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Cloister   /klˈɔɪstər/   Listen
Cloister

noun
1.
Residence that is a place of religious seclusion (such as a monastery).  Synonym: religious residence.
2.
A courtyard with covered walks (as in religious institutions).






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Cloister" Quotes from Famous Books



... evident, also, that his affection for her was on the wane. He was absent from her more frequently—spoke of the necessity of attending to his duty—his duty! oh, the ready excuse man finds to do evil. Better far for that poor girl would it have been to have been buried in the deepest recesses of the cloister, than to have attracted the notice of that vile unprincipled nobleman. It was about this time the old Earl died, and he quitted the service. There was no bar now for his acknowledging her as his wife—but he was satiated—his fleeting ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite

... existence, and the fidelity with which they preserved the knowledge of other days, that is surely a higher attainment in the life of the race, when the learning of the world exceeds the learning of the cloister, the ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... the municipality, and the huge mediaeval one on a hill outside, now used as a damp restaurant and dismal beer-cellar. I lingered at Lienz for a couple of days, in the ancient hostelry of the Post. The hallways were vaulted like a cloister, the walls were three feet thick, the kitchen was in the middle of the house on the second floor, so that I looked into it every time I came from my room, and ordered dinner direct from the cook. But, so far from being displeased with these peculiarities, I rather liked ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... stands before the second pair of towers. As so extended, the building has three pylons, as they are called, pylon being the name for the pair of sloping-sided towers with gateway between. Behind the first pylon comes an open court surrounded by a cloister with double rows of columns. The second and third pylons are connected with one another by a covered passage—an exceptional feature. Then comes a second open court; then a hypostyle hall, i.e., a hall with flat ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... ("on the second floor," as Bunker says) the carpet is again grass, and Bunker and I clamber through a little archway into the cloister gallery, where the monks used to look down on the service below when they felt inclined. The ladies look after us, brave adventurers that we are (only two or three million men have been here before us, perhaps, since the ruin became a popular success), and refuse to follow in our ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... their days in peace. Those with whom the world had dealt hardly, or those whom it had surfeited with its unsatisfying pleasures, those who were disappointed with earth, and those who were filled with passionate aspirations after heaven, alike found a haven of rest in the quiet cloister. And, gradually, lands came to them, and wealth, and social dignity—all gratefully extended to men who deserved so well of their fellows; while no landlords were more popular than they, for the sanctity of the monks sheltered their dependents ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... magnificent view is obtained through the fine old Gothic open window, which looks down sheer to the great depth below, and commands the entire country seaward. Descending into the courtyard to the northern cloister we pass two large sarcophagi of white marble. One of these has been elaborately worked in rich garlands of flowers and very grand bulls' heads, together with nude figures, all of which have been much damaged. ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... delicate attentions of the abbess and the nuns, were circumstances so soothing to her mind, that they almost tempted her to leave a world, where she had lost her dearest friends, and devote herself to the cloister, in a spot, rendered sacred to her by containing the tomb of St. Aubert. The pensive enthusiasm, too, so natural to her temper, had spread a beautiful illusion over the sanctified retirement of a nun, that almost hid from her ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... she marvelled at his abstaining; the old wheel revolved, as it ever does with creatures that wait for circumstances to bring the change they cannot work for themselves; and once more the two fell asunder. She had thoughts of the cloister. Her venerable relative died joining her hand to Prince Marko's; she was induced to think of marriage. An illness laid her prostrate; she contemplated the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... and all that truly I could have hoped for, and I told him so. About us was quiet, vacant cloister, and we parted more warmly than we ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... of men. Therefore faire Hermia question your desires, Know of your youth, examine well your blood, Whether (if you yeeld not to your fathers choice) You can endure the liuerie of a Nunne, For aye to be in shady Cloister mew'd, To liue a barren sister all your life, Chanting faint hymnes to the cold fruitlesse Moone, Thrice blessed they that master so their blood, To vndergo such maiden pilgrimage, But earthlier happie is the Rose distil'd, Then that which withering on the virgin thorne, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... an early age took me to [Rome], where they shortly died, not, however, before they had placed me in the service of a cardinal, with whom I continued some years, and who, when he had no further occasion for me, sent me to the college, in the left-hand cloister of which, as you enter, rest the bones of Sir John D[ereham]; there, in studying logic and humane letters, I lost whatever of humanity I had retained when discarded by the cardinal. Let me not, however, forget two points,—I am a Fraser, ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... iron banisters; the mansion at 19 Rue Eugene-Destenque, in the style of the Henri IV. period, having a great stone fireplace and decorative paintings in one gallery. Finally, in the Rue des Trois-Raisinets, the remains of the monastery of the Franciscans, with a cloister, and the framework of a granary of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... of the Cid he brought with him the body of the campeador, mounted upon his steed Bavieca, and solemnly and slowly the train wound on until the corpse of the mighty dead was brought to the cloister of the monastery of Cardena. Here the dead hero was seated on a throne, with his sword Tisona in his hand; and, the story goes, a caitiff Jew, perhaps wishing to revenge his brethren who had been given sand for ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... might veritably be called a city of the dead. He turned aside into the cloisters, and listened mechanically while an old man discoursed to him in crabbed German concerning Fastrada's tomb and the carved face of the minstrel Frauenlob upon the cloister wall. Presently, however, the guide showed him a little door, and led him out into the pleasant grassy space round which the cloisters had been built. He was conscious of a great feeling of relief. The blue sky was above him again, and his feet were on the soft, green grass. There were tombstones ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... William was murdered is still standing: it is a dark-looking building with arched windows and a narrow door, and forms part of the cloister of an old cathedral consecrated to St. Agatha. It still bears the name of Prinsenhof, although it is now used for artillery barracks. I got permission to enter from the officer on guard. A corporal who understood a little French accompanied me. We crossed a courtyard full of soldiers, and arrived ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis

... was outwardly secularized: and the minority who could not tolerate the secularization of her ideals took refuge in the hermit's cell or in the cloister. In these retreats was developed the practice of Christianity as an art or science of individual sanctity, but at the cost of a certain aloofness from the rough and tumble of workaday life. The Christianity of the Middle Ages was fertilized ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... the good effects of Feudalism was the impulse it gave to certain forms of polite literature. Just as learning and philosophy were fostered by the seclusion of the cloister, so were poetry and romance fostered by the open and joyous hospitalities of the baronial hall. The castle door was always open to the wandering singer and story-teller, and it was amidst the scenes of festivity within that the ballads and romances of mediaeval ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... inexhaustible demand for Peter's pence, went on vigorously. A recognised means of publicly raising funds was employed in February 1455-6, when the Archbishop proclaimed an indulgence of forty days to those who would help the Friars Preachers, whose cloister and buildings including 34 cells together with their books, vestments, jewels, and sacred vessels, had been destroyed ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson

... would fling it upon the floor. She never accepted anything for herself or for her family, which remained in poverty. And with such pride as she possessed, such natural simplicity, such a desire to remain in the background, one can very well understand that she should have wished to disappear and cloister herself in some lonely spot so as to prepare herself to make a good death. Her work was accomplished; she had initiated this great movement scarcely knowing how or why; and she could really be of no further utility. Others ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... courts. The courts had generally a fountain in the middle, and an altar to the hero forefather of the master, where, before each meal, offerings were made and wine poured out. The rooms were very small, and used for little but sleeping; and the men lived chiefly in the cloister or pillared walks round the court. There was a kind of back-court for the women of the family, who did not often appear in the front one, though they were not shut up like Eastern women. Most Greeks had farms, which they worked by the help of their slaves, and whence ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge

... OF THIS PARAGRAPH IS THE INCOMPLETENESS OF OUR LORD'S TEACHING.—For three and a half years He was perpetually pouring forth His wonderful words; in many different places—the market-place, the home at Bethany, the hillside, the Temple cloister; to many different audiences—now in thronging crowds, and again to the secret disciple whose footfall startled the night, or the lone woman drawing water from the well; on many different themes—to mention all of which would be impossible, though He never ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... our narrative commences Louis was seriously meditating his flight from home and the world to bury himself in some cloister of religion. His studies of philosophy and history had convinced him of the immortality of the soul and the vanity of all human greatness. In his frequent meditations he became more and more attracted towards the only lasting, imperishable Good which the soul will one day find in its possession. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... pil'd up there. He gazes now in exstatic trance Through the casement, out into nature's expanse. Whene'er we sit at the lone midnight, And stare out into the dubious light, Whilst the pallid moon is peering o'er Ruin'd cloister and crumbling tower, Feelings so wondrous strange come o'er us; The past, and the future, arise before us; The present fadeth, unmark'd, away In the garb of insignificancy. He gazes up into nature's height, The noble man with his eye so bright; He gazes up to the starry skies, Whither, ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow

... the cloister, though I have done nothing it seems to me during the past week but sleep, and am hardly strong enough now to carry the pen over the paper as ...
— A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters • Charles A. Gunnison

... He had forgotten even that the solemn thirtieth birthday was close upon him. It seemed to him as if his own egoism was lying about in scattered pieces, which he must collect in the calm of this cloister, and reconstruct. He wanted to resume possession of himself, very slowly, without violent effort. He wound up his watch; the hour was not yet half-past ten. The whole exquisite ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... called Polum, it formed part of the Barony of Gilbert de Gaunt, until about the 35th year of Edward I., when Robert de Barkeworth died seised of it; and it appears to have been the residence of Walter de Barkeworth, who died in 1374, and was buried in the cloister of Lincoln Cathedral. Afterwards it was the residence of the family of Thimbleby, a branch of the Thimblebys of Irnham, who probably built the present house about the time of Henry VIII. In the reign of Elizabeth ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... impressible and ardent nature was absorbed in other objects. Religion and its ministers possessed her wholly, and all her enthusiasm was spent on works of charity and devotion. Her father, passionately fond of her, resisted her inclination for the cloister, and sought to wean her back to the world; but she escaped from the chateau to a neighboring convent, where she resolved to remain. Her father followed, carried her home, and engaged her in a round of ftes and hunting parties, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... said I. 'But 'tis better to renounce the world and have strength to live in seclusion,' she answered. I made bold and replied that I thought it required much greater strength to go on the battlefield of the world and be good than live within the impenetrable walls of a cloister where bin cannot come. 'But, child, thou wilt see beautiful things made by the hand of man that will fill thy heart leaving not room for the Divine Presence.' 'Nay,' said I, 'I shall see God's work in every beauteous ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... as sheep. Lo! arose of that bridal Dione, rainbow'd and besprent of its dew! Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have loved, love anew! Her favour it was fill'd the sails of the Trojan for Latium bound, Her favour that won her AEneas a bride on Laurentian ground, And anon from the cloister inveigled the Virgin, the Vestal, to Mars; As her wit by the wild Sabine rape recreated her Rome for its wars With the Ramnes, Quirites, together ancestrally proud as they drew From Romulus down to our Caesar—last, best of that blood, ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... north side (A), defended by three separate iron doors. Near the entrance is a large tower (M), a constant feature in the monasteries of the Levant. There is a small postern gate at L. The enceinte comprises two large open courts, surrounded with buildings connected with cloister galleries of wood or stone. The outer court, which is much the larger, contains the granaries and storehouses (K), and the kitchen (H) and other offices connected with the refectory (G). Immediately adjacent to the gateway is a two-storied guest-house, opening from a cloister ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... a good share of wit, my faculties were continually on the stretch to entertain him,—a state of mind little consistent with happiness or ease; I was afraid to advance my friends or punish my enemies. My pupils at St. Cyr were not more secluded from the world in a cloister than I was in the bosom of the court; a secret disgust and weariness consumed me. I had no relief but in my work and books of devotion; with these alone I had a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... the least his illustrious brother, it may truly be said that while the one was a saint in the cloister, the other was a saint in the very thick of life's battle. [Footnote: "Henry Newman... stood for a spiritual Tory; while Francis Newman was a spiritual Radical" (Morning Leader, October, 1897).] ... I would speak of him rather ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... day of my arrival at the cloister I was assigned to Dom Granger, and placed by him at work on the Atlas of Christianity. A brief examination decided him as to what kind of service I was best fitted to render. This is how I came to enter ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... pressure of the arm of the procurator's wife, as a bark yields to the rudder, arrived at the cloister St. Magloire—a little-frequented passage, enclosed with a turnstile at each end. In the daytime nobody was seen there but mendicants devouring their crusts, and children ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the spot on the Rhine which is now occupied by Sackingen, and proposed to settle there, but the people warned him off. He appealed to the king of the Franks, who made him a present of the whole region, people and all. He built a great cloister there for women and proceeded to teach in it and accumulate more land. There were two wealthy brothers in the neighborhood, Urso and Landulph. Urso died and Fridolin claimed his estates. Landulph asked for documents and papers. Fridolin had none to show. He said the bequest had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... and majestic order, the females who composed the choir—six, who from their black scapularies, and black veils over their white garments, appeared to be professed nuns of the order of Mount Carmel; and as many whose veils, being white, argued them to be novices, or occasional inhabitants in the cloister, who were not as yet bound to it by vows. The former held in their hands large rosaries, while the younger and lighter figures who followed carried each a chaplet of red and white roses. They moved in procession around the chapel, without appearing to take the slightest notice of Kenneth, although ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... made the sign of the cross when they met these "gypsies" who dared to live in a cell at the monastery, neighbors to the dead, in constant communication with the spectral friar who stalked through the cloister. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... through which it guided them, they reached an aperture of irregular roundish shape, about the size, of the cloister window of a convent. They saw at once that it was big enough to allow the passage of their bodies. They saw, too, that it was admitting the sunbeams—admonishing them that it was ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... sure, dear sir," returned the Jew. "You don't know Brother Hyacinth as well as I do. There was a fellow came here on a day all spent and bleeding. He had lost a toe under a coach-wheel. If you will believe it, this dear host of ours bade him go walk on his hands, and offered him the cloister to get perfect in. Now, with me, I know it will go hard, unless those fools cease their din." The two friars had been dicing with the soldier, and had won his boots. Each had taken one from him, and were now wrangling ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... throne. The mikados began to abdicate after short reigns, to shave off their hair to show that they renounced the world and its vanities, to become monks and spend the remainder of their days in the cloister. These short reigns helped the shoguns and ministers in their ambitious purposes, until in time the reins of power fell into the hands of a few great families, who fought furiously with one another for the control. It is with the feuds of these families that we have now to do. The mikados had ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... Raymond Berenger, with his little body of infantry and cavalry, were drawn up on the easy hill which is betwixt the castle and the plain, ascending from the former towards the fortress; and it seemed clear to the Dominican, who had not entirely forgotten in the cloister his ancient military experience, that it was the Knight's purpose to attack the disordered enemy when a certain number had crossed the river, and the others were partly on the farther side, and partly ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... the loftiest love that dwelleth there Up to the heaven of heavens your longing turn, Then from your heart will pass this fearing care: The oftener there the word our they discern, The more of good doth everyone possess, The more of love doth in that cloister burn. ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... read anything that is not in the Cloister Monastery," he replied, "which for the most part only contains theological books, with a few scientific works, and those are written in Russian, Hebrew, Slavonic, and Greek, so I have ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... a worthy key to this great gate Italian. We walked at night in the open galleries of the cathedral cloister—white, smoothly curving, well-proportioned loggie, enclosing a green space, whence soars the campanile to the stars. The moon had sunk, but her light still silvered the mountains that stand at watch round Chiavenna; and the castle rock was flat and black against ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... history of Lynn, Mr. H.J. Hillen, well says: "Time's unpitying plough-share has spared few vestiges of their architectural* grandeur." A cemetery cross in the museum, the name "Paradise" that keeps up the remembrance of the cool, verdant cloister-garth, a brick arch upon the east bank of the Nar, and a similar gateway in "Austin" Street are all the relics that remain of the old monastic life, save the slender hexagonal "Old Tower," the graceful lantern of the convent of the grey-robed Franciscans. The above ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... Span. canino, canine, voracious. It can hardly be doubted that this word suggested Shakespeare's Caliban. Seraglio is due to confusion between the Turkish word serai, a palace, and Ital. serraglio, "an inclosure, a close, a padocke, a parke, a cloister or secluse" (Florio), which belongs to Lat. sera, a bolt ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... it was not all. The marquise, as we know, had taken refuge in a convent, where Desgrais dared not arrest her by force, for two reasons: first, because she might get information beforehand, and hide herself in one of the cloister retreats whose secret is known only to the superior; secondly, because Liege was so religious a town that the event would produce a great sensation: the act might be looked upon as a sacrilege, and might bring about a popular rising, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... of years ago there dwelt in a cloister a monk named Urban, who was remarkable for his earnest and fervent piety. He was a studious reader of the learned and sacred volumes in the convent library. One day he read in the Epistles of St. Peter the words, "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... Church of Santa Maria della Campagna. He came furnished with letters to the Governor, and Gambara had brought him to Fifanti's villa. From Monna Giuliana the young painter heard the curious story of my having been vowed prenatally to the cloister by my mother, learnt her name and mine, and the hope that was entertained that I should walk in the ways of St. Augustine after ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... reading certain books, his disgust for everyday life was accentuated, he longed for lenitive hours in a cloister, where the monotonous chant of prayers in an incense-laden atmosphere would bring on a somnolence, a dreamy rapture of mystical ideas. But only a simple soul, on which life's wear and tear had left no mark, was capable of savouring the delights of such a self-abandon, and his own soul was ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... property left her by her father, and in a few days it was as if she had never been in the village. Whither she had gone, no one could tell. Officious old women would have despatched her to the same place whither Petro had gone; but a Cossack from Kief reported that he had seen in a cloister, a nun withered to a mere skeleton, who prayed unceasingly; and her fellow villagers recognized her as Pidorka, by all the signs,—that no one had ever heard her utter a word; that she had come on foot, and had brought a frame for the ikon of God's mother, set with such brilliant stones that all ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various

... more fitted to adorn the cloister than the throne. He was more of a Saint than King, and was glad to leave the affairs of his realm in the hands of Earl Godwin. This man was the first great English statesman who had been neither Priest nor King. Astute, powerful, dexterous, he was virtual ruler ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... you may, it is true, gain access to a family of the middle class; and, once received, you will be well treated. But what conditions you must fulfill to gain that! You must lead a life like that of the cloister, and sacrifice all your dearest habits. The Englishman, though he invented the word eccentric, does not tolerate eccentricity in a foreigner. And, on the whole, the bourgeoise hospitality is not worth the sacrifices ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... unseen and unmolested. This square of earth, for instance, was not much larger than the space covered by the chamber roof above us; and yet, with the high walls towering over the rose-stalks, it was as secluded as a monk's cloister. We found it, indeed, on later acquaintance, as poetic and delicately sensuous a retreat as the romance-writers would wish us to believe did those mediaeval connoisseurs of comfort, when, with sandalled ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... such things as was necessarie for my body: for after I had made relation unto them of all my pristine miserie, and present joyes, I went before the face of the goddesse and hired me a house within the cloister of the temple to the end I might continually be ready to the service of the goddesse, and ordinarily frequent the company of the priests, whereby I would wholy become devout to the goddesse, and an inseparable worshipper of her ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... condemned persons shall you go at three yron gates, the court paued and vauted round about, and open aboue as it were a cloister. In this cloister be eight roomes with yron doores, and in ech of them a large gallerie, wherein euery night the prisoners do lie at length, their feet in the stocks, their bodies hampered in huge wooden ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... screaming women, wounded and dying cows, sheep, and swine, entangled in an enormous mass, made it impossible to pass that way. Napoleon turned his horse, and took the road to St. Peter's gate. Slowly, and with perfect composure, he rode through Cloister and Burg Streets. Not a muscle of his fane betrayed any uneasiness or embarrassment; it was ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... from the choir and church to the padre's room to be ready at hand in case he should want anything. He was not there, but I found him in the patio, talking earnestly with Don Manuel, as they walked up and down the cloister. As soon as he saw me, he told me to give orders to have the visitor's horse ready for him immediately after dinner. I did so, and on coming back from the large dining-room, where I told my errand to one of the mozos, found the padre and Don Manuel just sitting down ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... will steal, sir, an egg out of a cloister: for rapes and ravishments he parallels Nessus. He professes not keeping of oaths; in breaking them he is stronger than Hercules. He will lie, sir, with such volubility that you would think truth were a fool: drunkenness is his best virtue, for he will be swine-drunk; and in his sleep he ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... large embrace He folds the enchanted hill; then like a god Strides into heaven behind the purple peak. Oh beautiful! In the clear, rayless air, I see the chequered vale mapped far below, The sky-paved streams, the velvet pasture-slopes, The grim, gray cloister whose deep vesper bell Blends at this height with tinkling, homebound herds! I see—but oh, how far!—the blessed town Where Liebhaid dwells. Oh that I were yon star That pricks the West's unbroken foil of gold, Bright as an eye, only to gaze ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... columns, of one stone each, support the arches which enclose the sanctuary. From the S. side of the choir a door opens into what was formerly the "salle capitulaire," built in the 12th cent. The cloister is a modern addition by Violet le Duc, who also constructed the altar in the beautiful crypt below the choir. Near the abbey church is St. Martin's, 12th cent., and St. Etienne, now used as a storehouse. The Port St. Croix (15th cent.), as well as parts of ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... at last, indicating the end of the period. Three or four boys went forward to confer with Mr. Beaver about certain vexing algebraic problems. Needless to say, neither Burton nor Harrington was among these. They drifted out into the cloister with the rest of the class, having certain problems of their own, not algebraic. One or two boys addressed Burton and were rebuffed with a curt word, which was unusual, as Burton was almost painstakingly friendly ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... comprehend. Cunning rogues—very cunning! They might have been cheated, though; for, look ye, fair nephew, I myself remember the canon Robersart who had taken the vows and afterwards broke out of cloister, and became a captain of Free Companions. He had a mistress, the prettiest wench I ever saw, and three as beautiful children.—There is no trusting monks, fair nephew—no trusting them—they may become soldiers and fathers when you least ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... or eight days until, at the last, he came to a nunnery where he saw in the cloister many nuns waiting on a fair lady; none other, indeed, than Queen Guenevere herself. And she, looking up, saw Sir Launcelot, and at the sight, grew so pale that her ladies feared for her; but she recovered, and bade them go and bring Sir Launcelot to her presence. ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay

... Tuesday and Saturday nights, when I was at the club, and on Wednesdays, when I did the theatricals of the town, and on Thursdays and Fridays—but never mind! girls were out of the question in my case, and he knew that the bachelor hall where I preside was as difficult of access as a cloister. I might not have given my word without further deliberation, had not the impetuous Colonel seized us bodily and borne us back into his smoking-room, where he was about to shatter the wax on a flagon of wine, a brand of fabulous age and excellence. Bartholomew nodded to Alf, Alf ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... Catholic priest, who acted as tutor to Alexander Stuart, a natural son of James IV. of Scotland as professor of Greek for a short time at Oxford, and was the most learned man of his time. His best known work is his Colloquia, which contains satirical onslaughts on monks, cloister ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope

... market stalls, with awnings over them of gay striped linen cloth, about which some people, mostly women and children, were moving quietly, looking at the goods exposed there. The ground floor of the building round the quadrangle was occupied by a wide arcade or cloister, whose fanciful but strong architecture I could not enough admire. Here also a few people were sauntering or sitting reading ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... the only form which could resist that utterly prostrating action of later mediaevalism. Feudalism stamped out civilization; monasticism warped it; in the open country it was burnt, trampled on, and uprooted; in the cloister it withered and shrank and perished; only within the walls of a city, protected from the storm without, and yet in the fresh atmosphere of life, could it develope, flourish, and ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... priests. This transaction, which happened in 1776, was submitted for the decision of the Papal See; when it appeared that the pretended prophetess had, by means of many ingenious mechanical devices, thus long imposed on public credulity, whilst in the retirement of the cloister the most licentious and profligate occurrences nightly took place; and that when any unfortunate nun gave offence, either by refusing to be sacrificed at the shrine of infamy, or that it became desirable to get rid of her, in order to appropriate for the convent the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... oriental imagination, which afterward stole into the graver works of the monkish historians. Hence the chronicles are apt to be tinctured with those saintly miracles which savor of the pious labors of the cloister, or those fanciful fictions that betray their Arabian Authors. Scarce one of their historical facts but has been connected in the original with some romantic fiction, and even in its divorced state, bears traces of its former alliance. The records in preceding pages are 'illuminated' by these prefatory ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... beholder never suspects as such. It is well known that there was a faithful portrait of Alexander VI and his children above the altar of S. Lucia in the Church of S. Maria del Popolo, the work of Pinturicchio. Later, when Alexander restored this church, the painting was removed to the court of the cloister, and ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... did they slaughter, and many a fat hog did they set down to roast before the fire; many a jar, too, did they broach of my father's wine. Nine whole nights did they set a guard over me taking it in turns to watch, and they kept a fire always burning, both in the cloister of the outer court and in the inner court at the doors of the room wherein I lay; but when the darkness of the tenth night came, I broke through the closed doors of my room, and climbed the wall ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... that great Transitional choir was finished, Canterbury Cathedral remained till 1379. It is true that the north wall of the cloister and the lovely doorway in the north-east corner were built in the Early English time. It is equally true that the lower part of the Chapter House and the screens north and south of the choir and a glorious window in St Anselm's Chapel are Decorated work, but the Cathedral ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton

... plants which spring from the soil. The essence of the movement as to the masses was truly religious and the duties of religion released the doer of "the will of God" from all other obligations. The monk from his cloister and the hermit from his cave declared they had heard ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell

... through the pastures, and well adapted for the practical uses of agriculture, since they serve for the bathing and cleansing of the animals as well as for the watering of the grass. The plan of the farm-buildings is a large square, like some noble cloister, and in the park outside are barns and ricks of hay and other produce. In the central courtyard are the houses of the governors and captains who direct all the work on the farm. In the outhouses, which are built in the ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... house dismayed. Troubert assumed in his eyes the dimensions of an Egyptian pyramid. The hands of that man were in Paris, his elbows in the Cloister of Saint-Gatien. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... all the gossip rout. O senseless Lycius! Madman! wherefore flout The silent-blessing fate, warm cloister'd hours, And show to common eyes these secret bowers? The herd approach'd; each guest, with busy brain, Arriving at the portal, gaz'd amain, And enter'd marveling: for they knew the street, Remember'd ...
— Lamia • John Keats

... Church of Soroe, Bishop Absalon, the founder of Copenhagen, lies buried. It is said that this Bishop's spirit appears, with menacing attitude, if anyone desecrates the place by irreverence. Ludvig Holberg is also buried in this cloister church, as well as ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson

... themselves to the minds of the oldest inhabitants. However, even the oldest inhabitants breathed a deep sigh of relief, when finally they were housed in the brand-new church up beside the college campus, a real stone church, with transepts and painted windows and choir-stalls within, and a cloister and a grand tall tower without. The ramshackle old wooden church had been dear to them, had even remained dear to them after the railroad had laid down its tracks under their very eaves; but they were fretted by the crudely caustic comments of strangers coming ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... of the same year, trained as he already was in the school of the world, he entered into the quiet shades of the cloister. It can scarcely be expected that he will remain there long. First of all, let us take a view of monastic life on its most favorable side, as a school of self-denial, as a place of refuge for more profound study, as a field for the exercise of practical charity. In all these respects ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... fancy came, That he who bore my father's name, Broken in spirit and in health, Was weary of ill-gotten wealth. I to the cloister saw him led, Saw the wide cowl upon his head; Heard him, in his last dying hour, Warn others from the thirst of power; Adjure the orphan of his friend Pardon and needful aid to lend, If heaven vouchsaf'd ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... well say: "For Ireland's sake, don't let your blood circulate." It is impossible—even if it were possible it would be hateful. The man and woman have a great and beautiful destiny to fulfil together: to substitute for it an unnatural way of life that can claim neither the seclusion of the cloister nor the dominion of the world is neither beautiful nor great. We have cause for gratitude in the example before us. The woman can learn from it how she may equal the bravest man; and the man should learn to let his wife and children suffer rather than make of them willing slaves and cowards. ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... was Fra Angelico—by reason of the angelic character which belonged to him and to his paintings; otherwise Fra Giovanni; he was a monk in a Dominican cloister. He entered the convent when he was twenty years old; and from that time, till he was sixty-eight, he served God and his generation ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... finger. There are weightier matters. Let Doltaire, the idler, the Don Amato, the hunter of that fawn, save her from the holy ambush. Tut, tut, Chevalier. Let her go. Your nephew is to marry her sister; let her be swallowed up—a shame behind the veil, the sweet litany of the cloister." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... sweet city with her dreaming spires,' lovely as Venice in its splendour, noble in its learning as Rome, down the long High Street that winds from tower to tower, past silent cloister and stately gateway, till it reaches that long, grey seven-arched bridge which Saint Mary used to guard (used to, I say, because they are now pulling it down to build a tramway and a light cast- iron bridge in ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... structure. But it is used for government offices, and the entrance to its upper floor is by a staircase from the vestibule of the cathedral. The Service de Sante Municipale occupies the rooms along the portico that faces the cloister. The cure of souls has been banished to a private house across ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... along the cloister to the muffled music of "He will swallow up death in victory." They had not thus proceeded very far when they met another policeman, an ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... capacity for human happiness, but she guessed that the imagination could be so trained that when far from worldly conditions it could create a world of its own, and would shrink more and more from the practical realities. For Imagination has the instinct of a nun in its depths and loves the cloister of a picturesque solitude. It is a Fool's Paradise, but not inferior to the one which mortals are at liberty to enter ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... Lord Swinarton, Earle of Cloister-Sheer, Barron of the Garden, chiefe Master of the Presse, and overseer of the Prince's great Librarye, hath ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... protect my orphan child! The dreadful prison, that so long detained My wasting life, her dying words explained. The wretched priest, who wounded me by stealth, Bartered her love, her innocence for wealth! I laid her bones in earth; the chanted hymn Echoed along the hollow cloister dim; I heard, far off, the bell funereal toll, And sorrowing said: Now peace be with her soul! 180 Far o'er the Western Ocean I conveyed, And Indiana called the orphan maid; Beneath my eye she grew, and, day by day, Seemed, grateful, every kindness to repay. Renouncing Spain, her cruelties and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... in England, gates are hardly ever jumped, for two very good reasons. First, because it would take a Manifesto or a Cloister to negotiate a series of them safely during a long run; and second, because the habit of leaping gates would be almost certain to unfit a horse for the task of steadily going through the various phases of opening and shutting these means of ingress ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... and, above all, town work, his chief fatigue, would now again fall upon him. But this was not his present thought. His first care was, that his friend's remains should rest with those with whom his lot in life had been cast, in the cloister of the old Grammar-school; but here Mr. Cheviot looked concerned, and with reluctance, but decision, declared it to be his duty not to consent, cited the funeral of one of his scholars at the cemetery, and referred to ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... writing never before known, the inks were made thinner and necessarily were less durable in character. Greater attention was given to the study and practice of medicine and alchemy which were limited to the walls of the cloister and secret places. The monk physicians endeavored by oral instructions and later by written ones to communicate their ink-making methods not only of the black and colored, but of secret or sympathetic inks, ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... leading journals of the Republican party were seized. Marshal Soult found himself on the 7th of June, 1832, at the head of sixty thousand regular troops and twenty thousand National Guards. The insurgents, who had erected barricades, were driven back after a fierce fight at the Cloister of St. Meri. This bloody triumph closed the insurrection. The throne of the citizen king was saved by the courage and discipline of the regular troops under a consummate general. The throne of Charles X. could not have stood a day in face of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... of Idaho woods for this particular use. Transparencies and mounted photographs illustrated the vast forest resources of the State. Around the court a row of heavy columns supported the overhanging roof, and a wide cloister behind the columns, paved with brick, afforded a charming resting place. At the close of the exposition the building was sold to a citizen of Texas, who is to have it reerected on his ranch, and it will still ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... longer, he had been sixty-five years old.—He endur'd a twelve-month's torment of the body with a calmness that confess'd a superiority of soul! He was interred in the same grave with her the most dear to him when living, in the great cloister of Westminster-Abbey; near the lord ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... Passes Pisgah Sights Porphyria's Lover Pretty Woman, A Rabbi Ben Ezra Red Cotton Nightcap Country Return of the Druses, The Reverie Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli St. Martin's Summer Saisiaz, La Saul Serenade at the Villa, A Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, A Solomon and Balkis Sordello Soul's Tragedy, A Speculative Strafford Summum Bonum Time's Revenges Toccata of Galuppi's, A Too Late Transcendentalism Two in the Campagna Two Poets of Croisic Up in a Villa—Down in the City Waring Worst of it, The Youth ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... customs curtseyed to great dames, and in the most sacred enclosure of a High Place, Father Simeon Delmar was shown a stone, and told it was the throne of some well-descended lady. How exactly parallel is this with European practice, when princesses were suffered to penetrate the strictest cloister, and women could rule over a land in which they were denied the control of their ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of the Liber Dialogorum of St. Gregory, printed in the cloister of S. Ulrich at Augspurg ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various

... son of the churches of the Valleys his history ought not to be forgotten. With what interest would not the pen of Muston have clothed the recital! what attraction! what novelty! How the reformation, which originated in the cell of an obscure cloister, had already germinated in the mind of Waldo; how the rich merchant of Lyons, in search of the treasures of the age, was suddenly changed into a bumble disciple, voluntarily poor; and what were the principal traits of his ministry, his voyages, his relations, his life, his death! ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... have been the centre of the monastery, for the remains of the wall and some broken and unsteady pilasters showed four paths which, uniting at their extremities, formed a square. This must have been the cloister, in the middle were ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... light and air, was in many respects as little the method of nature, that is to say it gave as little play for the spontaneous working and growth of the forces of nature in the youth's breast, as that regimen of the cloister which he so profoundly abhorred. Partly this was the result of a ludicrously shallow psychology. He repeats again and again that self-love is the one quality in the youthful embryo of character, from which you ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... according to the bigoted edict of the preceding year. As the conversion of the heathen was professed to be the grand object of this expedition, twelve zealous and able ecclesiastics were directed to accompany it. At their head was Bernado Boyle, one of those subtle politicians of the cloister who in those days ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... merchant of Egypt in the reign of Justinian, who, from the extent of his travels, acquired the title of "Indico-pleustes." Retiring to the cloister, he devoted the remnant of his life to the preparation of a work in defence of the cosmography of the Pentateuch from the errors of the Ptolemaic astronomy.[1] He died in the year 550, before his task was completed, and one of the last portions on which he ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... gazed The stranger, raptured and amazed, And, 'What a scene were here,' he cried, 'For princely pomp or churchman's pride! On this bold brow, a lordly tower; In that soft vale, a lady's bower; On yonder meadow far away, The turrets of a cloister gray; How blithely might the bugle-horn Chide on the lake the lingering morn! How sweet at eve the lover's lute Chime when the groves were still and mute! And when the midnight moon should lave Her forehead in the silver wave, How solemn on the ear would come The holy ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... disgrace. But you are not to be honored by being sent to a convict company or into the worthy station of a subject. Listen to the fate I have decreed for you. A troop of German comedians has taken quarters in the Warehouse in the Cloister street. These mountebanks—histriones—are in straits because their clown—for whom they sent to Leipzig, has not arrived. You are to take off the honorable Prussian uniform and to join this group of mountebanks, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... discovery, with spring-like freshness, dawned upon the sight. Jordano Bruno was one of these zealous students of the sixteenth century. We see him first in a Dominican convent, but the old- world scholasticism had no charms for him. The narrow groove of the cloister was irksome to his freedom-loving soul. He cast off his monkish garb, and wandered through Europe as a knight-errant of philosophy, multum ille et terris jactatus et alto, teaching letters. In 1580 we find him at Geneva conferring with Calvin and Beza, but Calvinism did not commend ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... a heavy sleeper, and I knew where her keys hung, on a nail just within the door of her cell. I stole thither, unlatched the door, seized the keys and crept barefoot down the corridor. The bolts of the cloister-door were stiff and heavy, and I dragged at them till the veins in my wrists were bursting. Then I turned the key and it cried out in the ward. I stood still, my whole body beating with fear lest the hinges too should have a voice—but no one stirred, and I pushed open the door and ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... creature, I cannot but think," said Vaura, her eyes suffused with tears, "that she would be happier in the bright world, loved and loving, than in the cloister." ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... even I feared," said Lady Muriel. "I knew Fulk to be unscrupulous and grasping, but I did not think him capable of such foul oppression. For you, my sweet Agnes—would that I could prevail on him to leave you in the safe arms of the cloister—but, alas! I have no right to detain you ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the world is a queer sort of business: one can not Keep, you know, quite altogether as pure as one can in the cloister. When we are handling honey we now and then lick at our fingers. Lampe sorely provoked me; he frisked about this way and that way, Up and down, under my eyes, and he looked so fat and so jolly, Really I could not resist it. I entirely forgot how I ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... away with shame and ignominy, sire. You see, then, that I have no other protector but Heaven, no consolation but prayer, and this cloister is my only refuge." ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... influence of Zinzendorf, rose about 1740, but are not in a flourishing state; their circumscribed rules, like those of the cloister, being too much shackled to thrive in ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... sight before her, high blue mountains on whose peaks the snow lay white, as if a flock of swans had settled there. On the coast below were lovely green woods, and close on shore a building of some kind, the mermaid didn't know whether it was church or cloister. Citrons and orange trees grew in the garden, and before the porch were stately palm trees. The sea ran in here and formed a quiet bay, unruffled, but very deep. The little mermaid swam with the prince to the white sandy shore, laid him on the warm sand, taking ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... more and more detached from the world, till she asked her husband to allow her to enter an Ursuline convent. Champlain, fearing that this desire might arise rather from caprice than a vocation for the life of the cloister, thought it advisable to refuse her request, and he bade her a last adieu in 1633. After Champlain's death, Father Le Jeune informed her that she was now free to follow the dictates ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne

... never to be forgotten Gerard in The Cloister and the Hearth, and wonder if it was some monastery-trained youth like him who rested from the creation of saints and angels upon vellum, to draw fighting knights upon linen, and whether, perchance, his hushed heart burned within him at the ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler

... a convent, where she learnt music and drawing. Subsequently she studied painting at Rome, and there made the acquaintance of Battoni, Maron, Fuseli, Wright of Derby, and other artists. Upon her father's death she had resolved to return to the cloister; but her mother brought her on a visit to London, and a friendship she then formed with the popular Angelica Kauffman induced her finally to renounce all idea of a nun's life. Soon she became the wife of Richard Cosway. The marriage took place at St. George's, Hanover Square; Charles Townley, of ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... against custom and not against God. I broke the vows indeed, but I was forced to take those vows, and, therefore, they did not bind. I was a woman born for light and love, and yet I was thrust into the darkness of this cloister, there to wither dead in life. And so I broke the vows, and I am glad that I have broken them, though it has brought me to this. If I was deceived and my marriage is no marriage before the law as they tell me now, I knew nothing of it, therefore to me it is still ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... were brought from the San Francisco Mountains, more than a hundred miles away, under the direction of the priests, and that they were carved and finished prior to transportation. They were intended for the chapel and cloister, but the latter building was never finished. The roof timbers were finally distributed among the people of Shumopavi and Shupaulovi. At Shumopavi one of the kivas, known, as the Nuvwatikyuobi (The-high-place-of-snow—San Francisco Mountains) kiva, ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various

... he published "La Fuggitiva," a love story of the French wars, which found great favor. Inspired by his intercourse with Manzoni, a few years later he wrote "Ildegonda," a romantic poem treating of the times of chivalry and cloister life. This poem won a great success. Less happy was his attempt to rival Tasso with an epic poem in fifteen cantos on the Crusades. Among his prose tales, the most lasting in interest are the historical novel "Marco Visconti" and the idyl ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... sun; Here in this liberal land, by battle won For Freedom and the rule Of equal rights for every child of man, Arose a democratic school, To train a virile race of sons to bear With thoughtful joy the name American, And serve the God who heard their father's prayer. No cloister, dreaming in a world remote From that real world wherein alone we live; No mimic court, where titled names denote A dignity that only worth can give; But here a friendly house of learning stood, With open door beside the broad highway, ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... representing St. Laurent, St. Anthony, St. Sebastian, and St. Aquinius. Here, in a small window-like recess, is a very ancient iron Crucifixion. From the chapel behind the pulpit is the entrance into the cloister and convent, 13th and 14th cents. The sculpture above the sound-board of the pulpit is of one piece, and represents the Ascension of Mary Magdalene. The undulating fluting on the panels and the sculpture on the railing are very ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... to the companionship of women outside her house, whose conversation is mainly gossip about household difficulties; to the tame diversions of shopping at the nearest emporium; what power of interest in the larger things of life can be expected of her? The suburb is her cloister, and she the ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... the postillion, "I was sent, under the guidance of a lackey of the place, with a letter, which the priest, when he left, had given us for a friend of his in the Eternal City. We went to a large house, and on ringing, were admitted by a porter into a cloister, where I saw some ill-looking, shabby young fellows walking about, who spoke English to one another. To one of these the porter delivered the letter, and the young fellow going away, presently returned and told me to follow him; he led me into a large room, where, behind a table, on which were various ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... confinement, and instantly ran to the spot where dinner was always left for her; but no dinner was to be found. In the afternoon the bell was heard ringing at an unusual hour. When the inmates of the cloister came to see what was the cause of it, they found the hungry cat clinging to the bell-rope, and setting it in motion as well as she was able, in order that she might have her dinner served up for her. Was not this act of the cat the ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... in Germany, the three forms of type have their distinct uses. Gothic, variously known as Black Letter, Old English, Priory Text, Cloister, etc., is used only for special work, particularly in ecclesiastical printing. The modern type called "gothic" is not derived from it. Roman is the general text letter. Italic has ceased to be a ...
— The Uses of Italic - A Primer of Information Regarding the Origin and Uses of Italic Letters • Frederick W. Hamilton

... remarkable a change was not in that age to be accounted for but by a miracle. It was asserted and believed that the Holy Virgin, touched with his great desire to become learned and famous, took pity upon his incapacity, and appeared to him in the cloister where he sat almost despairing, and asked him whether he wished to excel in philosophy or divinity. He chose philosophy, to the chagrin of the Virgin, who reproached him in mild and sorrowful accents that he had not made a better choice. She, however, granted his request, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... seventy-eight years of age. Both of them immediately made the acquaintance of Ninon and Madame de la Saliere, and, astonished at the profound merit they discovered, deemed it to their advantage to frequent their society for the purpose of adding to their talents something which the study of the cloister and experience in the king's cabinet itself had never offered them. Abbe Gedoyn became particularly attached to Mademoiselle de l'Enclos, whose good taste and intellectual lights he considered such sure and safe guides. His gratitude soon received the additions ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... are not going to take the veil there, are you? It would be a great pity. No? You wish to lead the life of an intelligent woman who is free and independent? That is well; but it was rather an odd idea to begin by going into a cloister. Oh!—I see, public opinion?" And Madame Strahlberg made a little face, expressive of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... masters of the Town for a couple of weeks back, have got into the Church at Namslau, into the Cloister; are preparing plank floors for batteries, cutting loop-holes; diligent as possible,—siege-guns now at last just coming. The Castle fires fiercely on them, makes furious sallies, steals six of our oxen,—makes insolent gestures from the walls; at least one soldier does, this day. 'Sir, may I give ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... my friends to counsel go, A husband new they chose for me; The cloister's prior of mitred brow— The good Sir Nilaus ...
— The Verner Raven; The Count of Vendel's Daughter - and other Ballads • Anonymous

... order. Disconsolate widows, mothers mourning the loss of their children, and orphans affrighted by the world found a peaceful home there and a quiet life which was not unfrequently a step towards the cloister. ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... three but two kingdoms, Austrasia being one, and Neustria and Burgundy the other. This was the definitive dismemberment of the great Frankish dominion to the time of its last two Merovingian kings, Thierry IV. and Childeric III., who were kings in name only, dragged from the cloister as ghosts from the tomb to play a motionless part in the drama. For a long time past the real power had been in the hands of that valiant Austrasian family which was to furnish the dominions of Clovis with a new dynasty and a greater ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... of my heart, agree with those that speak in favor of Messer Simone dei Bardi. It is the native, intimate, and commendable wish of a man to abolish his enemies—I speak here after the fashion of the worldling that I was, for the cell and the cloister have no concern with mortal passions and frailties—and Messer Simone was in this, as in divers other qualities, of a very manly disposition. He thought in all honesty that it would be very good for ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... before—the same bare walls and floor, the rude settee, the crucifix above the door, and the one partially open window, set deep in the stone wall. Outside I could hear voices, and the shuffling of feet on the stone slabs, but within all was silence. I had been away from this emotionless cloister life so long, out in the open air, that I felt oppressed; the profound stillness was a weight on my nerves. Would the sister be successful in her mission? Would the Mother Superior, whose stern rule I knew so well, feel slightest sympathy with my need? And if she did, ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish

... Roman Catholic chapels rose all over the country. Cowls, girdles of ropes, and strings of beads constantly appeared in the streets, and astonished a population, the oldest of whom had never seen a conventual garb except on the stage. A convent rose at Clerkenwell on the site of the ancient cloister of Saint John. The Franciscans occupied a mansion in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The Carmelites were quartered in the City. A society of Benedictine monks was lodged in Saint James's Palace. In the Savoy ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the maids the cups of chocolatte which they brought unto their mistresses, who at last, seeing that neither faire nor foule means would prevail with the Bishop, resolved to forsake the Cathedrall: and so from that time most of the city betooke themselves to the Cloister Churches, where by the Nuns and ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head

... offer was eagerly accepted, and the crew, headed by Captain Breakes, marched up to the nunnery unopposed, and were welcomed at the door by the lady abbess. Having entered the peaceful cloister, each pirate chose a nun and marched back to the ship with their spoils. Soon after this Breakes decided to retire from piracy, and returned to Amsterdam to claim Mrs. Snyde. But he found that she ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... this gateway, the spectator sees, on his right, a long line of buildings, of the age of the original foundation, for the use of the brethren, each of whom has a house and garden to himself. On the left is an ambulatory, or cloister, 135 feet in length, and extending to the church on the south-east. Above the ambulatory is the ancient infirmary, and chambers called the Nuns's rooms, from their having been allotted to three hospital sisters on the foundation of Cardinal Beaufort. The centre of the court ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various

... anticipating my subject. In another chapter I propose, on the authority of Professor Neumann, a learned Sinologist of Munich, to set forth the proofs that in the last year of the fifth century a Buddhist priest, bearing the cloister name of Hoei-schin, or Universal Compassion, returned from America, and gave for the first time an official account of the country which he had visited, which account was recorded, and now remains as a simple fact among the annual registers of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... drubbed forth of the sacred precincts. So brother Anselm became Giles o' the Bow—the kind Saints be praised, in especial holy Saint Giles (which is my patron saint!). For, heed me—better the blue sky and the sweet, strong wind than the gloom and silence of a cloister. I had rather hide this sconce of mine in a hood of mail than in the mitre of a lord bishop—nolo episcopare, good brother! Thus am I a fighter, and a good fighter, and a wise fighter, having learned 'tis better to live to fight than to fight ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... all. Probably, if you could see into his mind you'd discover that he's wishing you hadn't wandered away from his orations. The thing which he considers more beautiful is the cloister of Monreale, at Palermo, in Sicily. But, then, this isn't the part of Italy Terry loves best. He won't begin to shine till he gets to Verona; and even Verona he calls only a charming inn where the world's great travellers have left mementoes of their passage, rather ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... a wild rose petal The neglected cloister owns, And the flaunting dock and nettle Wave above ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard

... peculiar feature of modern Rome, and interest the stranger more than many things of which he has heard loftier descriptions. You pass through the grand breadth and height of a squalid entrance-way, and perhaps see a range of dusky pillars, forming a sort of cloister round the court, and in the intervals, from pillar to pillar, are strewn fragments of antique statues, headless and legless torsos, and busts that have invariably lost what it might be well if living men could lay aside in that unfragrant atmosphere—the nose. Bas-reliefs, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the rational. And he falls victim of the inevitable despair of a rationalism century, of which the greatest victims were Tolstoy and Nietzsche. Out of despair he enters into the heroic fury of that Quixote of thought who broke out of the cloister, Giordano Bruno, and makes himself awakener of sleeping souls, 'dormitantium animorum excubitor,' as the ex-Dominican says of himself, he who wrote: 'Heroic love is proper to superior natures called insane—insane, not because they do not know—non sanno—but because they ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... the grand staircase, and the grand cloister, surprised me. I admired the elegance of the surgery, and the pleasantness of the gardens, which, however, are only a long and wide terrace. The Pantheon frightened me by a sort of horror and majesty. The grand-altar and the sacristy wearied ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... any foundation in fact? Why not? Through his numberless works we may easily divine the soul of the artist, and can well understand, how the calm and serene atmosphere of the monastic cell, the church perfumed with incense, and the cloister vibrating with psalms, would develop the mystic ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino

... recognizable by a person who knew the ground, of the south aisle and cloisters of St. Bertrand's. There were curious signs looking like planetary symbols, and a few Hebrew words in the corners; and in the northwest angle of the cloister was a cross drawn in gold paint. Below the plan were some lines of writing ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... stressful, stormy hours of my most unhappy youth did I not wish that she had preferred the virginal life of the cloister, and thus spared me the heavy burden of an existence which her unholy and mistaken saintliness went so near ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... bright as day; artificial sunlight had carried all before it, and London now knew no difference between dark and light. He stood in a kind of glazed cloister, heavily floored with a preparation of rubber on which footsteps made no sound. Beneath him, at the foot of the stairs, poured an endless double line of persons severed by a partition, going to right and left, noiselessly, ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... circulation equal to that of the Herald. One after another, excellent writers were added to its corps;—the vigorous, prompt, untiring Dana; George Ripley, possessing that blending of scholarship and tact, that wisdom of the cloister and knowledge of the world, which alone could fit a man of great learning and talent for the work of a daily newspaper; Margaret Fuller, whose memory is still green in so many hearts; Bayard Taylor, the versatile, and others, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... She was a pious and gentle woman, strictly attached to the duties of religion, and anxious for the spiritual rather than the temporal welfare of her children, whom she therefore devoted to the cloister. A dream, it is said, had indicated to her the future fame of her third son, before his birth. He rapidly displayed signs of possessing no ordinary character. His education was undertaken by the then celebrated ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... of monkish life, in the regions of Sherwood Forest, we cease to wonder at the virtuous indignation of Robin Hood and his outlaw crew, at the sleek sensualists of the cloister: ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... room was, being windowless, though the golden sunlight could be seen beyond the open doorway, which was under a sort of cloister or verandah overhung by some climbing plant. Arthur, collecting himself, reminded the child how the waves had borne them away from the rest, with earnest soothing promises of care, and endeavouring to get back to the rest. 'Say your prayers that God will take care of you and bring you back to your ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... than a year in an agony of irresolution. I have decided at last. I have lived a melancholy life; a lonelier life than is passed in the cloister. I have had no one to confide in; no one to advise me; no one to save me from the horrors of my existence. I have found a brave and prompt friend at last. Shall I ever forget the heroic tableau of the hall of the Belle Etoile? Have you—have you really kept ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... Chester and saw the Cathedral, which is not of the first rank. The Castle. In one of the rooms the Assizes are held, and the refectory of the Old Abbey, of which part is a grammar school. The master seemed glad to see me. The cloister is very solemn; over it are chambers in which ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... observance of the oath, or the safety of the suppliant. At length, in the year 1078, the object of this narrative recommenced its travels. A wealthy citizen of Amalfi, whose name is not recorded, had long felt a wish to exchange active life for the cloister, and had selected the monastery of Casinum as the place of his future retirement. Being present in the Eastern capital during the tumultuous deposition of Michael the Seventh, he perceived in the general confusion a favourable opportunity for appropriating this precious fragment to himself. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various



Words linked to "Cloister" :   cloistral, monastery, isolate, religious belief, faith, court, surround, skirt, ring, border, insulate, religion, courtyard, priory, environ, convent, residence



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