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Convent   Listen
noun
Convent  n.  
1.
A coming together; a meeting. (Obs.) "A usual ceremony at their (the witches) convents or meetings."
2.
An association or community of recluses devoted to a religious life; a body of monks or nuns. "One of our convent, and his (the duke's) confessor."
3.
A house occupied by a community of religious recluses; a monastery or nunnery. "One seldom finds in Italy a spot of ground more agreeable than ordinary that is not covered with a convent."
Synonyms: Nunnery; monastery; abbey. See Cloister.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Convent" Quotes from Famous Books



... the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky. Hooded woman? According to the accounts, we were in a perfect Convent of hooded women. Noises? With that contagion downstairs, I myself have sat in the dismal parlor, listening, until I have heard so many and such strange noises, that they would have chilled my blood if I had not warmed it by dashing out to make discoveries. Try this in bed, in the dead ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... and preserved for the Venetian government under the title of "Opere di Fra Paolo Sarpi, Servita, Teologo e Consultore della Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia" and included his life, letters and "opinions," and all others of his writings which escaped destruction in the fire of the Servite Convent, as well as many important extracts from the original manuscripts so destroyed and which had been transcribed by order of the Doge, Marco Foscarini, a few ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... Irish scullery-girl. The mistress and the servant were reading George Eliot's Life together in the kitchen, and when they came to her deathbed, on the pillow of which Thomas A'Kempis lay open, "Mem," said the girl, "I used to read that old book in the convent; but it is a better book to live upon than to die upon." Now, that was exactly Old Honest's mind. He lived upon one book, and then he died upon another. He lived according to the commandments of God, but ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... Lorenzo Campeggi, Bishop of Bologna, returned from his legation to England, where (as students of our history are well aware) he had been engaged upon the question of Henry VIII.'s divorce from Katharine of Aragon. Next day Charles arrived outside the gate, and took up his quarters in the rich convent of Certosa, which now forms ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... Irish. In silence Butler finished the third and last bottle, and his thoughts fixed themselves with increasing insistence upon a wine reputed better than this of which there was great store in the cellars of the convent of Tavora. ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... his niece," Louis answered. "She has been brought up in France at a convent somewhere in the south, I believe. I think I heard that this time she was to return to ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... majestic forests which covered the ascent of the mountains, they arrived in due time at Tronosha, "an edifice with strong walls, towers, and posterns, more like a secluded and fortified manor-house in the seventeenth century than a convent; for such establishments, in former times, were often subject to the unwelcome visits of minor marauders." After returning thanks for their safe arrival, according to custom, in a chapel with paintings in the old Byzantine style, "crimson-faced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... demanded, who had presumed to talk to her daughter of marriage without asking her leave? Questionable gentlefolk plainly; the best French people never did such things. Euphemia would return straightway to her convent, shut herself up and await her own arrival. It took Mrs. Cleve three weeks to travel from Nice to Paris, and during this time the young girl had no communication with her lover beyond accepting a bouquet of violets ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James

... on his left hand; on the right hand vineyards, seen now for the first time, sloping up into the crisp beeches of the Odenwald. By Weinheim only an empty tower remained of the Castle of Windeck. He lay for the night in the great whitewashed guest-chamber of the Capuchin convent. ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... his claim to Spanish support. Within the duchy itself, the Marshal de Rieux and his ward were in a state of antagonism; since he wished her to marry the Sieur D'Albret, a powerful Gascon noble who was not too submissive to the French monarchy; while the Duchess declared she would rather enter a convent. Anne at last announced her adhesion to the treaty of Frankfort; but as Henry had no intention of evacuating his forts, nothing particular resulted. The English King could not afford simply to drop the contest, and when the New Year came ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... his old warriors only Heime was left, and Heime had buried himself in a convent, where he sang psalms every day with the monks, and did penance for his sins. Theodoric, hearing that he was there, sought him out, but long time Heime denied that he was Heime. "Much snow has fallen", said Theodoric, "on my head and on ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... everything else, they might begin the quest at once, he set about looking for them, and spent the whole morning in the search. At length, when 'twas already past none, he called to mind that they would be at work in the Faentine women's convent, and though 'twas excessively hot, he let nothing stand in his way, but at a pace that was more like a run than a walk, hied him thither; and so soon as he had made them ware of his presence, thus he spoke:—"Comrades, so you are but minded ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... The convent of the Great St. Bernard is situated near the top of the mountain known by that name, near one of the most dangerous passes of the Alps, between Switzerland and Savoy. In these regions the traveller is often overtaken by the most severe weather, even after days of cloudless ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... excellent chocolate, whilst we also partook of it too. By 8 o'clock we were back in our billets. I had luncheon with my own General (Brigadier-General Lowry Cole). I hear that the enemy are walking about again on their parapets—refusing to fight. Church this morning in the unruined chapel of a small convent which has escaped the attention of the Huns! Apparently the people do not mind our using it. The central light of the east window represents a figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but a lot of my Presbyterians ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie

... in the midst of a severe shower, after having been obliged to come nearly a mile on foot. As we were flattering ourselves with being admitted, the Procureur of la Trappe, who has the direction of the female convent, told us that nobody could be received there. I tried, however, to ring the bell at the gate of the cloister; a nun appeared behind the latticed opening through which the portress ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein

... morning, she delivers her Note to Duperret. It relates to certain Family Papers which are in the Minister of the Interior's hands; which a Nun at Caen, an old Convent friend of Charlotte's, has need of; which Duperret shall assist her in getting: this then was Charlotte's errand to Paris? She has finished this, in the course of Friday:—yet says nothing of returning. She has seen and silently investigated several things. The Convention, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... "mutch" cap, spotless apron, and small tartan shawl over her shoulders. Willy and she have reared up a large family, all of them now settled in the world and most of them married. They are most proud of their youngest, Margaret, who is a lay sister in a town convent. Though her husband is reckoned a traveler, Bell can lay no claim to the title; she probably never moved farther than ten miles away from the family hearthstone until the day she left her father's house by the Burn of Breakachy to marry Willy Paterson, and certainly ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... employed. The bishop was an intelligent and social man. He had been in Mexico, and spoke with great freedom of the dissatisfaction of the clergy in South America. The religious establishments of the country were not to be molested. Madame Xavier Tarjcon, superior of the convent of Ursuline nuns at New-Orleans, was in the secret. Some of the sisterhood were also employed in Mexico. So far as any decision had been formed, the landing was to have been effected ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... Etienne, a pupil of Lanfranc, a friend of Anselm, he had been employed in the monastery of Bec to marshal with the eye of an artist all the pictorial ceremonies of his church. But he was chiefly known in that convent as a weeper. No monk at Bec could cry so often and so much as Gundulf. He could weep with those who wept, nay, he could weep with those who sported, for his tears welled forth from what seemed to be ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... required to render an itemized bill for his repairs on various pictures in a convent. The statement was ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... the eager suitor; treated him as a son-in-law, carried love messages from him to his daughter, and ended by refusing him her hand, and ordering her to renounce him on pain of being immured in a convent. Neither Frontenac nor his mistress was of a pliant temper. In the neighborhood was the little church of St. Pierre aux Boeufs, which had the privilege of uniting couples without the consent of their parents; ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... imitation. Modern beer was born at the time of Charlemagne, an epoch at which hops were first cultivated. The earliest writing in which one finds mention of hops as an aroma to beer is in a parchment of St. Hildegarde, abbess of the convent of St. Rupert, at Bingen on the Rhine. The art of fabricating beer remained for a long time a privilege of convents. The priests drank Pater's beer, while the lighter or convent beer was used by the laity. Although beer has been ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... have seen, they held—the western side at least—and held it long and well enough to afford, it is said, 2,600 pounds of walrus' teeth as yearly tithe to the Pope, besides Peter's pence, and to build many a convent, and church, and cathedral, with farms and homesteads round; for one saga speaks of Greenland as producing wheat of the finest quality. All is ruined now, perhaps by gradual change ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... to strive for more knowledge of it than I possess at this moment!" declared Chico—"see to what straits it has led that poor girl, who, but for this matter of a man, would have been good and safe working in a convent garden. Small profit this ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan

... blue satin bows, such as no English fingers could accomplish, and within was a little frock-body, exquisitely embroidered, with a breastplate of actual point lace in a pattern like frostwork on the windows. It was such work as Madame Belmarche had learnt in a convent in times of history, and poor little Genevieve had almost worn out her black eyes on this piece of homage to her dear Mrs. Kendal, grieving only that she had not been able to add the length of robe needed ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... expected to find that equivocal, disorderly life, that rebellion against social laws, which destroy morality. But instead of this he had found loving serenity, and such strong discipline that life there partook of the gravity, almost the austerity, of convent life, tempered by youth and gaiety. The vast room was redolent of industry and quietude, warm with bright sunshine. However, what most particularly struck him was the Spartan training, the bravery of mind and heart among ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... she can beat me sewin'," she said scornfully, "she's beatin' me at my own game. I learned of the nuns in the convent school where your stitches has to be that small you can't find 'em. You just let me ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt

... Hotel of the Apparitions, after which he himself and the ladies climbed into the vehicle. Madame Maze, shuddering slightly, like a delicate tabby who fears to dirty the tips of her paws, made a sign to the driver of an old brougham, got into it, and quickly drove away, after giving as address the Convent of the Blue Sisters. And at last Sister Hyacinthe was able to install herself with Elise Rouquet and Sophie Couteau in a large char-a-bancs, in which Ferrand and Sisters Saint-Francois and Claire des Anges were already seated. The drivers whipped up their spirited ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... to account for her sudden appearance, Unorna found herself installed in two rooms of modest dimensions, and very simply though comfortably furnished. It was quite a common thing for ladies to seek retreat and quiet in the convent during two or three weeks of the year, and there was plenty of available space at the disposal of those who wished to do so. Such visits were indeed most commonly made during the lenten season, and on the day when Unorna sought refuge among the nuns ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... splinters at the bottom of my mind. Sadly I looked upon the old Carl Schurz mansion on the hill, and we departed for the airy plateaus of Central Park. Desperately I pointed to the fading charms of East River Park—the convent round the corner, the hokey pokey cart by ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... seemed like a dream, its conclusion especially, in gentlemanly society, with every comfort and accommodation amidst the rudest rocks and in the region of perpetual snow. The thought that I was sleeping in a convent and occupied the bed of no less a person than Napoleon, that I was in the highest inhabited spot in the old world and in a place celebrated in every part of it, kept me awake some time." As a contrast to this, I may quote here an extract from ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... sketch of a French Convent, as the abode of holy women whose innocent lives were dedicated and devoted to the service of the Prince of Peace, should stand by itself, apart from any drawings suggesting less faintly the devilry of war. The nunnery had been in the possession ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey

... we were billeted at Barlin—don't get that mixed up with Berlin, it's not the same—in an abandoned convent within range of the German guns. The roar of artillery was continuous and sounded ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes

... between the Emperor and his enemies; while, at the same time, Richelieu was actually negociating with the King of Sweden to declare war, and pressing upon him the alliance of his master. The latter, indeed, disavowed the lie as soon as it had served its purpose, and Father Joseph, confined to a convent, must atone for the alleged offence of exceeding his instructions. Ferdinand perceived, when too late, that he had been imposed upon. "A wicked Capuchin," he was heard to say, "has disarmed me with his rosary, and thrust nothing less than ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... the little Parisian, had been brought up in a convent, kept from all free, intelligent, mundane conversation, and all free artistic impressions, the young Spaniard, at the same age, had the education and the style of a woman of ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... Mantes which he had given to the flames his horse stumbled among the embers, and William was flung heavily against his saddle. He was borne home to Rouen to die. The sound of the minster bell woke him at dawn as he lay in the convent of St. Gervais, overlooking the city—it was the hour of prime—and stretching out his hands in prayer the King passed quietly away. Death itself took its colour from the savage solitude of his life. Priests and nobles fled as the last breath left him, and the Conqueror's ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... heaped on him that the king could invent, the Cid left the city and rode to his castle of Bivar, only to find that his enemies had been before him and had stripped it bare, while his wife and children had sought refuge in the convent ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various

... person, and appeared in the warmest parts of this short but sanguinary affair. The enemy leaving five battalions, with some squadrons, at Ehynberg, marched by the left, and encamped behind the convent of Campen. The prince, having received intimation that M. de Castries was not yet joined by some reinforcements that were on the march, determined to be beforehand with them, and attempt that very night to surprise him in his camp. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... that Eileen should at least complete her education at a convent in the outskirts of Paris, and her first communion was delayed till she should "make" it in that more pious atmosphere. The O'Keeffe convoyed her across the two Channels, and took the opportunity of visiting a "variety" theatre in Montmartre, where he was delighted to find John Bull and his ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... Telegraph, there is a monastery of Capuchin monks and other smaller buildings. Of the town itself are seen several rows of houses and open squares, the Great Hospital, the Monasteries of St. Luzia and Moro do Castello, the Convent of St. Bento, the fine Church of St. Candelaria, and some portions of the really magnificent aqueduct. Close to the sea is the Public Garden (passeo publico) of the town, which, from its fine palm trees, and elegant stone gallery, with two summer-houses, forms a striking ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... then, taking him by the hand, I led him aside into a corner of the Temple and said to him, 'Tell me the cause of thy conversion to al-Islam;' and he made reply, 'Verily, 'twas a wonder of wonders, and befell thus. A company of Moslem devotees came to the village wherein is our convent, and sent a youth to buy them food. He saw, in the market, a Christian damsel selling bread, who was of the fairest of women; and he was struck at first sight with such love of her, that his senses failed him and he fell on his face in a fainting fit. When he revived, he returned ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... Quindreda, sister of St. Kenelm, {39} by whose instigation he was killed? On the vigil of the saint, when, according to custom, great multitudes of women resorted to the feast at Winchelcumbe, {40} the under butler of that convent committed fornication with one of them within the precincts of the monastery. This same man on the following day had the audacity to carry the psalter in the procession of the relics of the saints; and on his return to the choir, after the solemnity, the ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis

... obedience and respect that they have for their superior. At this juncture also arose disturbances made by the relatives of the said religious, occasioning many scandals; and the friars, encouraged by the support which these people gave them, could not be corrected within the convent, and disturbed it to the utmost. They made promises to the lay brethren to ordain them as priests in order to draw these into their following; and so far did they go that all of them together sallied out from the convent one morning—the second day of August in last year—more ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... my God!" he groaned. He recalled having seen Aileen embroidering these very handkerchiefs last summer up under the pines. One of the sisterhood, Sister Ste. Croix, was with her giving instruction, while she herself wrought on a convent-made garment. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... swathed in the mists of legend and doubt, was discovered the most reverend, because most ancient record of the new dispensation which dethroned that mountain, and silenced the thunders of the pedagogue law! Is it not possible that yet, in some ancient convent, insignificant to the eye of the traveller as modern Nazareth would be but for its ancient story, some one of the original gospel-manuscripts may lie, truthful and unblotted from the hand of the very evangelist?—Oh lovely parchment!' I thought—'if eye of man might but see ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... Protestant faith, and that in 1843 she took the veil. We may wonder however, whether tardy remorse for her deceit towards the dead man, who had treated her with kindness, had not its influence in causing this sudden religious enthusiasm, and whether the Sister in the Convent of the Visitation in Paris gave herself extra penance for her sins ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... the dead. She had placed candles on either side of the bed, and laid a cross on the poor child's breast. Drake was quite shocked when he saw this Papistical arrangement. But it afterwards came out that Mrs. Morley had been educated in a convent, and had imbibed certain notions of the Romish ritual for the dead that, her memory reviving, made her act thus, in spite of her openly confessed belief in the communion of the English Church. While she was thus ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume

... verse, Pitseus says he writ, partly in prose and partly in verse, many exquisite learned books, amongst which are eclogues, odes, and satires. He flourished in the reign of Henry VI. and died in the sixtieth year of his age, ann. 1440. and was buried in his own convent at ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... occur at the Pont de Thiele, between the lakes of Bienne and Neufchatel. The old convent of St. Jean, founded 750 years ago, and built originally on the margin of the Lake of Bienne, is now at a considerable distance from the shore, and affords a measure of the rate of the gain of land in seven centuries and a half. ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... while in their various windings they encircle gardens, meadows, and fields, villages, cottages, farm-houses, and country-seats, in motley mixture. In the midst rises a mass of mighty buildings, the general character of which varies between convent, palace, and castle. Some few Gothic church-towers and Romaic domes, it is true, break through the horizontal lines; yet the general impression at a distance and at first sight, is essentially different from that of any of the towns of the middle ages. The outlines ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... night without robbing the day of its due meed of cheerfulness, can rise superior to frailties and weaknesses without despising those who cannot, can be serious without being testy and morose, can live for years in a cell or a desert or a convent-close without perishing of ennui or being devoured by restlessness, and can mingle with life, where all its currents meet, without losing their heads or swerving a hairbreadth from the straight line of a most uncommon and most impressive ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.

... Sebert, King of the East Saxons, erected another to St. Peter: this was subverted by the Danes, and again renewed by Bishop Dunstan, who gave it to a few monks. Afterwards, King Edward the Confessor built it entirely new, with the tenth of his whole revenue, to be the place of his own burial, and a convent of Benedictine monks; and enriched it with estates ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... day after the interruption of the wedding, Lucinda had secretly departed from her father's house, and had fled no one knew whither; but within a few months Don Fernando had learned that she was in a certain convent, intending to remain there all the days of her life, if she could not pass them with Cardenio. As soon as he had learned that, choosing three gentlemen to aid him, he went to the place where she was. One day he surprised her walking with one ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... were the Evangelizers of the towns in England for 300 years. When the spoliation of the religious houses was decided upon, the Friars were the first upon whom the blow fell—the first and the last. [Footnote: The king began with the Franciscan convent of Christ Church, London, in 1532; he bestowed the Dominican convent at Norwich upon the corporation of that city on the 25th of June, 1540.] But when their property came to be looked into, there ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... troubled by such thoughts. It does not even worry her that she is so little to papa, and that he virtually carries on his life-work alone. I don't see how I can continue my old life after to-night. I had better shut myself up in a convent; yet just how I can ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... in a hollow space at the bottom was disclosed the gem. Sir Jocelin Saul, I may say, was lineally connected with—though, of course, not descendant from—that same Jocelin of Brakelonda, a brother of the Edmundsbury convent, who wrote the now so celebrated Jocelini Chronica: and the chalice had fallen into the possession of the family, seemingly at some time prior to the suppression of the monastery about 1537. On it was inscribed in old English characters of ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... in the gloom of the convent, the notes of the organ, the clouds of incense, the waxen tapers burning at the feet of the Virgin, the litanies of the nuns,—all this had filled her mind with the poetry of the cloister, and with that mystic and indefinable love which at the first contact with the world was ready to change into ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... most extravagant works projected on the subject of the Virgin Mary was the following:—The prior of a convent in Paris had reiteratedly entreated Varillas the historian to examine a work composed by one of the monks; and of which—not being himself addicted to letters—he wished to be governed by his opinion. Varillas at length yielded to the entreaties ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... we called at the convent, Pere Jacopo was absent; the next (Just at this moment Miss Spaulding spoke up and said something about Pere Jacopo—there is more in this acting of one mind upon another than people think) time, he was there, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... but her clear eyes met his with absolute candour. "We have a French governess," she explained, "who was brought up in a convent, so she is very easily shocked. If she knew that I had spoken to a stranger, and a man"—she raised her hands with a merry gesture—"she would have a fit—several fits. I couldn't risk it. Poor mademoiselle! She doesn't understand our English ways a bit. Why, she wouldn't even let me paddle ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... arrived from the Holy Land, being two of the saintly men who kept vigil over the sepulchre of our Blessed Lord at Jerusalem. He of the tall and portly form and commanding presence was Fray Antonio Millan, prior of the Franciscan convent in the Holy City. He had a full and florid countenance, a sonorous voice, and was round and swelling and copious in his periods, like one accustomed to harangue and to be listened to with deference. His companion was small and spare in form, pale of visage, and ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... a paroxysm of fury. Had this miscreant written that Marie was to be imprisoned in a convent, he could have borne it. But to suggest that his idol, his pure, adored image of a saint, might become the consort of the man on whom all the savage hatred of his nature was concentrated—this was more horrible than all the torments of hell. But he must calm himself ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai

... have passages of high poetry. Old Mr. Innes, with his tiresome preoccupations, his pedantic taste, his mediaeval musical instruments, affects me exactly as an unrelenting idealist does in actual life. The mystical Ulick has a profound charm; the Sisters in the convent, all preoccupied with the same or similar ideas, have each a perfectly distinct individuality. Evelyn herself, even with all her frank and unashamed sensuality, is a deeply attractive figure; and I know no books ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Palos, in western Spain, is a green hill looking out toward the Atlantic. Upon this hill stands an old building that, four hundred years ago, was used as a convent or home for priests. It was called the Convent of Rabida, and the priest at the head of it was named the Friar Juan Perez. One autumn day, in the year 1484, Friar Juan Perez saw a dusty traveler with a little boy talking with the gate-keeper of the convent. The stranger was ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... numerous folk-tales which correspond to the Christian legend of "The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus"—itself an echo of an older tale (see Baring Gould, "Curious Myths," 1872, pp. 93-112, and Cox, "Mythology of the Aryan Nations," i. 413)—and to that of the monk who listens to a bird singing in the convent garden, and remains entranced for the space of many years: of which latter legend a Russian version occurs in Chudinsky's collection (No. 17, pp. 92-4). Very close indeed is the resemblance between the Russian story of "The Two Friends," and ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... of the night was unbroken, save by the harsh clanging of the convent bell down at San Domenico, and the howl of a distant dog, while ever and anon bursts of dance music from ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux

... representations of flowers, leaves, and vegetables carved in stone with "accuracy and precision so delicate that it almost made visitors distrust their senses when they considered the difficulty of subjecting so hard a substance to such intricate and exquisite modulation." This superb convent was dedicated to St. Mary, and the monks were of the Cistercian Order, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... Nepal and Lalitpur, the capital, founding there five stupas. His daughter Carumati is said to have accompanied him and to have remained in Nepal when he returned. She built a convent which still bears her name and lived there as a nun. It does not appear that Asoka visited Kashmir, but he caused a new capital (Srinagar) to be ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... last batch to other parts of the crowded rooms. All the men were agreeable and amusing, and showed a flattering appreciation of their position. Claire felt no more interest in one than in another, but she liked them all, and felt a distinct pleasure in talking to men again after the convent-like existence of the last months. She was pleased to welcome a new-comer, smiled unconcerned ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... can't lick 'em. What? Our envelopes. Hello, Jones, where are you going? Can't stop, Robinson, I am hastening to purchase the only reliable inkeraser Kansell, sold by Hely's Ltd, 85 Dame street. Well out of that ruck I am. Devil of a job it was collecting accounts of those convents. Tranquilla convent. That was a nice nun there, really sweet face. Wimple suited her small head. Sister? Sister? I am sure she was crossed in love by her eyes. Very hard to bargain with that sort of a woman. I disturbed her at her devotions that morning. But glad to communicate with the outside world. Our great ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... ignorant monk who knows only his Ave Maria, and is despised on that account, when dead reveals his sanctity by five roses which come out of his mouth in honour of the five letters of the name Maria; a nun, who has quitted her convent to lead a life of sin, returns after long years, and finds that the Holy Virgin, to whom, in spite of all, she has never ceased to offer every day her prayer, has, during all this time, filled her place as sacristine, so that no one has ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... for I knew very well that the religious life would never satisfy me. If I entered a convent I should probably run away from it in despair. What a horrible situation to want to do right and long to do wrong at ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... all subjects as simply pawns on the monarch's chess-board; and she was so evidently unhappy over Babington's courtship, and so little disposed to enjoy her first feminine triumph, that the Queen declared that Nature had designed her for the convent she had so narrowly missed; and, valuable as was the intelligence she had brought, she was never trusted with the contents of the correspondence. On the removal of Mary to Chartley the barrel with the false bottom came into ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... sons married, and children, and one daughter married and she has two little ones. Miss Josephine is a school teacher. Miss Alice is the housekeeper, as the mother is not very well at times. One of the lovely girls is a Sister in a convent. ...
— A Slave Girl's Story - Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold. • Kate Drumgoold

... Tarbes, at the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, late on Sunday afternoon. The name of the hotel augured well for good cheer, and on the whole we found it satisfactory enough. One of its most appealing features is the fact that the kitchens and the garage were once a convent. It has undergone a considerable change since then, but it lent a sort of glamour to things to know that you were stabling your ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... against an angle of the convent which faced the sea, admired the grand spectacle which the opening of the winter season presented to his view. Above his head floated a triple bed of sombre clouds, forced along by the impetuous wind. Those lower down, black and heavy, seemed like the cupola of an ancient ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... the lily and the rose, and wear a head-dress which is exceedingly pretty. The Governor, after having treated me with a magnificent dinner under a tent of gold brocade near the seaside, carried me to a concert of music in a convent, where I found the nuns not inferior in beauty to the ladies of the town. The Governor carried me to see his lady, who was as ugly as a witch, and was seated under a great canopy sparkling with precious ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... her sister's ears, if another had cut church, if another were too much given to entertaining friends, if another went out without a licence, if another had run away with a wandering fluteplayer, the bishop was sure to hear about it; that is, unless the whole convent were in a disorderly state, and the nuns had made a compact to wink at each other's peccadilloes; and not to betray them to the bishop, which occasionally happened. And if the prioress were at all ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... had stumbled into a convent for young ladies," he grumbled to himself, "What with Sylvie actually gone, and that pretty pattern of chastity, Angela Sovrani, preaching at me with her big violet eyes,—and now Vergniaud who used to be 'bon camarade et bon vivant', branding ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... to it. Frequent were her journeys to the Continent for that purpose. She always stopped at Paris, visited the church where lay the unburied body of James, and wept over it. A poor Benedictine of the convent, observing her filial piety, took notice to her grace that the velvet pall that covered the coffin was become ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... convent and Scuola of S. Maria della Carita, opposite the iron bridge, which under rearrangement and restoration now forms the Accademia, or Gallery of Fine Arts, famous throughout the world for its Titians, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... for various purposes in the same manner as in a convent; and the most part of it that was not taken up by military duties, was spent in prayers and other devotional exercises. Orations and vespers were performed in public—every one, both soldiers and citizens, taking part; and ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... Beatrice. She came of good family, had been brought up like a lady, educated in a convent school in France. He evoked her old pride. She drew herself up with dignity, and called the children away. He wondered if he could bear a repetition of that degradation. It bled him ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... After Death one of her noblest, and the one After Communion. In my own view, the greatest of all her poems is that on France after the siege—To-Day for Me. A very splendid piece of feminine ascetic passion is The Convent Threshold. ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... refuge and safety in the convent of Ainay, near at hand, and there, too, Clotilda would have gone, but her uncle, the new king, said: "No, the maidens must be forever separated." He expressed a willingness, however, to have the Princess Clotilda brought up in his palace, which had been her ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... presence, and which broke out only when I found myself alone with Mamma. Actually, their echo has never ceased: it is only because life is now growing more and more quiet round about me that I hear them afresh, like those convent bells which are so effectively drowned during the day by the noises of the streets that one would suppose them to have been stopped for ever, until they sound out again through the silent ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... such short range that they are almost decapitated. Every house has been ransacked to the furthest corners, and the inhabitants dragged from their hiding places. The men shot; the women and children locked into a convent, from which shots were fired. And, for this reason, the convent is about to be set fire to; it may, however be ransomed if it surrenders the guilty ones and pays a ransom of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... for heav'n's sweet sake, and not To those who in respect of kindred claim, Or on more vile allowance. Mortal flesh Is grown so dainty, good beginnings last not From the oak's birth, unto the acorn's setting. His convent Peter founded without gold Or silver; I with pray'rs and fasting mine; And Francis his in meek humility. And if thou note the point, whence each proceeds, Then look what it hath err'd to, thou shalt find The white grown murky. Jordan was turn'd back; And a less wonder, then the refluent sea, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... number; this wall, along which grow thistles and grass with beaded blades; this street, with furrows made by the wheels of wagons; other walls gray and crowned with foliage, are in harmony with the silence that reigns in the Luxembourg, in the convent of the Carmelites, in the gardens ...
— A Street Of Paris And Its Inhabitant • Honore De Balzac

... any vacant throne!"—contemptuously—"and in the event of a big European War, Ruvania in German hands would provide an easy entrance into Russia. So you see, Nadine, alive and in safety, was a perpetual menace to the German plans. For some years she was hidden in a convent down in the West Country, not very far from Crailing, and after a while people came to believe that she, too, had perished in the revolution. It was only then that Max allowed her to emerge from the convent, ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... nowhere was there to be seen any traces of what had so terrified the king. However, a confessor was sent for; Joseph Foulon, superior of the convent of St. Genevieve, was torn from his bed, to come to the king. With the confessor, the tumult ceased, and silence was reestablished; everyone conjectured ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas

... supposed, of those who died of the Plague in 1348, and had been interred in that spot, as forming a part of Pardon Churchyard, which had lately been purchased by Sir Walter Manny, for the purposes of burial, and attached to the Carthusian convent there. Among the bones a few galley halfpence, and other coins, were found, as also a considerable number of abbey counters or jettons. I do not recollect if there was any date on the counters but the name "Hans Krauwinckel" occurred on some of them which fell into my possession, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various

... were both walking at liberty in the next street. On hearing this, Adriana ran out to fetch him home, taking some people with her to secure her husband again; and her sister went along with her. When they came to the gates of a convent in their neighbourhood, there they saw Antipholis and Dromio, as they thought, being again deceived by the ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... stroke to me to leave a place just as I began to be comfortably settled." Consul Harward: Records: Army in Germany, vol. 440. "All the English are arrested in Ostend; the men are confined in the Capuchin convent, and the women in the Convent des Soeurs Blancs. All the Flamands from the age of 17 to 32 are forced to go for soldiers. At Bruges the French issued an order for 800 men to present themselves. Thirty only came, in consequence of which they rang a bell on the Grand Place, and the inhabitants ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... Its churches were thronged with worshipers. Through its narrow streets proud noble and prouder ecclesiastic, thrifty merchant and active artisan, passed and repassed in an unceasing stream. It was rich in points of interest, preeminent among which were its castle and its convent. In the castle the stout-hearted Loudunians found a refuge and a stronghold against the ambitions of the feudal lords and the tyranny of the crown. To its convent, pleasantly situated in a grove of time-honored trees, they sent their children ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... noticed on an island in the Rhine, at the very extremity of the French Empire, the convent of Rolandswerth. He was told that the nuns who lived there had refused to leave it during the last war, that very often the cannon-balls of the contending armies had often fallen on the island without damaging the convent where those holy women were praying. The Emperor became ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... sub-prioress of a convent at Unterzell, proved to be a witch. She tormented the nuns at night, and, to assist her in the black art, she kept a considerable number of cats. General alarm prevailed; five of the nuns became possessed ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... monks here, one the sacristan who has charge of the entire church, and is responsible for its treasures; the other exercising what authority is left to the convent among the people of the town. They are both so good and innocent and sweet, one can't pity them enough. For this time in Italy is just like the Reformation in Scotland, with only the difference that the Reform movement ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin

... son of Erc; the battle of Mag-Ailbe; the battle of Almain; the battle of Ceann-eic; the plundering of the Cliacs; and the battle of Eidne against the men of Connacht." Three of these battles were fought at no great distance from St. Brigid's Convent. ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston

... that, do you? Let us make distinctions, if you please. Great is the difference between place and place. Do you mean the convent of the Red Brothers? That is no church. The late Emperor Joseph drove them out, and their property was put up to auction by the State, together with all the buildings situate thereon. Thus it was that I came into possession ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... Paris. The king has been more than obvious about his affections for Louise, and Madame, the queen-mother, and the queen join forces to destroy her. She is dishonorably discharged from court, and in despair, she flees to the convent at Chaillot. Along the way, though, she runs into D'Artagnan, who manages to get word back to the king of what has taken place. By literally begging Madame in tears, Louis manages to secure Louise's return ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... great Dangerfield front door bell. It was better in my poor uncle's time, for he would have made any place lively; but since his death the Park has relapsed into its natural solemnity, and I am quite sure that if ever I do go into a convent my sensations will be exactly like those which I have always experienced when visiting Aunt Horsingham. The moat alone is enough to give one the "blues;" but in addition to that, the thick horse-chestnuts grow up to the very windows, and dark Scotch firs shed a gloom ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... Mildred, I detest your friend Lord Minster, the mere sight of him sets my teeth on edge, and I did not want to meet him. I only came here to-day because Lady Florence told me that they were going up to the Convent this afternoon." ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... to leave Tusa hErin," she said suddenly and softly, as though thinking aloud.... "I am like a nun who has been in a convent.... She is lost in the open world.... Will I ever again find a place ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... please the king's good grace, and you, my lord Sir Gawaine, I shall first begin at Sandwich, and there I shall go in my shirt, barefoot; and at every ten miles' end I will found and gar make an house of religion, of what order that ye will assign me, with an whole convent, to sing and read, day and night, in especial for Sir Gareth's sake and Sir Gaheris. And this shall I perform from Sandwich unto Carlisle; and every house shall have sufficient livelihood. And this shall I perform while I have any livelihood in Christendom; and there nis none of all these religious ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... term. Convent-made, needlepoint lace. Cut drawnwork effects, also convent-made. Needlepoint lace in large squares. Black silk lace ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley

... I marry—I was seventeen in May, and of course no one could stand it till twenty-one! Mr. Greenbank is the only person who has asked me, and Aunt Jemima says no one else ever will! I have been out of the Convent for a whole month, ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn

... very nearly brought him to a court-martial. Lord Wellington was curious about visiting a convent near Lisbon, and the lady abbess made no difficulty; Mackinnon, hearing this, contrived to get clandestinely within the sacred walls, and it was generally supposed that it was neither his first ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow

... consciousness of herself as a grown-up, independent, independently feeling and thinking creature, to feel or think very strongly over her situation. It was the regular thing for girls of Louise of Stolberg's rank to be put through a certain amount of rather vague convent education, as she had been at Mons; to be put through a certain amount of balls and parties; to be put through the formality of betrothal and marriage; all this was the half-conscious dream—then would come the great waking up. ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... condemned himself to the most absolute seclusion, and disappeared in the depths of his convent, as if the slab of his tomb had already fallen over him. There, kneeling on the flags, praying unceasingly before a wooden crucifix, fevered by vigils and penances, he soon passed out of contemplation into ecstasy, and began to feel in himself that inward prophetic ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... somehow, without that little figure. But the next, Sunday, and the next, were still worse, and then it was known that the dreadful aunt was making much of Mary, and was sending her to a grand school—a convent at Santa Clara—where it was rumored girls were turned out so accomplished that their own parents did not know them. But WE knew that was impossible to our Mary; and a letter which came from her at the end of the month, and before the convent had closed upon the blue ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... wisdom by her misfortunes. She had no further desire to be queen, but lived a retired life in a convent, and was much more respected there than ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge

... a real Princess, except Eulalia, who knew how to be democratic enough to select an American for a quiet exchange of ideas ... the rest, no matter how desperately they may want to be free from Court restraint and bodyguards, remind me of the poor little caged girls at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Seville!... Well, so my captors have some connection with the Countess C——([Cszecheny] Chechany)—with the Tolna Festetics of Hungary.... And this is strange, for I had surmised that SHE, at least, would be friendly to MY mission, if she knows anything at all about ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... story, but having spacious verandas. The President's house, built in the Italian style, whose marble staircase is a wonder to Brazil; the six large churches, including the cathedral, after patterns from Lisbon; the post-office, custom-house, and convent-looking warehouses on the mole—these are the most prominent buildings. The architecture is superior to that of Quito. The houses, generally two-storied, are tiled, plastered, and whitewashed or painted; the popular ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... a French village, containing a convent and a young ladies' seminary. The country about this place pleased us much. We passed many fine farms—through open woodlands, which have much the appearance of domains—and across large tracts of sumach, the leaves of which at this season are ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... there were times, when music had increased such sorrow to a degree, that was scarcely endurable; when, if it had not suddenly ceased, she might have lost her reason. Such was the time, when she mourned for her father, and heard the midnight strains, that floated by her window near the convent in Languedoc, on the night that followed ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... Marquis de Vermandois, and the father of Marguerite, as a means of joining their estates, contracted their children without deigning to consult the wishes of the parties, and obedience or disinheritance was the only alternative. When the compact was concluded, Marguerite was taken from the convent where for five years she had lived as a boarder and scholar, and commenced her married life and her course in the fashionable world at the same time. The match was far more fortunate than such matches then generally proved to be. Marguerite's husband was passionately ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... to compose the village, and suggests a convent or a monastery. To the west, and about fifty yards distant, are ruins of stone and good white mortar, probably procured by burning the limestone rock. The annexed ground plan will give an idea of these interesting remains, which ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... a union with Mademoiselle Clotilde or a lettre de cachet; and as for pretty Mademoiselle Lacroix, as she has no particular home of her own, she ought to be grateful if we find her one in some convent where the lady superior is not too fond of letting her protegees gad ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach

... France, and fixed his abode in the environs of Paris. He placed Blanche at a convent in the immediate neighborhood, going to see her daily, and gave himself up to the education of his son. The boy was apt to learn; but to unlearn was here the arduous task,—and for that task it would have needed either the passionless experience, the exquisite forbearance, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... houses. Pierre gazed at the ruins and did not recognize districts he had known well. Here and there he could see churches that had not been burned. The Kremlin, which was not destroyed, gleamed white in the distance with its towers and the belfry of Ivan the Great. The domes of the New Convent of the Virgin glittered brightly and its bells were ringing particularly clearly. These bells reminded Pierre that it was Sunday and the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin. But there seemed to be no one to celebrate this holiday: everywhere were blackened ruins, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... lowered its tone. And so from the first Alvina spoke with a quiet, refined, almost convent voice. She was a thin child with delicate limbs and face, and wide, grey-blue, ironic eyes. Even as a small girl she had that odd ironic tilt of the eyelids which gave her a look as if she were hanging back in mockery. If she were, she was quite unaware of it, for under Miss Frost's care she ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence



Words linked to "Convent" :   cloister, community, cubicle, religious residence, cell, sect, religious sect, abbey, religious order, conventual



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