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noun
Purgatory  n.  A state or place of purification after death; according to the Roman Catholic creed, a place, or a state believed to exist after death, in which the souls of persons are purified by expiating such offenses committed in this life as do not merit eternal damnation, or in which they fully satisfy the justice of God for sins that have been forgiven. After this purgation from the impurities of sin, the souls are believed to be received into heaven.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Purgatory" Quotes from Famous Books



... superior merits of celibacy, the institution of the monastic life, the use of the sign of the cross, of holy oil, and even of images, the invocation of saints, the worship of relics, the rudiments of purgatory in prayers for the dead, and the tremendous mystery of the sacrifice of the body and the blood of Christ, which insensibly swelled into the prodigy of transubstantiation." In this remarkable passage we have a distinct foreshadow of the Tractarian movement, ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... bustled in, and, looking wistfully at the game in progress, was about to propose that they form one likewise at their table, for an evening without cards was to him a mild form of purgatory. But Lottie anticipated him. Giving a signal to the others and drawing down her face to portentous length, she said to Hemstead, "I fear you do not ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... entrance to these catacombs stands a church. The walls of the vestibule where my mother, the merchant, and I waited for a sufficient party to assemble, were covered with frescoes representing the passage of the soul through the various stages of purgatory. Beginning with the death scene (which greatly resembled the ikona of the Assumption in the cathedral) in the lower left-hand corner, the white-robed soul, escorted by two angels, passed through all the halting-places for the various sins, each represented ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... they said, if your Governantes should come once to settle there, there would be no Occasion for any other Tormentors, and the Devils themselves would be but so many Jacks out of Office. I have been, says she, too in Purgatory upon the same Project, but there so soon as ever they set Eyes upon me, all the Souls cried out unanimously, Libera nos, Domine. And as for Heaven, That's no Place for Quarrels, Slanders, Disquiets, Heart-burnings, and consequently none ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe

... of Saints, Relics and Purgatory, besides those other articles of Doctrine set forth in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass expounded; and the use of Holy Water, Incense, and Images [etc.] Illustrated. By D. Rock, D.D. ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley

... here?" "Yes, in heaven," said she. "Why how do you know you'll go to heaven?" She looked at me seriously and said, "Oh, I don't know—I don't know—I don't think I should like to go to the other place." We had then a long talk with her and it seems she's a regular little believer in Purgatory—but I wouldn't dispute with her. I guess there's a way of getting at her heart better than that.... Why is it that I have such a sensitiveness on religious points, such a dread of having my own private aims and emotions known ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... most infamous of assassins. My padrona has set out to say good morning to him. He may even now be on his way to purgatory." ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... Purgatory is usually understood to be—as its etymology indicates—a place where persons encumbered with evil accretions may have them purged out of them, or stripped off from them, and so be fitted for the purity and innocence of Heaven. It is therefore ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... of wind, and then he thought once more, 'But how to get rid of her, that's the question. Every time I come here now she goes on more and more about the necessity of our getting soon married—and I don't wonder at it either, for she has a perfect purgatory of a life with that snivelling Methodistical father of hers, one may be sure of it. It would be awfully awkward if any Oxford people were to catch me here walking with her on the cliff over yonder—some sniggering fellow of Jesus or Worcester, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... the preliminary hearing of the case of Terrence Cassidy, charged with the murder of the old farmer at Spring Bank on Monday last. All efforts to draw a confession from Cassidy had failed, and the detectives had come to the conclusion that he was either very innocent or very guilty—there was no purgatory for Terrence; it was heaven or the hot place, according to the detectives. For once the detectives were right. Terrence was very innocent. It appears that the tramp who was killed on the Wabash last night made a confession to the trainmen, ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman

... of Guardia we continued to descend, till we reached the Indian village of Santa Cruz. We passed at first along a slope extremely slippery and steep, to which the missionaries had given the name of Baxada del Purgatorio, or Descent of Purgatory. It is a rock of schistose sandstone, decomposed, covered with clay, the talus of which appears frightfully steep, from the effect of a very common optical illusion. When we look down from the top to the bottom of the hill the road seems inclined more than 60 degrees. The ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... presently there came a reply which stupefied her. The lawyer wrote that there happened to be in court a suit concerning the boundaries of an old Spanish land grant, which, it was claimed, extended north of the Purgatory River, and touched upon her own and other neighboring property. The lawyer wrote that matters would probably be settled in favor of the present landholders, but that, so long as litigation pended, all titles were so clouded as to make any ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead

... promise should have been needed and should have been boasted of with such violent vulgarity was almost more than Mrs. Western could stand. She came down-stairs and then underwent the additional purgatory of listening to the silver-tongued farewell. That she, she with her high ideas of a woman's duty and a woman's dignity, should have put herself into such a condition was a marvel to herself. Had some one a year since told her that she should ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope

... a great slacker, and more timid, physically and morally, than even I. He was a boy with a fatal facility for doing useless things moderately well, especially in the musical line. He was even more frightened of gym and horses than I was, and unlike me was not ashamed to show it. If the Shop was purgatory to me, it must have ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey

... sovereign appeals to it, and the clergy too, and beggars also. In 1330, the poor, the "poverail" of Greenwich, complain that alms are no longer bestowed on them as formerly, to the great detriment, say they, of the souls of the benefactors of the place "who are in Purgatory."[415] Convents claim privileges that time has effaced; servants ask for their wages; the barber of Edward II. solicits the maintenance of favours granted by a prince he had bled and ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... glowing end of his cigar wax and wane in the gloom, as the sentences rose and fell, till I was nearly asleep. The orangoutang, troubled by some dream of the forests of his freedom, began to yell like a soul in purgatory, and to wrench madly at the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... or his character. But the scamp was certainly a scamp, even though he might not be a murderer, or he would have revealed the secret. In fact, Mrs. Mountjoy believed in the matter exactly what Augustus had intended, and, so believing, had resolved that her daughter should suffer any purgatory ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... of life has faded from thy cause, High priest of heaven and hell and purgatory: Thy lips are loud with strains of oldworld story, But the red prey was rent out of thy paws Long since: and they that dying brake down thy laws Have with the fires of death-enkindled glory Put out the flame that faltered on thy hoary High altars, ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... them laughed at his pretensions to be a saint, and called him an ambitious schemer. Again, amongst the laity, many did not quite understand his habit of celebrating two Masses every day. He answered that he never celebrated without releasing a soul from purgatory, and that there had been saints who celebrated nine Masses every day, and, moreover, that he was Pope in his own diocese. This cut the ground from under the feet of his detractors, for in a town of the calibre of Asuncion the people looked on a service in a church as a ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... drew upon him occasionally, though by no means so freely as upon Boccaccio. Thus in "The Monkes Tale" he re-tells, in a very inferior fashion, the tragedy of Ugolino. In "The Parliament of Foules" and "The Hous of Fame" there are distinct imitations of Dante. A passage from the "Purgatory" is quoted in the "Wif of Bathes Tale," etc. Spenser probably, and Milton certainly, knew their Dante. Milton's sonnet to Henry Lawes mentions Dante's encounter with the musician Casella "in the milder shades of Purgatory." Here and there a reference to the "Divine Comedy" occurs in some seventeenth-century ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... dark portal, with its dusty stairway mounting between close walls to disappear in the upper shadows, her mind drew back as from a doorway to Purgatory. Nevertheless, it was a picture often in her reverie; and sometimes it came suddenly, without sequence, into the midst of her other thoughts, as if it leaped up among them from a lower darkness; and when it arrived it wanted ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... English cathedrals, only more vast and dim and gray; but there is as much difference as between noonday and twilight." The pictures, too, were apt in these first days to go against the grain with him. Contemplating a fresco representing scenes in purgatory, he broke forth: "I cannot speak as to the truth of the representation, but, at all events, it was purgatory to look at this poor, faded rubbish. Thank Heaven, there is such a thing as whitewash; and I shall always be glad to hear of its application to old frescoes, even at the sacrifice ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... a possible good, as neither can the blessed apprehend it as a future good. Consequently there is no hope either in the blessed or in the damned. On the other hand, hope can be in wayfarers, whether of this life or in purgatory, because in either case they apprehend happiness as a future ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... never so thoroughly presented as in the "New Education," in which it was shown that music was the most effective of all agents for the cultivation of man's higher nature, and the elevation of the world from its purgatory of selfishness, poverty, and crime. This idea was most fully realized by MRS. ELIZABETH THOMPSON, who has spent a considerable amount in promoting the currency and use of music, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various

... there was a driving party; it was to drive out of town to Purgatory, a pretty place, where there is a brook in a deep ravine with a verdant meadow-floor; and there they were to take food and drink, as is the way of humanity in pretty places. Now it so happened that the Austins, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... it," said Grant. "It's a spook. It's the wail of a lost spirit, loosed temporarily from the horrors of purgatory. It's sent as a warning to repent you of your sins, and it's howling because it hates to go back. What you ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... torments destined to those who did not expiate their sins in this world, prayed for a miracle to convince them. His prayer was heard; and a certain cavern, so small that a man could not stand up therein at his ease, was suddenly converted into a Purgatory, comprehending tortures sufficient to convince the most incredulous. One unacquainted with human nature might conjecture that few would be disposed to venture voluntarily into such a place; on the contrary, pilgrims came in crowds. Now, all who entered from vain curiosity or with souls unprepared ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and-twenty! I had rather see it sadder than so strangely settled and sedate! Shall I speak to him again? Not yet: those green hill-sides, those fields and cattle, must refresh him better than my clavers, after his grim stony mount of purgatory. I wish it were a brighter day to greet him, instead of ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... since leaving Sandy Hook; I felt like patting their enormous cranks and shafts with my hand,—then at the coal bunks, vast cavernous recesses in the belly of the ship, like the chambers of the original mine in the mountains, and saw the men and firemen at work in a sort of purgatory of heat and dust. When it is remembered that one of these ocean steamers consumes about one hundred tons of coal per day, it is easy to imagine what a burden the coal for a voyage alone must be, and one is not ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... point of view; and much of the error in faith or practice on the part of Christians of those days, seems traceable to the tendency on the part of Rome to crystallize opinions into dogmas, and then to impose those dogmas on the Church. Thus the "Romish doctrine concerning purgatory," and the mechanism of "pardons," or indulgences, grew out of the floating belief held by such holy men as St. Augustine, that the souls of the faithful would undergo some more perfect purification after death than is attainable in this world; while the elaborate ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... cell, where he was first made acquainted with the prince's sentence, which seemed to him far more terrible than death. To him it appeared there was no world out of Verona's walls, no living out of the sight of Juliet. Heaven was there where Juliet lived, and all beyond was purgatory, torture, hell. The good friar would have applied the consolation of philosophy to his griefs: but this frantic young man would hear of none, but like a madman he tore his hair, and threw himself all along upon the ground, as he said, to take the measure of his grave. From this unseemly ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Preface Elzevirs Ballade of the Real and Ideal Curiosities of Parish Registers The Rowfant Books To F. L. Some Japanese Bogie-books Ghosts in the Library Literary Forgeries Bibliomania in France Old French Title-pages A Bookman's Purgatory Ballade of the ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... Simone, seeing this, sucked his lips like one puzzled, Dante again addressed him in the same bantering manner. "Come," he cried, "'tis but a toss of three ivories and the world is lighter by one of us, and purgatory the more populous. You shall toss first or last, as you please." As he spoke he shook the dice invitingly on his extended palm, and ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... at piquet. "I was so unlucky as to win," said he, referring to that indiscretion, "and I shall never forget the anguish on the face of the man who paid me. Unless I could always lose, it would be a perfect purgatory to play." ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... twenty years of his life in exile with a price on his head. He had been falsely accused of theft and treachery, and his indignation at the wrong thus done him and at the evil conduct of his contemporaries led him to write his poem, in which he visits Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, and learns how God punishes bad actions, and how He rewards those ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... and in a few minutes four of these men appeared with Cyrene. As soon as she saw Germain she clasped her hands to her bosom and uttered a strange cry, a cry full of wild gladness and fierce agony, such as a soul writhing in the flames of purgatory might give at a sudden opening of the gates of both heaven and hell, and she sprang forward to ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... as from the phantoms of the rose gardens of a century or two ago—to arrive, frigid and forlorn in such a haven, to drink a cup of tea in the old Paca house (now a hotel), is to experience heaven after purgatory. For there is no town that I know whose very house fronts hold out to the stranger that warm, old-fashioned welcome that Annapolis seems ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... made the cause of all the trouble to be one Fabry (Lefevre), a priest and scholar, who rejected pictures from the churches, forbade the use of holy water for the dead, and denied the existence of purgatory.[149] ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... Margett's [St. Margaret's.] Church, where I heard a young man play the fool upon the doctrine of Purgatory. ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... to the Greeks. Its origin was in the words of Satan in Eden, "Ye shall not surely die." The pagans had their nether world of spirits, or their transmigration of souls with its ceaseless round from body to body, and the Roman Catholics their purgatory with its purifying fires. From these sources and not from the Word of God, the traditional view has come into modern Christendom, representing the Lord as unable or unwilling to end sin, but keeping ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer

... "Oh, and what is worse," said she when she revived. "I have killed him!" "O, ho! you have killed him, well that is something towards obtaining reconciliation with the church; but I assure you, that unless you had killed him, you would never have got absolution, nor purgatory, but would have gone plump to the devil. But where is your offering to the cloister?" said he, snarling. "Here," she replied, and handed him a pretty big purse of money. "Well," said he, "I will now make your peace, and your penance is to ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... other ahead of you, step ahead, reach back, pick up the one you left, and toss that ahead. That's easy. But I'm worrying about your not seeing fresh water, Payne. This will be slow, hard work. In the heat to-morrow we'll thirst like souls in purgatory. And we don't know how far that mud reaches or what we'll be up against ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen

... the curate of Leguerno shall say enough masses in your behalf to keep your poor soul out of purgatory. But you will not ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... books, as my uncle counselled, but what think you? By ill hap Bob, coming in to ask some question, found me studying the Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri, and hit upon one of the engravings representing the torments of purgatory. What must he do but report it, and immediately a hue and cry arises that I am being corrupted with Popish books. In vain do I tell them that their admirable John Milton, the only poet save Sternhold and Hopkins that my father deems not absolute pagan, knew, ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... in. One day he asked how grievous sins were to be forgiven which were committed after baptism, whether by faith, or not at all in this life. He was answered that the Articles said nothing on the subject; that the Romish doctrine of pardon and purgatory was false; and that it was well to avoid both curious questions and ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... time when unquestioning faith held the minds and beliefs of men. Nothing seemed too marvelous to be accomplished through Divine means. When a great poet of whom we shall tell you later, wrote about Hell, Heaven and Purgatory, his neighbors all believed that he had really visited those places and seen all the wonders that he described. So when soothsayers and astrologers foretold that the infant Elizabeth was to become one of the Saints of Heaven, ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... day?" she asked, with a childish laugh. "We have been asking each other, 'Where could this soul redeemed from purgatory have gone?' Each one of ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal

... and divining that Aunt Belindy had not understood, "twenty-five years that I don't have to go to purgatory. You see most people have to spend years and years in purgatory, before they ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin

... words revealed the fact. "You are going to purgatory," he said, "and I am going to perdition. Do you know, I sometimes wonder if we shouldn't do better to turn and fly in the face of the gods when they drive us too hard? Why do we give in when we've nothing to ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... said the Man of Books, "your story Is really not ill told in verse. As the Celt said of purgatory, One might go farther and fare worse." The Reader smiled; and once again With steadier voice took up his strain, While the fair singer from the neighboring tent Drew near, and at his side a graceful ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... pleasures for those poor girls. One may not even smile, and as for games, even they are not permitted. I think that it is shameful to make such a purgatory of a place. One may not, one could not, be happy ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... been done to his master. Lander, however, protested that he did not stand in need of so potent a medicine, on the other hand, the caboceer protested that he was a great fool to entertain any such an opinion, and following the practice of the celebrated Dr. Sangrado, Lander was obliged to undergo the purgatory of the caboceer's medicine, and he was ready to admit that he did not feel himself the worse for it after its effects had subsided. The town of Adja is remarkable for an avenue of trees, with a creeping briar-like plant ascending to the very tops, and hanging ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... with such genial amity, her native air was so intoxicating, that she seemed to be in a sort of paradise. But when her friends and neighbors began to ask questions, she felt herself gradually descending into a region which, for all she knew, might resemble purgatory. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... does escape so well, From Purgatory he drops into Hell; Where like a branded Sacrifice he comes, And in the Flame the Harlot lit, consumes: Of Buboes, Nodes, and Ulcers he complains, Of Restless Days, and damn'd nocturnal Pains. Nor less than ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various

... Catholic, thinks differently. With the aid of a budding student she sends for Father Franz Reder in the near-by Church of the Holy Florian. The priest obeys the summons, anxious to shrive a sinning soul, and to send her out of the world if not to Paradise, at least to Purgatory. In the office he encounters Professor Bernhardi, who tells him politely but firmly that he won't allow his patient to be disturbed. The priest, without excitement but painfully impressed, argues that, even if there ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... more lies of your estated property, your county station, your influence generally, and your abilities individually, than the fee-simple of your property, converted into masses, will see me safe through purgatory; and I have consequently baited the trap that has caught myself; for, persuaded by my eloquent advocacy of you all, H. E. has written to Walpole to make certain inquiries concerning you, which, if satisfactory, he, Walpole, will put himself in communication with you, as to the extent and the ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... sir, if you feel for him still, in spite of all his faults, how do you know that God may not feel for him still, in spite of all his faults? For my part," quoth Frank, in his fanciful way, "without believing in that Popish Purgatory, I cannot help holding with Plato, that such heroical souls, who have wanted but little of true greatness, are hereafter by some strait discipline brought to a better mind; perhaps, as many ancients have held with the Indian Gymnosophists, by transmigration into the bodies ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... the opening passage of the same novel, was evidently no remotely conceived fancy. Its realisation, in ideal love, represents the author's Crown of Life. The wise man who said that Beautiful Woman[27] was a heaven to the eye, a hell to the soul, and a purgatory to the purse of man, could hardly find a more copious field of illustration than in ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... in their hands, sing the Gloria in excelsis. Above these are twelve angels dancing or floating round in a circle, holding olive-branches between them. In the foreground, in the margin of the picture, three figures rising out of the flames of purgatory are received and embraced by angels. With all its quaint fantastic grace and dryness of execution, the whole conception is full of meaning, religious as well as poetical. The introduction of the olive, and the redeemed, souls, may express ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... bulls from Rome was rejected; the progress of the reformation abroad, which had every where been attended with the abolition of the monastic orders, gave them reason to apprehend like consequences in England; and though the king still maintained the doctrine of purgatory, to which most of the convents owed their origin and support, it was foreseen, that, in the progress of the contest, he would every day be led to depart wider from ancient institutions, and be drawn nearer the tenets of the reformers, with whom his political interests naturally ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... evils as well as the advantages of civilization!)—I was saying, they send us these love-tokens, no doubt (we shall have to weigh out the crumbs, if each is to have his fair share) that we may the better estimate their state of bliss by passing some hours in purgatory. This, as far as I can apportion it without weights and scales, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... McPherson sardonically. "Through it with many a lamentable groan and a beating of the breast, and with squeaky little wails of remorse—and on through it, out onto the pleasant slopes of forgetfulness and new mischief. Take my condolences on your fearful passage through your purgatory. I fear me it will take you the best part of a week to pass entirely out of it. It's only a man-built hell, that of yours. And, according to the modern theologians, God has no worse ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... and special gifts; and to strengthen them for the help of others. Do you think Titian would have helped the world better by denying himself, and not painting; or Casella by denying himself, and not singing! The real virtue is to be ready to sing the moment people ask us; as he was, even in purgatory. The very word "virtue" means not "conduct" but "strength," vital energy in the heart. Were not you reading about that group of words beginning with V,—vital, virtuous, vigorous, and so on,—in Max Muller, the other day, Sibyl? Can't you tell ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... not always show up when anybody was on the watch for him; he seemed to prefer displaying his supernatural powers to the unwary. For two whole days he did not put in an appearance; whether he was haunting elsewhere or expiating his sins in purgatory was a point for discussion. On the third evening, however, Tattie, Jess, and Magsie had screwed their courage to sticking-point, and strolled upstairs in the twilight, half hoping and half fearing to catch a glimpse ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... This wintry purgatory wore away; the icy stalactites that hung from the cliffs fell crashing to the earth; the clamor of the wild geese was heard; the bluebirds appeared in the naked woods; the water-willows were covered with their soft caterpillar-like blossoms; the twigs of the swamp ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... it for anything, though I'm glad I'm not dead before I've had a chance to really live. All I ask is that you won't tell a soul I was out with you. Grandpa would think I was headed straight for purgatory if he knew." ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... body, for he gladly desired to die for his sins. It was more pleasant for him to die with Christ than to live any longer. Nor did he pray that our Lord would deliver him from the pains of hell, or of purgatory, nor did he ask for the kingdom of heaven; but he resigned himself entirely to the will of God, and offered himself altogether to Christ, to do what He would with him. In his humility he prayed for nothing except for grace and mercy, for which David also prayed when he said, "Deal with Thy ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge

... in detail what the condition the outcast will be, and what will be the constituents of their suffering? We cannot. Rome has impiously traded upon this weakness of humanity. She has parcelled out her purgatory, as we delineate this upper world on a map. This is the machinery whereby she is enabled to traffic in the souls of men. No; that condition lies in outer darkness; I cannot see through the veil, and tell the specific sufferings that lie beneath ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... having bestowed what was necessary to render us essentially good, it would be requiring more than he had given. The most whimsical idea was, that not believing in hell, she was firmly persuaded of the reality of purgatory. This arose from her not knowing what to do with the wicked, being loathed to damn them utterly, nor yet caring to place them with the good till they had become so; and we must really allow, that both in this world and the next, the wicked ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... Esau: "Thy dwelling shall be of the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above." Aglauros is for her envy turned into a black stone; and hers is one of the voices —the other being that of Cain—which haunts the circle of envy in the Purgatory: ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... rather sit by a good fire and read about Arctic discoveries. But I like very well to hear the bells' jingling and to see the young people trying to have a good time as hard as they do at a picnic. It may be that they do, but to me a picnic is purgatory and a sleigh-ride that other place, where, as my favorite Milton says, "frost performs the effect of fire." I believe I have quoted him correctly; I ought to, for I could repeat half his poems from memory once, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... his apparition, being condemned after Death to be viridis viridarius, a green Forrester because in his life-time he had violently inclosed other men's Grounds into his Park. Surely such Fictions keep up the best Park of Popery (Purgatory), whereby their fairest Game and greatest ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... ——s break to pieces, tear. pedestal m. pedestal, foundation. pedir ask, ask for, beg, demand; —— cuenta bring to account, demand account of. pedrera f. precious stones. pena f. punishment, penalty, agony, trouble, anxiety, sorrow, pain; nima en —— soul in purgatory. pendencia f. quarrel, dispute, row. pendn m. banner, flag. penetrar penetrate, pierce. penoso, -a painful. pensamiento m. thought, mind. pensar think, consider, plan, mean, intend; —— en think of. pensil m. beautiful garden. peasco m. large rock. perder lose, squander, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... nun, sinking upon her knees and raising her hands imploringly to the king; "I want the love you once promised me—the love which is my earthly happiness and my salvation—your love, without which I must die; wanting which, I suffer the tortures of purgatory!" ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... 3: Composed soon after the assassination of Wm. Goebel, the Democratic contestant for the Governorship of Kentucky in 1900: He is lauded, while Taylor, his opponent, is condemned as a demagogue and conspirator, who "ought to be in purgatory ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin

... not lacking, and with one of these, a young man some eight years older than herself, she had had for the past three months a sort of understanding. For her, as for so many others, the time she had still to spend at school was as purgatory before paradise. To top all, one of the day-scholars in Laura's class was actually engaged to be married; and in no boy-and-girl fashion, but to a doctor who lived and practised in Emerald Hill: he might sometimes be seen, from a peephole under the stairs, waiting to escort ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... symbols. That on the right is said to be the tomb of S. Barbatianus, confessor of Galla Placidia, and was originally in the church of S. Lorenzo in Caesarea, whence it was brought to the cathedral in the thirteenth century by the archbishop Bonifazio de' Fieschi, whom Dante found in Purgatory among the gluttons: ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... have alleged this text for their purgatory. Here is indeed a purgatory, and a fire of purgatory, and such a purgatory that we must needs go through it before we can come to heaven. But this purgatory is in this world, not in the world to come. The flesh must go through it, and not the soul ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... is essential to them. They are mass phenomena.[435] Some great hope (the good to be obtained by taking the heads of murdered men or from appeasing the gods by sacrificing one's children) or some great fear (drought, failure of food, purgatory), if common to the whole, makes them adopt any suggestion of a means to realize the hope or avert the feared calamity. Often there is no such quasi-rational reason for common action. Hysteria, especially amongst women and children, produces manias of falsehood, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... the merchant, springing to his feet, "if that man be you, a thousand times, yes! Go; do your worst; cast forth my name like waste-paper on the winds, scourge it, brand, blacken it; do what you will. Though you curse me to the confines of purgatory, my daughter ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa

... adventure," says Manuel, "and must fight against each other for the Count's daughter, I shall certainly kill you, dear Niafer. Now if you were a Christian, and died thus unholily in trying to murder me, you would have to go thereafter to the unquenchable flames of purgatory or to even hotter flames: but among the pagans all that die valiantly in battle go straight to the pagan paradise. Yes, yes, your abominable religion is a great comfort ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... dread the sight of food. Doubtless, the grim, inexorable process of the 'rest-cure' is very good for him who is strong enough and brave enough to bear it, and rich enough to pay for it. I address myself to the frailer, cowardlier, needier man. Instead of ceasing from life, and entering purgatory, he need but essay a variation in life. He need but go and stay by himself in one of those vast modern hotels which abound along the South and ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... sabios, or priests; but the sabio, who was also from Mogadore, at once took the part of the Swiri, and decided that the other should have nothing. Whereupon the Gibraltar Jew cursed the sabio, his father, mother, and all his family. The sabio replied, "I put you in ndui," a kind of purgatory or hell. "I put you in seven nduis," retorted the incensed Jew, over whom, however, superstitious fear speedily prevailed; he faltered, became pale, and dropping his voice, retreated, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... the existence of a Purgatory, he quotes: 'Saint Mathew says in Chapter twelfth, thirty-sixth verse——.' But he quotes wrongly, as from that verse cannot be derived the existence of a Purgatory, nor anything of its kind. The Hebrew text says: 'Wa 'ebif 'omar lakam kij 'al kal abar reg ashar idabbru 'abaschim yittbu heschboun ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... far more afraid of, and incomparably more influenced in their conduct by, the doctrine of purgatory, than Protestants by that of hell! That the Catholics practise more superstitions than morals, is the effect of other doctrines. Supererogation; invocation of saints; power of relics, &c. &c. and not of ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... once exorcise the demon with the fortunately all-potent spell of Bocca bacciata, and the rest! Absence and Destiny show him in the same Purgatory; and it is impossible to say that he has actually escaped in the crowning poem of the series—the crowning-point perhaps of his ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... some opinions peculiar to themselves about purgatory, the creation of souls, and some of our mysteries. They repeat baptism every year, they retain the practice of circumcision, they observe the Sabbath, they abstain from all those sorts of flesh which are forbidden by the law. Brothers espouse the wives ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo

... roll down the inclined plane of your social happiness into the bosom of another happiness,—sleep. Sleep for the sleepy is bliss just as truly as society to the lonely. What in the distance would have seemed Purgatory, once reached, is Paradise, and your happiness is continuous. Just as it is in mending. Short-sighted, superficial, unreflecting people have a way—which in time fossilizes into a principle—of mending ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... indicate a joint ownership of territory, but it is more likely that the Kiowa territory adjoined the Comanche on the northwest. In fact Pope[61] definitely locates the Kiowa in the valley of the Upper Arkansas, and of its tributary, the Purgatory (Las Animas) River. This is in substantial accord with the statements of other writers of about the same period. Schermerhorn (1812) places the Kiowa on the heads of the Arkansas and Platte. Earlier still ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... deeds and thoughts and words overbalance the good, then he goes straight down to the place of darkness and torment. If his good and evil deeds and thoughts exactly balance, then he passes into a kind of purgatory. ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... more article, however, of happier import. 'All these indulgences,' it appeared, 'are applicable to souls in purgatory.' For God's sake, ye ladies of Creil, apply them all to the souls in purgatory without delay! Burns would take no hire for his last songs, preferring to serve his country out of unmixed love. Suppose you were to imitate the exciseman, mesdames, and even if the souls in purgatory were not greatly ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson

... his fist and smote the pope on his face, and withal he laughed that the whole house might hear him, yet none of them saw him, or knew where he was. The pope persuaded his company that it was a damned soul, commanding mass presently to be said for his delivery out of purgatory, which was done; the pope sat still at meat, but when the latter mess came to the pope's board, Dr. Faustus laid hands thereon, saying, "This is mine," and so he took both dish and meat, and flew into the Capitol or Campadolia, calling his spirit ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... connection between the two is a rash postulate, I would draw their attention to the fact that, quite apart from our Grail texts, we possess a romance which is, plainly, and blatantly, nothing more or less than such a record. I refer, of course, to Owain Miles, or The Purgatory of Saint Patrick, where we have an account of the hero, after purification by fasting and prayer, descending into the Nether World, passing through the abodes of the Lost, finally reaching Paradise, and returning to earth after Three Days, a ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... Thanks, most excellent skipper, "may your shadow never be less"—it is substantial enough now. Do you ask why I go to New York from Philadelphia to reach Charleston? The reply is simple:—to avoid the purgatory of an American railway, and to enjoy the life-giving breezes "that sweep o'er the ocean wave." The skipper was a regular trump; the service was clean, and we fed like fighting-cocks. The weather was fine, the ship a clipping good one, passengers few, but with just enough 'bacco-juice ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... vision of Weltin, composed by a monk, eleven years after the death of Charlemagne, shows him in purgatory, with a vulture, who is perpetually gnawing the guilty member, while the rest of his body, the emblem of his virtues, is sound and perfect, (see ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... his fellow-clerks in the evenings, for he had an instinctive feeling that it was as well they should not become acquainted with his circle in Warwick Street. And yet to him the attractions of that circle became daily more difficult to resist. And often when he was enduring the purgatory of the Divan, listening to the snarls of St. Barbe over the shameful prosperity of everybody in this world except the snarler, or perhaps went half-price to the pit of Drury Lane with the critical ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... tableaux of men and scenes in the early history of the Territory,—heroes whose exploits he knew by heart; and when he heard the shouting which seemed to fill the rivers from bluff to bluff, he was willing to wade through purgatory to pay for ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... brass-band, I suppose— where he will reign a thousand years. At the conclusion of this felicitous period Satan is to be loosed for a little season, and after he has pawed up the gravel with his long toe-nails and given us a preliminary touch of Purgatory, we are to have the genuine pyrotechnics. Some of the divines did not agree with the spectacular ceremonies arranged by Dr. Seasholes for the Second Coming; but he seems determined to carry out his program or enjoin ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... unclouded by the doubt whether mankind is to be tortured in hell for ever and a day, or for a day without the ever. At the end of life there may be no definite vista of a Heaven glowing with the light of apocalyptic imagination, but neither will there be the unutterable horror of a Purgatory or a Hell lurid with flames for the helpless victims of an unjust but omnipotent Creator. To entertain such libellous representations at all as part of the contents of "Divine Revelation," it was necessary to assert that man was incompetent to judge of the ways ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels

... Ghost, will live again in glory, one would like to believe with Dante that the hymns, temples of the Word, are likewise immortal, and that they will still be heard in the everlasting. Doubtless in the twilight glens of Purgatory the bewailing souls continue to sing the Te lucis ante terminum, even as in the star-circles, where the Blessed move ever, will always leap up the triumphant notes ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... feeling a friendly hand on his shoulder, exclaimed in a voice broken by sobs, "Oh, tell me, where may I go to become an anchorite! There's no other safety! I'll give all my portion, and spend all my time in prayer for my father and the other poor souls in purgatory." ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... been the practice in the Church for anyone to introduce any teaching he saw fit; for example, the monks and priests have daily produced new saints, pilgrimages, special prayers, works and sacrifices in the effort to blot out sin, redeem souls from purgatory, and so on. They who make up things of this kind are not such as put their trust in God through Christ, but rather such as defy God and Christ. Into the hearts of men, where Christ alone should be, they ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... the other side was much larger, for it was carried up so far as to darken a great portion of the window. That on the left represented the misery of hell—torment without hope. That on the right contained two tableaus: the lower one was purgatory, here four recumbent figures lay in the four corners, uncomfortably enough; for the bed of each figure was six sharp spikes, each of which perforated the occupier of it. But yet these dead men were not horrible to look at as ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... of purgatory Were lightly borne with such a heaven in view. I were content with one brief hour a day, Snatched from the toils of war and thy high duties, To gaze on thy dear face—to feel thy hand, Even as now a stay ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... and how different the ideas of honour among officers in your world and ours! Your history of cicisbeosm is more entertaining: I figure the distress of a parcel of lovers who have so many things to dread-the government in this world! purgatory in the next! inquisitions, villeggiaturas, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... horseback, and drawing the horse in splendid trappings, very gloriously accoutred, they scarce refrain in a literal sense from worshipping the very beast. What shall I say of such as cry up and maintain the cheat of pardons and indulgences? that by these compute the time of each soul's residence in purgatory, and assign them a longer or shorter continuance, according as they purchase more or fewer of these paltry pardons, and saleable exemptions? Or what can be said bad enough of others, who pretend ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... turned into parables by this influence. Luther knew not well how to reconcile the epistle of St. James to the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and so he could not allow it to be divine. The Papists bring all their Apocrypha into their Bible, and stamp divinity upon it, for they can fancy purgatory is there, and they find prayers for the dead. But they leave out the second commandment because it forbids the worship of images. Others suppose the Mosaic history of the creation, and the fall of man, to be oriental ornaments, ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... for this very purpose, as when they say, "If you give the dear Virgin, or this or that saint so many hundred florins, you do a most excellent good work, and merit so much indulgence and forgiving of sin, and ransom as many souls from purgatory." ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther

... comes constantly to my master's to get an ounceworth of bread, and my master never has been able to find out where he carries it." "Very well; enter," said the lady; "I will show you where he carries it." Then the lady began to call all the souls in purgatory: "My children, come hither!" The souls then descended; and to some she gave the worth of a grano of bread, to some the worth of a baiocco, and to others the worth of five grani, and the bread was gone in a moment. When the bread ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... his wild imaginations of hell and of purgatory and fleeting glimpses of paradise, never put before us the picture of a soul that was lost and found heaven, after a cycle of despair. Nor could Madeleine Lannoy ever explain her feelings at that moment, even to herself. To begin with, she could ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... get thither. Katie, here, hauds wi' purgatory, ye ken! where souls are burnt clean again—like ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... contravention of a kingdom not of this world, boldly to usurp the temporal dominion of it all: instead of the overwhelming incomprehensibility of an eternal doom, to comfort the worst with false assurance of a purgatory longer or shorter; that after all, vice may be burnt out; and who knows but that gold, buying up the prayers and superfluous righteousness of others, may not make the fiery ordeal an easy one? In ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... a gaming-house so called, where you risk little, and are cheated a good deal: 'Club,' a pleasant purgatory, where you lose more, and are not supposed to be cheated ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... their willingness to include in their affirmation a denial of Mariolatry, purgatory, and other ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... St. Patrick's Purgatory ('Curious Myths of the Middle Ages') The Cornish Wreckers ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... it was put to the vote and carried that eider down and spring mattresses were useless innovations after luxurious straw, and that whilst some benighted people might regard us as having been in purgatory, we had been in paradise, and hoped to be there again within twenty-four hours. And the barn, too! How poor in comparison seemed a conventional house on this sweet Sunday morning! We had prudently filled all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... the flame]. Peace, friendly element, be still! [To the Toper.] This time 'twas but a drop of fire from purgatory. ...
— Faust • Goethe

... other kinds of papistical superstitions and abuses; as of beads, of lady psalters and rosaries, of fifteen oos, of St. Barnard's verses, of St. Agathe's letters, of purgatory, of masses satisfactory, of stations and jubilees, of feigned relics, of hallowed beads, bells, bread, water, palms, candles, fire, and such other; of superstitious fastings, of fraternities, of pardons, with such like merchandise, which were so esteemed and abused to the prejudice of God's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various

... Near Purgatory's entrance The radiant Angels wait; It was the great St. Michael Who closed that gloomy gate, When the poor wandering spirit Came ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... if we pray to any of the saints, this is only because they are united to God. Now some yet living in this world, or even some who are in Purgatory, are closely united to God by grace, and yet we do not pray to them. Therefore neither should we pray to the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... destiny of his native land. Here, right beneath, rode Taillefer up the slope before them all, singing the song of Roland, tossing his lance in air and catching it as it fell, with all the Norse berserker spirit of his ancestors flashing out in him, at the thought of one fair fight, and then purgatory, or Valhalla—Taillefer perhaps preferred the latter. Yonder on the left, in that copse where the red-ochre gully runs, is Sanguelac, the drain of blood, into which (as the Bayeux tapestry, woven by ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... from Lanty, poor Victorine moaned her envy of the fate of Rosette and Babette; and he, with something of their little mistress's spirit, declared that he had no doubt but that 'one way or the other they should be out of it: either get safe home, or be blessed martyrs, without even a taste of purgatory.' ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... had been guilty of snobbery, she was doing penance for it now. She was too loyal to what her family ought to have been and was not to apologize for Abbie, but she suffered in a social purgatory. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... donkey-drivers, guides, peddlers and beggars—but in Damascus they so hate the very sight of a foreign Christian that they want no intercourse whatever with him; only a year or two ago, his person was not always safe in Damascus streets. It is the most fanatical Mohammedan purgatory out of Arabia. Where you see one green turban of a Hadji elsewhere (the honored sign that my lord has made the pilgrimage to Mecca,) I think you will see a dozen in Damascus. The Damascenes are the ugliest, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of entertainment within or adjoining Westminster Hall. It is called in "Hudibras," "False Heaven, at the end of the Hall." There were two other alehouses near Westminster Hall, called Hell and Purgatory. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... 4. In purgatory's cleansing fires Brief be my stay; Oh, bid me, if today I die, Go home today. So, for tomorrow and its needs, I do not pray; But keep me, guide me, love me, ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various

... great epic was called by him a comedy because its ending was not tragical, but "happy"; and admiration gave it the epithet "divine." It is in three parts—Inferno (hell), Purgatorio (purgatory), and Paradiso (paradise). It has been made accessible to English readers in the metrical translations of Carey, Longfellow, Norton, and others, and in the excellent prose version (Inferno) of John Aitken Carlyle, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... gods; and on the left the wide expanse of the waters, with a coast like a fringe of little glens and creeks and headlines, and the sun's glitter on the waves like Dante's "tremolar della marina" on the shore of Purgatory. ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... in this intermediate region, or purgatory of the outward-bound voyage, and occasionally violent tornados or squalls, which in a moment tear away every rag of canvas from a ship's yards. For several hours at a time, also, rain falls down in absolute torrents. Even when the weather clears up, and ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... need no purgatory in the next world. I kept him on bread and water for a month in my strong room, and at first he demanded absinthe with threats, then grovelled, begging and praying for it. After that a period of depression and despair ensued, but finally his naturally strong constitution ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... was full the voyage was begun, while from the suffering blacks below, unused to seafaring under any circumstances, and desperately sick in their stifling quarters, there arose cries and moans as if the cover were taken off of purgatory. The imagination recoils from the thought of so much ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... I may now receive and die. My sin Indeed is great, but yet I have been in A purgatory, such as fear'd hell is A recreation, and scant map of this. My mind neither with pride's itch, nor yet hath been Poison'd with love to see or to be seen. I had no suit there, nor new suit to shew, Yet went to court: but as Glare, ...
— English Satires • Various

... in hell as Minos, with a great serpent twisted round his legs, surrounded by a crowd of devils. Messer Biagio complained to the Pope, who asked him where he was placed? "In hell," was the reply. "Then I can do nothing to help you," said the Pope; "had the painter sent you to purgatory I would have used my best efforts to get you released, but I exercise no influence in hell, ubi nulla est redemptio." Some years afterwards Paul IV. objected to the naked figures, and employed Daniele da Volterra ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... herself one; but how could she be a Jewess with her strong faith in St Nicholas, who was the saint of her own Church, and in St John of the River, and in the Madonna? No; she must be an outcast from all religions, a Pariah, one devoted absolutely to the everlasting torments which lie beyond Purgatory—unless, indeed, unless that mild- eyed Saviour would be content to take her faith and her acts of hidden worship, despite her aunt, despite that odious nun, and despite the very priest himself! She did not know how this might be with her, but she did know that ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... the curtain. Nobody had heard of Weber and Beethoven, and Mozart, dead more than a score of years, was mentioned by a well-known musical connoisseur as a young man of great promise! Such surroundings as these were a species of purgatory to Berlioz, against whose bounds he fretted and raged without intermission. The director's receptions were signalized by the performance of insipid cavatinas, and from these, as from his companions' revels in which he would sometimes indulge with the maddest debauchery as if to kill his ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... value of this new office, he replied, that "It might be worth some thousands of pounds to him who after his death would instantly go to heaven; twice as much to him who would go to purgatory: and nobody knows what to him who would adventure to go to hell." Such was the pious casuistry of a witty usurer. Whether he undertook this last adventure, for the four hundred thousand pounds he left behind him, how can a sceptical ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... the far light an angel clothed with the brilliancy of the sun. With the speed of lightning he plunged far down the purgatory fire; his brightness was so great that Alvira could follow him even through the flames. There the angel found a young, beautiful soul, deep in agony, clothed with crimson fire. A smile of ineffable joy lit up the ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... very old-fashioned, I suppose, in my ideas. Do you know," she asked, with a smile upon the face which lifted confidingly toward me, "I—I really believe the world was made in six days; and that the whale swallowed Jonah, and that there is a real purgatory and a hell of fire and brimstone. You don't, do you, Bobbie? But I do,—and I promised to stay with him till death parted us, you know, and I must do it. I am all he has. He would get even worse without me. I—oh, boy dear, boy dear, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... choice sometimes sobers the intoxicated brain; and a young man shrinks from the gulf, appalled at the darkness of dishonesty. But to excessive vanity, high-life with or without fraud, is Paradise; and any other life Purgatory. Here many resort to dishonesty without a scruple. It is at this point that public sentiment half sustains dishonesty. It scourges the thief of Necessity, and pities the ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher

... even the few who have succeeded in falling into a doze are snatched awake by an atrocious din of church-bells sufficient in number to supply heaven, nirvana, the realm of houris, and the Irish section of purgatory, with enough left over to furnish boiling pots for the more crowded section of the Hereafter. Then with a dim suggestion of dawn every living dog and fighting-cock, of which each inhabitant appears to possess at least a score, joins ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... of purgatory are finely and amply illustrated in the story at p. 110, whilst the power of the saints and the value of pilgrimages would be impressed upon the hearers by the narrative of the miracles wrought by St. James of Compostella ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton

... called "The Seven Wise Masters." There are legends of the Virgin and the saints, a paraphrase of Scripture, a treatise on the seven deadly sins, some Bible history, a dispute among birds concerning women, a love song or two, a vision of Purgatory, a vulgar story with a Gallic flavor, a chronicle of English kings and Norman barons, and a political satire. There are a few other works, similarly incongruous, crowded together in this typical manuscript, which now gives ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... chapter in the history of the Hospital. The foundation for the souls of the two princes existed no longer—the children, no doubt, having been long since sung out of Purgatory. Queen Eleanor, however, immediately refounded it. The Hospital was, as before, to consist of a Master, three Brothers, three Sisters, and bedeswomen. It was also provided that six poor scholars were to be fed and clothed—not educated, The Queen further provided that on November the 16th of ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant

... It's not that ye are ill in bed, or hindered by the rain, or the could; it's because ye are heretics all, that ye shun the confession and the holy mass. Do ye know what the Church has power to do wi' the like o' ye? Arrah! it was the heavenly and not the mortal wisdom that made the hot fires o' purgatory for such. Small help will ye get from me when the flames are scorching ye. Never a mass shall be said for a sowl o' ye, unless ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous

... little, silly, wicked fool! But if ever a little fool got her rich deserts without needing to wait for purgatory, that one'll be Rhoda.... Oh, Peter, be more excited and angry! Why aren't you stamping up and down and vowing vengeance, instead of sitting on the hearth saying, 'Rhoda's gone,' as if it was ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... was taken up by the Press. "Purgatory is no name for it," "The Old Bailey Scandal," and other startling headlines failed to move Bumbledom. The most celebrated Criminal Court in the world, situated in the richest city, to this day remains a public scandal and a purgatory to ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... short time, little son. And only those who are never fit for heaven go down with Satan. But you are not one of those," he hastily added, straining the boy to him. "And the Masses which the good priests say for us will lift us out of purgatory and into heaven, where the streets are pure gold and the gates are pearl. And there we will ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... of a reconciliation; a hill cannot be had, you know, without going to the expense of a valley. And though I hated the very thought of a moment's difference with so truly gentle a girl, yet how, but through such a purgatory, could one win the paradise of her returning smiles? All this, however, came to nothing; and simply because she positively would not quarrel. And the jealousy fell through, because there was no decent subject for such a passion, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... by eight feet, furnished with only a plank on which the student must sit and sleep. He is shut in there for three days, food being given him on entering for the entire time. This torture is repeated three times, so that nine days of purgatory have to be endured before the goal ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... Wherever I went I should be dazed and lost; when I looked at a bush I should say: that did not grow at home; the soil would be different and even the sun would not set in the same place. And what should I tell my father if he were to come looking for me when it gets too hot for him in Purgatory? He would ask me how I was to find his grave again, and Stasiek's, poor Stasiek who has laid down his head, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... these singers dead so long, 65 And still, God knows, in purgatory, Give its best sweetness to all song, To ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... terror." Grandcourt "fulfilled his side of the bargain by giving her the rank and luxuries she coveted." Matrimony as a bargain never had and never will have but one result. "She had a root of conscience in her, and the process of purgatory had begun for her on earth." Without the root of conscience it would have been purgatory all the same. So much for resorting to marriage for deliverance from poverty or old maidhood. Better be an old maid than an old fool. But how are we to be ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... was;—though I used to feel assured that the explicit tablet would be as clear to my eyes in purgatory as Mr. Daubeny's words have been to my ears this afternoon. I never for a moment doubted that the truth would be known before long,—but did doubt so very much whether it would be known in time. I'll go home now, Mr. Monk, and endeavour to get the matter off my mind. I will resolve, at any rate, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope



Words linked to "Purgatory" :   divinity, theology, fictitious place



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