the camp the luxuries of Paris, soft bedding, rich tapestry, sideboards of plate, hampers of Champagne, opera dancers, cooks and musicians. Better to be a prisoner in the Bastille, better to be a recluse at La Trappe, than to be generalissimo of the half naked savages who burrowed in the dreary swamps of Munster. Any plea was welcome which would serve as an excuse for returning from that miserable exile to the land of cornfields and vineyards, of gilded coaches ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bird I seldom hear till June, and that is the cuckoo. Sometimes the last days of May bring him, but oftener it is June before I hear his note. The cuckoo is the true recluse among our birds. I doubt if there is any joy in his soul. "Rain-crow," he is called in some parts of the country. His call is supposed to bode rain. Why do other birds, the robin for instance, often make war upon the cuckoo, chasing it from the vicinity ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... was Christ's ideal of the Christian life? Was it that of the monk or the citizen?—the recluse who meditates apart on his own salvation, or the worker who enters the world and contributes to the betterment of mankind? Is the kingdom of God a realm apart and separate from all the other domains of activity? Or has Christianity, according to its essence, room within ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... has not studied human nature so superficially as to fail to comprehend the snares and pitfalls which men's egregious vanity sometimes spring prematurely; and rumour quotes me aright, in proclaiming me a recluse when the curtain falls and the lights are extinguished. To-day I deviated from my usual custom in compliment to the representative of my country, who sends you—so his card reads—'charged with an explanation of his unavoidable absence.' As minister-extraordinary, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... a recluse, he was by no means an ascetic. He was marked by deep gravity of countenance coupled with a kindly humorous disposition. No one knew where he came from, or why he had taken up his abode in such a lonely ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... very much between his recluse studious life there, and his very active one at Mota, with almost no leisure to read, and very little to write, and with an abundance of society which was a pleasure ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... char-parson, of the class common in those days of sinecurism and non-residence, who walked sixteen miles every Sunday to serve two churches, besides reading daily prayers at Huntingdon, and who regaled his friend with ale brewed by his own hands. In his attached servant the recluse boasted that he had a friend; a friend he might ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... nature of her feelings. These appeared in every paragraph in which it was proper to make any allusions of the sort. But the letters had other charms. It was apparent, throughout, that the writer was ignorant that she wrote to an invalid, though she could not but know that she wrote to a recluse. Her aim evidently was to amuse Grace, of whose mental sufferings she could not well be ignorant. Lucy was a keen observer, and her epistles were filled with amusing comments on the follies that were daily committed in New York, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... all these fifty years, alone and for himself, amassing learning, and compiling a fortune. He comes home now at night alone from the club, where he has been dining freely, to the lonely chambers where he lives a godless old recluse. When he dies, his Inn will erect a tablet to his honour, and his heirs burn a part of his library. Would you like to have such a prospect for your old age, to store up learning and money, and end so? But we must not linger ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... invalid, transferred the Roman estates to his younger brother, who was married and had children, and, in exchange, took the Neapolitan estates and title, which had just fallen back to the main branch by the death of a childless Marchese di San Giacinto. Late in life this old recluse invalid married, contrary to all expectation—certainly contrary to his own previous intentions. However, a child was born—a boy. The old man found himself deprived by his own act of his principality, ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... ignoble had it not been naive. The recluse of Kremenetz, passionately devoted to his people but wanting in political foresight, was calling Russian officialdom to aid in his fight against the bigotry of the Jewish masses, in the childish conviction that the Russian authorities had the welfare of the Jews truly at heart, ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... the devotee abandons society, becomes a recluse, flees into the desert or the mountain, subsists upon roots or herbs, sits in one posture till the joints of the body become fixed, holds the arms above the head till they become immovable, and the finger nails turn and grow through the palms of the hands; or sits gazing at the navel and repeating ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... somewhat of a recluse in her habits; she was a nervous, diffident woman, who made weak health an excuse for shutting herself out from society. Fay had lived with her ever since her father's death; but during the last year Miss Mordaunt had been much troubled by qualms of conscience, as to ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to whom I cannot do better than quote Mr. Lathrop. One of these young men "is Edward Wolcott, a wealthy, handsome, generous, healthy young fellow from one of the sea-port towns; and the other Fanshawe, the hero, who is a poor but ambitious recluse, already passing into a decline through overmuch devotion to books and meditation. Fanshawe, though the deeper nature of the two, and intensely moved by his new passion, perceiving that a union between himself and Ellen could not be a happy one, resigns the hope of it from the beginning. ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... reputed to be extremely wealthy, yet lived in a miserly fashion, entertaining no visitors, and never spending a penny which it was possible for him to save. He never married, but passed his days as a recluse, shut up among the books in his library, seeing only a few old servants whose services he had retained. Sometimes in the early morning he would wander about the woods and fields in the neighbourhood, seeking for wild flowers, ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... complexion and red eyes, stands in an attitude of readiness (to grapple with every offender) and the king is of righteous vision, the subjects never forget themselves. The Brahmacharin and the house-holder, the recluse in the forest and the religious mendicant, all these walk in their respective ways through fear of chastisement alone. He that is without any fear, O king, never performs a sacrifice. He that is without fear never giveth away. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... But recluse though he was, he could not on occasion escape from hearing things. Things the newsboy shouted on the streets, things the men talked about on the drugstore corner when they ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... Pennsylvania town. A mysterious Mrs. Ventress is the centre of its rapidly unfolding series of peculiar situations. Mrs. Ventress is a puzzle to the townspeople. They believe odd things about her. The particular family in Tupton with which she comes in contact is an eccentric one. The father is a recluse—for reasons. His adopted daughter, Bessie Gedney, is an odd character among young girls in fiction. Dr. Gedney's real daughter had disappeared years before. Why? What has become of her? This complicates ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... "except a very few, including Rev. James Lemen's interviews with Lincoln, as written up by Mr. Lemen on ten pages of legal cap paper." This Joseph B. Lemen is now far advanced in years, has long been a recluse, and has the reputation of being "peculiar." In a personal interview with him, the present writer could elicit no further facts regarding the whereabouts of the "Lemen Family Notes." Nevertheless, the discovery of the copy of the Lemen Diary and the manuscript of Dr. Peck's "History" ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... to have little more communication with the great world out of which he had come than did the humble Culm fishermen. With winds and storms, the third year rolled around, and the master of the old house was still as much of a recluse as ever; but the Culm people had ceased to regard him with any interest, and the man led a most solitary life, hardly seeing a human being, other than his housekeeper, from month to month. Do you wonder what could make him so stern and ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... a good deal of a recluse," she answered. "It's really a very good thing that I'm fond of outdoor life, and that I take an interest in books, too. But I'm very deficient in knowledge in book matters—do teach me something while you're here!—I'd like to know a good deal about all these folios and quartos ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... his dark melancholy and wild deeds, hastened to lower the drawbridge. Greetings were exchanged in silence, and in silence did Sintram enter, and those joyless gates closed with a crash behind the future recluse. ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... him. The man who, a few years before, had delighted Paris with his daily feuilletons, with his duels, with his forty-two lawsuits, who had been the master of revels in the Latin Quarter, in New York lived almost as a recluse, writing a book on Buddhism. While he was in New York I was a reporter on the Evening Sun, but I cannot recall ever having read his name in the newspapers of that day, and I heard of him only twice; once as giving an exhibition of his water-colors at the American Art Galleries, and ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... African episode had better be dropped. Rossiter, after his appeal, would set himself to forget and ignore it. It must be damped down in the poor old father's mind as of relative unimportance—after all, his father was a recluse who did not have many visitors ... by the bye, he must remember to write on the morrow and explain why he could not come down for Christmas or the New Year ... would promise a good long visit in the Easter holidays instead—Must remember that resolution to learn ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... may number Edward FitzGerald, whose letters are, perhaps, the most artistic of any that have recently appeared, and may be placed without hesitation in the class of letters that have a high intrinsic merit independently of the writer's extraneous reputation; for FitzGerald was a recluse with a tinge of misanthropy, nearly unknown to the outer world, except by one exquisite paraphrase of a Persian poem, and his popularity rests almost entirely upon his published correspondence. Of these letters, so excellent of their kind, can it be said that they have the note of improvisation, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... 1725. On the last page of "Letters from a Lady of Quality to a Chevalier" Chetwood had also advertised for speedy publication "a Book entitled, The Danger of giving way to Passion, in Five Exemplary Novels: First, The British Recluse, or the Secret History of Cleomira, supposed dead. Second, The Injur'd Husband, or the Mistaken Resentment. Third, Lasselia, or the Unfortunate Mistress. Fourth, The Rash Resolve, or the Untimely Discovery. Fifth, Idalia, or the ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... apologists. Buddhism was an after-thought, only reached after six years of bootless asceticism. There is no evidence that when Siddartha left his palace he had any thought of benefiting anybody but himself. He entered upon the life of the recluse with the same motives and aims that have influenced thousands of other monks and anchorets of all lands and ages—some of them princes like himself. Nevertheless, for the noble decision which was finally reached we give him high ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... That shy recluse, Ellery Channing, most eccentric of the transcendentalists, was not to be found at the School or the evening symposia. He had married a sister of Margaret Fuller, but for years he had lived alone and done for himself, and his oddities ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... host. "Yes; I'm afraid I became a bit of a recluse latterly. I had to take such confounded care of myself. Well, I didn't want to go out of the world before I could help it, and I was enjoying the quiet here after the strenuous years in Africa—Africa South, East, West. What years they were!" He sighed. "Only the luck ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... Peacocks and the Swans The Story of the Tortoise and the Geese The Story of Fate and the Three Fishes The Story of the Unabashed Wife The Story of the Herons and the Mongoose The Story of the Recluse and the Mouse The Story of the Crane and the Crab The Story of the Brahman and the Pans The Duel of the Giants The Story of the Brahman and the Goat The Story of the Camel, the Lion, and His Court The Story of the ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... the appropriate epitaph for the tombstone of many an author; and if we look carefully into his history we shall find an answer to the question: "All but what?" We shall find, perhaps, that he is a recluse, that his social nature is not fed at all, and that be is, of course, unsympathetic. This is a very frequent cause of dissatisfaction with an author, as it always gives a morbid tinge to his writings. Dickens is eminently a social man, and eminently ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... eyes were huge, because he was so thin; his temples were sunk, his beard scanty, the hair on his head long.... By his face it was impossible to tell his class: gentleman, merchant, or peasant; judging by his appearance and long hair he looked almost like a recluse, a lay-brother, but when he spoke—he was not at all like a monk. He was losing strength through his cough and his illness and the suffocating heat, and he breathed heavily and was always moving his dry lips. Noticing that Goussiev was looking at him, he turned ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... me see. Yes, certainly. You are Mr. Grey the recluse, the hermit, the philosopher, and all that sort of thing. Why, certainly; Dr. Jones, our surgeon, has told me all about you. Dear me, how interesting a rencontre! Lived all alone here for seven—was it ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... though in a morning-dress, which the distance of his residence, and the freedom of the place, made excusable, had, even in the minute points of his exterior, none of the negligence, or wildness, which might be supposed to attach to the vestments of a misanthropic recluse, whether sane or insane. As he paid his compliments round the circle, the scales seemed to fall from the eyes of those he spoke to; and they saw with surprise, that the exaggerations had existed entirely in their own ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... there. It is in some ways the greatest and most powerful thing that Bellini ever accomplished. The central figures and the attendant saints have a large gravity and carefully studied individuality. St. Jerome, absorbed in his theological books, an ascetic recluse, is admirably contrasted with the sympathetic, cultured St. Paul. The landscape, set in a marble frame, is a gem of beauty, and proves what an appeal nature was making to the painter. The predella, illustrating the principal scenes in the lives of the saints around the ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... Rachael, "but do not fear. It was but a passing madness—God smite those guinea fowl! I have lived the life of a nun, and it is an unnatural life for a young woman. Yesterday I learned that I have not the temperament of the scholar, the recluse—that is all. I should have guessed it sooner—then I should not have been fascinated by this brilliant Scot. It was my mind that flew eagerly to companionship—that was all. The hours were pleasant. I would ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... old man, though his age can hardly have exceeded seventy. He was small and bent, with a finely wrinkled face which still wore the tan of youthful exposure. But for this dusky redness it would have been hard to reconstruct from the shrunken recluse, with his low fastidious voice and carefully tended hands, an image of that young knight of adventure whose sword had been at the service of every uprising which stirred the uneasy soil of Italy in the first half ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... a fairy of malignant propensities, and considered the author of all the mischief of the neighborhood. In Sir W. Scott's novel so called, this imp is introduced under various aliases, as Sir Edward Mauley, Elshander the recluse, cannie Elshie, and the Wise ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... a bitter thrill of speech; "ah, what do I know of life? I am only a recluse, a dreamer, a visionary! You must learn of life from the men who have lived, Patricia. I haven't ever lived. I have always chosen the coward's part. I have chosen to shut myself off from the world, to posture in a village all my days, and to consider its trifles as of supreme importance. ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... similar suggestions, had conceived a great wish to meet the marquise; for, having got M. de Nocheres who no doubt regretted her prolonged retreat—to entrust him with a commission for his granddaughter, he came to the convent parlour and asked for the fair recluse. She, although she had never seen him, recognised him at the first glance; for having never seen so handsome a cavalier as he who now presented himself before her, she thought this could be no other than the Marquis de Ganges, of whom people had so ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... a necessity in a well-ordered life. As with many other common blessings we forget its benefits. Nor are these benefits so evident until we see the blighting result in the life of the one who, for any reason whatsoever, has become a social recluse. We have known a few persons who have once been in society, but who have allowed themselves to remain away from all sorts of gatherings, for a number of years. In every case, the result has been openly noticeable. They have become boorish ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... is woman's book; if she reads it ill, it is either her own fault or she is blinded by passion. Yet the genuine mother of a family is no woman of the world, she is almost as much of a recluse as the nun in her convent. Those who have marriageable daughters should do what is or ought to be done for those who are entering the cloisters: they should show them the pleasures they forsake before ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... when quiet as calm as a dove, as fierce as a hawk when aroused; moving always in an eccentric orbit, which few understood; flashing out now and then gleams which some said were sparks of genius but which most people said were mere eccentricity, he had sunk into a recluse. He was in this state when he met HER. He always afterward referred to her so. He was at a reception when he came upon her on a stairway. A casual word about his life, a smile flashed from her large, dark, luminous eyes, lighting up her face, and Henry Floyd awoke. She had called ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... among these there were several bigamists; and one who was not only a heretic but a leader of heretics. For, among other heresies which he taught, one was that God had a beginning, [a doctrine] which only very learned men understood. Another was a prebend whom his illustrious Lordship held as a recluse in our college, for heinous and atrocious crimes, whose final end was a sentence of degradation, and delivery to the secular arm; the dean settled this case, without examining the documents in the case (which they did not find), by condemning ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... this coppice, not far from the eastern or more remote end of the island, Legrand had built himself a small hut, which he occupied when I first, by mere accident, made his acquaintance. This soon ripened into, friendship—for there was much in the recluse to excite interest and esteem. I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. He had with him many books, but rarely employed them. His chief amusements were gunning and ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... during her first month as a property owner in Edgewood. Her appearance would have been against her winning friends easily in any case, even if she had not acquired the habits of a recluse. It took a certain amount of time, too, for the community to get used to the fact that old Mrs. Butterfield was dead, and her niece Lyddy Ann living in the cottage on the river road. There were numbers of people who had ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... celebrating the victory of Louis over the Normans, composed by a monk with whom that monarch was on terms of great intimacy. The style is coarse and energetic, and blends the triumphant emotions of the warrior with the pious devotion of the recluse. Towards the close of the tenth century, Roswitha, a nun, composed several dramas in Latin, characterized by true ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Steele, who described Selkirk as a "man of good sense, with strong but cheerful expression." Whether Selkirk ever met Defoe is uncertain, though the character of Robinson Crusoe was certainly founded on his adventures in Juan Fernandez. In 1712 he returned to Largo, living the life of a recluse, and we must be forgiven for suspecting that he rather acted up to the part, since it is recorded that he made a cave in his father's garden in which to meditate. This life of meditation in an artificial cave was soon ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... shall not stir from the Altenburg, where I am reckoning on finishing my Elizabeth, and on living more and more as a recluse—indeed, even a little like a bear—but not in the style of those estimable citizens of the woods, whom the impresarii of small pleasures degrade by making them dance in the market-places to the sound of their flutes and drums! I shall rather choose a model ideal ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... model playgrounds, its New Thought and its "Journal," but I don't have to be of it. There are only so many hours in the day. I go around "in circles" all winter; in summer I wish to invite my soul, and there isn't time for both. I think I am regarded by the people in the village as a mixture of recluse and curmudgeon, but who cares if they ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... father, who was her junior, and used by us to distinguish between her and that other Elizabeth who was Aunt Lizzie Peabody). Of my grandmother Hawthorne I have no personal recollection at all; she was a Manning, a beautiful old lady, whom her son resembled. She had been a recluse from society for forty years; it was held to be good form, in that age and place, to observe such Hindoo rites after the death of a husband; hers had died in his thirty-fourth year in Surinam. But she had also insensibly fallen into the habit ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... communicating new powers to his being and vivifying it with the fires of love. As he had said to the father, to impose a wife on Etienne would be to kill him. Above all it was important that the young recluse should not be alarmed at the thought of marriage, of which he knew nothing, or be made aware of the object of his father's wishes. This unknown poet conceived as yet only the beautiful and noble passion of Petrarch for Laura, of Dante for Beatrice. ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... and the world in which he dwelt was sufficiently large without the intrusion of external things. In his walks I would often follow in his track, with that fondness of imitation peculiar to childhood, but was never the object of his notice, and never heard him converse but once. Overcome by such recluse habits, DeQuincey showed no desire to court the patronage of the great, and had but little intercourse with the lordly family of the Dalhousies. Indeed, his only intimacy was with Mr. Craig, whose hospitality had won ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of this singular Greenland recluse was in keeping with his study. The walls were painted light blue, a blue carpet adorned the floor, blue curtains softened the light which stole through the windows, and blue hangings cast a pleasant hue over a snowy pillow. Although ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... all the intelligence of what had happened at court since I had left it; and although I professed to have renounced the world, and to have become a recluse, a sitter in a corner, as it is called, yet still I found that I had an ear for what was passing in it. They informed me that the chief executioner had returned from his campaign against the Russians, and had brought the Shah a present of two Georgian slaves, a male and a female, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... "boys" had said, "the Prince" was sure to break the spell, that fettered the life of the beautiful recluse. He had been on his way to her father, to seek his permission for himself and his fellow students to pass through his grounds, when all at once a new experience presented itself and he found himself talking all sorts of nice nonsense, to ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... discouraged and offended his new companions. Hay did not return more than twice, Pringle never at all, and there came a time when Archie even desisted from the Tuesday Club, and became in all things - what he had had the name of almost from the first - the Recluse of Hermiston. High-nosed Miss Pringle of Drumanno and high-stepping Miss Marshall of the Mains were understood to have had a difference of opinion about him the day after the ball - he was none the wiser, he could not suppose himself ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was rather discomfited. "There may be nothing in it, and Franklin seems to be decent enough in his life, though a bit of a recluse. I've nothing to ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... at the very gates of my lost home—so that I may drain the bitter cup of humiliation to the dregs. The fools who call themselves my friends think, that because I can endure to live here, I am indifferent to all I have lost; that I am an eccentric bookworm—an easy-going philosophical recluse, content to dawdle away the remnant of my days amongst old books. It pleases me to let them think so. Why, there is never a day that yonder trader's carriage, passing my windows, does not seem to drive over my body; not a sound ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... staid principally in furnished lodgings. Of all our ministers, he had the least occasion for an outfit, and I suppose spent almost nothing on that article. He was of a disposition, too, to restrain himself within any limits of expense whatever, and it suited his recluse turn, which is, to avoid society. Should he judge of what others should do, by what he did, it would be an improper criterion. He was in Europe as a voyageur only, and it was while the salary was five hundred guineas more than ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... "but do not fear. It was but a passing madness—God smite those guinea fowl! I have lived the life of a nun, and it is an unnatural life for a young woman. Yesterday I learned that I have not the temperament of the scholar, the recluse—that is all. I should have guessed it sooner—then I should not have been fascinated by this brilliant Scot. It was my mind that flew eagerly to companionship—that was all. The hours were pleasant. I would not ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... military life. In 1831 he had joined the insurgents in the Romagna who were in arms against the Papal Government. The death of his own elder brother, followed in 1832 by that of Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt, made him chief of the house of Bonaparte. Though far more of a recluse than a man of action, though so little of his own nation that he could not pronounce a sentence of French without a marked German accent, and had never even seen a French play performed, he now became possessed by the fixed idea that he was one day to ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... he gave himself to others reluctantly; he was, in truth, a recluse. He stood for character more than for intellect, and for intuition more than for reason. He was often contrary and inconsistent. There was more crust than crumb in the loaf he ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... boat—had on board—his fare paid, and so good-bye. But it is needless to multiply examples; the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When we came to Apemama, of so many white men who have scrambled for a place in that rich market, one remained—a silent, sober, solitary, niggardly recluse, of whom the king remarks, "I think ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... naturally glum, So she married young Grouch, the recluse; For she says when she's sad, she just looks at his face— Then she can't help but laugh like ...
— Why They Married • James Montgomery Flagg
... down to write to my dear recluse, intending at first to write only a few lines, as she had requested me; but my time was too short to write so little. My letter was a screed of four pages, and very likely it said less than her note ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova • David Widger
... in the mill now. The peasants came no longer with their corn. She had enough to live on, and her long seclusion unfitted her for strange men in the mill, and people she must talk to. And so long was the habit of the recluse on her, that though her soul flew leagues her body never wandered more than a few hundred yards from her home. Some who had heard of her, and had glimpses of her, spoke to her when they met; but they could make no headway with this sweet, shy, silent woman. Yet ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... methinks be an useless Comparison between the Condition of a Man who shuns all the Pleasures of Life, and of one who makes it his Business to pursue them. Hope in the Recluse makes his Austerities comfortable, while the luxurious Man gains nothing but Uneasiness from his Enjoyments. What is the Difference in the Happiness of him who is macerated by Abstinence, and his who is surfeited with Excess? He who ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... look at him, that he was not at the party by choice; and it was natural enough to think, with Susy Pettingill, that it must have been a freak of the dark girl's which brought him there, for he had the air of a shy and sad-hearted recluse. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... transcribe Hume's observations, that the reader may observe the literary phenomenon. "They were struck with the extensive genius of the man, who being educated amidst naval and military enterprises, had surpassed in the pursuits of literature, even those of the most recluse and sedentary lives; and they admired his unbroken magnanimity, which at his age, and under his circumstances, could engage him to undertake and execute so great a work, as his History of the World." Now when the truth is known, the wonderful ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... immediately behind trees. Her lover's home was unusually illuminated to-night—unusually, because, at other times, when she had passed it, only one or two lights had been visible, Major Perigal living the life of a recluse who disliked intercourse with his species. Half an hour later, Mavis was putting her baby to bed at Mrs Trivett's. His face was flushed, his eyes staring and wide awake; but Mavis put down these manifestations to the trying journey from town. She went downstairs ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... he was supposed to live according to a definite set of religious rules and as a member of a religious community. Abelard, however, made rather light of his churchly associations. He was at once an accomplished man of the world and a profound scholar. There was nothing of the recluse about him. He mingled with his fellow men, whom he dominated by the charm of his personality. He was eloquent, ardent, and persuasive. He could turn a delicate compliment as skilfully as he could elaborate a syllogism. His rich voice had in it a ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Meredith. My Lord, I will put it with a convincing brevity, not indeed a dust-scattering brevity fit only for the mumbling recluse, who perchance in this grey London marching Eastward at break of naked morn, daintily protruding a pinkest foot out of compassing clouds, copiously takes inside of him doses of what is denied to his external ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... rough garb—belted woolen jacket, trousers awkwardly patched, leggings rolled above the knee, and yellow moccasins. Although he was the ordinary type of the woods recluse, there was kindliness in his expression, as well as a benignant gleam in his eye ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... the recluse headquarters of the Jesuits, so of all enslaved Spanish-Americans probably the Guaranis are the worst. During Lent they will inflict stripes on their bodies, or almost starve themselves to death; and their abject humility to the Pa is sad to ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... afterward added the Sutras, literally "Strings of pithy sentences" regarding laws and ceremonies. Still later the Upanishads were composed, treating of God and the soul; the Aranyakas, or "Tracts for the forest recluse;" and, after a very long interval, the Puranas, or "Traditions from of old." All these ranked, however, not as divinely-inspired knowledge, or things "heard from God" (sruti), like the Vedas and Brahmanas, but only as sacred ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... brood, or whether they were brooders by nature, it is difficult to say. I think they were all easterners, and this would explain away certain characteristic shynesses of temper and of expression in them. Ryder, as we know, was the typical recluse, Fuller in all likelihood also. Martin I know little of privately, but his portrait shows him to be a strong elemental nature, with little feeling for, or interest in, the superficialities either of life or of art. Of Blakelock I can say but little, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... they are, just as if they were utterly commonplace. They know that if they can boast a knighthood or a baronetcy or a Privy Councillorship, they will taste day by day and every day that respect, that confidence from all about them that no one but a trained recluse despises. And life will abound in opportunities. "Oh, well!" they will say. Such things give them influence, consideration, power ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... us a month or two ago the case of a gentleman living in a country town—a quiet, shy, studious recluse—born on this fatal day. By some mischance he happened to pick up a journal in which was an article on the Government by Mr. ARNOLD WHITE. He read it. He was so terrified that he expired from heart failure. That sounds to you incredible, but real life is often incredible. That is one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... habits, the world is right in condemning a man who, out of pure affectation or eccentricity, shuts himself up alone, loses his friends, and sets society against him. Those, however, who act in this way naturally, because their profession obliges them to lead a recluse life, or because their character rebels against feigned politenesses and conventional usage, ought in common justice to be tolerated. What claim by right have you on him? Why should you force him to take ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... A recluse, who was credited with the gift of second sight, having commanded the children of Israel to follow him to a mountain top in order to hear the revelation of certain mysteries, saw that he was accompanied by a crowd which ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... countrywoman has not studied human nature so superficially as to fail to comprehend the snares and pitfalls which men's egregious vanity sometimes spring prematurely; and rumour quotes me aright, in proclaiming me a recluse when the curtain falls and the lights are extinguished. To-day I deviated from my usual custom in compliment to the representative of my country, who sends you—so his card reads—'charged with an explanation of his unavoidable absence.' As minister-extraordinary, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the inquisitor, and the Jesuit were lords of Spain,—sovereigns of her sovereign, for they had formed the dark and narrow mind of that tyrannical recluse. They had formed the minds of her people, quenched in blood every spark of rising heresy, and given over a noble nation to a bigotry blind and inexorable as the doom of fate. Linked with pride, ambition, avarice, every passion of a rich, strong nature, potent for good and ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... outside the windows of his mind that Townsend found life a thing of odd discoveries, strange secrets, and thrilling hazards. His own existence, though in reality an exceedingly quiet one, indeed almost that of a recluse, was still to him a great adventure. There was always for him the possibility of the sudden appearance of the man in the black cloak with hat drawn over his brows, either looking, or saying "Beware!" I remember ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... more than once with imaginary stories about their neighbour. "He was a miser—a recluse—a misanthrope—he had a wife in a lunatic asylum—he had known some great trouble that had embittered his life; he had made a vow never to let a human being cross his threshold; he was a Roman Catholic priest in disguise, an Agnostic, a Nihilist." ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... lessons in painting ever since I arrived, I was always very fond of it and mean to stick to it; it suits me and I am not without hopes that I shall do well at it. I live almost the life of a recluse, seeing very few people and going nowhere that I can help—I mean in the way of parties and so forth; if my friends had their way they would fritter away my time without any remorse; but I made a regular stand against it from the beginning and so, having my time pretty much in my own ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... err, it is the same thinker who in the volume before us solicits the attention of the philosophic world to his views of the Will. It adds greatly to the interest of the volume itself, in our view, and we trust will do so in the view of our readers, to know that he is no studious recluse nor professional philosopher, but active, shrewd, and keen-sighted, both in his mills, when at home in a fitly named valley, and upon Change, when in Boston ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... sweet after strife. I would sleep for a while. I am weary. "My friend, I had meant in these lines to regather, and send To our old home, my life's scatter'd links. But 'tis vain! Each attempt seems to shatter the chaplet again; Only fit now for fingers like mine to run o'er, Who return, a recluse, to those cloisters of yore Whence too far I have wander'd. "How many long years Does it seem to me now since the quick, scorching tears, While I wrote to you, splash'd out a girl's premature Moans of pain at what women in silence endure! To your eyes, friend of mine, and to your eyes alone, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... in the morning, and two in the afternoon, were devoted to work in the fields or in the garden by those who were able for such tasks. Confession and communion were frequent, but no uniform rule was enforced. In this, as in fasting and austerities generally, each recluse was left to his own free will; and, as will be seen in Pascal’s case, there was no need to stimulate the ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... graveyard gate, what do you want?" demanded Cap'n Sproul, running eye of great disfavor over Mr. Gammon and his faithful attendant. He had heard various reports concerning this widower recluse of Purgatory, and was prepared to ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... right for a young man to lead the life of a recluse of seventy. Here we are in the height of the London season, and I am sure you haven't been into ten houses, when a hundred of the very best are open to you—" I loathe the term "best houses." The tinsel ineptitude of ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... every attitude and step; men with full satin roses on their shining shoes; diamond tablet rings on their forefingers; with snuff-boxes, the worth of which might almost purchase a farm; lace worked by the delicate fingers of some religious recluse of an ancestress, and taken from an altar-cloth; old point-lace, dark as coffee-water could make it; with embroidered waistcoats, wreathed in exquisite tambour-work round each capricious lappet and pocket; with cut steel buttons ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... doubtless she now recognised him, although well-nigh ten years had gone by since he had last crossed that threshold. Instead of evincing any surprise, she seemed to consider his extraordinary return quite natural, and remained as silent and discreet as usual. She led, indeed, the life of a recluse, never speaking unless her work absolutely required it. And thus she now contented herself with saying: "Monsieur l'Abbe, Monsieur Bertheroy is in the study, and has been waiting there for a quarter ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... might be the same; and that, thus fortified by exercise, they might the better support the pangs of child-birth, and be delivered with safety. In order to take away the excessive tenderness and delicacy of the sex, the consequence of a recluse life, he accustomed the virgins occasionally to be seen naked as well as the young men, and to dance and sing in their presence on certain festivals. There they sometimes indulged in a little raillery upon those that had misbehaved themselves, and sometimes they ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... not forget that during the Western and the Eastern Tsin (Shin) dynasties (A.D. 265-420) both Taoism and Buddhism grew prosperous to no small extent. And China produced, on the one hand, Taoists of an eccentric type, such as the Seven Wise Men of the Bamboo Forest, while she gave birth to many recluse-like men of letters, such as Tao Yuen Ming (To-yen-mei, died A.D. 427) and some others on the other. Besides there were some scholars who studied Buddhism in connection with Taoism and Confucianism, and led a secluded life. To the last class of scholars ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... world, is a type of the separation of thought from act that seems natural to India or to the Indian mind, type also of the independence of each thinker. The thinker secludes himself; "the mind is its own place." To become a thinker signifies to become an ascetic recluse; even modern enlightenment often removes an Indian ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... me extraordinary talents for the art, and his encomiums awakened all my ardor. What a blissful period of my existence was it that I passed beneath his roof. Another being seemed created within me, or rather, all that was amiable and excellent was drawn out. I was as recluse as ever I had been at the convent, but how different was my seclusion. My time was spent in storing my mind with lofty and poetical ideas; in meditating on all that was striking and noble in history or fiction; ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... rebelled at the crude presentations of Bromstead, at the secrecies and suppressions of my youth, at the dull unrealities of City Merchants, at the conventions and timidities of the Pinky Dinkys, at the philosophical recluse of Trinity and the phrases and tradition-worship of my political associates. None of these things were half alive, and I wanted life to be intensely alive and awake. I wanted thought like an edge of steel and desire like a flame. The real work before mankind now, I realised ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... it?" he remarked; "the old man they say acts so queerly, and has kept to himself up there on his estate for years, living the life of a recluse among his books and papers. There must be some good reason for his acting that way. He's met with some sort of terrible disappointment in life it may be; but then that's no ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... players. You gain in knowledge what you lose in time. If you are a philosopher, you can study human nature through the buffoon and the mummer. If you are a naturalist, here are grand forests to contemplate. If you are not a recluse, here is free, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... individual, have, in the same age, brought others to the stake or to the scaffold. The results of deep research or extravagant speculation seldom provoke hostility, when meekly announced as the deductions of reason or the convictions of conscience. As the dreams of a recluse or of an enthusiast, they may excite pity or call forth contempt; but, like seed quietly cast into the earth, they will rot and germinate according to the vitality with which they are endowed. But, if new and startling opinions are thrown ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... grace and grandeur with the habits and sentiments of a recluse,—of austerity of life with gentleness of manner,—of inflexible moral principle with humility and even bashfulness of deportment, is delineated with the most beautiful and wonderful consistency. Thus when her brother sends to her, to entreat ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... in which Johnson was certainly very deficient. Both of these great men, however, impress us by their deep sense of the evils under which humanity suffers, and their rejection of the superficial optimism of the day. Butler's sadness, undoubtedly, is that of a recluse, and Johnson's that of a man of the world; but the sentiment is fundamentally the same. It may be added, too, that here, as elsewhere, Johnson speaks with the sincerity of a man drawing upon his own experience. He announces himself as a scholar thrust out upon the world rather by necessity ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... astonishing suddenness he could raise insurmountable barriers; and people, not of his order, who occasionally presumed on his simplicity of life and habits, found themselves put distinctly ill at ease by a quiet, curious look in his eye. No man was ever more the recluse and at the same time the man of the world. He had had his bitter little comedy of life, but it was different from that of his brother Frank. It was buried very deep; not one of his family knew of it: Edward Lambert, and one or two others who had good ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of September 1558 died the imperial recluse of Yuste, once Charles V., and it is said his last looks were steadfastly directed towards that great canvas The Trinity, which to devise with Titian had been one of his greatest consolations at a moment when ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... followed her, till she returned to her cavern, and waited till nightfall, when he arose and entering a sherbet-sellers [637] shop, drank a cup of liquor, [638] then went forth the city, intending for the cavern of Fatimeh the recluse. When he came thither, he entered and saw her sleeping on her back on a piece of matting; so he went up to her and sitting down [639] on her breast, [640] drew his dagger and cried out at her; whereupon she awoke and opening her eyes, saw a man, a Maugrabin, ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... on the high balcony, telescope in hand, gazing seaward. No one knew his name. He dealt with the villagers through his servant, who could speak English, himself professing that he could not speak the language. He was a recluse, almost a hermit. At odd times, a brig would be seen dropping anchor in the offing. She was always from across the water, from the old country, as villagers to this day insist upon calling Europe. The manor during these peaceful invasions showed signs of life. Men from the brig went up ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... well pull it down, and so form a mound over the skeleton. Jack, therefore, with his axe, cut down the other door-post, which, when it was done, brought the whole hut in ruins to the ground, and thus formed a grave to the bones of the poor recluse and his dog. Then we left the spot, having brought away the iron pot, the pistol, and the old axe, as they might be of ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... be too contemplative, and to stay at home, on a carnival day in Cuba. All the world recognises you in the character of a moralising recluse, and all the carnival world will surely make you its victim. As I sit, despising these frivolities, as I call them, a great 'comparsa' of whites—the genuine article—comes rushing along in my direction. Out of the carnival season, the dramatis personae of this comparsa are respectable members ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... tongue-tied, embarrassed and overawed by the well-dressed and prosperous-looking. His sense of inferiority was in no way compensated for, and to avoid pain he became a sort of recluse, doing his work and returning to his shell, so ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... devil,—a foul and melancholy fiend,—who resented the attempted possession of others by subjecting them to himself. One had turned from quiet and sober habits to reckless dissipation; another had turned from the usual gayety of life to recluse habits, and both, apparently, by the same influence; at least, so it appeared to Redclyffe, as he insulated their story from all other circumstances, and looked at them by one light. He even thought that he felt a similar influence coming over himself, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... looks toward the golden sunrise. I would share your happiness and give you in return a portion in the hope that I too have found. With you at my side I could walk through the world, (for I am not such a recluse as you might suppose,) knowing that the desire of all men's hearts had fallen to me, and that my life was consecrated henceforth to noble uses. And yet ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... for entertainments given by members of the noble families of Stanley and Egerton, they show that Milton's plan of life did not involve cutting himself off from the great world, where they must have caused his name to be talked of. His life at Horton was evidently not that of a mere recluse, {42} forgetting the world outside and forgotten by it. Arcades and Comus, and still more the wonderful outburst At a Solemn Music, are visible links with the cultivated circles of the town, as Lycidas, which followed them in 1637 and was printed in 1638 at Cambridge with other poems to ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... just opened your third letter. My dear, I have about one thousand livres to dispose of; spend them for me on pretty things, such as we can't find here, nor even at Marseilles. While speeding on your own business, give a thought to the recluse of La Crampade. Remember that on neither side have the heads of the family any people of taste in Paris to make their purchases. I shall reply to your ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... seek beyond its walls for some pleasure and amusement. To speak of pleasure and amusement to this unfortunate man, was in his present state to insure a refusal, and so it of course happened. Father d'Aigrigny did not at first try to gain the recluse's confidence, nor did he speak to him of sorrow; but every time he came, he appeared to take such a tender interest in him, and showed it by a few simple and well timed words. By degrees, these interviews, at first so rare, became more frequent and longer. Endowed ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... mean? Was the Arab magician, recluse in his wretched hut below the castle, prepared to serve her? Was it through him and Foresto that she might hope to escape or at least to manage some revenge? Thereafter she often watched the renegade's window, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... 'hermit,' I mean 'recluse.' With all the will to be a social success and identify myself with the welfare of the place in which I dwell, my powers are circumscribed. Do not think I put myself above the people, or pretend any intellectual superiority, or any nonsense of that sort. No, it is merely ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... had been practically a recluse these past several years, had, nevertheless, the metropolite's inborn indifference to the passerby. He had scarcely noticed the steadily increasing group before the steps. Now he ignored them all. He was hungry. That invitation to partake of food ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... contained him was no less deceptive. Its book-lined walls advertised him as the scholarly recluse that he was not. He had had an eye to this effect. He had placed in prominent positions the books that he had inherited from his father, who had been a schoolmaster. You were caught at the very door by the thick red line of The Tudor Classics; by the eleven ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... time that a little group of earnest thinkers had been gathered together at Dr. Langton's house. The physician was a person held in high esteem in Oxford. He took no open part now in her counsels, he gave no lectures; he lived the life of a recluse, highly esteemed and respected. He would have been a bold man who would have spoken ill of him or his household, and therefore it seemed to him that he could very well afford to take the risk of receiving young men here, who desired to speak freely amongst themselves and one another ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... explore. Prancing in pride of earthly trust, His charger hurled him to the dust, And, by a base plebeian thrust, He died his band before. God judge 'twixt Marmion and me; He is a chief of high degree, And I a poor recluse; Yet oft, in Holy Writ, we see Even such weak minister as me May the oppressor bruise: For thus, inspired, did Judith slay The mighty in his sin, And Jael thus, and Deborah" - Here hasty Blount broke in:- "Fitz-Eustace, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... strong evidence which we have for it, there is a balance in its favour from the number of great men who have been convinced of its truth, after a serious consideration of the question. Grotius was an acute man, a lawyer, a man accustomed to examine evidence, and he was convinced. Grotius was not a recluse, but a man of the world, who certainly had no bias to the side of religion. Sir Isaac Newton set out an infidel, and came to be a ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... prejudices, permitted the visits of the hero of my story. Still he did not altogether encourage the affection which he found springing up between Mary and the poet. When, however, he found that her affections were engaged, he did not withhold his consent from her marriage, and the recluse bore to his solitary mansion the young bride of his affections. O sir, the house assumed a new appearance within and without. Roses bloomed in the garden, jessamines peeped through its lattices, and the fields about it smiled with the effects of careful cultivation. Lights ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... recounting the humiliating State it had formerly been in, say, that he had been a Taylor, a Shrimp, and a Tom-tit. It is from these causes, as well as from the habits and appearance contracted by a recluse and sedentary Life, that, in the enlighten'd, as well as the ignorant, the ideas of Taylor and Insignificance are ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... demanding some employment. She sought that employment in developing the powers of her child. Vere was not specially studious. Such an out-of-door temperament as hers could never belong to a bookworm or a recluse. But she was naturally clever, as her father had not been, and she was enthusiastic not only in pleasure but in work. Long ago Hermione, trying with loving anxiety to educate her boyish husband, to make him understand certain subtleties of her ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... his earlier fame, which set him in a place apart and assured beyond all possible depreciation, so long as he elected to stay there, the very conditions of his business saved him. He enjoyed in those two desperate years the immunities of a recluse. The results were prominently before the public, but Jimmy wasn't. His study was literally his sanctuary. Sitting there nearly all day and half the night, he was removed from the world's observation at the precise moment ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... the condition of an individual soul's being, which no association with others can do away; but there is no reason why we should add to that burden of personality which the Bishop of Oxford, in one of his most striking sermons, has shown to be truly 'an awful gift.' And say, youthful recluse (I don't mean you, middle-aged bachelor, I mean really young men of five or six and twenty), have you not sometimes, sitting by the fireside in the evening, looked at the opposite easy chair in the ruddy glow, and imagined that easy chair occupied by a gentle companion—one who would bring ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... beautiful as an angel and as silly as a goose." The greater includes the less. Your view from the mountain-side may be very pretty, but she who has taken one step higher commands your view and her own also. It was no dreamy recluse, but the accomplished and experienced Stendhal, who wrote, "The joys of the gay world do not count for ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... found himself again opposed by his London friends. Unable to secure a new Alice in Wonderland for his child readers, he determined to give them Kate Greenaway. But here he had selected another recluse. Everybody discouraged him. The artist never saw visitors, he was told, and she particularly shunned editors and publishers. Her own publishers confessed that Miss Greenaway was inaccessible to them. "We conduct all our business with her by correspondence. I have never seen ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... husband, and, with a view to further every wish of her intoxicated imagination, she determined to spare no exertion to secure the support of her own family, which, when agreeing in one point, was the most powerful of any in the kingdom. Her father, the Earl of Strathearn, was now a misanthrope recluse in the Orkneys; she therefore did not calculate on his assistance, but she resolved on requesting Wallace to put the names of her cousins, Athol and Badenoch, into the exchange of prisoners, for by their means she expected to accomplish all she hoped. ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Night-Inspector, with a pen and ink, and ruler, posting up his books in a whitewashed office, as studiously as if he were in a monastery on top of a mountain, and no howling fury of a drunken woman were banging herself against a cell-door in the back-yard at his elbow. With the same air of a recluse much given to study, he desisted from his books to bestow a distrustful nod of recognition upon Gaffer, plainly importing, 'Ah! we know all about YOU, and you'll overdo it some day;' and to inform ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the living gold; Him I desire who dwells recluse, And not his image worn and old, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... "A recluse, manifestly," said Philippa to herself; "the child does not understand. But is she an anchoritess or an eremitess?—Does she ever leave her ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... sat in his cell and read. The gentle stillness of a rare spring morning enveloped him with its benison. And the clear light fell upon the large pages of a book in his hand,—the window through which it streamed was the one link between the young recluse and the life of the world. From it he could see the roofs of the city beneath him; when he so wished, he might, without straining his gaze, distinguish the Pantheon at the end of that triumphal avenue which spanned the Seine and had once evoked for him visions of antique splendour. But Brother ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... great calamity for an Empire when its leading counsellors are ignorant. I will not question your good intentions, Halil, but it strikes me as very comical that you should wish us, on the strength of the prophecy of a Turkish recluse, to declare war against one of our neighbours who is actually living at peace with us, is doing us no harm, and harbours no mischievous designs against us. You speak as if Europe was absolutely uninhabited by any but ourselves, as if there was no such thing as powerful nations ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... town. A mysterious Mrs. Ventress is the centre of its rapidly unfolding series of peculiar situations. Mrs. Ventress is a puzzle to the townspeople. They believe odd things about her. The particular family in Tupton with which she comes in contact is an eccentric one. The father is a recluse—for reasons. His adopted daughter, Bessie Gedney, is an odd character among young girls in fiction. Dr. Gedney's real daughter had disappeared years before. Why? What has become of her? This ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... treacherous.' replied the Father. Then he was silent, and seemed lost in revery. The pure, ever-present breeze of Mackinac played in his long silvery hair, and his bright eyes roved along the wall of the old house; he had a broad forehead, noble features, and commanding presence, and as he sat there, recluse as he was,—aged, alone, without a history, with scarcely a name or a place in the world,—he looked, in the power of his native-born dignity, worthy of a ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... either of these. A man may have as much wisdom in the possession of an affluent fortune, as any beggar in the streets; or may enjoy a handsome wife or a hearty friend, and still remain as wise as any sour popish recluse, who buries all his social faculties, and starves his belly while he well ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... a letter to Wordsworth (February 8, 1804), thinking, perhaps, less of the chieftain than the sonnet, exclaims, "'Oh for one hour of Dundee!' How often shall I sigh, 'Oh for one hour of The Recluse!'"—an aspiration which Byron would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... she said, "that I'm so busy this week. But we ought to meet at many places, unless you continue to play the recluse. Don't you really go anywhere ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... was Richard Harding Davis. I recognized him, nor shall I forget that peculiar thrill I experienced at finding myself in actual, physical contact with an author. And that this author should be none other than the creator of Gallegher, prepossessing, vigorous, rather than a dry and elderly recluse, made my excitement the keener. It happened also, after entering the smoking-car, that the remaining vacant seat was at my side, and here Mr. Davis established himself. He looked at me, he asked if my name was Winston Churchill, ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... Lady Kirkbank, 'what a delight to see you again after such ages; and what a too lovely spot you have chosen for your retreat from the world, the flesh, and the devil. If I could be a recluse anywhere, it would be amongst just such ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... dear to many, have no doubt given impressions unfavorable to Thoreau's thought and personality. One hears him called, by some who ought to know what they say and some who ought not, a crabbed, cold-hearted, sour-faced Yankee—a kind of a visionary sore-head—a cross-grained, egotistic recluse,—even non-hearted. But it is easier to make a statement than prove a reputation. Thoreau may be some of these things to those who make no distinction between these qualities and the manner which often comes as a kind of by-product of an intense devotion of a principle ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... but seldom, he lied well. Drummond smoked his cigarette meditatively. He remembered that he had heard stories about the wonderful likeness between these two sisters, one of whom was an artist and a recluse, whilst the other had attached herself to a very gay and a very brilliant little coterie of pleasure-seekers. There was a bare chance that he had been mistaken. He thought it best to let the matter drop. A few minutes later ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... prosecuting their campaigns in the South, checked by General Nathaniel Greene—when South Carolina was being overrun by Cornwallis, and Virginia itself was invaded by expeditions from New York under Philips and Arnold. As Jefferson had no military abilities, indeed, was a recluse rather than a man of action, the administration of his native Province, while able and efficient, was lacking in the notable incident which the then crisis of affairs would naturally call forth. Even his own Virginia homestead was at this time raided by the English ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... education was as yet in its infancy. This was not only his first visit to England, but, indeed, to any spot further afield than Interlaken. All of his six-and-twenty years that he could recollect had been passed in a chalet on the Scheidegg above Grindelwald, his only companion an elderly recluse who had deliberately cut himself off from communion with his fellows. The trouble which had driven Mr. Strange, an author at one time of some mark, into this seclusion, was now as completely forgotten as his name. Even David knew nothing of its cause. That Strange was his uncle and had adopted ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... table, spoke of the gentleman who occupied the private apartments, wondered that no one appeared to be aware who he was, and then in confidence informed the assembled party that the recluse was the celebrated author of the "Pleasures of Memory," now engaged in illustrating "HIS ITALY" with splendid embellishments from the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... these fierce little notes is not the gentle recluse we are apt to imagine him. They show, on the contrary, that he was not wanting in spirit when occasion demanded. He was himself upright and honest in all his dealings. And he never forgot a kindness, as more than one entry in his will abundantly testifies. He was absolutely without malice, and ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... to recall the Buddha's education in a secluded palace, his encounter successively with a decrepit old man, with a man in mortal disease and poverty, with a dead body, and, lastly, with a religious recluse radiant with peace and dignity, and his consequent abandonment of his princely state for the ascetic life in the jungle. Some of the correspondences in the two stories are most minute, and even the phraseology, in which some of the details of Josaphat's history are described, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... offering to convey them, without charge, to the Holy Land; and, the offer having been joyfully accepted, seven vessels, with children on board, sailed from Marseilles. But the voyage was not prosperous. At the end of two days, when the ships were off the isle of St. Peter, near the rock of the Recluse, a tempest arose, and the wind blew so violently that two of them went down with all on board. The five others, however, weathered the storm, and reached Bugia and Alexandria. And now the young Crusaders discovered to their consternation how they had been deceived and betrayed. Without delay they ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... lips, and Sam's Mongolian shape flitted across the screen, bearing a tray with similar suggestive objects. What meant this unheard-of conviviality on the part of the ascetic, the hermit, the midnight-oil-burner, the scholarly recluse of the garrison? Buxton stared with all his eyes and listened with all his ears, starting guiltily when he heard a martial footstep coming quickly up the path, and faced the intruder rather unsteadily. It was only the corporal ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... drops down. Scarce was he fallen asleep, when a figure entered the room: 'tis a girl all clothed and veiled in white; on her forehead a fillet of black and gold. She sees him. In amazement she lifts her white hand: 'Am I, then, such a stranger in the house already? Alas, poor recluse!... But I am ashamed, and ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... like the terraced and retreating colonnades one sees in fanciful pictures of Belshazzar's Feast and the palaces of the ancient Pharaohs. No other human dwelling is near. It was founded many ages ago by a holy recluse who lived at first in a cave in the rock—a cave which is inclosed in the convent walls, now, and was reverently shown to us by the priests. This recluse, by his rigorous torturing of his flesh, his diet of bread and water, his utter withdrawal from all society ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was a short, thick-set, heavily whiskered gentleman, and looked more like a retired man of affairs than the prosy recluse that he was; but he had long since ceased to take any active interest in life, and gave himself up entirely to scientific study and research of a more or less abstruse nature. A useless sort of existence, it seemed to me, as mankind was never destined, nor intended, to reap ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... sentences I wandered; and, presently, I had no fault to charge against their abrupt tellings; for, better far than my own ambitious phrasing, is this mutilated story capable of bringing home all that the old Recluse, of the vanished house, had striven ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... who (to speak frankly) found it a trifle dull. It might be said, though perhaps unkindly, that Miss COLE looks at life through such feminine eyes that all her characters, male and female, are types of perfect womanhood. In Denis Laurie, the gentle essayist and recluse, one might expect to find some feminine attributes; but even the bolder and badder lots, whose task it is to supply the melodramatic relief, struck me as oddly unvirile. But this is only a personal ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... whom nature had denied the impromptu faculty; who, in public, was by nature a cypher; whose time of mental activity, even when alone, was not under the meridian sun; who needed the fresh silence of morning, or the recluse peace of evening, to win from the Creative Impulse one evidence of his presence, one proof of his force; I, with whom that Impulse was the most intractable, the most capricious, the most maddening of ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... had plainly come to change our day travel into night travel, for freezing was resumed each night after the sun was set, and the surface grew hard again. So at this cabin we lay all the next day, with an interesting recluse of these parts who knows many passages of Shakespeare by heart, and who drew us a chart of our course to the next habitation, marking every bend to be followed and the place where the river must be crossed. But there is always difficulty in ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... while the world outside knew nothing of the matter. One by one the younger men stepped forward on the public stage and secured the plaudits of the discerning, and ascended the slow incline of general reputation. But Rossetti remained obstinately recluse, far preferring to be the priest and confessor of genius to acting himself a public part. To this determination several outward things engaged him still further. He married quite early in life; and his wife, who was herself an artist of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... the horseman at length, in a low deep tone, "you have chosen to shut yourself up in a narrow cell, like a recluse, for more than two months, denying yourself all sort of enjoyment, practising severest abstinence, and passing your whole time in useless prayer—ay, useless, for if you were to pray from now till doomsday—come when it will, a thousand years ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the Hall Basil Hurlhurst, the recluse invalid, lay upon his couch, trying to shut out the mirth and gayety that floated up to him from below. As the sound of Pluma's voice sounded upon his ear he turned his face to the wall with a bitter groan. "She is so like—" he muttered, grimly. "Ah! the pleasant voices of our youth turn ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... That damsels shall be sent Attired in holy hermits' weed, And skilled in blandishment, That they the hermit may beguile With every art and amorous wile Whose use they know so well, And by their witcheries seduce The unsuspecting young recluse To leave his father's cell. Then when the boy with willing feet Shall wander from his calm retreat And in that city stand, The troubles of the king shall end, And streams of blessed rain descend Upon the thirsty land. Thus shall the holy Rishyasring To Lomapad, the mighty ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... such a world, and to a world of congruous meditation thereon, that we see him retiring in his but lately published poem of The Recluse—taking leave, without much count of costs, of the world of business, of action and ambition; as also of all that for the majority of mankind counts ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... voyage. When he came back from that in a month's time, he bought a small house and had it hauled to the "Cove," a lonely inlet from which no other human habitation was visible. Between his sea voyages he lived there the life of a recluse; fishing and playing his violin were his only employments. He went nowhere and ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Senor Colonel! As you see, I've had them coupled according to orders. What a well-matched pair!" he added, ironically, as his eyes fell upon Cris Rock and the hunchback. "Ay Dios! It's a sight to draw laughter from the most sober-sided recluse that ever lodged within ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... who is readily recognized as that Lord Howe who met his death at Ticonderoga. As a most natural sequence, even amid the hostile demonstrations of both French and Indians, Lord Howe and the young girl find time to make most deliciously sweet love, and the son of the recluse has already lost his heart to the daughter of a great sachem, a dusky maiden whose warrior-father has surrounded her with all the comforts ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... and disconcerted. For Jenny Atherly, the sober recluse of Santa Clara, hidden in her sombre draperies at the funeral, was no longer to be recognized in the fashionable, smartly but somewhat over-dressed woman he saw before him. In spite of her large features and the distinguishing Roman nose, like his own, she looked even pretty in her excitement. ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... were sunk, his beard scanty, the hair on his head long.... By his face it was impossible to tell his class: gentleman, merchant, or peasant; judging by his appearance and long hair he looked almost like a recluse, a lay-brother, but when he spoke—he was not at all like a monk. He was losing strength through his cough and his illness and the suffocating heat, and he breathed heavily and was always moving his dry lips. ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... who was a recluse, my mother who was essentially our mother, the two girls and four boys. I was an afterthought, being seven years younger than my next brother, who for seven years had been called B. (for baby), and couldn't escape from it even ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... strange to say, when the gift came direct from her, the money was never returned on the plea that it was "tainted." She shared her husband's dislike for entertaining, and led practically the life of a recluse. The advent of Shirley, therefore, into her quiet and uneventful existence was as welcome as sunshine when it breaks through the clouds after days of gloom. Quite a friendship sprang up between the two women, and when tired of writing, Shirley would go into Mrs. Ryder's room ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... may son," said the venerable recluse, giving me a farewell pat on the shoulder, "come back soon to your spiritual father who loves you, and amiably favor him with another tiny, tiny ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... In him the active mood and the passive—the practical and the ideal—the objective and the subjective—are not as parallel lines that never meet, but are sections of one line, describing the circle of his all-embracing mind. His youth has been, that of a dreamy recluse, the scorn of men of the world. 'Oh, fear him not, my lord,' says one of them ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... and more disagreeable than the kingbird's, cannot but rasp his ears as it does ours. And yet it is chiefly by this piercing note, given with a rising inflection, that we know the bird is in our neighborhood; for he is somewhat of a recluse, and we must often follow the disagreeable noise to its source in the tree-tops before we can catch a glimpse of the screecher. Perched on a high lookout, he appears morose and sluggish, in spite of his aristocratic-looking crest, trim ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... room to the right of this was the friar's bed-room; at the farther end of it was situated the alcove, very low, and paved above with flags like a tomb. The room to the left was the workshop, the refectory, the store-room of the recluse. A press at the far end of the room had a wooden compartment with a window opening on the cloister, through which his provisions were passed in. His kitchen consisted of two little stoves placed outside, but not, as was the strict rule, in ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Miss Mills, too; that amiable, though quite used up, recluse; that little patriarch of something less than twenty, who had done with the world, and mustn't on any account have the slumbering echoes in the caverns of Memory awakened; what ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... independent of politics, makes a strange figure. The recluse life led here at Richmond, which is carried to such an excess of privacy and economy, that the Queen's friseur waits on them at dinner, and that four pounds only of beef are allowed for their soup, disgusts all sorts of people. The drawing-rooms are abandoned: Lady ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the site of the present enormous edifice. It was torn down in 1812. Here for nearly a quarter of a century the tall form, and face pale and meagre from intense thinking, appeared each Sabbath before a people among whom his recluse habits rendered him almost a stranger. Here, having rested upon the desk, upon the elbow of his left arm, whose hand held a tiny book of closely written MS., he read with stooping form and low tones those solemn ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... preserved from many ordinary frailties by the restraints of his situation. No man out of a cloister ever wrote about love, for example, so coldly and at the same time so grossly. His descriptions of it are just what we should hear from a recluse who knew the passion only from the details of the confessional. Almost all his heroes make love either like Seraphim or like cattle. He seems to have no notion of any thing between the Platonic passion of the Glendoveer who gazes with rapture on his mistress's leprosy, and the brutal ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... answered the recluse. "Your young eyes will wax heavy with these midnight vigils. You must sleep, my boy, and to-morrow I will communicate my plans ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... said the governor, forcing a laugh; "who would believe that a mere recluse, a man almost dead, could have committed crimes so numerous, and so long ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... life, and tired of the world, I dragged on a miserable existence for some time, in a secluded situation on the shores of Cornwall; but, by degrees, the monotony of my sedentary and recluse life wearied me. I began to associate with the poor fishermen around me, and, in a short time, became enthusiastically fond of their perilous and exciting mode of life. The sea became to me quite a 'passion'—my mind had found a new channel for its energies; and when, a short time ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... She had known that temptation and conquered it. After her reception as a Dominican Tertiary, she had possessed the extraordinary resolution to live for three years the recluse life, not in the guarded peace of a convent, but in her own room at home, in the noisy and overcrowded house where a goodly number of her twenty-four brothers and sisters were apparently still living. And these had been years of inestimable preciousness; ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... they were brooders by nature, it is difficult to say. I think they were all easterners, and this would explain away certain characteristic shynesses of temper and of expression in them. Ryder, as we know, was the typical recluse, Fuller in all likelihood also. Martin I know little of privately, but his portrait shows him to be a strong elemental nature, with little feeling for, or interest in, the superficialities either ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... on a graveyard gate, what do you want?" demanded Cap'n Sproul, running eye of great disfavor over Mr. Gammon and his faithful attendant. He had heard various reports concerning this widower recluse of Purgatory, and was prepared ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... Persian officials, displayed the keenest interest in the Chinese war of 1900 and the eventual end of China. He spoke bitterly of the recluse Buddhists of Tibet, and I fully endorsed his views. Then again, he told me more of historical interest about his province, and of the medical qualities of the Halmund water—which cures all evils. More elaborate compliments flowed ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... building; and neatness, elegance and propriety reign within. The nuns, who are all of the noblesse, are many of them handsome, and all genteel, lively, and well bred; they have an air of the world, their conversation is easy, spirited, and polite: with them you almost forget the recluse in the woman of condition. In short, you have the best nuns at the Ursulines, the most agreeable women at the General Hospital: all however have an air of chagrin, which they in vain endeavour to conceal; and the general eagerness with which they tell you unask'd ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... are responsible for all the extravagances of modern times, for the irreparable loss to virtue and society of the noble youth of your country. You hate the church of God because she is a witness against you. The priest, the nun, and the recluse are objects of your malice; for they are living examples of what you call impossible morals, and refuters of the code of low virtue you practise and preach. The faith of the Catholic laity, too, you endeavor ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... world are nothing but one continued scene of Folly, all the actors being equally fools and madmen; and therefore if any be so pragmatically wise as to be singular, he must even turn a second Timon, or man-hater, and by retiring into some unfrequented desert, become a recluse from all mankind. ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... is on the threshold of young womanhood, she goes to stay with her grandfather in Ireland, with the trust from her mother of reconciling him and his son, Bertha's father. Bertha finds her grandfather a recluse and a miser, and in the hands of an underling, who is his evil genius. How she keeps faith with her mother and finds her own fate, through many strange adventures, is ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... passion, in the eleventh century, for the deliverance of Jerusalem and the triumph of the Cross was fortunate in this respect. An obscure pilgrim, at first a soldier, then a married man and father of several children, then a monk and a vowed recluse, Peter the Hermit, who was born in the neighborhood of Amiens, about 1030, had gone, as so many others had, to Jerusalem "to say his prayers there." Struck disconsolate at the sight of the sufferings and insults undergone by the Christians, he had an interview with Simeon, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... might have been spared to all who were interested—had the guardians and executors of my father's will thought fit to "let well alone"! But, "per star meglio" [2] they chose to remove my brother from this gentle recluse to an active, bustling man of the world, the very anti-pole in character. What might be the pretensions of this gentleman to scholarship, I never had any means of judging; and, considering that he must now, (if living at all,) at a distance ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... individuals, of whom the mass may be composed, would look at them when alone. In books, too, man must be studied, but more especially face to face, in constant, earnest observation. The preacher must get out and about. A recluse he cannot afford to be. Pale-faced piety cultivated in the cloister may be admirably adapted for Sunday exhibition, but is apt to prove rather ineffective when brought into active service in week-day tasks. ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... preached to the prisoners on the rights of man and attacked the monarchy. The day following the authorities freed him on the ground that he was demoralizing the prisoners. Time has dealt lightly with him, and no one can read of his latter days—his brilliancy all eclipsed—a recluse except for his love and companionship for children—unmoved. In his day he was a power and in no small degree did he contribute to the living monument of great men—The ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... to his stay at Ceuta beyond the general suggestion and encouragement to take up a life-profession of discovery, it was at any rate put into practice on his second and last return (1418). From that time to the end of his life he became a recluse from the Court life of Lisbon, though he soon gathered round himself a rival Court, of ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... those universal human instincts which give us our ideas of national and individual freedom. The declaration that men are created equal excited no surprise then. They believed it without a thought that it had entered the mind of a fantastic recluse in the retirement of l'Hermitage, and, in obedience to that belief, they severed the ties of tradition and kindred, exposed their homes and the lives of those whose lives were dearer to them than their own to the rage of civil war, and placed all they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... daughter of Kanwa? The saintly man, though descended from the great Kasyapa, must be very deficient in judgment to habituate such a maiden to the life of a recluse. ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... that his identity was enveloped in a degree of mystery rendered him doubly interesting. In the case of each this was his introduction to the social life of Ophir. Each had been a resident of the town, the one as a student and recluse, the other as a business man, but each was a stranger to the stratum known as society. Each held himself aloof that evening from the throng: the one, through natural reserve, courteous but indifferent to the passing crowd; the other ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... attracted general attention, for she was no recluse, and spent most of her time in the open air. If your walk lay along the beach, the common, or the dusty high-road, you were sure to meet Miss Carr and her dog ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... have been convinced of its truth, after a serious consideration of the question. Grotius was an acute man, a lawyer, a man accustomed to examine evidence, and he was convinced. Grotius was not a recluse, but a man of the world, who certainly had no bias to the side of religion. Sir Isaac Newton set out an infidel[1337], and came to be a ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... like a beautiful "bas relief" from the violet background; and the solemn voice of the convent bell told the hour when orisons arose like holy incense to the skies. A fitting resort for the student, and the recluse was this secluded spot, where nature opened her fairest page, and beauty planted her altars on earth, in air and sky, and where ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... away large sums for charitable purposes and, strange to say, when the gift came direct from her, the money was never returned on the plea that it was "tainted." She shared her husband's dislike for entertaining, and led practically the life of a recluse. The advent of Shirley, therefore, into her quiet and uneventful existence was as welcome as sunshine when it breaks through the clouds after days of gloom. Quite a friendship sprang up between the two women, and when tired of writing, Shirley would go into Mrs. Ryder's room and chat until the ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... Horace Baird, the recluse of the Temple, was sometimes met in Hall's chambers. When he lifted his hat, the white locks growing amid the black, magnificent masses of hair caught the eye, and set the mind thinking on the brevity of youth, or wondering what ill-fortune had thus done the work of time. ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... person he gave himself to others reluctantly; he was, in truth, a recluse. He stood for character more than for intellect, and for intuition more than for reason. He was often contrary and inconsistent. There was more crust than crumb in the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... attention of the philosophic world to his views of the Will. It adds greatly to the interest of the volume itself, in our view, and we trust will do so in the view of our readers, to know that he is no studious recluse nor professional philosopher, but active, shrewd, and keen-sighted, both in his mills, when at home in a fitly named valley, and upon Change, when in Boston ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... gratifications are intensified by sympathy,—how, at the theatre, the concert, the picture gallery, we lose half our enjoyment if we have no one to enjoy with us; if, in short, we bear in mind that for all happiness beyond what the unfriended recluse can have, we are indebted to this same sympathy;—we shall see that the agencies which communicate it can scarcely be ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... her heart began to beat again with some interest in life. There was one friend, almost her only friend—for she now repelled nearly every one who approached her—who never failed in hopeful, comforting, stimulating words and offices, who visited her frequently in her recluse life at Ivy Cliff, and sought with untiring assiduity to win her once more away from its dead seclusion. And she was at last successful. In the winter after Mr. Delancy's death, Irene, after much earnest ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... shadowed by the same cloud of dismay. I smothered in small halls situated over saloons and livery stables, travelling by freight-train at night in order to ride in triumph as "Orator of the Day" at some county fair, until at last I lost all sense of being the writer and recluse. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... undoubtedly changed Melchior's son to an incredible extent; from an easily-led, pleasure-loving youth, Zeno became a self-contained man—almost a recluse—and he won for himself the reputation of being one of the severest judges on the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... note in Dorothea's character as it was in that of Angelica.—Slipper and Nano, two dwarf brothers, engaged as attendants respectively on Ateukin and Queen Dorothea, provide most of the humour. More worthy of note are Oberon, King of the Fairies, and Bohan, the embittered Scotch recluse, who together provide an Induction to the play. We are reminded of the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew. Ben Jonson also makes use of this device. In this particular Induction the story of James the Fourth is supposed to be played before Oberon to illustrate the reason of Bohan's ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... the warlike preparations of Servia and Greece, Abdul Hamid looked on Russia's advice in a contrary sense as a piece of Muscovite treachery. About the same time, too, there were rumours of palace plots at Constantinople; and the capricious recluse of Yildiz finally decided to keep his best troops near at hand. It appears, then, that Nihilism in Russia and the spectre of conspiracy always haunting the brain of Abdul Hamid played their part in assuring the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... avail, but the heat to dissolve everybody's facts. Heat puts you in right relation with magazines of facts. The capital defect of cold, arid natures is the want of animal spirits. They seem a power incredible, as if God should raise the dead. The recluse witnesses what others perform by their aid with a kind of fear. It is as much out of his possibility, as the prowess of Coeur-de-Lion, or an Irishman's day's work on the railroad. 'Tis said, the present and the future are always rivals. Animal spirits constitute the power of the present, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... near enough for the Navesink light to wink its welcome, the banker found himself in a pensive mood. The last evening of the voyage was being celebrated with a dance on deck, but Edwardes, who had remained somewhat of a recluse during the passage over, was content to play the part ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... bridal, and began to be jealous for myself. It was not thus that I desired to be loved. And then I began to fall into a great pity for the girl herself. I thought how sharp must be her mortification, that she, the student, the recluse, Felipe's saintly monitress, should have thus confessed an overweening weakness for a man with whom she had never exchanged a word. And at the coming of pity, all other thoughts were swallowed up; and I longed only to find and console and reassure her; ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had said, "the Prince" was sure to break the spell, that fettered the life of the beautiful recluse. He had been on his way to her father, to seek his permission for himself and his fellow students to pass through his grounds, when all at once a new experience presented itself and he found himself talking all sorts of nice nonsense, ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... she; "I understood it all. But I must not do anything more to-day, for every day I grow weaker. We must be better acquainted, and a poor sick recluse may certainly claim forbearance. We meet to-morrow evening, at the same ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... and successor of Caligula, and the son of Drusus and Antonia, was not bad, but weak. He was a student and a recluse in his habits. His favorites and nearest connections were unprincipled. The depravity of his wife, Messalina, was such that he did right in sanctioning her death. The immoral and ambitious Agrippina, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... it is attributable to insufficient nourishment in some department of their nature. "All but," is the appropriate epitaph for the tombstone of many an author; and if we look carefully into his history we shall find an answer to the question: "All but what?" We shall find, perhaps, that he is a recluse, that his social nature is not fed at all, and that be is, of course, unsympathetic. This is a very frequent cause of dissatisfaction with an author, as it always gives a morbid tinge to his writings. Dickens is eminently a social man, and eminently healthy and sympathetic. Possibly ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... acquisitive, versatile yet stubborn, with thrift passing over into avarice, and mental power degenerating into smartness; cold and hard under long repression of emotion, yet capable of passion and fanaticism; at worst, a mere trader, a crank, a grim recluse; at best, endowed with an austere physical and moral beauty. Miss Jewett preferred to touch graciously the sunnier slopes of this provincial temperament, to linger in its ancient dignities and serenities. Miss ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... Why, I should hear his angry voice pealing in every corner! It was a good room for echoes; and he could speak loudly if he chose. Come away! there is a door I always use that leads to my private apartments. I am no recluse; but in these moods I do not care to show myself to people. If you are not afraid, you may come with me, unless you prefer Miss ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... a doubt the emissaries of some person or persons in Germany, who were interested in the old gentleman and would be benefited by his death. As this story coincided so fully with the mysterious appearance of the old man at South Norwalk; his recluse habits and avoidance of society, it soon gained many believers, who were thoroughly convinced of the correctness ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... due to a straitened income and the gout. Nor was his seclusion unenlivened by friendship. The Burneys, in particular, visited him from time to time; and Fanny has left us descriptions of scenes of almost uproarious gaiety, enacted at Chesington by this gloomy recluse and his young friends. But we shall hear more of Chesington ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... dwarf in a voice which made the flesh of the hearers thrill, and Scott, in particular, looked as if he conceived himself to have actually got into the den of one of those magicians with whom his studies had rendered him familiar. 'Ay, he has poo'er,' repeated the recluse; and then, going to his usual seat, he sat for some minutes grinning horribly, as if enjoying the impression he had made, while not a word escaped from any of the party. Mr Ferguson at length plucked up his spirits, and called to David to open the door, as they must now ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... Treaty Between the Peacocks and the Swans The Story of the Tortoise and the Geese The Story of Fate and the Three Fishes The Story of the Unabashed Wife The Story of the Herons and the Mongoose The Story of the Recluse and the Mouse The Story of the Crane and the Crab The Story of the Brahman and the Pans The Duel of the Giants The Story of the Brahman and the Goat The Story of the Camel, the Lion, and His Court The Story of the Frogs and ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... me I fancied it was the Frog. From the ardour of my greediness I closed my teeth upon it, and the child died on the spot. The holy man discovered the fact, and from regret for his son, attacked me, and I, turning toward the open country, fled with speed, and the recluse pursued me and cursed me, and said: 'I desire of my Creator that He will make thee base and powerless, and cause thee to be the vehicle of the Frog-king. And, verily, thou shalt not have power to eat Frogs, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... economy of nature. In a flood of the Rhone, in 1863, this lake received from the overflow of that river, which does not pass through it, 72,000,000 cubic yards of water, and of course moderated, to that extent, the effects of the inundation below. [Footnote: Elisee Recluse, La ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... these documents have been published in one form or another, "except a very few, including Rev. James Lemen's interviews with Lincoln, as written up by Mr. Lemen on ten pages of legal cap paper." This Joseph B. Lemen is now far advanced in years, has long been a recluse, and has the reputation of being "peculiar." In a personal interview with him, the present writer could elicit no further facts regarding the whereabouts of the "Lemen Family Notes." Nevertheless, the discovery of the copy of the Lemen Diary and the manuscript of Dr. Peck's "History" gives encouragement ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... many motives which helped to fill the monasteries. Kings and nobles, for the good of their souls, readily gave land upon which to found colonies of monks, and there were plenty of remote spots in the mountains and forests to tempt the recluse. ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... mid-August that the aged Steinway was choked to death in his rubbishy old house in East Thirty-ninth Street, where by the current rumour of the neighbourhood, he kept large sums in cash. Suspicion fell upon the recluse's nephew, one Maxwell, who vanished with the discovery ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... he could not make acquaintances below his own intellectual level. Solitude fostered a sensitiveness which to begin with was extreme; the lack of stated occupation encouraged his natural tendency to dream and procrastinate and hope for the improbable. He was a recluse in the midst of millions, and viewed with dread the necessity of going forth to fight ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... looked over the manuscript. Of Raleigh it is observed, to employ the language of Hume, "They were struck with the extensive genius of the man, who, being educated amidst naval and military enterprises, had surpassed, in the pursuits of literature, even those of the most recluse and sedentary lives; and they admired his unbroken magnanimity, which, at his age, and under his circumstances, could engage him to undertake and execute so great a work, as his History of the World." He was assisted in this great ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and in his view of the world that lay outside the windows of his mind that Townsend found life a thing of odd discoveries, strange secrets, and thrilling hazards. His own existence, though in reality an exceedingly quiet one, indeed almost that of a recluse, was still to him a great adventure. There was always for him the possibility of the sudden appearance of the man in the black cloak with hat drawn over his brows, either looking, or saying "Beware!" I remember well his pointing out to ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... I have certainly made you see, a recluse of the most uncompromising type; but he was such for only half his time. From ten in the morning till five in the afternoon, he came and went like any other citizen, fulfilling his judicial duties with ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... actor. But he could not hold it. To understand this obstacle, we must go back a few years to those appalling reveries at Charnwood. Those illusions, which had vanished before the dissipation of a less recluse life and more free society, now in his solitary tragic studies, and amid the intense calls upon feeling incident to tragic acting, came back upon him with tenfold vividness. In the midst of some most pathetic passage, the parting of Jaffier with his dying friend, for instance, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... says Hardy, "is the residence of a recluse or priest;" and so Davids:—"the clean little hut where the mendicant lives." Our author, however, does not use the Indian name here, but the Chinese characters which express its meaning—tsing shay, "a pure dwelling." He uses the term occasionally, ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... from common life and content with the scanty fare the wilderness could offer; yet he was keenly appreciative of his people's needs, and he knew their sins,—the particular ones that beset Pharisees, publicans, soldiers. If a recluse in habit, he was far from such in thought; he was therefore no seeker for his own soul's peace in his desert life. His dress was strikingly suggestive of the old prophet of judgment on national infidelity (I. Kings xvii. 1; II. Kings i, 8), the Elijah whom John would not claim to be. ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... industrious fellows for a moment, I beseech you. He sows hurry and reaps indigestion; he puts a vast deal of activity out to interest, and receives a large measure of nervous derangement in return. Either he absents himself entirely from all fellowship, and lives a recluse in a garret, with carpet slippers and a leaden inkpot; or he comes among people swiftly and bitterly, in a contraction of his whole nervous system, to discharge some temper before he returns to work. I do not care how much or how well ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rising in her all the evening; a pride born in recoil from her latest recollection of him. The episode of that night under the bay tree had gone with her clear across the Atlantic. Even the influence of the wholly new environment, in which she had grown from a girl recluse to a woman, had not served for a long time to erase that ugly stain on her memory. Here and now was the man who served so to perturb her once—and she could look on him, with her more mature eyes, as an attractive, unlicked young cub. She surprised herself taking revenge upon the past by a ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... Academy of Geneva, to be a youth of great promise, destined to become distinguished. But the years slipped by, and his literary performance, consisting of desultory essays and several slight volumes of verse, was not enough to justify the prophecy. His life more and more became that of a bachelor recluse and valetudinarian. When he died, in 1881, at sixty years of age, after much suffering heroically borne, as pathetic entries in the last leaves of his Diary remain to show, there was a feeling that here was "one more faithful failure." But the quiet, brooding teacher ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... than quote Mr. Lathrop. One of these young men "is Edward Wolcott, a wealthy, handsome, generous, healthy young fellow from one of the sea-port towns; and the other Fanshawe, the hero, who is a poor but ambitious recluse, already passing into a decline through overmuch devotion to books and meditation. Fanshawe, though the deeper nature of the two, and intensely moved by his new passion, perceiving that a union between himself and Ellen could not be a happy one, resigns the hope of it from ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... to be too contemplative, and to stay at home, on a carnival day in Cuba. All the world recognises you in the character of a moralising recluse, and all the carnival world will surely make you its victim. As I sit, despising these frivolities, as I call them, a great 'comparsa' of whites—the genuine article—comes rushing along in my direction. Out of the carnival season, the dramatis personae of this comparsa ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... agreed, That damsels shall be sent Attired in holy hermits' weed, And skilled in blandishment, That they the hermit may beguile With every art and amorous wile Whose use they know so well, And by their witcheries seduce The unsuspecting young recluse To leave his father's cell. Then when the boy with willing feet Shall wander from his calm retreat And in that city stand, The troubles of the king shall end, And streams of blessed rain descend Upon the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Her almost "Brahminical" love of nature had grown with her years, but a holier element mingled with her adoration now; she looked beyond the material veil of beauty, and bowed reverently before the indwelling Spiritual Presence. Since Hugh's death, nearly a year before, she had become a recluse, availing herself of her mourning dress to decline all social engagements, and during these months a narrow path opened before her feet, she became a member of the church which she had attended from infancy, and her hands closed firmly over ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... that he had been practically a recluse these past several years, had, nevertheless, the metropolite's inborn indifference to the passerby. He had scarcely noticed the steadily increasing group before the steps. Now he ignored them all. He was hungry. That invitation to ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... was startled by her loveliness and Rosemary was startled by his presence. She had never thought she would find anyone by that remote spring, least of all the recluse of Glen St. Mary manse. She almost dropped the heavy armful of books she was carrying home from the Glen lending library, and then, to cover her confusion, she told one of those small fibs which even the best of women ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... them, without charge, to the Holy Land; and, the offer having been joyfully accepted, seven vessels, with children on board, sailed from Marseilles. But the voyage was not prosperous. At the end of two days, when the ships were off the isle of St. Peter, near the rock of the Recluse, a tempest arose, and the wind blew so violently that two of them went down with all on board. The five others, however, weathered the storm, and reached Bugia and Alexandria. And now the young Crusaders discovered to their consternation how they had been deceived and betrayed. Without ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... sent out from Paris, worth thousands of dollars, And all as to style most recherche and rare, The want of which leaves her with nothing to wear, And renders her life so drear and dyspeptic That she's quite a recluse, and almost a skeptic, For she touchingly says that this sort of grief Can not find in Religion the slightest relief, And Philosophy has not a maxim to spare For the victims of such overwhelming despair. But the saddest, by far, of all these sad features, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... gain in knowledge what you lose in time. If you are a philosopher, you can study human nature through the buffoon and the mummer. If you are a naturalist, here are grand forests to contemplate. If you are not a recluse, here ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... the adventurous little band not now accounted for is Peter Bell, the former recluse. Peter was forward in the smoking car enjoying his old black pipe, which was his delight and solace and Miss Prescott's particular abomination. Among Peter's other peculiarities, acquired in a long and solitary ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... or magnetism of manner, the weight of social position, all of which tend to secure to an inferior man a pre-eminence in the circle in which he moves, are equally evanescent, and the shy, rugged, and tactless recluse often emerges on the strength of his genuine and abiding performances to a position in the eyes of the world which he ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... difficulty, even if he had daylight to befriend him, he declares, that with or without the Hermit's consent, he is determined to be his guest that night. He is admitted accordingly, not without a hint from the Recluse, that were he himself out of his priestly weeds, he would care little for his threats of using violence, and that he gives way to him not out of intimidation, but simply ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... was, Maggie had replied that she had gone nutting by previous engagement with Mr. Alvord, and as the party returned in the glowing evening they met the oddly assorted friends with their baskets well filled. In the eyes of the recluse there was a gentler expression, proving that Johnnie's and Nature's ministry had not been wholly in vain. He glanced swiftly from Burt to Miss Hargrove, then at Amy, and a faint suggestion of a smile hovered about his mouth. He was about to leave ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... paid, and so good-bye. But it is needless to multiply examples; the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When we came to Apemama, of so many white men who have scrambled for a place in that rich market, one remained—a silent, sober, solitary, niggardly recluse, of whom the king remarks, "I think he good; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sex, it was all her papa desired of her. This gave her a haughty, sullen, and reserved turn; made her stiff, formal, and affected. She had sense enough to discover early the faults of Coquetilla, and, in dislike to them, fell the more easily into that contrary extreme, which a recluse education, and her papa's cautions, naturally led her. So that pride, reserve, affectation, and censoriousness, made up the essentials of her character, and she became more unamiable even than Coquetilla; and as the other was ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... shut off from the rest of the world by high walls and groves of pine and fir, which had belonged for many a generation to the old family of Carstairs. Its last proprietor, Sir Alexander Carstairs, sixth baronet, had been a good deal of a recluse, and I never remember seeing him but once, when I caught sight of him driving in the town—a very, very old man who looked like what he really was, a hermit. He had been a widower for many long years, ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... segment, a part, though by no means an unimportant part, of the greater whole. The classic movement, against which he set his face steadily, was not to be easily annihilated; it survived in Rome in such illustrious representatives as Canova, Thorwaldsen and Gibson. But Overbeck grew more and more the recluse; he shortly became a proselyte to the Romish Church, shut himself out from other associations, and thus after a time devoted his pencil ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... Pelletier, had now come to Pre-Charmoy with her baby-daughter, to escape from the drought prevailing at Algiers, and her presence was a great pleasure to my recluse. She often read to him to keep up her English, and accompanied him in his drives when I was prevented, aware that he did not much like to venture away alone since he had been ill. At his request she had brought an Algerian necklace and bracelets made of hardened paste ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... died before him. In like manner the dominion of South Wales descended to Rhys son of Gruffyd, owing to the death of several of his brothers. During the childhood of Richard, a holy man, named Caradoc, led a pious and recluse life at St. Ismael, in the province of Ros, {107} to whom the boy was often sent by his parents with provisions, and he so ingratiated himself in the eyes of the good man, that he very often promised him, together with his blessing, the portion of all his brothers, ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... paragraph in which it was proper to make any allusions of the sort. But the letters had other charms. It was apparent, throughout, that the writer was ignorant that she wrote to an invalid, though she could not but know that she wrote to a recluse. Her aim evidently was to amuse Grace, of whose mental sufferings she could not well be ignorant. Lucy was a keen observer, and her epistles were filled with amusing comments on the follies that were daily committed in New York, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... pleasure was to wander among the woods and glades." He absolutely refused all preferment, and when "he was once persuaded to make a journey to Whitehall, to kiss His Majesty's hands, but heard by the way that this would be the prelude to a bishopric, he at once turned back." Yet More was no recluse. "He had many pupils at Christ's; he loved music, and used to play on the theorbo; he enjoyed a game at bowls, and still more a conversation with intimate friends, who listened to him as to an oracle; and he was ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... Mortlake," said the man of the island slowly. "After I knew I was ruined, I fled down here, where I was raised, and became a recluse on that island. It was cowardly of me, I know, but from now on I am going to ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... entice the hermit of the Capello out of his cell," cried Max Emmanuel. "My dear Eugene, was ever a man so obstinate a recluse? Every time I come I am told that you are at the arsenal, the dock-yards, the armory, a picture-gallery, or some other retreat of arts ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... rather curious thing that one is reminded at times of Ballantyne's "Martin Rattler," written very much earlier, even down to to the presence of a "recluse". That doesn't mean you won't enjoy the book just as much as you might have enjoyed "Martin Rattler." Best, as always, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... monks forth of Coventry, Bid him his fate explore. Prancing in pride of earthly trust, His charger hurled him to the dust, And, by a base plebeian thrust, He died his band before. God judge 'twixt Marmion and me; He is a chief of high degree, And I a poor recluse; Yet oft, in Holy Writ, we see Even such weak minister as me May the oppressor bruise: For thus, inspired, did Judith slay The mighty in his sin, And Jael thus, and Deborah" - Here hasty Blount broke in:- "Fitz-Eustace, we must march our band; Saint Anton' fire thee! wilt thou stand All day, with ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... the most important meetings of the Congress of Scientists which was being held in New York. He was quite unprepared for the reception that was given him there. Of a very quiet and retiring disposition, and having lived the life of a recluse for many years, known to the world only by his writings, it never seemed to have occurred to him that his name was a famous one in other countries as well as his own. His first appearance was greeted with acclamation as soon as his name was mentioned, and during his stay ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... the privilege of ordering and contriving measures; to the other, that of carrying them into execution. Theories, he said, which did not connect men with measures, were not theories for this world: they were chimeras with which a recluse might divert his fancy, but they were not principles en which a statesman would found his system. He maintained, that by the negative vested in the commissioners, the chartered rights of the company, on which stress had been laid, were insidiously ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... was the child of George's uncle, who was a recluse living at Tunbridge. He was a scholar and a pedant, and concerned himself but little about his only child, whose fortune ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... and purity of life, and as such is found in many ancient carvings and paintings accompanying various Saints. There is also a legend specially connecting this creature with S. Giles. In a retreat in a forest in the diocese of Nismes, the recluse, with one companion, is said to have lived on the fruits of the earth and the milk of a hind. Some dogs that were out hunting pursued this hind, and she took refuge in the dwelling of the Saint. The sportsman, Flavius Wamba, King of the Goths, treated him with every mark of respect, and gave ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... wall nearly as high as the eaves of the building. The wall suggests an asylum, a house of detention or some like place set apart for the unfortunate members of society. In reality, however, it is the residence of a mysterious recluse of the name of Lane, who shut himself up there nearly eighteen years ago and has since been rarely seen. It was built after his own plans, they say, when he came to Ogdensburg with his wife, who died soon afterward. Nobody knows whence he came or anything ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... we have described her, with all the simplicity and curiosity of a recluse, attached herself to the opportunities of increasing her store of literature which Edward's visit afforded her. He sent for some of his books from his quarters, and they opened to her sources of delight of which she had hitherto had no idea. The best English poets, of every description, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... recreation of the day. Two hours in the morning, and two in the afternoon, were devoted to work in the fields or in the garden by those who were able for such tasks. Confession and communion were frequent, but no uniform rule was enforced. In this, as in fasting and austerities generally, each recluse was left to his own free will; and, as will be seen in Pascal’s case, there was no need to stimulate the ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... my father who was a recluse, my mother who was essentially our mother, the two girls and four boys. I was an afterthought, being seven years younger than my next brother, who for seven years had been called B. (for baby), and couldn't escape from it even ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... gave her her baptismal name. Jeanne Leber reproduced all the virtues of her godmother, and gave to Canada an example worthy of the primitive Church, and such as finds small favour in the practical world of to-day. She lived a recluse for twenty years with the Sisters of the Congregation, and practised, till death relieved her, mortifications most terrifying to the ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... as an austere recluse,— Still less as one who hates mankind—, Do I thy peaceful precincts choose; But as a student, who can find No joys in Vanity's gay Fair That for an instant can compare With those thou askest ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... passions of the book-lover, which are not allotted to many. He had read hungrily, enjoying chiefly those magical draughts of prose which linger in the mind: Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Pater, Thoreau, Conrad. He was much of a recluse, a little saddened and sharpened perhaps by some of his experiences; and he loved, above all, those writers who can present truth with a faint tang of acid flavour, the gooseberry jam of literature as it were. One of my last satisfactions was to convert him (in some ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... was naturally glum, So she married young Grouch, the recluse; For she says when she's sad, she just looks at his face— Then she can't help but laugh like ...
— Why They Married • James Montgomery Flagg
... the ancient Sextum, a pretty village between six mountains, pop. 2600, and 2985 ft. above the sea-level. From Seez the road passes the village of Villard-Dessus, and then crosses the Recluse by a lofty bridge near an escarpment of gypsum, called the Roche Blanche, supposed to be the place noticed by Polybius, where Hannibal posted himself to protect his cavalry and beasts of burden. 3m. beyond is St. Germain; the last inhabited village ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... of my humiliation there emerged, full-grown, a huge respect for this quiet-eyed ex-schoolmaster who, for the few of us who knew him, lived the life of a studious recluse among his technical mechanisms in the laboratory. He was a salaried man, and I was one of his three employers. That he was able to ignore completely the business relation was a ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... the man on the grey horse. "And if you will allow me to offer you a cup of coffee, I shall be most pleased. You must excuse me, for I never take anything before midday. I am a recluse, have been for many years and rarely stir abroad. I do not intend to return to the world unless I can bring something with me worth having." A wistful smile twisted a little the ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... material, a sailor hat, tan gloves with big welts on the back and stout, low-heeled Oxfords. This was the young woman who had come five thousand miles to improve her health! This was the child of the Orient, and in the Orient, woman is a hothouse flower. This was the timid young recluse to whom the soft-spoken diplomats were to carry a few roses ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... thy country's hope thy fame extends: The rescued merchant oft thy words resounds: Thee and thy cause the rural hearth defends: His bowl to thee the grateful sailor crowns: The learn'd recluse, with awful zeal who read Of Grecian heroes, Roman patriots dead, Now with like awe doth living merit scan: While he, whom virtue in his bless'd retreat Bade social ease and public passions meet, Ascends the civil scene, and knows ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... in the village. Some of it was very hard for a wife to bear, and she resented it indignantly; yet never received a word from father with which to refute it. At this time, as nearly as I can judge, she was a recluse, and subject to periods of profound melancholy, but nothing worse. Then she took that winter journey to her sister's deathbed, brought home the boy, and, hastened by exposure and chill and grief, I suppose, her mind gave way,—that's ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not be supposed that Lady Eustace, during these summer weeks, was living the life of a recluse. The London season was in its full splendour, and she was by no means a recluse. During the first year of her widowhood she had been every inch a widow,—as far as crape would go, and a quiet life either at ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... passes the open door, and we can hear the breathing of the corpulent recluse. As soon as he has carried away the enormous overcoat that sheathes him, like the hide of a pachyderm, and is disappearing, Brisbille begins to roar, "What a snout! Did you see it, eh? Did you see the jaws he swings from his ears, eh? The exact ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... World—that is, if you do not disdain the company of strolling players. You gain in knowledge what you lose in time. If you are a philosopher, you can study human nature through the buffoon and the mummer. If you are a naturalist, here are grand forests to contemplate. If you are not a recluse, here is free, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... This gave him a freedom among men, a sense of belonging anywhere, and singled him out from the rest. It gave him, too, the joy of expression—the joy of throwing out his thought and getting its immediate reaction in other lives. Yet he understood perfectly the man who seemed shy and recluse, who was choked-off before strangers, and who yet burned to be a democrat, to give and take, to share alien lives, to be of the moving throng of life. Such a man was the victim either of a wrong education, an education of repression that discouraged any personal display, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... further from him. All I could gather was that the Trewinions had been a great people, but had fallen on evil days as the result of their own sinning, and that the present representative of the family was a recluse, living alone in the old Manor House, and that many curious ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... we see her speaking, for the first time beyond perfunctory salutations, with the captain, a taciturn recluse of a man, furious just now at some unexpected litigation connected with his cargo and horribly inconvenienced by the loss of his stewardess. Two ladies waiting, literally, on the wharf, have been promised accommodation ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... that make this shy and furtive Recluse, this Wanderer in the shadow, the greatest of critics? Imagination, in the first place, and then that rare, unusual, divine gift of limitless Reverence for the Human Senses. Imagination has a two-fold power. ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... as I told you, was solitary and retired; my time chiefly passed in writing out documentary matters for the lawyers. The circumstance of my using the pen so incessantly became known, and I was looked on as a literary recluse. One day a lady personally unknown to me, but whose indefatigable zeal was always seeking the good of others, sent me a parcel of tracts. With equal wonder and delight I opened one of them, a simple, spiritual little production; ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... was more fortunate in 1768, when it again became vacant; but he held it as a sinecure, doing none of its duties. He died in 1770, on the 3d of July, of gout in the stomach. His habits were those of a recluse; and whether we agree or not, with Adam Smith, in saying that nothing is wanting to render him perhaps the first poet in the English language, but to have written a little more, it is astonishing that so great and permanent a reputation should have ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... receiving, from each of the embayed windows in succession, a flush of morning sun; and Otto looked so gay, and walked so airily, he was so well dressed and brushed and frizzled, so point-device, and of such a sovereign elegance, that the heart of his cousin the recluse was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the farm of Hubert To where Mabel's castle stood, Closed in, a league on all sides. With wall'd parks and wealthy wood, No chance glimpse could be look'd for, So recluse her widowhood. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... great promise, destined to become distinguished. But the years slipped by, and his literary performance, consisting of desultory essays and several slight volumes of verse, was not enough to justify the prophecy. His life more and more became that of a bachelor recluse and valetudinarian. When he died, in 1881, at sixty years of age, after much suffering heroically borne, as pathetic entries in the last leaves of his Diary remain to show, there was a feeling that here was "one more faithful failure." But the quiet, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... which has not often been held by men gifted with his peculiar genius — that of a county member. The contest between the Dukes of Gloucester and Lancaster, and their adherents, for the control of the Government, was coming to a crisis; and when the recluse and studious Chaucer was induced to offer himself to the electors of Kent as one of the knights of their shire — where presumably he held property — we may suppose that it was with the view of supporting his patron's ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... his cell and read. The gentle stillness of a rare spring morning enveloped him with its benison. And the clear light fell upon the large pages of a book in his hand,—the window through which it streamed was the one link between the young recluse and the life of the world. From it he could see the roofs of the city beneath him; when he so wished, he might, without straining his gaze, distinguish the Pantheon at the end of that triumphal avenue which spanned ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... I fancied it was the Frog. From the ardour of my greediness I closed my teeth upon it, and the child died on the spot. The holy man discovered the fact, and from regret for his son, attacked me, and I, turning toward the open country, fled with speed, and the recluse pursued me and cursed me, and said: 'I desire of my Creator that He will make thee base and powerless, and cause thee to be the vehicle of the Frog-king. And, verily, thou shalt not have power to eat Frogs, save what their King shall bestow on thee as alms.' And now, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... that between these two men, so different in outward fates,—between "the adored, the incomparable Nelson" and the homely poet, "retired as noontide dew,"—there was a moral likeness so profound that the ideal of the recluse was realized in the public life of the hero, and, on the other hand, the hero himself is only seen as completely heroic when his impetuous life stands out for us from the solemn background of the poet's calm. And surely these two natures taken together make the ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... next proceeded to give me his advice upon my future conduct and pursuits in the university; remarked that his old friend, my father, could not have selected a more unfortunate person to usher me into notice: that his habits were those of a recluse, and his associations confined almost within the walls of his own college; but that his good wishes for the son of an old friend and schoolfellow would, on this occasion, induce him to present me, in person, to the principal of Brazennose, of whom he took occasion to speak in the highest possible ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and Cecile Shepard Mr. Northrup appeared very well indeed at dinner that night in the Corner House. They learned he could be very entertaining if he wished; that he had not forgotten how to interest women if he had been a recluse for so long; and that even Tess and Dot found something about him to admire. The former said afterward that Mr. Northrup had a voice like a distant drum; Dot said he had a "noble looking forehead," meaning that it was very ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... favour from the number of great men who have been convinced of its truth, after a serious consideration of the question. Grotius was an acute man, a lawyer, a man accustomed to examine evidence, and he was convinced. Grotius was not a recluse, but a man of the world, who certainly had no bias to the side of religion. Sir Isaac Newton set out an infidel, and came to be ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... next quest he found himself again opposed by his London friends. Unable to secure a new Alice in Wonderland for his child readers, he determined to give them Kate Greenaway. But here he had selected another recluse. Everybody discouraged him. The artist never saw visitors, he was told, and she particularly shunned editors and publishers. Her own publishers confessed that Miss Greenaway was inaccessible to them. "We conduct all our business with her by correspondence. I have never seen her personally ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... order, comparable to Beethoven's Coriolanus, i.e., the themes are dramatic characterizations: the first typifying the stormy nature of Manfred; the second, with its note of pleading, the mysterious influence over the recluse of the spirit of Astarte. As in all works of this kind the music cannot be readily appreciated without a knowledge of the poem which it illustrates.[193] As for the structure, Schumann clings too closely to the Sonata-form. The music is eloquent just in proportion as he gives ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... Lenide, stimulated by similar suggestions, had conceived a great wish to meet the marquise; for, having got M. de Nocheres who no doubt regretted her prolonged retreat—to entrust him with a commission for his granddaughter, he came to the convent parlour and asked for the fair recluse. She, although she had never seen him, recognised him at the first glance; for having never seen so handsome a cavalier as he who now presented himself before her, she thought this could be no other than the Marquis de Ganges, of whom ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... circumstances a number of fragments of the Royal Archives of Memphis have been preserved from destruction with the rest, containing petitions written on papyrus in the Greek language; these were composed by a recluse of Macedonian birth, living in the Serapeum, in behalf of two sisters, twins, who served the god as "Pourers ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... then her heart began to beat again with some interest in life. There was one friend, almost her only friend—for she now repelled nearly every one who approached her—who never failed in hopeful, comforting, stimulating words and offices, who visited her frequently in her recluse life at Ivy Cliff, and sought with untiring assiduity to win her once more away from its dead seclusion. And she was at last successful. In the winter after Mr. Delancy's death, Irene, after much earnest persuasion, consented to pass a few weeks in the city ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... most memorable men who have done honour to modern times. He combined the discharge of the most important duties of active and public life with the attainment of that exact and various learning which is generally the portion only of the recluse student. He was distinguished as an advocate and a magistrate, and he composed the most valuable works on the law of his own country; he was almost equally celebrated as an historian, a scholar, a poet, and a divine; a disinterested statesman, a philosophical lawyer, a patriot who ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... differ quite as much as our bodily appearance. There is no uniformity in the spiritual sphere;—this we know from its manifestations in conduct and history. One man is heroic and another tender, one a reformer and another a recluse, one conservative and another radical. The same Bible has passages as widely contrasted as the twenty-third and the fifty-eighth Psalms, and characters as unlike as Jacob and Jesus. Indeed, may it not be assumed that physical differences are but expressions of still more clearly marked differences ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... Act Congress, or when Princess Anne was not half a century old, the old church had taken its stand, backed up to the town, recluse from its gossip. Between its tall round doors, with little window-panes like spectacles let into their panels, the ivy vine arose in form like the print of The Crucified, reaching out its stems and tendrils wide of the one glorified window in the gable, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... latter, however, was boarded up—nobody could remember a time when it was not. And none knew why it was so closed; certainly not because of the occupant's dislike of light and air, for on those rare occasions when a hunter had passed that lonely spot the recluse had commonly been seen sunning himself on his doorstep if heaven had provided sunshine for his need. I fancy there are few persons living to-day who ever knew the secret of that window, but I am one, as you ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... My Lord, I will put it with a convincing brevity, not indeed a dust-scattering brevity fit only for the mumbling recluse, who perchance in this grey London marching Eastward at break of naked morn, daintily protruding a pinkest foot out of compassing clouds, copiously takes inside of him doses of what is denied to his external bat-resembling vision, but with the sharp brevity of a rotifer astir in that curative ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... ministers, he had the least occasion for an outfit, and I suppose spent almost nothing on that article. He was of a disposition, too, to restrain himself within any limits of expense whatever, and it suited his recluse turn, which is, to avoid society. Should he judge of what others should do, by what he did, it would be an improper criterion. He was in Europe as a voyageur only, and it was while the salary was five hundred guineas more ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... extraordinarily young; she was inevitably romantic. Living what amounted to the life of a recluse, it was only to be expected that she should live her illusions and dreams. Her mind was a storehouse of folklore, romance, poetry and religion; her rationalistic readings had not in any way become part of her, though facts and ratiocinations, by mere feat of memory, were stored in her mind ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... was toying with the idea of becoming a recluse, of living in some hushed retreat where the turmoil of life would be muffled—as in those streets covered with straw to prevent any sound from ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... by the news of the warlike preparations of Servia and Greece, Abdul Hamid looked on Russia's advice in a contrary sense as a piece of Muscovite treachery. About the same time, too, there were rumours of palace plots at Constantinople; and the capricious recluse of Yildiz finally decided to keep his best troops near at hand. It appears, then, that Nihilism in Russia and the spectre of conspiracy always haunting the brain of Abdul Hamid played their part in ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... it for all other human nature, save my father's, not to breathe an indignant anathema on the scheming head of the brother-in-law who had thus violated the most sacred obligations of trust and kindred, and so entangled an unsuspecting recluse. But, to give even Jack Tibbets his due, he had firmly convinced himself that "The Capitalist" would make my father's fortune; and if he did not announce to him the strange and anomalous development into which ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hardest part of the task she had assigned herself was done. To acquaint Bruce's father with Sprudell's plot and enlist him on Bruce's side seemed altogether the easiest part of her plan. She had no notion that she was the brilliant lady-journalist to whom the diplomat, the recluse, the stern and rock-bound capitalist, give up the secrets of their souls, but she did have an assured feeling that with the arguments she had to offer ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... by nature, it is difficult to say. I think they were all easterners, and this would explain away certain characteristic shynesses of temper and of expression in them. Ryder, as we know, was the typical recluse, Fuller in all likelihood also. Martin I know little of privately, but his portrait shows him to be a strong elemental nature, with little feeling for, or interest in, the superficialities either of life or of art. Of Blakelock I can say ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... hands together. Conviction as positive as certainty thrilled along every nerve. Mr. Richards, the recluse, was the midnight walker—Mr. Richards, who was no invalid at all; and who, shut up all day, came out in the dead of night, when the household were asleep, to take the air in the grounds. There, in the solemn hush of her room, Rose's thoughtless words came ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... outside affairs and in his view of the world that lay outside the windows of his mind that Townsend found life a thing of odd discoveries, strange secrets, and thrilling hazards. His own existence, though in reality an exceedingly quiet one, indeed almost that of a recluse, was still to him a great adventure. There was always for him the possibility of the sudden appearance of the man in the black cloak with hat drawn over his brows, either looking, or saying "Beware!" I remember ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... "bloody Mary." Knowing her Spanish parentage, we can better understand why she was such an ardent Roman Catholic. Strange that one so loyal to the forms of her religion should have been the innocent cause of the English Reformation! The injured queen, divorced, remained in England, a religious recluse, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... offended his new companions. Hay did not return more than twice, Pringle never at all, and there came a time when Archie even desisted from the Tuesday Club, and became in all things - what he had had the name of almost from the first - the Recluse of Hermiston. High-nosed Miss Pringle of Drumanno and high-stepping Miss Marshall of the Mains were understood to have had a difference of opinion about him the day after the ball - he was none the wiser, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... analyse subtleties of emotion. Intellectuality had no part in her; most people's talk was for her meaningless, and she had not the patience to listen to any conversation that rose above the food and business of the day. She was confused and bewildered by everything the strange recluse on the hill said to her,—she could not follow him at all,—and yet, the purely physical attraction he exercised over her nature drew her to him like a magnet and kept her in a state of feverish craving for a love she knew she could never win. She would have ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... O'er my nocturnal hours breath'd new delight; Made me exult in labour, plann'd for you! Its progress from your inspiration grew: The toil was sweet, that your approvance cheer'd; For what your love inspir'd, that love endear'd. Nor unregarded by the fair, and great, Was your recluse in this sequester'd state; When I began, by just records, to prove How Cowper merited our country's love; The loveliest regent of poetic taste; First of the fair; with all attractions grac'd! Friend of the muses! and herself a muse! Her bright eyes dimm'd with sorrow's sacred dews, ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... the desolation, the sombre surroundings, the risks to be run every hour—every second—and you will understand that those two English gentlemen had something in them passing self-interest, passing all that the world has to offer. Ferrier never dreamed of becoming a nautical recluse; he was too full of the joy of life for that: but he had a purpose, and he went right at his mark like a bullet from a rifle. Once that evening he went on deck and tried to peer through the wall of trembling darkness that surrounded ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... his property, if he thought fit to claim her, by virtue of the marriage already had; but it was a present supply of her necessary wants, by which he acknowledged her as his wife, and engaged to furnish her with alimony, not ample indeed, but suitable to the recluse life which he prescribed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... four dollars. How much better to exhibit the stoic tenacity of all great men, go back to my hall bedroom (which I was temporarily occupying) and concentrate on matters in hand. What right, I said, has a Buddhist recluse, born either in 1281 or 1283, to harass me so? But I knew in my heart that the matter was already decided. I walked back to the corner of Hallbedroom street, and stood vacillating at the newsstand, pretending to glance over the papers. But across six centuries the insistent ghost of Kenko had ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... shone out, and a bearded shadow towered and dwindled upon a white blind. Uniacke, a bachelor, and now almost of necessity a recluse, entertained for the present a visitor. Remembering the substance of the shadow he opened the churchyard gate, threaded his way among the gravestones, and was quickly at the Vicarage door. As he passed within, a yellow glow of lamplight and of firelight streamed into the ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... locks, and, taking off his ornaments, sends them and the horse back in charge of the unwilling Channa to Kapilavastu. The next seven days were spent alone in a grove of mango trees [v.04 p.0684] near by, whence the recluse walks on to Rajagriha, the capital of Magadha, and residence of Bimbisara, one of the then most powerful rulers in the valley of the Ganges. He was favourably received by the raja; but though asked to do so, he would not as yet assume the responsibilities of a teacher. He attached himself ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... requires a fund of good-nature like yours not to grow morose. Company keeps our rind from growing too coarse and rough; and though at my return I design not to mix in public, I do not intend to be quite a recluse. My absence will put it in my power to take up or drop as much as I please. Adieu! I shall inquire about your commission of books, but having been arrived but ten days, have not yet had time. Need I say?—no I need not—that nobody can be ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... the same plane as those of 1843. It might also be cited as another proof not only of De Quincey's very keen interest in all the leading questions of the time, but as an illustration of the John Bull warmth and heat which he, the dreamer, the recluse, the lover of abstract problems, could bring into such discussions. Here, at all events, his views were definite enough, and stated with a bold precision of English plainness that would have pleased the most pronouncedly Tory or Unionist ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... neighbourhood of Llangollen Vale, and having heard much of Lady E. Butler and Miss Ponsonby, felt a desire to see and converse with them. But how he could obtain this pleasure (as the ladies seldom or never saw company, and were fond of a recluse life) was the question. At length he bethought himself of a method the most likely to answer the purpose, without the appearance of forwardness or indelicacy. He sent his servant with the following ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... the house himself and had lived in it with an old servant for about ten years. His practice, never very extensive, had after a few years been given up entirely. Not only so, but he had withdrawn himself almost altogether from social life and become a recluse. I was told by the village doctor, about the only person with whom he held any relations, that during his retirement he had devoted himself to a single line of study, the result of which he had expounded in a book that did not commend itself ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... their neighbors' affairs, and when private life will soon be a thing of the past, so bold and so intrusive are the eyes of the press,—that modern Argus. Nevertheless, it is a truth which rests on the authority of the first six Christian centuries, during which no recluse ever returned to social life. Few are the moral wounds that ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... icy, midnight moonbeams of the recluse of Christ's College! How preciously golden seem the links of our universal brotherhood, when the Fates are waving their dark wings around us, and menace us with their sundering! I am not sure, my worthy Wagonero, that, rather than see my own little cord finally cut, I would not consent to be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the property, a genial recluse, Mr. Robinson Cruse, who for eight years had led an almost solitary life, his nearest neighbor on the island being the sergeant in charge of Fort Gaines, which officer, I was informed, was seldom seen outside of his dismal enclosure. Solitude, however, did not seem to have had the usual ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... vulgar prejudices, permitted the visits of the hero of my story. Still he did not altogether encourage the affection which he found springing up between Mary and the poet. When, however, he found that her affections were engaged, he did not withhold his consent from her marriage, and the recluse bore to his solitary mansion the young bride of his affections. O sir, the house assumed a new appearance within and without. Roses bloomed in the garden, jessamines peeped through its lattices, and the fields about it smiled with the effects of careful cultivation. Lights were seen in the ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... hear his angry voice pealing in every corner! It was a good room for echoes; and he could speak loudly if he chose. Come away! there is a door I always use that leads to my private apartments. I am no recluse; but in these moods I do not care to show myself to people. If you are not afraid, you may come with me, unless you prefer ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... viewed it with feelings of great devotion, had worn at her neck while a girl, and which, after she became a mother, she had placed round her child's. It had even happened, that being, while pregnant, abandoned by all the world, and constantly occupied in contemplating the image of this benevolent recluse, her offspring had contracted some resemblance to this revered object. She therefore bestowed upon him the name of Paul, giving him for his patron a saint who had passed his life far from mankind by whom he had been first deceived and then forsaken. Virginia, on receiving this little present ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... its heroine a little French girl brought up in an old chateau in Normandy by an aunt who is a recluse and devote. A child of this type transplanted suddenly to the realistic atmosphere of New York must inevitably have much to suffer. The quaint little figure blindly trying to guess the riddle of duty under these unfamiliar conditions ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... has been in history a height without sustaining breadth, a needle, not a cube. Genius has been tremulous, recluse,—has been cherished in solitude with Nature,—has been a feminine partiality among men, holding for gods its favorites, for dogs the refuse of mankind. It still counts the practical life an interruption. It is therefore ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... dressed in rough garb—belted woolen jacket, trousers awkwardly patched, leggings rolled above the knee, and yellow moccasins. Although he was the ordinary type of the woods recluse, there was kindliness in his expression, as well as a benignant gleam in his eye that ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... "I have prepared a letter of introduction for you to one of our Order known as Elzear of Melyana,—he is a recluse, and his hermitage is situated close to the Babylonian ruins. You will find rest and shelter there after the fatigues of travel. I have also traced out a map of the district, and the exact position of the field you seek, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... appetencies just, Produce a formative prolific dust; With apt propensities, the Styles recluse Secrete a formative prolific juice; These in the pericarp erewhile arrive, Rush to each other, and embrace alive. —Form'd by new powers progressive parts succeed, Join in one whole, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... unpleasantly agitated by the interest he excited, in spite of his astonishment at a public discussion of the matter in this house, "I am in the dark. Her father should know, but I do not. Her door is locked to me; I have not seen her. I am absolutely in the dark. I am a recluse. I have forgotten the ways of the world. I should have supposed her father would ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... went out, I saw her husband. (I'll tell you, in strict confidence, that her husband is Professor Spence. They are well known people here. He used to be a sort of recluse. A queer chap. Deep as a judge.) Well, I saw him pass, on the opposite side of the road. He saw her and was just going to call, when it seemed to strike him where she had come from. I couldn't see very well across the road, but he looked ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... reason to dread a fair outside, to mistrust a popular bearing, to shudder before distinction, grace, and courtesy. Beauty and affability had come in my way when I was recluse, desolate, young, and ignorant—a toil-worn governess perishing of uncheered labour, breaking down before her time. These, Caroline, when they smiled on me, I mistook for angels. I followed them home; and when into their hands I had given without reserve my whole chance of future happiness, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... fates overtakes the obscure professional scholar in this country: either he shrinks to the dimensions of a true villager and deserts the vastness of his library; or he repudiates the village and becomes a cosmopolitan recluse—lonely toiler among his books. Few possess the breadth and equipoise which will enable them to pass from day to day along mental paths, which have the Forum of Augustus or the Groves of the Academy at one end and the babbling square of a modern town at the ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... instant of even less importance. I recollect the news coming. The King, having been always in frail health, had never married; seeing clearly but not far, he was a sad man: the fate that struck down his brother increased his natural melancholy; he became almost a recluse, withdrew himself from the capital to a retired residence, and henceforward was little more than a name in which Prince von Hammerfeldt conducted the business of the country. Now and then my mother visited him; once she brought back to me a letter from ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... attention, as with his tall, slender, majestic figure he moved through the village, or paced the beach, or impelled his frail boat. But speculation as to who he was or what had induced him to become a recluse had about ceased from the despair of obtaining any ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... "The vihara," says Hardy, "is the residence of a recluse or priest;" and so Davids:—"the clean little hut where the mendicant lives." Our author, however, does not use the Indian name here, but the Chinese characters which express its meaning—tsing ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... writers—Walpole, Gray, Byron, Scott, FitzGerald, and a long list. But nearly all these men were men of affairs, of action. Given a good literary style they could hardly have been other than interesting, they had so much to say that they gained from external sources. Even FitzGerald—the one recluse—had all the treasures of literature constantly passing into his study. Cowper had but eighteen books altogether during many of his years in Olney, and some of us who have lent our volumes in the ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... I love to meditate, as I watch the sunset; it suits a recluse like me. And there, a little farther off, I have planted some of the trees beloved ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... mind diseased, No ear have I to hear, no heart to heed The words of wisdom that might serve my need, Frown on my doctors, with the friends am wroth Who fain would rouse me from my fatal sloth, Seek what has harmed me, shun what looks of use, Town-bird at Tibur, and at Rome recluse. Then ask him how his health is, how he fares, How prospers with the prince and his confreres. If he says Well, first tell him you rejoice, Then add one little hint (but drop your voice), "As Celsus bears his fortune well or ill, So bear with Celsus ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... vicar. "A man. If I remember rightly, his name was Madley; an artist. He was a great recluse; seldom went out of the place, and—" the vicar hesitated and then broke into a little gush of candour "—and since you appear to have come for this information, and since it is better that the truth should be told than that garbled versions should get about, ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... that he had a brother who was a monk, or rather hermit, who lived a life of reading, meditation and prayer, in a solitary place not far from Falaise. Arlotte's father sent immediately to this religious recluse for his spiritual counsel. The monk replied that it was right to comply with the wishes of so great a man, whatever they might be. The tanner, thus relieved of all conscientious scruples on the subject by this high religious ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... should make a retreat of some days together, at Camaldoli, in order to give his body some rest, which was borne down by fatigue, and relax his mind from the various cares which oppressed it. He willingly assented to this, because he liked the life of a recluse. They, therefore, went to this holy solitude, and they remained there nearly a month, solely employed in meditation on heavenly things. The cardinal took a cell at the entry of the desert where it is still to be ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... horseman at length, in a low deep tone, "you have chosen to shut yourself up in a narrow cell, like a recluse, for more than two months, denying yourself all sort of enjoyment, practising severest abstinence, and passing your whole time in useless prayer—ay, useless, for if you were to pray from now till doomsday—come ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of mind in the recluse when an incident occurred, that gradually seemed to accomplish a completion of his prophecy. This incident was a visit from an old ecclesiastical acquaintance, attended by two young ladies, Mary and Harriet Welford, daughters of an aged and retired ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... write at 'large leisure in noble mornings, opened by prayer or by readings of Plato, or whatsoever else is dearest to the Morning Muse.' Yet he could not wholly escape the recluse's malady. He confesses that he sometimes craves 'that stimulation which every capricious, languid, and languescent study needs.' Carlyle's potent concentration stirs his envy. The work of the garden and the orchard he found very fascinating, eating up days and weeks; 'nay, a brave scholar ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... the professor. "I opened those letters, Wigan. Of course Zena's first question on her arrival was why Mr. Parrish had not opened them. Her second question was: Why did he live the life of a recluse in Gray's Inn? How would you ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... Montmartre. Jacques remained pensively at his window listening to the winged chorus of spring harmony which added to his sadness. Seeing a raven fly by uttering a croak, he thought of the days when ravens brought food to Elijah, the pious recluse, and reflected that these birds were no longer so charitable. Then, not being able to stand it any longer, he closed his window, drew the curtain, and, as he had not the wherewithal to buy oil for his lamp, lit a resin taper that he had brought back from a trip to ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... entertainments given by members of the noble families of Stanley and Egerton, they show that Milton's plan of life did not involve cutting himself off from the great world, where they must have caused his name to be talked of. His life at Horton was evidently not that of a mere recluse, {42} forgetting the world outside and forgotten by it. Arcades and Comus, and still more the wonderful outburst At a Solemn Music, are visible links with the cultivated circles of the town, as Lycidas, which followed them in 1637 and was printed in 1638 at Cambridge ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... conscious that he leads two lives, the one trivial and ordinary, the other sacred and recluse; the one which he carries to the dinner-table and to his daily work, which grows old with his body and dies with it, the other that which is made up of the few inspiring moments of his higher aspiration and attainment, and in which his youth survives for him, his dreams, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to grow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as if, when the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. And, by and by, it came to pass, that he was almost continually in the air; but, as yet, for all that he said, or perceptibly did, on the at last sunny deck, he seemed as unnecessary ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... resemblance to that of the celebrated Pope. He had a fondness for poetry, and was not destitute of taste. His manners were expressive of a tenderness and benevolence, the demonstrations of which appeared to have been somewhat too artificially cultivated. His habits were those of a perfect recluse. He seldom went out of his drawing-room, and he showed to a friend of Mary a pair of shoes, which had served him, he said, for fourteen years. Mary frequently spent days and weeks together, at the house ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... of the world, I dragged on a miserable existence for some time, in a secluded situation on the shores of Cornwall; but, by degrees, the monotony of my sedentary and recluse life wearied me. I began to associate with the poor fishermen around me, and, in a short time, became enthusiastically fond of their perilous and exciting mode of life. The sea became to me quite a 'passion'—my mind had found a new channel for its energies; and when, a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... is extremely well-housed, after having roamed like a Tartar about the country with his whole personal estate at his heels. . There is an extensive view, which is called pretty: but Northamptonshire is no county to please me. What entertained me was, that he who in London -,vas grown an absolute recluse, is over head and ears in neighbours, and as popular as if he intended to stand for the county, instead of having given up the town. The very first morning after my arrival, as we were getting into the chaise to go to Wroxton, they ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... to the foothills, going now slower, and evidently fatigued, if not frightened half to death. Nothing is so appalling to a recluse as half a mile of summer boarders. As the deer entered the thin woods, she saw a rabble of people start across the meadow in pursuit. By this time, the dogs, panting, and lolling out their tongues, came swinging along, keeping the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
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