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Penance   Listen
noun
Penance  n.  
1.
Repentance. (Obs.)
2.
Pain; sorrow; suffering. (Obs.) "Joy or penance he feeleth none."
3.
(Eccl.) A means of repairing a sin committed, and obtaining pardon for it, consisting partly in the performance of expiatory rites, partly in voluntary submission to a punishment corresponding to the transgression, imposed by a confessor or other ecclesiastical authority. Penance is the fourth of seven sacraments in the Roman Catholic Church. "And bitter penance, with an iron whip." "Quoth he, "The man hath penance done, And penance more will do.""
4.
Hence: Any act performed by a person to atone for an offense to another; an act of atonement. (Colloq.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Penance" Quotes from Famous Books



... said the good man, thou must do penance for thy sin. Sir, what penance shall I do? Such as I will give, said the good man. Nay, said Sir Gawaine, I may do no penance; for we knights adventurous oft suffer great woe and pain. Well, said the good man, and then he held his peace. And ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... young reformer, he rather overdid the matter, for in trying to keep out of the way of temptation, he denied himself much innocent enjoyment. The "artistic fit" was a good excuse for the seclusion which he fancied would be a proper penance, and he sat listlessly plying crayon or paintbrush, with daily wild rides on black Brutus, which seemed to do him good, for danger of that sort was ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... theory possible; the sacredness of the blood-tie lending to any chastisement that may be inflicted on an erring kinsman the purely religious complexion of a sacrifice, an act of excommunication, a penance, or what not. Thus almost insensibly we are led on to the subject of religion from the study of the legal sanction; this very term "sanction," which is derived from Roman law, pointing in the same direction, since it originally stood ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... "To the student of human nature, which means the study of evil as well as good, this religious body is of absorbing interest. One would look to find these enthusiasts righteous and virtuous in their daily life; but, apart from the annual week of penance, their religion influences them not at all, and on the whole the members of the Brotherhood constitute a desperate class, dangerous ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... the diligence drove along. Among these one of the most remarkable was a procession of people dressed in a most fantastic manner, and wearing masks which entirely concealed their faces. There were two round holes in the masks for the eyes. Mr. George told Rollo that these were men doing penance. They had been condemned to walk through the streets in this way, as a punishment for some of ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott

... He could hear the soft varying play of her voice as she addressed them. Mr. Carlisle grew restless. There was a more evident and tremendous gap between himself and her than he had counted upon. Was she doing this like a Catholic, for penance, or to work out good deeds to earn heaven like a philanthropist? While he pondered the matter, in increasing restlessness, mind and body helping each other; for the atmosphere of the room was heavy and stifling from the foul human beings congregated ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... their sins to their rabbis, and the penance or punishment was commensurate with their guilt. It was not uncommon for Jewish devotees to lash themselves, but the number of stripes did not at any time exceed thirty-nine. During the flagellation the penitent lay on the ground with his head to the ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... mother only known, Roger was already enduring considerable self-inflicted penance for getting into a predicament which made it impossible for him ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... their chief pastimes. The men enter into the dance with zest, but the women as though they were performing some awful penance. Both sexes play football. They have learned the use of cards and are reckless gamblers, sometimes staking even the garments on their ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... idea in any subject: and observe how he represents Cupid; as one of three, a terrible trinity, his companions being Satan and Death; and he himself "a lean scarecrow, with bow, quiver, and fillet, and feet ending in claws," [Footnote: Lord Lindsay, vol. ii. letter iv.] thrust down into Hell by Penance, from the presence of Purity and Fortitude. Spenser, who has been so often noticed as furnishing the exactly intermediate type of conception between the mediaeval and the Renaissance, indeed represents Cupid under the form of a beautiful winged god, and riding on a ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... is drawing nigh; but between the campaign of Varaville and the campaign of Le Mans came the tardy papal confirmation of William's marriage. The Duke and Duchess, now at last man and wife in the eye of the Church, began to carry out the works of penance which were allotted to them. The abbeys of Caen, William's Saint Stephen's, Matilda's Holy Trinity, now began to arise. Yet, at this moment of reparation, one or two facts seem to place William's government of his duchy in a less favourable light than usual. ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... many tears he searched high and low, but no ass was then to be found, nor for many months afterwards. And how at last Sancho got back the ass you must read for yourself in the History of Don Quixote. For yourself, too, you must read of Don Quixote's adventures in the mountains; how he there did penance; and of many other things, till at last the Curate and the Barber of La Mancha took him home in a cart which the Knight believed to be ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... herself that she had allowed her work to be interrupted, and in penance decided to remain on until six instead of five o'clock as she had intended. Besides, she half expected that Mr. Beale would return, and was surprised to discover that she was disappointed ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... less drunk, to credit his enemies, since the age of ten; and Catharine declares he had a mortal aversion to the bath, which it seems was then a Russian, not a German, observance. When ordered by the Empress to take one as penance during Lent, he replied that it was repugnant to his moral nature and unsuited to his physical constitution: nothing, he said, but the most vital considerations could induce him to risk the Empress' ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... is a tradition that it has come to us from the days of St. Pol himself, and that the saintly monk-bishop made his daily meal of it. But I feel very sure," she added with a smile, "that those early days of fasting and penance never rejoiced in anything as refined and civilized and as good ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... cripples, maimed and diseased beggars of all degrees of loathsomeness, lepers and epileptics, and infinite numbers of monks, brown, grey and black, in sack-shaped frocks and pointed hoods, with shaven crown and cropped beard, emaciated with penance or bloated with gluttony. And all this the painter sees, daily, hourly; it is his standard of humanity, and as such finds its way into every picture. It is the living; but opposite it arises the dead. Let us turn aside from the crowd of the mediaeval city, and ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... be just at present much more comfortable for all parties you should square round a little, and take your punch. Come, Thady, are you going to be a martyr, too? it's a heathenish kind of penance, though, to be holding your tongue so long. Come, my boy, you were to bring the ticket about the ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... the strictest honour; that she had mixed a powder with the gruel, which her father had drank on the foregoing Monday and Tuesday nights; that she was the cause of his death, and that she desired life for no end but to go through a painful penance for her sin. She protested at the same time that she had never mixed the powder with anything else that he had swallowed, and that she did not know it to be poison till she had seen its effects. She said that she ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead

... soon know,' she said almost with gaiety. 'Oh! it is quite possible'—she threw up one hand in a wild childish gesture—'it is quite possible that to-morrow I may be at your feet, asking you to give me penance for my rough words. On the other hand—Anyway, Father, you have not found me a ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... passionate natures, the horror felt at great national calamities, the cry to heaven for help. The awakening of the conscience had by no means necessarily the sense of sin and the felt need of salvation as its consequence and even a very severe outward penance did not perforce involve any repentance in the Christian meaning of the word. When the powerful natures of the Renaissance tell us that their principle is to repent of nothing, they may have in their minds only matters that are morally indifferent, faults of unreason or imprudence; ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... the grace courtesy will let you," said the doctor; whether altogether lightly, or with some feeling, it would have been hard for a by-stander to tell. "Is Miss Derrick's penance out? She comes next—and ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... and when he had thus stilled them, he turned to the Lady Vivien and said: "This is my command that I lay upon thee: that thou shalt go into the court of King Arthur and shalt confess thyself to him and that thou shalt fulfil whatever penance he may lay upon thee to perform because of thy transgressions. Now wilt thou do this for to save ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle

... into an act of rashness. He seized some church plate at Pinhel that he might convert it into rations. It was an act which, considering the general state of public feeling in the country at the time, might have had the gravest consequences, and Sir Robert was subsequently forced to do penance and afford redress. That, however, is another story. I but mention the incident here because the affair of Tavora with which I am concerned may be taken to have arisen directly out of it, and Sir Robert's behaviour may be construed as setting an example and thus as affording ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... tells me to do. These are cases in point. I do not believe that a local Church can suppress and permanently disuse sacraments of the universal Church. The Anglican Church by its suppression of the sacraments of Unction and by its almost universal disuse for centuries of the sacrament of Penance, compelled those who would be loyal to the Catholic Church to which it appealed to act on their own initiative in the revival of the use of those sacraments. I do not believe that the local Church has the ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... still in its full vigor, the power of the religious orders and brotherhoods was revered by the people, and the hierarchy was still formidable to the temporal power. It was, therefore, in the natural constitution of society that bigoted zeal, which in such times makes a show of public acts of penance, should avail itself of the semblance of religion. But this took place in such a manner that unbridled, self-willed penitence degenerated into luke-warmness, renounced obedience to the hierarchy, and prepared a fearful opposition to the Church, paralyzed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... of the way of salvation through the Son, and of the work of the Holy Spirit, are sadly perverted. The efficacy of Christ's death for the pardon of sin, is secured to the sinner, they suppose, by baptism and penance. The belief is universal, that baptism cancels guilt, and is regeneration. They also believe baptism to be the instrumental cause of justification. Hence faith is practically regarded as no more than a general assent of ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... go as a soldier and be obliged to live like a Gentile, of his own free will. And David knew how wicked it was, for he was a pious man at heart. When he returned from service, he was aged and broken, bowed down with the sense of his sins. And he set himself a penance, which was to go through the streets every Sabbath morning, calling the people to prayer. Now this was a hard thing to do, because David labored bitterly all the week, exposed to the weather, summer or winter; and on Sabbath morning there was nobody so tired and lame and sore ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... in order to avoid injury to insects (irya), gentle and holy talk (bha@sa), receiving proper alms (e@sa@na), etc, (3) guptis or restraints of body, speech and mind, (4) dharmas consisting of habits of forgiveness, humility, straightforwardness, truth, cleanliness, restraint, penance, abandonment indifference to any kind of gain or loss, and supreme sex-control [Footnote ref 1], (5) anuprek@sa consisting of meditation about the transient character of the world, about our helplessness without the truth, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... me I trow I'd do penance for half a year)— For once I saw a flame there and the smoke of a sacrifice, And a voice spake out of the thicket that ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... this fresh misdeed while you are about penance. I have no objections to you becoming a good wife! it will be a novel sensation, and of nothing are you more fond! Suppose you convince your husband that it is wicked to kill his fellow-men by the myriad—that love of woman is better than glory—decide him to go into a cottage by the Mediterranean ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... one particular precept of the Christian code is harder to realize and practice than all the rest put together. It was this, perhaps, which drove the anchorites on from one degree of penance to another, and made them so savage in self-tormenting. When the macerated flesh had almost lost sensation, the thorn that had galled it sometimes in their hot youth rankled incessantly, more venomous than ever. That ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... seemed to have become liable. The cause of his grief they could not guess, but he was not sure they did not suspect the cause; and so the classes in which he heretofore took so much pleasure came to be dreaded by him. Every moment except those in which he sat immersed in dreams was a penance and a pain; and at last he pleaded illness, and Mathias took his class, leaving Joseph to wander as far as he liked from the cenoby, which had become ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... called them) parson in the neighborhood, and there was a confounded sprinkling of these unbelievers in our part of the country. I prayed half a dozen times a day; I fasted thrice in a week; and, as for penance, I used to scourge my little sides, till they had no more feeling than a peg-top: such was the godly life I led at my uncle Jacob's ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... but he created quite a sensation in Prague, denounced alike the vices of the clergy and the idle habits of the rich, persuaded the ladies of high degree to give up their fine dresses and jewels, and even caused certain well-known sinners to come and do penance in public. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... to Lady Susan, I was much pleased with her, she was so simple: 'Very well,' she said, 'I hope I shall be able to make her comfortable:' no begging off, no heroism. And really, Beatrice, don't you think we could make some other arrangement? It is too great a penance for her, poor child. Lady Susan will do very well, and I can have an eye to her; I am much inclined to leave the poor ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge

... penance can atone? For such an outrage done to thee, Arraign'd before thy beauty's throne, What punishment wilt ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron

... Virgin, whose maternal heart consented in that hour of agony to be broken for the sins of men. I see the Magdalen as she clings to the cross, and receives upon that hair, with which she wiped His Feet, the drops of His Blood. I behold that heart, humbled in penance and inflamed with love—the heart of the woman who had loved much, and for whom he had prayed. It seems to me that I travel step by step to Calvary, and learn, as they unite in Him, every lesson of suffering, of peace, of hope, of ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... country, and Confess'd all his Sins unto him. The Bishop severely reproved him, and let him know how grievously he had provoked God's indignation. The Soldier hereupon being exceedingly sorrowful, resolved to do penance suitable to the greatness of [his] Sins. For the People of that country have this Naturally, that as they are more prone to evil thro' Ignorance than Men of other Countries,* so are they more ready and willing to do penance, when they are made ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... Jake been able to confine his food intake to the level of his body's ability to digest, he might still be walking and enjoying life. But try as I might I could not make him understand. Perhaps he enjoys doing penance in his wheel chair more than he would enjoy ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... shaggy head, and pushed her away the length of his long, strong arms. "Bosh!" said he; "you're a puss and no cat, and I like you better for the claws. If you hate yourself, you'll get a big penance. Hate the ugly like Parpon, not the pretty like you. The one's no sin, the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... "and if he knew it, I should like half a year's penance in the black sash" [as the black sheep or scapegoat of her Nursery] "better than my next half-hour alone with him. When I was silly enough to tie the veil over her mouth" [take the lead in sending her to Coventry] "the day after we came here, I expected ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... than the repentant, since repentance is, as Jerome says (Cap. 3 in Isa.), "a second plank after shipwreck." But God loves the penitent more than the innocent; since He rejoices over him the more. For it is said: "I say to you that there shall be joy in heaven upon the one sinner that doth penance, more than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance" (Luke 15:7). Therefore God does not always love ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... Heliobas decisively. "His life on earth is assured for many years yet,—inasmuch as his penance is not finished, his recompense not won. Thus far my knowledge of his fate ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... would rid me of her! and, that I did supererogatory penance in a belfry, at Westminster-hall, in the Cock-pit, at the fall of a stag; the Tower-wharf (what place is there else?)— London-bridge, Paris-garden, Billinsgate, when the noises are at their height, and loudest. Nay, I would sit out ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... not give you any penance, my child, for you have committed no sin—that is, in so far as the death of your brother is concerned. For the rest of your sins, you must read and memorize the third chapter of 'The Soul and The ...
— The Eyes Have It • Gordon Randall Garrett

... day, they voluntarily returned to their mush and milk, for they had eaten too much jam, and, having been very ill in the night, considered it sufficient evidence that their penance was ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... mother's portrait in her grandmother's room, where nothing clearly had been admitted that had not some connection with family affection or family pride. She wondered whether on her mother's death her grandmother had hung the picture there in dumb confession of, or penance for, her own unkindness. ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... as it may, if our good senator was a political sinner, he was in a fair way to expiate it by his night's penance. There had been a long continuous period of rainy weather, and the soft, rich earth of Ohio, as every one knows, is admirably suited to the manufacture of mud—and the road was an Ohio railroad ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... pleased at the vehement boy, and would willingly have shaken him by the hand and stroked his curly head, but the penance he proposed for Rameri was to serve a great end, and Ameni would not allow any overflow of emotion to hinder him in the execution of a well considered design. So he answered the prince ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... great, then, when, having opened the letter, she found in it bitter reproaches for her conduct, an exhortation to do penance, and an assurance several times repeated that she should never leave her prison. He ended his letter in announcing to her that, in spite of his distaste for public affairs, he had been obliged to accept the regency, which he had done less for his country ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... Scotch manners identical with that of Burns's "Holy Fair," on the very spot where the poet located that immortal description. By way of further conformance to the customs of the country, we ordered a sheep's head and the broth, and did penance accordingly; and at five o'clock we took a fly, and set out for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... long and a little longer I have been carrying sacks of flour. The next time I see a stalk of wheat I am going to snarl at it. This new occupation is a sort of special penance for not having my hammock lashed in time. It seems that I have been in the service long enough to know how to do the thing right by now, but the seventh hitch is a sly little devil and always gets me. I need a longer line or a shorter hammock, but the only ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.

... quick, that birth and title Should have more weight than merit has in the army. I would fain not be meaner than my equal, So in an evil hour I let myself Be tempted to that measure. It was folly! But yet so hard a penance it deserved not. It might have been refused; but wherefore barb And venom the refusal with contempt? Why dash to earth and crush with heaviest scorn The gray-hair'd man, the faithful veteran? Why to the baseness of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... in the life of every imaginative youth, when he is a pagan and worships in the old Homeric pantheon,—where self-denial and penance were unknown, and where in grove and glen favored mortal lover might hear the tread of "Aphrodite's glowing sandal." The youthful poet may ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... Princess Rhezzia loved her husband tenderly, but was doomed to this fate by a vile enchanter. If she was more to be pitied for being subject to involuntary metamorphosis, our heroine is surely more to be admired, for the constancy with which she endured a self-inflicted penance; a penance calculated to render her odious in the eyes of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... hold upon their pity; and in losing the vigor of the flesh, he seems to their compassionate eyes to grow into the spiritualities they pine for. But he must not give over his visitings; that hair-cloth shirt of penance he must wear to the end, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... shame, but the precaution only tended to render her more culpable. Her behaviour, indeed, had long afforded ample food for the sarcasms of the Jews and Pagans. Saint Ambrose compelled her to perform public penance, and after having declaimed on her double crime, gave her hopes of pardon, if, like "Soeur Jeanne," this early nun would sincerely repent: to complete her chastisement, he ordered her every day to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... a penance to perform, and a class-lesson to give; but I should be very sorry to let you put yourself to the trouble of coming here all to no purpose. I am going to send for her. Only first allow me, Monsieur—as is our custom—to put your name on ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... delusion, the amount of real infliction being no more than a ride in a fine morning of some miles. Whether the whole, as involving some little added trouble of mind to that whose whole weight he was going so soon to remove, was too severe a penance for the steward's neglect, may be variously judged by various readers. In the halcyon days that followed, Winifred never forgot the place on the Tivy bank where she slept and dropped her book; nor did the happy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... of the sixteenth century the Elector of Saxony strictly forbade the ringing of bells against storms, urging penance and prayer instead; but the custom was not so easily driven out of the Protestant Church, and in some quarters was developed a Protestant theory of a rationalistic sort, ascribing the good effects of bell-ringing in storms to the calling ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... rage of his enemies, although by my guilt, by my fault. I am the abhorred one who has brought him to prison and to death. Woe to me, the scum of men! There is no hope for me, my crimes can be expiated by no penance. For he is dead—and I, I am his murderer! Thrice unhappy hour in which my mother gave me to the world! Must I still drag on this life of agony and bear these tortures about with me?—as one pest stricken, flee from men, and be despised and shunned by all the world? No! I can bear ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead

... getting me money, NOTHING BUT MONEY. Even for that purpose I should not like to employ them if I were not compelled to do so. After the insight which I have gained this summer, I should willingly submit to the penance of selling all my goods and chattels, and go, naked as I am, into the wide world, where—I swear it to you—no illusion should tempt me any more. But my wife could not bear such a violent step again; I know it would ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... same. And though I am pretty stout already, I would coil a few more lengths round my waist; and if the natives were to find out by chance what I had got about my body, they would only fancy that I was doing a bit of penance like themselves. Keep up your heart, sir; and if the young lady is shut up in the old tower, as you suppose, we'll manage, by hook or by ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston

... example, if not formally and by written precept, that marriage was honorable, and that celibacy was an invention of the priests not warranted by primitive Buddhism. Penance, fasting, prescribed diet, pilgrimages, isolation from society whether as hermits or in the cloister, and generally amulets and charms, are all tabooed by this sect. Monasteries imposing life-vows are unknown within its pale. Family life takes the place of monkish seclusion. Devout ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... of them noticed the passer-by, eyed her respectfully. She knew that they thought of her as a "young lady." She longed for a wistful moment to be one of them, to be among them, to have no troubles but the possible "penance" after school, no concern but for the contents ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... head, a Roman nose and a sharp eye—sat on a hard-bottomed chair in front of a square desk. Why should business men, by the way, subject themselves to voluntary martyrdom by using polished seats of hard-wood? Is it with a view to doing penance, for the sins of the class ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne

... moor, and quaking fen, Or depth of labyrinthine glen; Or into trackless forest set With trees, whose lofty umbrage met; World-wearied Men withdrew of yore; (Penance their trust, and prayer their store;) And in the wilderness were bound To such apartments as they found; Or with a new ambition raised; That God might ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... of ecclesiastical revenue was the sale of indulgences, or the remission by the pope of the temporal penalties of sin, both penance in this life and the pains of purgatory. The practice of giving these pardons first arose as a means of assuring heaven to those warriors who fell fighting the infidel. In 1300 Boniface VIII granted a plenary indulgence to all who made the pilgrimage to the jubilee at Rome, and the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... at the same time, sunk their ship. You have lost the goods you had on board, but I will make it up to you in another way. As to your two brothers, I have condemned them to remain five years in that shape. Their perfidiousness too well deserves such a penance; and, in short, after having told me where I might hear ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... that it must be a severe penance to listen to Aunt Maria, and took Gilbert's part. She supposed that he must be very solitary; it must be a melancholy thing to ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the pleasures and even the passions of life. Austere, even rigid, in those acts of piety and personal mortifications enjoined by his religion—voluntary fasts, privations, nights supposed to be past in vigil and in penance; occasional rich gifts to patron saints, and their human followers; an absence of all worldly feeling, even ambition; some extraordinary deeds of benevolence—all rendered him an object of actual veneration to the priests and monks with which the goodly city of Segovia ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... "to be whipped at the cart's tail to Westminster, and afterwards from the same place to Cheapside. At Cheapside to be branded with F.A. (signifying false accusation), one letter on either cheek. To do public penance in Saint Martin's Church. To be detained in the Fleet till they do weary of her; and then to be sent to Bridewell, there to spend and end ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... he said it in the church. You must change your life and do penance; you must burn everything belonging to your past errors—your books, your papers, your manuscripts. Make this sacrifice, master, I entreat it of you on my knees. And you will see the delightful existence ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... and says to the peasant, 'Man, thou hast ingenuity in thy head and a stick in thy hand.' The peasant immediately understands the stratagem," and persuades the bear to get into a sack he has with him that he may carry the bear three times round the field instead of doing penance, after which the bear is to do what he likes with him. The bear gets into the sack, the man "binds it strongly" together, and then beats the bear to death with his stick. Gubernatis at p. 132 of the same volume tells a similar story from Russia ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous

... said the holy man, throwing back his cowl and upper vesture, and discovering under the latter a garment of goatskin, and from beneath the former a visage so wildly wasted by climate, fast, and penance, as to resemble rather the apparition of an animated skeleton than a human face, "for twenty years have I macerated this miserable body in the caverns of Engaddi, doing penance for a great crime. Think you I, who am dead to the world, would contrive a falsehood to endanger ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... would be, if the letter of the law of Skitzland were carried out! But it is absolutely certain that, this is in effect the law of nature, which does not act, it is true, all in a moment; but which slowly and truly tends to this. The Hindoo ties up an arm, for years together, as a penance, thinking thereby he does Brahma service; the limb with fatal sureness withers away, and rots. The prisoner in solitary confinement has his mind and faculties bound, fettered and tied, and by a law as fixed as that which keeps the stars ...
— A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development, delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at their Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, in Norwich, Conn • S.R. Calthrop

... refrain a few remarks on the 45situation we are now in, for from this place may be seen the children of penance (the Magdalen); the children of darkness (the School for the Indigent Blind); the insane (New Bethlem); the infatuated and fanatic (the congregations of the Zoar Chapel, and the faithful of mewses, garrets, and wooden tabernacles); the children of Thespis ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... days: they've seemed three months. After keeping me waiting for thirty-six hours my legal adviser makes his appearance last night and states to me, with his mouth full of mutton, that I haven't a leg to stand on, that my claim is moonshine, and that I must do penance and take a ticket for six more days of purgatory with his presence thrown in. My friend, my friend—shall I say I was disappointed? I'm already resigned. I didn't really believe I had any case. I felt in my deeper consciousness that it was the crowning illusion of a life of ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James

... devoid of its master. The baffled judge and his subordinates took their departure, after putting a series of questions to various persons, which were answered without the slightest regard to truth, the replicants being ignorant of any penalty attached to lying beyond confession and penance; and considering, indeed, that in an instance like the present it was rather a virtue than a sin. When they were fairly out of sight, Constance went leisurely back to her bower, and ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... the young clergyman, who is worthy of her love, but, unfortunately, not a strong character. Lightning is not swifter than the transition in our minds from good to evil, and in an unguarded moment he brings ruin upon himself, and a life-long penance on Hester Prynne. Hawthorne tells this story with such purity and delicacy of feeling that a maiden of sixteen can read ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... Then we (reserving unto Delia's grace Her farther pleasure, and to Arete What Delia granteth) thus do sentence you: That from this place (for penance known of all, Since you have drunk so deeply of Self-love) You, two and two, singing a Palinode, March to your several homes by Niobe's stone, And offer up two tears a-piece thereon, That it may change the name, as you must change, And of a ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... red spots had formed on his salient cheekbones. One day last week, taking his hand, I felt his pulse flutter, and all his strength as it were, liquefy under my touch. "You are ill," I said. "You have fever, Father Domenico. You have been overdoing yourself—some new privation, some new penance. Take care and do not tempt Heaven; remember the flesh is weak." Father Domenico withdrew his hand quickly. "Do not say that," he cried; "the flesh is strong!" and turned away his face. His eyes were ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... did not reckon it as nothing. The condolence of a friend or fellow-sufferer may soothe, though it cannot cure; and for such a solace the heart intuitively seeks. Confidence and sympathy are consolatory virtues—even penance has its purpose. I longed, therefore, for a friend—one to whom I could confide my secret, and unbosom my sorrow; and I sought that friend in the young backwoodsman. I had a claim upon him: he had made me the confidant ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... ex-premier was diverted from the mental Shakesperian sustenance derived from "chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy," by an importunate appeal from a reckless disorderly, who was doing penance for his anti-teetotal propensities, by performing a two hours' quarantine in the village stocks. So far from sympathising with the fast-bound sufferer, his lordship, in a tone of the deepest regret, deplored, that he had himself not been so tightly secured in his place, as, had that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various

... frequent, wine he never used, the discipline was no stranger to him, a bed was not among his possessions, on the bare floor or bench at most he would rest his sore missionary body; yet he never imposed unnecessary penance on anyone, he was hard only on himself, he was gentle and affectionate to a marked degree, his faith, trust in Providence, humility and charity, were heroic. Of his seventy-four years of life, fifty-four he had been a Franciscan Priest and thirty-five ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field

... do not need it. Life is a penance and ordained as a tribulation. I have come through by striving. Why should I care ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany

... fail of universal recognition. Accursed be he who willingly saddens an immortal spirit—doomed to infamy in later, wiser ages, doomed in future stages of his own being to deadly penance, only short of death. Accursed be he who sins in ignorance, if that ignorance be ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... ignorance, and not to give fictions and inventions Arranged his affairs that he died without money For penance: "we must make our servants fast" The argument of interest is the best of ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger

... was to be attended by a great number of perfect souls, and such as participated in the glorious state of Jesus Christ, whom he therefore called the champions of God. He was condemned by the Parliament of Paris, and after having done penance, dressed in his shirt, with a rope round his neck and a torch in his hand, before the entrance of Notre Dame, he was burnt with his book and writings, his ashes being subsequently cast into the air. ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... passions. Many miracles are related of him. It is said that having given away all his corn in time of famine, he caused the fields to be sown with sand for lack of grain, and was rewarded by a plentiful harvest. Having given way to murmuring in a moment of impatience he imposed upon himself the penance of making a pilgrimage to Rome, wearing on his leg a heavy chain; this he fastened by a padlock and threw the key into the Dee at a place now known as "The Pool of the Key." He is said to have bought a fish for food ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett

... wish our young exile could see you this evening," he went on, disregardful of my brief explanation. "He would strew his hair with ashes, and wear sackcloth in penance for the past, I doubt not; for I tell you frankly, Miriam, you have improved wonderfully of late, and you bear inspection far better than Evelyn with all her beauty; your figure is absolutely faultless; your face the most attractive woman ever wore, if not the most absolutely regular. I ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... Well, I'll go and do penance. Look your last on my manly beauty, Miss Martha. We're off. Which side of the house ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... over to the boys, to show him over the domain; and they, young imps as they were, knowing he was in no favour with their father, felt they might treat him as ill as they pleased, and quiz him with impunity. The first portion of Furlong's penance consisted in being dragged through dirty stable-yards and out-houses, and shown the various pets of all the parties; dogs, pigeons, rabbits, weasels, et caetera, were paraded, and their qualities expatiated upon, till poor Furlong was quite weary of them, ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... no profession of faith, no incense, no prayer, no penance, no sacrifice. Its whole duty consists in comforting the afflicted, assisting the unfortunate, protecting the helpless, and in honestly fulfilling our duties to our fellow mortals. In the language of Confucius, the ancient ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham

... otherwise than as downright chambermaids. I had an audience next day Of the empress mother, a princess of great virtue and goodness, but who picques herself too much on a violent devotion. She is perpetually performing extraordinary acts of penance, without having ever done any thing to deserve them. She has the same number of maids of honour, whom she suffers to go in colours; but she herself never quits her mourning; and sure nothing can be more dismal than the mourning here, even for a brother. ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... us, then know, that the word of a Knight of the Cross is, like God's word, irreproachable, and that that girl, whom we saved from the hands of robbers, shall now be given her liberty, and after an exemplary penance for his sins against the Order, he also shall be allowed to go back to ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... hand. "Merciful lady! What sin have I committed? I never go to my club, except when I've been wicked, as a penance. If you will permit me to employ a metaphor—oh, but a tried and trusty metaphor—when one ship on the sea meets another in distress, it stops and comforts it, and forgets all about its previous engagements ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... temperament. He was a stern man, a strict Presbyterian, with the cold fire of Calvin in his bones. She had been bred an Episcopalian, and was genial and sympathetic by nature. The husband was the master-spirit, and the children grew up under the rigid exactions of his sect. Sunday was a long day of penance, and one of their two half-holidays was consecrated to the cheerful uses of the catechism. To New England ears it all has a familiar sound. When the children grew old enough they promptly left the fold and resigned ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton

... sparingly, profess the most severe rules, and have no servants or boarders, enjoy a universal reputation for virtue and sanctity. They consider the other convents worldly, and their motto is, "All or nothing; the world or the cloister." Each abbess adds a stricter rule, a severer penance than her predecessor, and in this they glory. My friend the Madre—-frequently says —"Were I to be born again, I should choose, above every lot in life, to be a nun of the Santa Teresa, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... penance was known in the religious ceremonies of some of the American nations. Baptism was a religious ceremony with them, and the bodies of the dead were sprinkled ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... Episcopate, in their dependence on Romish ideas and institutions (the Ecclesiastical organisation in its dependence on the Roman Empire). (5) The separation of the idea of the "sacrament" from that of the "mystery", and the development of the forensic discipline of penance. The investigation has to proceed in a historical line, described by the following series of chapters: Rome and Tertullian; Rome and Cyprian; Rome, Optatus and Augustine; Rome and the Popes of the fifth century. We have, to shew how, by the power of her constitution and ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... And now the great mass of the Papists have fallen back on the wretched notion that repentance merely means confessing their sins to a priest, and receiving absolution from him, and doing some little penance too childish to speak ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley

... misery. (Author's Note.) ————— me as follows:—"There are two streams or currents, an upward and a downward one, by which souls are continually passing and repassing as on a ladder. The carnivorous animals are souls undergoing penance by being imprisoned for a time in such forms on account of their misdeeds. Have you not heard the story of my lion?" I said yes, but that I did not understand it, because I thought it impossible for a human soul to suffer the degradation of ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... Soul of old that was, May now be damn'd to animate an Ass; Or in this very House, for ought we know, Is doing painful Penance ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... consideration she could not but agree, though she shrank from his way of putting it. It was some satisfaction at least to know that, since the two hundred cards she had sent out had reached their recipients, the process of public penance must in some measure have been started. She had seen no one who could tell her what the effect had been; her bridesmaids evidently knew enough to consider silence the better part of sympathy; not even Drusilla Fane had looked in or called her on ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... recant his statements. In 1632 he published at Florence his Dialogue on the Ptolemaic and Copernican Systems of the World. For this he was cited to Rome, his book ordered to be burned, and he was sentenced to be imprisoned, to make a recantation of his errors, and by way of penance to recite the seven ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... that has received him. Thus it was with me, at least. I dreaded to look one of my townsmen in the face,—they knew all: and many years after, when the harsh judgments which would have received me were softened by my lonely penance and sadness, and proffers came from society, my solitude had become sacred to me; and that old star which the daguerrotypist had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... only one daughter, he appointed these invasive sons of Eric to be sent for, and if he died to become king; but to "spare his friends and kindred." "If a longer life be granted me," he said, "I will go out of this land to Christian men, and do penance for what I have committed against God. But if I die in the country of the heathen, let me have such burial as you yourselves think fittest." These are his last recorded words. And in heathen fashion he was buried, and besung by Eyvind and the Skalds, though himself a zealously ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle

... of tears to wash away: it is I will weep for both; it is I will go and be a sacrifice to atone for all our sins: it is I will be the pressing penitent, and watch, and pray, and weep, until heaven have mercy; and may my penance be accepted for thee;—farewell—I have but one request to make thee, which is, that thou wilt, for Octavio's sake, forgive the faithful slave that brings ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... written long ago, but I have been pestered with stupid letters, and am undergoing the purgatory of sitting for hours to Woolner, who, however, is wonderfully pleasant, and lightens as much as man can, the penance; as far as I can judge, it will make a ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... say, though the Fairy scolded and threatened, and Turritella wept and raged for twenty days and twenty nights. At last the Fairy Mazilla said furiously (for she was quite tired out by his obstinacy), 'Choose whether you will marry my goddaughter, or do penance seven years for ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various

... the subject on which he was anxious, he gave a full account of his sister's proceedings. 'In short,' said he, 'Emily and Ada torment poor Lily every hour of her life; she bears it all as a sort of penance, and how it is to ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... atone for this fault; I went to Uttoxeter in very bad weather, and stood for a considerable time bareheaded in the rain, on the spot where my father's stall used to stand. In contrition I stood, and I hope the penance ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... least thing becomes exceedingly serious. Madame de ——- has told her young friend, Madame de Fischtaminel, that she had been compelled to make an extraordinary confession to her spiritual director, and to perform penance, the director having decided that she was in a state of mortal sin. This lady, who goes to mass every morning, is a woman of thirty-six years, thin and slightly pimpled. She has large soft black eyes, her upper ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac

... attempt to reconcile the conflicting chroniclers; but we should add, from the subsequent page, by Sir James, "the conspirators, despairing of pardon, found a distant refuge in the Castle of Knaresborough, in the town of Hugh de Moreville, and were, after some time, enjoined by the Pope to do penance for their crime, by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where they died, and were interred before the gate of the Temple." Sir James describes the murder of Becket with minuteness: "the assassins fell on him with many ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various

... honors in the Protestant town of Rochelle, where he publicly renounced the Roman Catholic faith, declaring that he had assented to that faith from compulsion, and as the only means of saving his life. He also publicly performed penance for the sin which he declared that he had thus been ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... of Simon and Guy," said Henry. "Poor Henry! It was a foul crime; and Father Robert can bear me witness that I did penance for it, when that kindly heart of his was ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to Anthony the morning after her flight with Justin. "I suppose I'm in disgrace, anyhow, and this shall be my penance. Only it won't be very severe punishment, for I shall love to take care ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey

... thing was clear to him; David must have his own house now—David must leave him. He could not help but acknowledge that he helped on this consummation, and it was with something of the feeling of a man doing a just penance that he went to look at a furnished house, whose owner was going to the south of France with a sick daughter. The place was pretty, and handsomely furnished, and John paid down the year's rent. So when David returned with his young bride, he assumed at once the dignity and the cares ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... consists simply in keeping the subject of it awake, by the constant teasing of a succession of individuals employed for the purpose. The best of our social pleasures, if carried beyond the natural power of physical and mental endurance, begin to approach the character of such a penance. After this we got a little rest; did some mild sight-seeing, heard some good music, called on the Max Mullers, and bade them good-by with the warmest feeling to all the members of a household which it was a privilege to enter. There only remained the parting ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... moral duty that we were required to relinquish the most rational of all our amusements, when the clergy were enjoined celibacy, and when the laity were denied the right to read their Bibles? He thought that it must have been from a notion of penance that they erected the drama into an ideal place of profaneness, and spoke of the theatre as of the tents of sin. He did not mean to dispute that there were many excellent persons who thought differently from him, and he disclaimed the slightest idea of charging them with bigotry or hypocrisy ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... instigations of Sathanas," said the priest, crossing himself. "O, my son, whenever these temptations occur, remember thy vows and obligations, and betake thyself more diligently to prayer and penance. But, Sir Christopher, it becomes me not to address thee as a babe in Christ. Though it be thy pleasure to remain in an inferior position, thou hast a mind which soars with the highest in the order, and comprehends the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... had drawn down the wrath of God, and, with the help of the lepers, had poisoned the wells. The enraged populace, especially the hordes of Flagellants, or half-naked men and women, who, lashing themselves for penance and singing a mad hymn to the Virgin, swept over South Germany and the Rhenish provinces, murdered in those days many thousand Jews, tortured others, or baptized them by force. There was another accusation which in earlier times and all through the Middle ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... brethren in philosophy, it reached even to the king himself. A far from creditable lawsuit with a Jew completed Frederick's irritation. He forbade the poet to appear in his presence before the affair was over. "Brother Voltaire is doing penance here," wrote the latter to the Margravine of Baireuth, the King of Prussia's amiable sister he has a beast of a lawsuit with a Jew, and, according to the law of the Old Testament, there will be something more to pay for having ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... saw the boy he asked, "Te—filo, who has been drawing in my new missal?" The boy hung his head, and the Father, taking his silence as an admission of guilt, added, "That was wrong of you, Te—filo, and I must give you some penance to remind you not to do such mischief again. Do you know, boy, what that book is worth? Not less than twenty pesos, Te—filo, or even more. That is one year's wages of Agust'n the mayordomo, so you can see such things must be left alone. ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase

... to bound again, Let the shadows gather round me while I sit in silence here, Broken-hearted, as an orphan watching by his father's bier. Let me hold my still communion far from every earthly sound— Day of penance—day of passion—ever, as the year comes round. Fatal day whereon the latest die was cast for me and mine— Cruel day, that quell'd the fortunes of the hapless Stuart line! Phantom-like, as in a mirror, rise the griesly scenes of death— There before me, in its wildness, stretches bare Culloden's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... I hate to record scenes of this sort; but, as I have imposed the task upon myself; I will go through it; and, though the temptation is great, seeing what I was then, the disciple as well as the offspring of romance, and what I now am, worldly in the world's most sordid worldliness, to do my penance in self-mockery—for the sake of the young hearts still unseared, I ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... it, and pray out an expiation, dear Henry. Had we houses of religion as there were once, and many divines of our Church would have them again, I often think I would retire to one and pass my life in penance. But I would love you still—yes, there is no sin in such a love as mine now; and my dear lord in heaven may see my heart; and knows the tears that have washed my sin away—and now—now my duty is here, by my children whilst ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... very rich and valuable collection of these things.[O] Richard then caused an ecclesiastical court to be organized, and sent her before it to be tried. The court, undoubtedly in accordance with instructions that Richard himself gave them, sentenced her, by way of penance for her sins, to walk in midday through the streets of London, from one end of the city to the other, almost entirely undressed. The intention of this severe exposure was to designate her to those who should assemble to witness the punishment as a wanton, and thus to put her to shame, and draw upon ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... hastily, blushing and laughing. "It would be light penance, in any case; to spend a day here, after a fortnight down yonder. What I mean is, I might improve the time ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... with plates of gold, studded with jewels. Enter boldly at the gate, which always stands open, but do not ask us to tell you what we saw or what befel us there, for that you will learn for yourself. This only we may say, that it cost us each our right eye, and has imposed upon us our nightly penance." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.

... back in defeat from the bulwarks. Jesus near! A child's cry, a prisoner's prayer, a sailor's death-shriek, a pauper's moan reaches him. No pilgrimages on spikes. No journeying with a huge pack on your back. No kneeling in penance in cold vestibule of mercy. But an open door! A compassionate Saviour! A present salvation! ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... to the monks I discovered he was perfectly sane. It appeared that he was a Greek about forty-five years of age, who was a native of Kyrenia, and for some offence twenty years ago he had been ordered by the priests to do penance in this extraordinary manner. His body, originally white, had become quite as brown as that of an Arab of the desert; he possessed no clothing nor property of any kind, not even a blanket during ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... grew flax which Mother spun into thread and wove into cloth for our shirts and summer trousers, and for towels and sheets. Wearing those shirts, when new, made a boy's skin pretty red. I dare say they were quite equal to a hair shirt to do penance in; and wiping on a new home-made linen towel suggested wiping on a brier bush. Dear me! how long it has been since I have seen any tow, or heard a loom or a spinning-wheel, or seen a boy breaking in his new flax-made shirt! No one sees these things ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... times five digits depend from hands and feet. The Queres has not even a distinct term for finger or for toe. He designates the former as one above the hand, the latter as one above the foot. Four days the redman fasts or does penance; four days he mourns, for that is the time required by the soul to travel from the place where it has been liberated from the thralls of earthly life to the place of eternal felicity. At the time of which we are speaking, the body was still cremated, and with it ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... say, when I pondered on these things, thoughts would flit through my mind, whether, when death severed the body from the souls of these people, that their spirits were not instantly infused into cats and dogs, and that they came back in those shapes as a penance for their brutality to mankind, and their loving-kindness to brutes. However, we never went to the party. The woman remarked to a friend that she thought me devoid of all feeling, to laugh at ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... Anjou, the country people are very faithful servants to our Holy of Catholic religion, and none of them will lose his portion of paradise for lack of doing penance or killing a heretic. If a professor of heresy passed that way, he quickly found himself under the grass, without knowing whence his death had proceeded. A good man of Larze, returning one night from his evening prayer to the wine flasks of Pomme-de-Pin, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac

... crime, was not sufficient to avert the wrath of Heaven, which seemed to be visiting him in the form of rebellions and disasters in every part of his dominions, came to Canterbury in 1174 and went through a penance of extreme severity. Landing at Southampton, he came by the Pilgrims' Way to Harbledown, and so entered the ancient city. At the church of St. Dunstan, outside the walls, he took off his ordinary dress ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home

... of the floor—and I realised that I was not the only one to be honoured by a kiss and an embrace. 'Oh, you're covering me with paint,' Nina protested suddenly; and indeed he had forgotten to drop his brush and palette, and great dabs of colour were clinging to her cloak. While he was doing penance, scrubbing the garment with rags soaked in turpentine, he kept shaking his head, and murmuring, from time to time, as he glanced up at ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... will help me against thee, that I may strip thee of thy clothes. So, if thou sentest one to fetch thee wherewithal to clothe thyself, it would be well for thee.' 'By Allah,' cried he, 'I will assuredly conquer thee and make thee a byword among the folk, generation after generation!' 'Do penance [in advance] for thy [void] oath,' rejoined she. Then said he, 'What five things did God create, before He made man?' And she replied, 'Water and earth and light and darkness and the fruits [of the earth].' (Q.) 'What did God create with the hand of omnipotence?' (A.) ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... unto them." Nevertheless, two things must here be required of them: one, that they compel an annual confession to be observed by their subjects, according to the constitution, canon Omnis Utriusque, concerning penance and remission and the custom of the Church universal. Another that through their preachers they cause their subjects to be faithfully admonished when they are about to confess that although they cannot state all their sins individually, nevertheless, a diligent examination ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous

... ever stronger and eddied through the air like the breath of a mighty power that bent low all foreheads and cast them down into the dust with tears of sorrow, penance, and supplication. All those present repeated them after the old man and that confused, tearful and monotonous murmur of voices awoke Janina from her torpor. She felt that she was still alive, so she knelt down on the threshold of the room ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... I shall tell her of this man's proposal of marriage," he said to his aggrieved conscience. After all is there not an instinctive leaning in the hearts of most of us towards the Roman Catholic doctrine of penance? Immediately on our conscience becoming seared as with a red-hot iron through some act its sensitiveness shrinks from, we, feeling this inward shrinking away as if from our lower nature invariably bring out the whip and lash our poor weak flesh by way ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... beautiful is a courtesan." A "Day of Humiliation," with a special prayer composed by himself, was his suggestion for mending matters; and Madame von Kruedener, not to be outdone in coming to the rescue, preached the necessity of "public penance." Thus taken to task, Ludwig solemnly declared in writing that he had "never exacted the last favours" from Lola Montez, and furnished the entire episcopal bench with a copy ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... in the lonely Scottish isle, and bathed the fevered brow of the pilgrim in the hospital at Jerusalem. He has dug ditches, and governed the world as the pope of the Church. He has held the plow in the furrow, and thwarted the devices of the king. He has befriended the poor, and imposed penance upon princes. He has imitated the poverty and purity of Jesus, and aped the pomp and vice of kings. He has dwelt solitary on cold mountains, subsisting on bread, roots and water, and he has surrounded himself with menials ready to gratify every luxurious ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... added that nothing was more foolish than for friends to take leave of each other. 'It is true, indeed,' says he, 'in the common acquaintance and friendship of the world, this is a very harmless ceremony; but between two persons who really love each other the church of Rome never invented a penance half so severe as this which we absurdly ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... singing beautifully and delightfully, and then he was still more troubled and said, "How joyously thou singest, the Lord is not angry with thee. Ah, if thou couldst but tell me how I can have offended him, that I might do penance, and then my heart also would be glad again." Then the bird began to speak and said, "Thou hast done injustice, in that thou hast condemned a poor sinner who was being led to the gallows, and for that the ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... Olivia, and think you have done for her very well; but the good-for-nothing father, who was the real author of all her faults and sufferings, should not escape unpunished. I hope he hung himself, or took the sur-name of Bone or underwent some direful penance or other. ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... will do any penance you ask; I am unworthy to speak your name. I owe you my life and more—and more a thousand times." At this she lifted her arm and placed her hand upon his cheek and neck. She then learned for the first time that he was wounded, and the tears came softly as she slipped from his arms to ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... taste and care and the whole is worth seeing. The nuns of Easebourne would seem to have been "difficult females," for a Bishop of Chichester in 1441 was obliged to call the Prioress to order for wearing sumptuous clothes with fur trimmings and for using too many horses when travelling, the penance being a restriction to four. The nuns were spoken of by a contemporary writer as "wild females of high family put at Easebourne to ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... Another penance was the drinking of milk. My father was very fond of milk and could take quantities of it. But whether it was a failure to inherit this capacity, or that the unfavourable environment of which I have told proved the stronger, ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... knowledge and power of good and evil into their own hands through the mere earthly wisdom of the serpent; when the woman had had her hasty outside way and lead, according to the story, and woe had come of it, what was the sentence? And was it a penance, or a setting right, or ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... was a brave and tender knight; he tells us that before starting to join the crusaders at Marseilles he called all his friends and household before him, and declared that if he had wronged any one of them reparation should be made. After a severe penance he was assoiled, and as he set forth, durst not turn back his eyes lest his heart should be melted at leaving his fair chateau of Joinville and his two children whom he ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... only duly considered, may tend greatly to the amending of our lives. Will you believe that since yesterday night I have been a thousand times dead, and revived as LAZARUS was; and considering my dreadful situation, remember (as it were with the memory of a similar penance in your hearts) that we must all die, and trust to HIM who can bestow upon us life eternal: but first ye must die to sin, to avarice, to rapine, to lust, and all those sinful deeds to which our nature ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... take this pillow from my head, and put another blanket on my feet, and fix the fire, and give me some water, or something? Oh, dear, dear!—" groaned poor Rose Lincoln, as with aching head and lungs, she did penance for her imprudence in crossing the wet, slippery street in ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes

... same monotony of repose—the turning door in the wall (sole indication to those within, that there is a world without), moved in silence, ever at the same stated hour, by invisible hands—the prayer and penance in the chapel choir, always a solitude to its occupants, however many of their fellow-creatures may be standing beneath it—the short hours of exercise amid high garden walls, which shut out everything but the distant sky. Beyond this, what remains but that ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... now the monk's prayers to heaven; he implored forgiveness for his brother, and offered penance for him. Poor man! he thought if he could but see him and talk to him, he would redeem him from his apostacy; but, alas! his duty was in Hurdwar, he was bound there and could not move. One day (it was during the fair) he had wandered at a distance from the river, that ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... upon herself a voluntary penance for having, in her heart's bitter despair, presumed to abjure her faith in the Sechus of her mother? Or was there yet another reason? The heart of woman is a strangely sensitive thing. It loves not to build its happiness upon the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various

... "I have done penance, Lillian," he said, "if ever man has. For two years I have devoted time, care, and thought to those you love, for your sake; for two years I have tried night and day to learn, for your sake, to become a better man. Do not visit my fault too heavily upon me. I am ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme

... had nearly affected his happiness, and in which she took a not very creditable share. "Had I known your lordship's real character," Miss O'G was pleased to say, "no tortures would have induced me to do an act for which I have undergone penance. It was that black-hearted woman, my lord, who maligned your lordship to me: that woman whom I called friend once, but who is the most false, depraved, and dangerous of her sex." In this way do ladies' companions sometimes speak of ladies when quarrels ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray



Words linked to "Penance" :   penalty, self-reproach, penalization, remorse, remission, sacrament, repentance, self-abasement, remittal, penalisation, compunction, remission of sin



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