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Cloister   /klˈɔɪstər/   Listen
Cloister

verb
(past & past part. cloistered; pres. part. cloistering)
1.
Surround with a cloister, as of a garden.
2.
Surround with a cloister.
3.
Seclude from the world in or as if in a cloister.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Cloister" Quotes from Famous Books



... the scene. In the intervals between the hours of prayer and the observance of the round of cloister life, come hours for the copying of books under the presiding genius of Alcuin. The young monks file into the scriptorium, and one of them is given the precious parchment volume containing a work of Bede or Isidore or Augustine, or else some portion of the Latin Scriptures, or even a heathen ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... of solitude, this longing for the cloister, this thirsting for annihilation and oblivion, Marsa would experience a desire for the dashing, false, and frivolous life of Paris. She would quit Maisons, taking with her a maid, or sometimes old Vogotzine, go to some immense hotel, like the Continental ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... excavations have been made in the sides of the mountain. At A (Fig. 2), on a level with the ground, is seen a great cloister ornamented with a series of bass reliefs representing the principal gods of the Hindoo paradise. The side walls contain large, two-storied halls ornamented with superb sculptures of various divinities. Columns of squat proportions support the ceilings. A small ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various

... you make her unhappy. Let her dance as much as she pleases; she is young. My wife is forty; I wrote to her from the battle-field to go to a ball. And you want a young woman of twenty, who sees her life flitting, and has every illusion, to live in a cloister, or to be always washing her baby like a nurse. You are too much you in your household, and not enough in your administration. I should not say all this to you except for the interest I have for you. Make the mother ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... iris-leapt cataracts of our virgin West as stay the natural force that sends him forth to slay. No environment, however scientific, could have softened him. Place that man in the silver-silent purity of the palest cloister, and there will be some deed of violence done with the crozier or the alb. Rear him in a happy nursery, amid our brave-browed Anglo-Saxon infancy, and he will find some way to strangle with the skipping-rope ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... outgrown both the classroom and the cloister. It is the anonymous religion that we must take into account in the future if the church is to progress with the needs ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper

... women, having been initiated into the life of the cloister abroad, returned to England to found monasteries in their own land, they were received by their countrymen with reverence and respect. This respect soon expressed itself in the national law, which placed under the safeguard of severe ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney

... 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 shape of a great cross, the labourers ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... 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 on her! How keen it sparkles ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... activity in religion came a corresponding interest in other lines. Algorisms began to appear, and knowledge from the outside world found {124} interested listeners. Another Raoul, or Radulph, to whom we have referred as Radulph of Laon,[494] a teacher in the cloister school of his city, and the brother of Anselm of Laon[495] the celebrated theologian, wrote a treatise on music, extant but unpublished, and an arithmetic which Nagl first published in 1890.[496] The latter ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith

... structure: not content with that sacrilege, an attempt was made to demolish St. Margaret's Westminster, and to employ the stones to the same purpose but the parishioners rose in a tumult, and chased away the protector's tradesmen. He then laid his hands on a chapel in St. Paul's churchyard, with a cloister and charnel-house belonging to it; and these edifices, together with a church of St. John of Jerusalem, were made use of to raise his palace. What rendered the matter more odious to the people was, that the tombs and other monuments of the dead wore defaced; and the bones, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... bridal wreath by the front gate was a great white drift against the new green of a crimson-starred burning bush, while over it all trailed the perfume-laden honeysuckle which bowered the front porch, decorated trellis and trees and finally flung its blossoms down the hill to well-nigh cloister Rose ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... good part their honest gifts and oblations that they gave, to the intent I might buy 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 divine name: It fortuned ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... cardinal's window. This fortification Grew from the ruins of an ancient abbey; And to yond side o' th' river lies a wall, Piece of a cloister, which in my opinion Gives the best echo that you ever heard, So hollow and so dismal, and withal So plain in the distinction of our words, That many have suppos'd it is a spirit ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... hear the same complaints. "What was the use of our having lived in a cloister, twenty, thirty, forty years; what was the sense of having vowed chastity, poverty, obedience; what good are all the masses and canonical hours that we read; what profit is there in fasting, praying, etc., if any man or woman, any beggar or scour woman is to be made equal to ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... few minutes of a scant quarter-hour to spare, I would not have any one miss seeing the cloister, from which the Catholic Kings used to enter the church by the gallery to those balcony capitals, but which the common American must now see by going outside the church. The cloister is turned to the uses ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... Meads between services. Everybody sends provisions, and asks their friends; but Cherry is to go and rest at the Harewoods'. The governor will get her in through the library into the north transept as quiet as a lamb, no squash at all. It is only along the cloister—a hop, step, and lump; and Miles has promised me the snuggest little seat for her. Then the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the gravel path between the cloister and the church, with his chancellor at his side. His cowl was thrown back and the white gown of his Order, which hung full to his feet, was fastened close to the throat. His face was pale, and the well-cut features and the small hands betokened ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott

... is partly surrounded by a colonnade, quite cloister-like in effect. At the right center of the Francois I. wing is that wonderful spiral staircase, concerning the invention of which so ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... light, show wan and woeful; withal, lovely as ever; piquant in their pale beauty, like those of some rebellious nun hating the hood, discontented with cloister and convent. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... worth while to describe the Casa Grande, which is strikingly different from our European notions of the "great house" of the village. As we enter by the gate, we find ourselves in a patio—an open quadrangle surrounded by a covered walk—a cloister in fact, into which open the rooms inhabited by the family. The second quadrangle, which opens into the first, is devoted to stables, kitchen, &c. The outer wall which surrounds the whole is very thick, and the entire building is built of mud bricks baked in the sun, ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... occasion die, Whilst they did sleep in love's elysium. And, truly, I would rather be struck dumb, Than speak against this ardent listlessness: For I have ever thought that it might bless The world with benefits unknowingly; As does the nightingale, upperched high, And cloister'd among cool and bunched leaves— 830 She sings but to her love, nor e'er conceives How tiptoe Night holds back her dark-grey hood. Just so may love, although 'tis understood The mere commingling of passionate breath, Produce more than our searching ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... underwent in private the examination of the spiritual authorities, and carried out their painful vocation beneath the protecting shadow of hallowed walls; but our suffering heroine had been cast forth from the cloister into the world at a time when pride, coldness of heart, and incredulity were all the vogue; marked with the stigmas of the Passion of Christ, she was forced to wear her bloody robe in public, under the eyes of men who scarce believed in the Wounds of Christ, far less ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... Powers and the Chappells, such as we know them from Mede's letters, was an existence to which only the want of daily bread could have driven Milton. Happily his father's circumstances were not such as to make a fellowship pecuniarily an object to the son. If he longed for "the studious cloister's pale," he had been, now for seven years, near enough to college life to have dispelled the dream that it was a life of lettered leisure and philosophic retirement. It was just about Milton's time that the college tutor finally supplanted the university professor, a system which implied ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... not do so without damning the men he most loved, even could his keen and in some ways sceptical intellect have consented to commit suicide. Or to the Romanising party in the Church? The movement sprang from the cloister, and he had breathed the bracing air of secular life. He was far too clear-headed not to see whither they were tending. To him they appeared to be simply feeble imitations of the real thing, dabbling with dangerous arguments, and ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... utterly subdued her; nor was she sufficiently possessed of that all-denying zeal of the Catholic enthusiast to which every human tie and earthly duty has been often sacrificed on the shrine of a rapt and metaphysical piety. Whatever her opinions, her new creed, her secret desire of the cloister, fed as it was by the sublime, though fallacious notion, that in her conversion, her sacrifice, the crimes of her race might be expiated in the eyes of Him whose death had been the great atonement of a world; whatever such higher thoughts and sentiments, they gave way, at that moment, to the ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... their simplicity, that made one start. She was to have taken the veil, but she felt stifled the moment she entered a church. It had seemed to be all over with her, when the Superior, by whom she was treated with great affection, diverted her from the cloister by procuring her that situation at Madame Vanzade's. She had not yet got over the surprise. How had Mother des Saints Anges been able to read her mind so clearly? For, in fact, since she had been living in Paris she had dropped into ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... battlements and frescos and heraldic devices in gold and colors, and a man-at-arms carved in stone standing life-size in his niche and bearing his date 1530. A little farther on, but close at hand, is a cloister with beautiful marble columns and tombs, and a colossal wood-carved Calvary, and beside that a small and very rich chapel: indeed, so full is the little town of the undisturbed past, that to walk in it is like opening a missal of ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)

... were gardens and villas replete with all the contrivances of Roman luxury. The houses were built on three sides of a square court. A cloister ran round the court, supported by pillars. The open space was used as a garden. At the back of the house were the kitchens and apartments for the slaves and domestics. The Romans adapted their dwellings to the climate in which they lived. In the sunny south, at Pompeii, the houses were more open, ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... having the sexes unite at the repasts of knowledge, than, as Plautus bluntly puts it, having he wits and she wits recline at the repasts of fashion. Isolation is more likely to breed pruriency than commingling to provoke indulgence. The virtue of the cloister and the cell scarcely deserves the name. A girl has her honor in her own keeping. If she can be trusted with boys and men at the lecture-room and in church, she can be trusted with them at school and in college. Jean Paul says, "To insure modesty, I would advise ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke

... interesting, is conducted, not so much with art, as spirit; the characters are animated, and the scene busy. Canutus King of Denmark, after having gained the city of Winchester, by the villainy of a native, orders all to be put to the sword, and at last enters the Cloister, raging with the thirst of blood, and panting for destruction; he meets Cartesmunda, whose beauty stops his ruffian violence, and melts him, as it were, into a human creature. The language of this play is as modern, and the verses as musical as those of Rowe; fire and elevation run ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... of himself, a stranger. But when Marcolina wished to kiss her hand, the Abbess gathered the girl in her arms. Then, with a wave of the hand inviting them to follow, she led the way through a small room into a cloister surrounding a quadrangular flower-garden. In contrast to the outer garden, which had run wild, this inner garden was tended with especial care. The flower-beds, brilliant in the sunshine, showed a wonderful play of variegated colors. The warm ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler

... wont to be buried. In this city of Tripoli our English merchants have a consul, and all of the English nation who come here reside along with him, in a house or factory, called Fondeghi Ingles, which is a square stone building, resembling a cloister, where every person has his separate chamber, as is likewise the custom of all the other ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... 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 matins' distant hum, While ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, By guardian angels led, Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives, whom ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... hurry up! You'll just be in time," a remark which was answered by a gesture of despair from the young man. Then he went up the court towards the Hall, entered the flagged passage, looked for a moment at the notices on the screen, and went through into the back court, which was surrounded by a tiny cloister. ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... 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

... crown, to shun business and diversions, to lead exemplary and chaste lives: if single, they could not marry; if married, they could not enjoy the privileges of the state: hence, though they inhabited not the cloister, they were of the religious order, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various

... and 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 it from childhood all complete Without ...
— Lamia • John Keats

... seized the error, confessed the noble crimes of valour and fidelity which the son had indeed committed, and went to the doom, exulting that his death saved the life he had given, not in vain! I saw women, young, delicate, in the bloom of their beauty; they had vowed themselves to the cloister. Hands smeared with the blood of saints opened the gate that had shut them from the world, and bade them go forth, forget their vows, forswear the Divine one these demons would depose, find lovers and helpmates, and be free. And some of these young hearts had loved, and even, though ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... cloister connecting the Bishop's palace with the cathedral was begun by Bishop Lacy, who took great interest in the cathedral although he never visited his diocese. It was upon this work of the cloisters that 2800 marks were ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher

... To meet the balmy breath of early life, Her saddened days, all, cold and colourless, Will stretch before her their whole weary length Amid the sameness of obscurity. She wanted not seclusion, to unveil Her thoughts to heaven, cloister, nor midnight bell; She found it in all places, at all hours: While, to assuage my labours, she indulged A playfulness that shunned a mother's eye, Still, to avert my perils, there arose A piety that, even ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor

... Along the South Cloister lay the magnificent refectory, an upper hall of the time of Edward II., with arcades of the time of the Confessor beneath it. Very strict were the rules of behaviour in this great dining-room. No monk might speak, and ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... irrational, and irrationalize 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, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... and a queer dreamy look except when he smiled. His name was Brother Basil. When he saw the bundle of especially fine sheepskins that Padraig had brought his face lit up so that it seemed as if the sun had come into the cloister. "Good!" he said. "I will give you ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... stage of all time, and on it placed a lot of little figures, "pigmy minds"—all save one, and he the nearest great, an unworldly person summoned from a cloister, with the vision of genius and the practical incapacity of one who has run away from life, hating men but loving all mankind, eloquent but inarticulate in a large way, incapable of true self expression in his chosen field of political action, so self-centered that he forgot ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... wonderful," he said one evening to Fra Giulio, as they talked together in the cloister after vespers; "I solemnly declare that it hath happened to me to ask him a question of which I, verily, knew not the answer; and he, keeping in quiet thought for some moments, hath so lucidly responded that his words ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... was truly convinced that no nun in cloister was as hopelessly certain of safety from world and flesh and devil as was her heart and its meditations, under the ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... Swithelm, Sigheri, Offa. This last prince, having made a vow of chastity, notwithstanding his marriage with Keneswitha, a Mercian princess, daughter to Penda, went in pilgrimage to Rome, and shut himself up during the rest of his life in a cloister. Selred, his successor, reigned thirty-eight years, and was the last of the royal line; the failure of which threw the kingdom into great confusion, and reduced it to dependence under Mercia [w]. Switherd first acquired the crown, by the concession of the Mercian ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... stone, five or six stories high. Each house became a citadel filled with insurgents, which kept up a deadly fire upon the advancing columns. The slaughter on both sides was dreadful; on either side was equal courage and desperation. A very bloody struggle took place at the Cloister of St. Meri, which strong position the insurgents held ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... tremble. There, we won't speak of it further. Wait for me a moment. I have only to put the cross in its place, and a fresh altar cloth, and then I am done. To-morrow is the feast of The Holy Cross, and I am preparing against it. The night is fine. We will smoke a cigar in the cloister garden." ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... visited, or started to visit, the tomb years later, we are told, in 888, when Mercia had risen to new life under her great brother's rule. Through these same months Guthrum, Oskytal, and the rest are wintering at Repton, after destroying there the cloister where the kingly line of Mercia lie; disturbing perhaps the bones of the great Offa, whom Charlemagne had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... bearing, and, at that time I am sorry to say, looked upon him as an amiable faddist. A special favourite with both of us was William Stirling of Keir. His great work on the Spanish painters, and his 'Cloister Life of Charles the Fifth,' excited our unbounded admiration, while his BONHOMIE and radiant humour were a delight we ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... their lost companion, rejoiced loudly, and, beating their wings gratefully, made many circles over the sacred cloister, before they flew away. Neither did they in future ever dare to place a foot on the lands of the convent, nor to touch ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... 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 him to be the ruler of Florence, yet, also, and no less, that it would be very good for ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

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

... Potato. Kauder-Waelsch,(Ger.) - Gibberish. Kellner,(Ger.) - Waiter. Kermes - Annual Fair. Kinder,(Ger.) - Children. Kitin, a kitin - Flying or running rapidly. Klein und gross - Small and great. Kloster,(Ger.) - Cloister. Knasterbart,(Ger.) - Literally, tobacco-beard; perhaps denoting a good old fellow, fond of his pipe. Kneiperei,(Ger.) - Revel. Knock dem out de shpots - Knock the spots out of them; astonish them. Kœnig Etzel - King Attila. Komm maidelein! Rothe ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland

... fact. While wandering about the Continent he arrived at 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the year 1833, a very holy Brahman, who lived in his cloister near the iron suspension bridge over the Bias river, ten miles from Sagar, sat down with a determination to wrestle with the Deity till he should be compelled to reveal to him the real cause of all these calamities of season under which the people ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... more. I should have used a stronger expression for that riot, when in scandalous undress, carrying in front a steak on a spit, the whole company sings low songs such as 'Megalljon Kend'[31] and 'Hetes, nyloczas,'[32] and in this guise makes scandalous processions from castle to cloister." ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... the two perfumers mingled their tears. The bankrupt gathered courage as he felt the indulgences shown to him, and he got into the coach with his uncle and Ragon. Precisely at half past ten o'clock the three reached the cloister Saint-Merri, where the Court of Commerce was then held. At that hour there was no one in the Hall of Bankruptcy. The day and the hour had been chosen by agreement with the judge and the assignees. The three solicitors were already there on behalf ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... window, equally gay with hangings, while the bells of all the churches clashed forth their gayest chimes, and fitful bursts of music were borne upon the breeze. Little Thekla danced in the narrow space for very glee, and wondered why any one should live in a cloister when the world was so wide and so fair. And Dame Johanna tried to say something pious of worldly temptations, and the cloister shelter; but Thekla interrupted her, and, clinging to Christina, exclaimed, "Nay, but I am always naughty ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... 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 ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... 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, during which the marquise ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... world from the divine height of scientific meditation are very exhausting; and, besides, I had apprehended perfectly the bare life of the cloister. When I made up my mind to carry out this new plan of life, I looked for quarters in the most out-of-the-way parts of Paris. One evening, as I returned home to the Rue des Cordiers from the Place de l'Estrapade, I saw a girl of ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... adopted by Master Guillaume de Villon, chaplain of Saint Benoit-le-Betourne, near the Sorbonne. From him he borrowed the surname by which he is known to posterity. It was most likely from his house, called the "Porte Rouge," and situated in a garden in the cloister of St. Benoit, that Master Francis heard the bell of the Sorbonne ring out the Angelus while he was finishing his "Small Testament" at Christmastide in 1456. Towards this benefactor he usually gets credit for a respectable display of gratitude. But with his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... alameda[obs3], board walk, embankment, road, row, lane, alley, court, quadrangle, quad, wynd[Scot], close, yard, passage, rents, buildings, mews. square, polygon, circus, crescent, mall, piazza, arcade, colonnade, peristyle, cloister; gardens, grove, residences; block of buildings, market place, place, plaza. anchorage, roadstead, roads; dock, basin, wharf, quay, port, harbor. quarter, parish &c. (region) 181. assembly room, meetinghouse, pump room, spa, watering place; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... standing on tiptoe, as may still be seen in S. Miniato without Florence, between the door that leads into the sacristy and that which leads into the convent; and in S. Spirito in the said city, the whole side of the cloister opposite the church; and in like manner at Arezzo, in S. Giuliano and S. Bartolommeo and in other churches; and in Rome, in the old Church of S. Pietro, scenes right round between the windows—works that have more of the monstrous in their lineaments ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari

... caught hope from the anticipations she would not damp, and gave herself to the description of the peaceful cloister life, reviewing in turn the nunneries she had heard described, and talking over their rules. There would indeed be as little liberty as here, but she would live in the midst of prayer and praise, and be at rest from the plots and plans, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... intended sister, and placed the crown of virginity upon her temples, when an anathema, was with great solemnity, pronounced against all who should attempt to make her break her vows. The impressive ceremony which thus excludes youth and beauty in a cloister, closes with the solemn notes of the organ, accompanied by the harmonious voices of the nuns as they conduct their new sister to her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various

... deception: One pilgrim's a thief, Or another may wheedle Some cloth from the wife Of a peasant, exchanging Some "sanctified wafers" 30 Or "tears of the Virgin" He's brought from Mount Athos, And then she'll discover He's been but as far As a cloister near Moscow. One saintly old greybeard Enraptured the people By wonderful singing, And offered to teach The young girls of the village 40 The songs of the church With their mothers' permission. And all through the ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... it is a house worthy of deep veneration and respect. The king has incorporated it in his royal patronage, with authority to have a public church with bells and a choir, and permission to celebrate the divine offices. They have a cloister, and profess the tertiary order of the Dominicans. The only thing necessary to perfect their lives, and which they desire, is profession ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... Call its sad votaries to the shrine of God, And, with the cloister and the tented sod, Join in ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod

... the old one was made a vestibule to the new. South of the early chapter-house was probably the fratery; on the upper floor of this building and the chapter-house was the dormitory—a wheel-stair leading to it from the south transept. On the west side of the cloister was the sub-prior's house, known also as Senzie House; south-east of the fratery is the prior's house or Hospitium Vetus, which was sometimes the residence of the bishop. West of the cathedral are the remains ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story

... at Oxford, as is also that of the illustrious Wykehamist, Bp. Fox, to whose devotion we owe Corpus Christi College in that university. One of the earliest tombs bearing a staff incised, is that of Abbot Vitalis, who died in 1082, and may be seen in the south cloister of St. Peter's Abbey in Westminster. There were croziered as well as mitred abbots: for instance, the superior of the Benedictine abbey at Bourges had a right to the crozier, but not to the mitre. The Abbot of Westminster was croziered ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various

... 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 ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... concerning myself; he enumerated all the hopes that the illustrious house into which my father had first married expressed for a speedy introduction to his son; he lingered with an eloquence more savouring of the court than of the cloister on the dazzling circle which surrounded the French throne; and when my vanity, my curiosity, my love of pleasure, my ambition, all that are most susceptible in young minds, were fully aroused, he suddenly ceased, and wished me ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... are men and women; and neither cloister life, nor capuchin hoods and cloaks, nor bare feet, nor protracted midnight services, can prevent heartburnings and rivalries, nor can all of these together put down—what is most to be dreaded in a monastery—the growth of affection between man and woman. What could ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... he loves is about to be taken out of the sunlight into the grey shadow of the cloister. Why shouldn't ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... the electors, discrediting the worthy, and gaining the favor of friends and relatives by putting forth all his efforts to attain the desired liberty in order to escape from the observance and the cloister? Oh, beginning so full of troubles! If one had to describe all the troubles, it would be necessary to use much paper. Let the above suffice, so that it may be recognized that the reason why the holy orders resist subjection ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various

... tradition 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 sentiment in ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino

... monastic orders as a whole repelled it with unswerving obstinacy. The quarrel only became more bitter as years went on. The keen sarcasms of Erasmus, the insolent buffoonery of Hutten, were lavished on the "lovers of darkness" and of the cloister. In England Colet and More echoed with greater reserve the scorn and invective of their friends. The Monarchy had other causes for its hate. In Cromwell's system there was no room for either the virtues or the vices of monasticism, for its indolence and superstition, or for its ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... will not pardon Geronimo. He will never be the same to me. Should I find him, or should he return to me, I will give him an income sufficient to keep him from want; that being done, I shall renounce the world and retire into a cloister, to await there in solitude and peace the time when it may please God ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience

... Hermangilda, of which my aunt is the abbess, is hardly a quarter of a league distant from Gerolstein, for the abbey gardens border on the suburbs of the city. A charming house, completely isolated from the cloister, had been placed at my disposition by my aunt, who loves me, as you know, with a maternal tenderness. The day of my arrival she informed me that there was the next day to be a solemn reception and court ceremony; the grand duke on that day was to make the official ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... course as the other. The consent of the parents was asked to the matrimonial selection of the mistress, but public opinion required some very strong reason to justify them in withholding it. The only exception to this arrangement was when girls were destined for the cloister, and in that case they received their education in a convent. But there was one person who had absolutely no voice in the matter, and that was the unfortunate girl in question. The very idea of consulting her on any point of it, would have struck a mediaeval ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... too, was a riverman, tough and wiry and small. A man whose pinched, wizened body was a fitting cloister for the warped soul that flashed malignantly ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... New Testament and sometimes from the Old. It is said they were designed to supply the place of the Greek and Roman theatre, which had been banished from the Church. The plays were written and performed by the clergy. They seem to have first been employed to wile away the dulness of the cloister, but were very soon introduced to the public. Adam and Eve in Paradise, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection were theatrized. The effect could hardly be salutary. The different persons of the Trinity appeared on the stage; on one side of the scene stretched the yawning throat of an immense wooden ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... the window of his office in Great Cloister Street, Westminster, he made his thoughts travel back to a certain glorious morning in August which now seemed so remote and irrecoverable. At this precise time he was waiting on the balcony of the Hotel de la Plage—the sole ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... living diplomatist who knows men and cities, and has, moreover, a fine sense of humour. "My Lord," said a famous Russian statesman to him, "you have all the qualities of a diplomatist, but you cannot control your smile." This gentleman, walking alone in a certain cloister at Cambridge, met a casual acquaintance, a well-known London clergyman, and was just about shaking hands with him, when the clergyman vanished. Nothing in particular happened to either of them; the clergyman was not in the seer's ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... within the garden door, on one side the clear, still room, on the other the green and growing things, the great tree loved by birds. The place was like a cloister. He stayed with her an hour, and in all that time there was not a great deal said with the outer tongue. But each grew more happy, ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... Spain. Her sister Anne soon after died, and Philip II., her morose and debauched husband, having already buried four wives, and no one can tell how many guilty favorites, sought the hand of his young and fresh niece. But Margaret wisely preferred the gloom of the cloister to the Babylonish glare of the palace. She rejected the polluted and withered hand, and in solitude and silence, as a hooded nun, she remained immured in her cell for fifty-seven years. Then her pure spirit passed from a joyless life ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... known as the Pious people. They lived in the world, but were not of it. They did not live according to its spirit; for its spirit is the sworn enemy of God. Many of them, while surrounded with the wealth and magnificence of this world, practised the virtues of the cloister. Others belonged to the middle classes of society; and others, again, to the poorer classes. But in whatever class their lot was cast, they all sanctified themselves by loving God and their neighbor, and by acquitting ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux

... part 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

... province upon the boundaries of Samnium and Campania. There he destroyed the remnants of idolatry, converted many of the pagan inhabitants to Christianity by his preaching and miracles, and in the year 529, under many difficulties, founded upon the ruins of a temple of Apollo the renowned cloister of Monte Cassino,[6] the alma mater and capital of his order. Here he labored fourteen years till his death. Although never ordained to the priesthood, his life there was rather that of a missionary ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... Friars became her militia and police; the mystery of Christ's presence in the Eucharist was made an engine of the priesthood; the dreams of Paradise and Purgatory gave value to her pardons, interdictions, jubilees, indulgences, and curses. In the Church the spirit of the cloister and the spirit of the world found neutral ground, and to the practical accommodation between these hostile elements she owed her wide supremacy. The Christianity she formed and propagated was different from that of the New Testament, inasmuch as it had taken up ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... side o' th' river lies a wall, Piece of a cloister, which, in my opinion, Gives the best echo that you ever heard: So plain in the distinction of our words, That many have supposed it a ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... d'Alencon which threw a heavy shadow over both court and garden; moreover, a deep silence reigned there. But this silence, these half-lights, this solitude, soothed a royal soul, which could there surrender itself to a single emotion, as in a cloister where men pray, or in some ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various

... long have fallen Ceaseless, constant, to her lot, But, like cloister honors falling, Unto one who sought them not; Daughter meek of the great Foundress Of thy honored house and name, Worthy art thou to be Abbess Of the ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... behind the great hump of towering rock. The place, walled in by beetling precipice, was beginning to darken into cloister-dim shadows. Bud's back was turned and he did not hear the footfall of the two men who had come upon him there. He knew that when once he succumbed to the thirst it meant a parting with reason and a frenzy of violence. But when the first savor of the fiery moonshine stuff ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... 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 thing and I shall trust ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... 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 ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... given partly in the words of the old surveyors.—It consisted of two principal quadrangles besides the dial court, the buttery court and the dove-house court, in which the offices were situated. The fountain court was a square of 86 feet, on the east side of which was a cloister of seven arches. On the ground floor of this quadrangle was a spacious hall; the roof of which was arched with carved timber of curious workmanship. On the same floor were the lord Holland's, the marquis of Hamilton's, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... under the 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 ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... crossed his hands upon his breast, and, bending his head, answered meekly: "Thou knowest best. My sins are very heavy; let me go at once and do penance in a cloister. There I will school my spirit to humility, and walk barefooted across the stones till ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman

... other day. A flapper came in and said she had forgotten the name of the book she wanted, but it was something about a young man who had been brought up by the monks. I was stumped. I tried her with The Cloister and the Hearth and Monastery Bells and Legends of the Monastic Orders and so on, but her face was blank. Then one of the salesgirls overheard us talking, and she guessed it right off the bat. Of course ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... suffice to make a man sleep three days and putting it in a beaker of wine, that was not yet well cleared, gave it to Ferondo to drink in his cell, without the latter suspecting aught; after which he carried him into the cloister and there with some of his monks fell to making sport of him and his dunceries; nor was it long before, the powder working, Ferondo was taken with so sudden and overpowering a drowsiness, that he slumbered as yet he stood afoot and presently fell ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... Christianity only as a system of restraints. She is despoiled of every liberal and generous principle: she is rendered almost unfit for the social intercourses of life, and is only suited to the gloomy walls of that cloister, in which they would confine her. But true Christians consider themselves not as satisfying some rigorous creditor, but as discharging a debt of gratitude. Their's is accordingly not the stinted return of a constrained obedience, but the large and liberal measure ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... and preserved in the Chapter library, gives a more minute account of this work of destruction. "The windows were generally battered and broken down; the whole roof, with that of the steeples, the chapter-house and cloister, externally impaired and ruined both in timber-work and lead; water-tanks, pipes, and much other lead cut off; the choir stripped and robbed of her fair and goodly hangings; the organ and organ-loft, communion-table, and the best and chiefest of the furniture, with the rail before ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers

... blue-gray and mixed with tiny dust particles, and it hung in thin motionless strata or came curling in feathery wisps almost invisible in the shadow but heavy laden with magic scent. Up slid the moon, till Main Street was a phantom cloister, the maple boles huge columns casting purple shadows on a milky floor. Fairy lights winked in hooded windows like deep-set eyes, and a soft warm haze lapped round him dreamily, lulling ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... hitherto, with great industry, sought all occasions to gratify his people, so he continued to do in the choice of a wife. This was Matilda, daughter of Malcolm the late King of Scots; a lady of great piety and virtue, who, by the power or persuasion of her friends, was prevailed with to leave her cloister for a crown, after she had, as some writers report, already taken the veil. Her mother was sister to Edgar Atheling, the last heir-male of the Saxon race; of whom frequent mention hath been made in the two preceding reigns: and thus ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... and revolutions at home? In the most violently disturbed times indeed, those with which ordinary history is mainly occupied, science is quite impossible. It needs as its condition, in order to flourish, a fairly quiet, untroubled state, or else a cloister or university removed from the din and bustle of the political and commercial world. In such places it has taken its rise, and in such peaceful places and quiet times true science will ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... your request," said he. "I have other plans for you. The grandchild of the King of Spain cannot be permitted to die a penitent in a cloister; if she has atonement to make for crime, let her make it, not under the serge of the nun, but under ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... Balzac, Byron and Browning may be selected, and a writer who, if hardly of the same class, has written at least one masterpiece. This is Charles Reade, whose delightful book "The Cloister and the Hearth" seems likely to attain immortality. Reade, we know, was absolutely stagestruck, and wrote dozens of plays and spent a great deal of money over them; indeed, it is not too much to say that his mania for the theatre seriously injured his work as a novelist. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... these survey, And on each pleasant footstep stay, We opportunely may relate The progress of this house's fate. A nunnery first gave it birth, (For virgin buildings oft brought forth) And all that neighbour-ruin shows The quarries whence this dwelling rose. Near to this gloomy cloister's gates, There dwelt the blooming virgin Thwaites, Fair beyond measure, and an heir, Which might deformity make fair; And oft she spent the summer's suns Discoursing with the subtle Nuns, Whence, in these words, one to her weav'd, As 'twere by chance, thoughts long conceiv'd: 'Within this holy ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... dead men's shoes, I trow," muttered father Segrim, with a sour look at the lads, as he led them through the outer court, where some fine horses were being groomed, and then across a second court surrounded with a beautiful cloister, with flower beds in front of it. Here, on a stone bench, in the sun, clad in a gown furred with rabbit skin, sat a decrepit old man, both his hands clasped over his staff. Into his deaf ears their guide shouted, "These boys say they are ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... quicker and quicker with vague apprehension; when a valet, dressed in cloth of silver, trimmed with crimson velvet, approached her carriage precipitately. "Madame," said he, "the archbishop is in the church; he entered by the portal of the cloister; he is already in the sanctuary; the ceremony ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... it—that an author is finally judged by his best work. This would be comforting to authors if true: but is it true? A day or two ago I picked up on a railway bookstall a copy of Messrs. Chatto & Windus's new sixpenny edition of The Cloister and the Hearth, and a capital edition it is. I think I must have worn out more copies of this book than of any other; but somebody robbed me of the pretty "Elzevir edition" as soon as it came out, and so I have only just ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... a disgrace to their calling, though I firmly believe that by far the greater number lead a life of privation and virtue. Their conduct can, to a certain extent, be judged of by the world; but the pale nuns, devout and pure, immured in the cloister for life, kneeling before the shrine, or chanting hymns in the silence of the night, a veil both truly and allegorically must shade their virtues or their failings. The nuns of the Santa Teresa and of other strict orders, who live sparingly, profess the most severe rules, and have no servants ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... the man arises with a servant's heart and a ruler's brain, then is the summer of the Church's content. But whether the men who wrote the following songs moved in some shining orbit of rank, or only knelt in some dim chapel, and walked in some pale cloister, we cannot tell, for they have ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... eye, as it is known, devils can fly hundreds of miles: so that almost the same beat of the clock which left these two in Champagne, found them hovering over Paris. They dropped into the court of the Lazarist Convent, and winded their way, through passage and cloister, until they reached the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... One first passes through the magnificent old gatehouse pictured here. Inside is a large grassy space, with the mass of buildings facing one. They are arranged in a quadrangular form, enclosing a grassy cloister garth. On the south side is the refectory, a magnificent hall above some small rooms on the ground floor. It is believed to have been built by Abbot Dovell in the sixteenth century. The roof, of carved ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home

... 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

... here the spectre noticed by Father Sinson the Jesuit, which he saw, and to which he spoke at Pont-a-Mousson, in the cloister belonging to those fathers; but I shall content myself with the instance which is reported in the Causes Celebres,[320] and which may serve to undeceive those who too lightly give credit to ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... the way, while Telemachus followed in her steps. When they got to the ship they found the crew waiting by the water side, and Telemachus said, "Now my men, help me to get the stores on board; they are all put together in the cloister, and my mother does not know anything about it, nor any of the maid servants ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... trap. But he shut the drawer violently and turned away from his writing-table. Even his pamphlets had become trivial in his eyes. He was brought face to face with real passions and real facts, he had been fetched out from his cloister and was blinking miserably in a full measure of daylight. How long could he endure ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... climb the oaks, to swing in the maples, to scale the roofs and the towers and the masts of the vessels. What had I to do with a monkish frock and a whitewashed cell? Ouf! I put my fingers in my ears and ran away whenever my poor mother talked of the cloister. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... very sensible theory that boarding-school girls should be kept little girls, until their school life was over, and they stepped out, fresh and eager and spontaneous, to greet the grown-up world. Saint Ursula's was a cloister, in fact, as in name. The masculine half of the human species was ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster

... of my childhood, I set out for the Carmel, where we all heard Mass. At the moment of Communion, when Jesus had entered our hearts, I heard sobs on all sides. I did not shed a tear, but as I led the way to the cloister door my heart beat so violently that I wondered if I were going to die. Oh, the agony of that moment! One must have experienced it in order to understand. I embraced all my dear ones and knelt for my Father's blessing. He, too, knelt ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... 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 no chance, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... even anxious Dorothy and gave an agreeable turn to the thoughts of all. So, at a nod of consent, the girls sped along the cloister, seeking the great kitchen and the salaaming ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond

... came to pray were careless, frivolous people, and that the vergers did their work without more reverence than did the stablemen who cared for her father's horses. And once when twilight was veiling the choir, and all the worshipers had departed, she saw a curate strike a match on the cloister-wall, to light his pipe, and then with the rector laugh loudly, because the bishop had forgotten and read his "Te Deum Laudamus" ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... Eadberht might beat back the inroads of the Mercians and even conquer Strathclyde, before the anarchy of his own kingdom he could only fling down his sceptre and seek a refuge in the cloister of Lindisfarne. From the death of Baeda the history of Northumbria became in fact little more than a wild story of lawlessness and bloodshed. King after king was swept away by treason and revolt, the country fell into the hands of its turbulent nobles, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... deprived of sight, went north to Nidaros, where he went into the cloister on the holm, and assumed the monk's dress. The cloister received the farm of Great Hernes in Frosta for his support. King Harald alone ruled the country the following winter, gave all men peace and pardon who desired it, and took many of the men into his court-service ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... actor, closed his days as a preacher. Shirley, Mason, Home, Milman, Croly, Maturin, White—these are names well known in the history of the theatre, and they are all names of clerical association. Such has been the fascination of the 'boards' even for those whose home has been the pulpit and the cloister. ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... that longing to go beyond which lay their grasp upon the men who know, and wish, and will. But neither his knowledge, nor his actions, nor his will, had found direction. He had fled from social life from necessity; as a great criminal seeks the cloister. Remorse, that virtue of weak beings, did not touch him. Remorse is impotence, impotence which sins again. Repentance alone is powerful; it ends all. But in traversing the world, which he made his cloister, Wilfrid had found ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... 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 ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... this old gentleman in our next picture reading so quietly and steadily? Does he not look absorbed in his book? Certainly the peacock, the bird, and the cat do not worry him or each other, and there is still another animal in the distance—a lion! Can you see him? He is walking down the cloister pavement on the right, with his foot lifted as though it were hurt. The story is that this particular lion limped into the monastery in which this old man lived, and while all the other monks fled in terror, this monk saw that the lion's fore-paw was hurt. He raised ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway

... I had three votes, I should plump them all for "The Cloister and the Hearth," as being our greatest historical novel, and, indeed, as being our greatest novel of any sort. I think I may claim to have read most of the more famous foreign novels of last century, and (speaking only ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Italian sculpture, the pulpit by Niccola Pisano in the Duomo of Siena. I would rather, had it been possible, have given the pulpit by Giovanni Pisano in the Duomo of Pisa; but that pulpit is dispersed in fragments through the upper galleries of the Duomo, and the cloister of the Campo Santo; and the casts of its fragments now put together at Kensington are too coarse to be of use to you. You may partly judge, however, of the method of their execution by the eagle's head, which I have sketched from the marble in the Campo Santo (Edu., No. 113), and the lioness ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... flat of the cotton-field Lies an acre of forest-tangle still; A cloister dim, where the grey moss waves And the live-oaks ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... retreat towards the porter's lodge, he suddenly plunged into the thickest belt of shrubs, and left the road clear. Paulina seized the moment, and, with a palpitating heart, quickened her steps towards the cloister. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... feet never fail To walk the studious cloister's pale, And love the high-embowered roof, With antic pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light; There let the pealing organ blow, To the full voiced quire below, In service ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... ramparts; and meanwhile, within and out of shot, dwelt in her private garden which she watered with grateful tears. It seems strange to say of this colourless and ineffectual woman, but she was a true enthusiast, and might have made the sunshine and the glory of a cloister. Perhaps none but Archie knew she could be eloquent; perhaps none but he had seen her - her colour raised, her hands clasped or quivering - glow with gentle ardour. There is a corner of the policy of Hermiston, where you come suddenly in view of the summit of Black ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... conspicuous station in the Catholic church. Such rare and illustrious penitents were celebrated as the glory and example of their age; but the monasteries were filled by a crowd of obscure and abject plebeians, [30] who gained in the cloister much more than they had sacrificed in the world. Peasants, slaves, and mechanics, might escape from poverty and contempt to a safe and honorable profession; whose apparent hardships are mitigated by custom, by popular applause, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... Portions of the nave, transepts, chapter-house, and abbot's house remain, the latter being restored and making a fine specimen of ecclesiastical domestic architecture built around a court. An open cloister extends the entire length of the house. There are beautiful intersecting Norman arches in the chapter-house. There are some quaint old houses in the town—timbered structures with bold bow-windows—and not a few of them of great age. Roger de Montgomery is credited ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... his. Ha! it is but ten lines long. 'Dearest Achille, how I long for you to come back! The court is as dull as a cloister now that you are gone. My ridiculous father still struts about like a turkey-cock, as if all his medals and crosses could cover the fact that he is but a head lackey, with no more real power than I have. He wheedles a good deal out of the king, but what ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... good young man. I do bethink me That once I walked behind him in the cloister; He saw me not, but whispered to his fellow: "Of all men who do dwell beneath the moon I love and reverence ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler

... religious edifice is perhaps as bad a piece of profanation as any of those rude dealings which Mr. Ruskin justly deplores; but a traveller has to make the most of odd moments, and I was waiting for a friend in whose company I was to go and look at Giotto's beautiful frescoes in the cloister of the church. My friend was a long time coming, so that I had an hour with Mr. Ruskin, whom I called just now a light litterateur because in these little Mornings in Florence he is for ever making his readers ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... he had said in those hours of confidence; "and, to be as sublime a blockhead, if you'll allow me the word, you, my dear fellow, have kept sounding the charge. We've sat prating here of 'success,' heaven help us, like chanting monks in a cloister, hugging the sweet delusion that it lies somewhere in the work itself, in the expression, as you said, of one's subject or the intensification, as somebody else somewhere says, of one's note. One has been going on in short as if the only thing to do were to accept the law of one's talent ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... I am" (I mused) "and quad and cloister Are beckoning to me with the old allure; The lovely world of Youth shall be mine oyster Which I for one-and-ninepence can secure, Reaching on Memory's wing Parnassus' groves and ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various

... d'hote, stepped into the street. For Mr. Clinch had eaten a late breakfast at Gladbach, was dyspeptic and American, and, moveover, preoccupied with business. He was consequently indignant, on entering the garden-like court and cloister-like counting-house of "Von Becheret, Sons, Uncles, and Cousins," to find the comptoir deserted even by the porter, and was furious at the maidservant, who offered the sacred shibboleth "Mittagsessen" as a reasonable explanation of the solitude. "A country," ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... Alhambra by a Saracenic cloister, from the ceiling of which an occasional lamp threw a gleam upon some Eastern arms hung up against the wall. This passage led to the armoury, a room of moderate dimensions, but hung with rich contents. Many an inlaid breastplate, many a Mameluke ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... the Luxembourg, the erstwhile convents of the Visitation and the Sacre-Coeur, the cloister of the Oratorians, the Salpetriere, and the St. Lazare hospitals, and there was, of course, the Temple, and, lastly, the Conciergerie, to which those prisoners were brought whose trial would take place within the next few days, and ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... that needs all these things like a hungry, thirsty, naked, poor, imprisoned, sick soul. O what a blessed marriage and home were that where such parents were to be found! Truly it would be a real Church, a chosen cloister, yea, a paradise. Of such says Psalm cxxviii: "Blessed are they that fear God, and walk in His Commandments; thou shalt eat of the labor of thine hands; therefore thou shalt be happy, and it shall be well with thee. Thy wife shall be ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... ecclesiastics, but wanted peace at any hazard. Quarreling began first between individuals of the various factions, but it soon resulted in conflicts between civilians and the volunteer guard. The first step taken by the military was to seize and occupy the cloister, which lay just below the citadel, the final goal of their leader, whoever he was, and the townsfolk believed it was Buonaparte. Once inside the citadel walls, the Corsicans in the regular French service would, it was hoped, fraternize with their kin; with such a beginning, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... the classes which we have described. He was not a Puritan. He was not a freethinker. He was not a Royalist. In his character the noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmonious union. From the Parliament and from the Court, from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay



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



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