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Holy of holies

noun
1.
(figurative) something regarded as sacred or inviolable.
2.
(Judaism) sanctuary comprised of the innermost chamber of the Tabernacle in the temple of Solomon where the Ark of the Covenant was kept.  Synonym: sanctum sanctorum.






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"Holy of holies" Quotes from Famous Books



... into the Holy of Holies," said another student, in relating his experience in listening to a ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... Bigness's own sanctuary, and now Bibbs reached the roaring holy of holies itself. The car must stop at every crossing while the dark-garbed crowds, enveloped in maelstroms of dust, hurried before it. Magnificent new buildings, already dingy, loomed hundreds of feet above him; newer ones, more magnificent, were rising beside ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... cunning of the "Havamal." The first thing enjoined upon a man both by the Norse writer and by the Spanish author is the art of silence. Probably this has been the result of social experience in all countries. "Cautious silence is the holy of holies of worldly wisdom," says Gracian. And he gives many elaborate reasons for this statement, not the least of which is the following: "If you do not declare yourself immediately, you arouse expectation, especially when the importance of your position makes you the object of general attention. ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... this solitude, some rejoice in it, but the use of it is the test of a man's life. A very near friend of Dr. Brooks's once heard of a man who said that he knew Dr. Brooks intimately; and this friend said: "No man ought to say that. Not one of us knew Dr. Brooks intimately. There was a central Holy of Holies in his life, into which none of us ever entered." So it was. And this preservation of an inner privacy for the deeper experiences of life is what proves a soul to be peaceful and strong. Guard your soul's individual life. In the midst ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... expense, and it will cost a good deal, I think, to repair and renew the fine old wood panelling of such minute and intricate workmanship. The church is divided by three screens; one in front of the eastern three domes is impervious and conceals the holy of holies. He opened the horseshoe door for me to look in, but explained that no Hareem might cross the threshold. All was in confusion owing to the repairs which were actively going on without the slightest ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... Words like flaming stars, that shoot down from the heavens, and burn up the palaces, and illuminate the huts. . . . Words like bright javelins, that whirr up to the seventh heaven and strike the pious hypocrites who have skulked into the Holy of Holies. . . . I am all joy and song, all sword and flame! Perhaps, too, all delirium. . . . One of those sunbeams wrapped in brown paper has flown to my brain, and set my thoughts aglow. In vain I dip my head into the sea. No water extinguishes ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... into the studio. As quick as a flash, Dick dropped a curtain, just like this, between me and his easel! I was determined to see what he had been painting, but he positively forbade it. He said it was a painter's prerogative to warn even—love from that holy of holies. I often wonder what was behind the curtain. I realized from that moment that if you want to see a great artist's best work, you must override his modesty and secretiveness—and tear the screen ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... of Moliere; he could count on her to do them the honours some night when she was in the "bill," and to make the occasion sociable. Miriam had been impatient for it—she was so convinced that her eyes would be opened in the holy of holies; but wishing as particularly as he did to participate in her impression he had made her promise she wouldn't taste of this experience without him—not let Madame Carre, for instance, take her in his absence. There were questions the girl wished to put to Mademoiselle Voisin—questions ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... ideals? Does the accursed Midas-touch of his mind dissolve everything, one very Holy of Holies, into the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... minds of the Jews that the enemy would not be permitted to approach the Holy City. It was true that their faith had been sorely shaken, by many strange prodigies. A strange light had shone about the altar and the Temple, and it was said that voices had been heard from the Holy of Holies, saying, "Let us depart hence." The Beautiful Gate of the Temple, which required the strength of twenty men to close it, had opened of its own accord. War chariots and armies had been seen contending in the clouds; and for months a great ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty

... passes, officials and employees of the civil administration taking orders from the military authorities. A relay of aides, orderlies, and secretaries led us from courtyard to corridor and from corridor to staff headquarters and into the Holy of Holies—the office of ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green

... knowledge, we should and must approach the deeper psychological mysteries of Nature. But as long as we interpose the darkness of personal doubt and prejudice between ourselves and the Light Eternal no progress can be made,—and every attempt to penetrate into the Holy of Holies will be met and thrust back by that 'flaming Sword' which from the beginning, as now, turns every way to guard the Tree ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... closet. Monuments, mural and others, to long-departed worthies, and images of the Savior, the Virgin, and saints, were numerous everywhere about the church; and in the chancel there was a great deal of quaint and curious sculpture, fencing in the Holy of Holies, where the high altar stands. There is not much painted glass; one or two very rich and beautiful rose-windows, however, that looked antique; and the great eastern window, which, I think, is modern. The pavement has, probably, never been renewed, as one piece of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... plain, inartistic room, and the middle-aged woman whose holy of holies it had been for fifteen years was as old-fashioned and unbeautiful as it; yet there was, somehow, about the place a certain atmosphere of goodness and peace that cannot be ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... time he dared not approach those who were the best for him, the purest, the Holy of Holies. He trembled at the thought of bringing his faith in them to the test. But how resist the pitiless instinct of a brave and truthful soul, which will go on to the end, and see things as they are, whatever suffering ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... and suffocating sorrow is on every one of them, plain to the eye of the initiated alone, they who have gazed on the wonders of the inner temple—the holy of holies—and gone forth reverently to dream of the ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... of the Creator is revealed. The general interpretation of this verse is that Satan was created as a guard or protector to the throne of the Most High. This is reasonable. Like the golden cherubim, covering the visible mercy seat in the Holy of Holies of the earthly tabernacle, he was created a guard and covering cherub to the heavenly center of Glory. It is expressly stated that he was located by the Most High upon the holy mountain of God, the mountain of God being a symbol of the center of God's power, government, and eternal throne (Ps. ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer

... the rule," he said. "Because the old priests did pry and peer, it was ruled henceforth that only the blind could enter the Holy of Holies." I'd swear he was smiling, if thirty teeth peeking out of what looked like a crack in an old ...
— The Repairman • Harry Harrison

... in with one comprehensive glance, and a little smile trembled on the corner of her lips as she followed the harassed financier into his "holy of holies." ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... be long concealed, and the following day was discovered. Had thunder fallen on the police, they would have been less astonished than at this event. To penetrate to the very sanctuary! The holy of holies! The fact appeared so very extraordinary, that it was doubted. Yet it was evident that a robbery had taken place, and to whom was it to be attributed? All the suspicions fell on the clerks, sometimes on one, sometimes on another, when Beaumont, betrayed by a friend, was apprehended, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... agrestium e pastu in rupem nemore opacam concessit: secutus Moses, conjectura herbidi soli, largas aquarum venas aperit." (Hist. v. 3). Tacitus is infinitely more offensive, and, certainly, most untruthful, when he says that the Jews "kept for worship in their holy of holies the image of an ass, as the animal by whose guidance they had slaked their thirst and brought their wanderings to a happy sequel": "effigiem animalis, quo monstrante errorem sitimque depulerant, penetrali ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... number—and in the midst of them, "a man clothed with linen;"—the former, with instruments of destruction; the latter, with writing materials. They step (the scene is in the temple) by the side of the brazen altar. Thither there comes to them out of the holy of holies, to the threshold of the temple, the glory of the Lord, and gives to Him who is clothed with linen the commission to preserve the faithful, while the others receive a commission to destroy the ungodly, without ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... of prayer on our behalf is applicable, and is in Scripture applied, to our Lord. As on earth, the climax of all His intercourse with His disciples was that deep yet simple prayer which forms the Holy of Holies of John's Gospel, so in heaven His loftiest office for us is set forth under the figure of His intercession. Before the Throne stands the slain Lamb, and therefore do the elders in the outer circle bring acceptable praises. Within the veil stands the Priest, with the names of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... to know what became of the preachers, after tying the red handkerchief round their heads and retreating to their tents. I crept carefully round to the back of this holy of holies, and applying my eyes to a little aperture in the canvas, I saw by the light of a solitary candle several men lying upon mattrasses fast asleep, their noses making anything but a musical response to the hymns and prayers without. While I was gazing upon these ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... all worship as yet in the dark, as in the exquisite dark, like faith, of the Holy of Holies ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... however penetrated the peaceful sphere of the Infants' Asylum, which, indeed, seemed to be the innermost retreat, or the holy of holies ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... because he spake the words, 'Hear now, ye rebels; shall we bring you forth water out of this rock?' And yet he murmured not. Art thou more worthy than Aaron, unto whom I showed greater honor than unto any created being, for I sent the angels themselves out of the Holy of Holies when he entered the place? Yet when his two sons died, he ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... them, polytheism might perhaps actually have been stamped out in Greece at one time. But Greek thought, always sincere and daring, was seldom brutal, seldom ruthless or cruel. The thinkers of the great period felt their own way gently to the Holy of Holies, and did not try to compel others to take the same way. Greek theology, whether popular or philosophical, seldom denied any god, seldom forbade any worship. What it tried to do was to identify every new god with some aspect of one of the old ones, and the result was naturally confusion. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... remains as it was when the caliphs worshiped here. We felt oppressed by a sensation of gloom wandering amid the dark forest of pillars. It is, and always will be, a mosque, as characteristic and typical as the most marked shrine in the East. The Holy of Holies, as sacred to the Spanish Arabians as Mecca to those of the East, has been preserved intact, and is by far the most interesting portion of the structure. Here all the original lace-like ornamentation ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... Hyrcanus, and Aristobulus surrendered himself to Pompey when the latter had advanced near to Jerusalem. But the Jews refused to follow the example of their king, and it was not till after a siege of three months that the city was taken. Pompey entered the Holy of Holies, the first time that any human being, except the high-priest, had penetrated into this sacred spot. He reinstated Hyrcanus in the high-priesthood, but compelled him to pay an annual tribute to Rome; Aristobulus accompanied him as a prisoner. ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... for your sister, Petrusha," he said. "When I used to come and see you, I felt as though I were going to a holy shrine, and I really did worship Zina. Now my reverence for her grows every day. For me she is something higher than a wife—yes, higher!" Vlassitch waved his hands. "She is my holy of holies. Since she is living with me, I enter my house as though it were a temple. She is an extraordinary, rare, ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... collection would involve the country in universal ruin. Upon this, Alva burst forth in one of the violent explosions of rage to which he was subject. The prosperity of the, Netherlands, he protested, was not dearer to the inhabitants than to himself. He swore by the cross, and by the most holy of holies, preserved in the church of Saint Gudule, that had he been but a private individual, living in Spain, he would, out of the love he bore the provinces, have rushed to their defence had their safety been endangered. He ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... was you. Though you might not feel like a son to me—I could not expect it when the memory of that sweet relationship was more worthily filled. But I could feel like a father to you. Nothing could prevent that or interfere with it, for I would keep it as my secret in the very holy of holies of my heart, where had been for thirty years the image of a sweet little child—your mother. My boy, when in your future life you shall have happiness and honour and power, I hope you will sometimes give a thought to the lonely old man whose later years your ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... God to witness will strengthen your mutual adjuration, swear by Him and His throne, or by whatever else will render it inviolable, and commit it to writing, each transcribing a copy for the other as your most sacred relics, to be enshrined in your "holy of holies." ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... ideal society, was like. Family life was consecrated. Men and women belonged to the new order with their whole households. Religion became largely a family matter. The worship that had been confined to the temple now made an altar in every home and a holy of holies in the midst of every family. The scriptures that belonged to the synagogue now belonged in the home. Above all, this family existed for the purposes taught by Jesus, that men might grow in brotherhood toward the likeness of the divine Fatherhood. It was an institution, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... of a new translation of Campanella's Sonnets, published by the Grolier Club, had been sold for three hundred dollars. This impressed the members greatly. It was a novel idea. A new work might thus be enshrined in a sort of holy of holies, which, if the collector so desired, could be forever sacred from the profanation of any vulgar or unappreciative eye. The possessor of such a treasure could enjoy it by the eye of imagination, having at the same time the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... she said thoughtfully. "New York has not taught me to expect such from a man. Then the American dollar is not the sign of the Holy of Holies—to you?" ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... unconscious of our own significance, indifferent to the gaze of the curious. There was one thought in our minds: that we had actually attained unto Jerusalem and were walking the last few miles to the Holy of Holies. ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... separated by an insulation so sure that it cannot possibly flash into the other. The unclean electricity of lust cannot find its way through the non-conductors of esteem, reverence, duty, and honor. Those are safe, who, shielded by such holy barriers, pay their worship, in the mental holy of holies, to the supernal charms of truth and virtue, to the dazzling sanctity of the principle of good. It is only the gross and weak who are discharged to their ruin by the lures of vice and pleasure. A profound reverence for a person at the same time ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... will people inundate their unfortunate victims with such "weak, washy, everlasting floods?" Why will they haul everything out into the open day? Why will they make the Holy of Holies common and unclean? Why will they be so ineffably stupid as not to see that there is that which speech profanes? Why will they lower their drag-nets into the unfathomable waters, in the vain attempt to bring up your pearls and gems, whose ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... shown you my Holy of Holies, but we will never speak of it again. You know my sorrow, and we will understand each other without words. I have learned to be thankful for the unexpected blessings which come into my life, of which your companionship is one. You will always ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... so much, still he had not yet entered the Presence of God. Another veil separated from the Holy of Holies where above the mercy seat dwelt the very God Himself in awful and glorious manifestation. While the tabernacle stood, only the high priest could enter there, and that but once a year, with blood which he offered for his sins ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer

... great Operations Room of the Pentagon, the uppermost echelons of the American General Staff glared at Dr. Titus whose civilian presence was defiling this military "holy of holies." ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia

... of Priapus regarded his sistrum as being just as sacred as a Catholic priest now considers any vessel or robe used in the service of mass, and that the priests of Brahma look on the Lingam with as much reverence and awe as did the Levites on the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy of Holies. Phallic worship is a religion, the oldest abstract religion in existence. Fundamentally the Creator—the Life Giver—is the phallic worshiper's god. Is he very far wrong in all that is absolutely essential? "Men think they know because they are sure they feel, and are firmly convinced ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... was the great stairs at Solomon's temple that so impressed the Queen of Sheba. Small shrines or miniature temples, called Tenno Samma, or "Heaven's Lord," are carried on staves, like the Ark of the Covenant, at their religious ceremonies. The inner shrine, or Holy of Holies, is small, and a cube, or nearly so, in proportion. It is usually detached behind the other portions of the temple, the door being closed, so that it cannot be seen into, and it generally contains, not an image, but a tablet, or what the Japanese call a "Gohei," ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... office held Julius March forcibly. He had ministered to others, and his own soul was satisfied. His expression was exalted, his short-sighted eyes were alive with inward light. Tired and worn, there was still a remarkable suavity in his bearing. He had come forth from the holy of holies, and the vision beheld there dwelt with ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... we glory in the fact. We glory in it, as the old Jews gloried in it, when the Roman soldiers, bursting through the Temple and into the Holy of Holies itself, paused in wonder and in awe when they beheld neither God, nor image of God, but—blank yet ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... dare pronounce the ineffable Name" cried Joseph Eskapha, his old Master. "What! Shall thy unconsecrated lips pollute the sacred letters that even in the time of Israel's glory only the High Priest might breathe in the Holy of Holies on ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... foliated pattern and wainscoted with books of reference as high as hand can reach; the dread tribunal of librarians and keepers in session down yonder, on a kind of judgment-seat, at the end of the avenue whose carpet deadens all footsteps; and behind again, that holy of holies where work the doubly privileged—the men, I imagine, who are members of two or three academies. To right and left of this avenue are rows of tables and armchairs, where scatters, as caprice has chosen and habit consecrated, the learned population of the library. Men form ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... lecture on the subject. I am assured that I shall not be debarred from my utterances because that which I say is unpopular. I am told that as long as I do not touch Her Majesty or Her Majesty's family, or the Christian religion,—which is only the second Holy of Holies,—I may say anything. Good taste would save me from the former offence, and my own convictions from the latter. But my friend who so informs me doubts whether many will come to hear me. He tells me that the serious American is not popular here, ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... can tell what blessings have gone out from that farewell into the whole Church of Christ through all the centuries? It is the holy of holies of Christian history. The Lord's Supper, instituted that night, and which has never ceased to be observed as a memorial of the Master's wonderful love and great sacrifice, has sweetened the world with its fragrant memories. The words spoken ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... and always at night just before she went to bed. His room, with the old-fashioned secretary against the wall, and the stuffed gull on the shelf, and the books in the cupboard, and the polished narwhal horn in the corner, was to her a sort of holy of holies, a place where she was led each evening at nine o'clock, at first by Mrs. Bailey and, later, by Mrs. Hobbs, to shake the hand of the big man who looked at her absently over his spectacles and said good night in a voice not unkindly but expressing no particular interest. At other times she was ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... sleeping princess; a theory that solves all the problems of life; the symbolical rites and ceremonies of secret orders; the secrets of the Ancient Alchemists; the Rosicrucians; the Free Masons; the Hermetics; their initiation rites and ceremonies explained; what is meant by the "Holy of Holies?" by the "secret chamber;" and the degree of "mastership;" the sexual significance of the symbolism of the "templars;" the red rose on the cross; the star and the crescent; what is the inner meaning of "the ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... acted;—and he could do the same with women. But there was one person who had been to him above all, and round everything, and under everything. There had been a private nook within him into which there had been no entrance but for the one image. There had been a holy of holies, which he had guarded within himself, keeping it free from all outer contamination for his own use. He had cherished the idea of a clear fountain of ever-running water which would at last be his, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... comes from the sense of service, to be rendered or received; and one must enter that holy of holies, the library, with a grateful benediction on one's lip, and humility and reverence and joy in one's soul. Of all the writers about books, Charles Lamb, in his playful way, comes nearest to this old-world, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... Self-abnegation can not be discerned so long as we want to live. If we never reach the point where we literally "hate our own life," we shall never know how much there is in us not divine. The flesh is ever the veil that separates between the holy place and the holy of holies. Until we have reached that place where we have lost sight of all that is human, and hunger and thirst for all the life of God, Christian perfection ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr

... is ever to be brought to this standpoint, the nature and the meaning of the One have to be presented to it. And it is this, as Eucken shows, which has been partially accomplished by the religions of the world. Their founders were personalities who had scaled the heights towards the "holy of holies" of the One; they descended into the plains to reveal what they had seen and heard and experienced on the heights. They had been able to commune with the Alone, and their natures had been completely transformed. In passing thus from the stage of "universal" ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones

... side, should hold her peace about the man's wife. A man must be very degraded indeed if his wife be not holy to him. Lord George had been driving his wife almost mad during the last twenty-four hours by implied accusations, and yet she was to him the very holy of holies. All the Popenjoy question was as nothing to him in comparison with the sanctity of her name. And now, weak as he was, incapable as he would have been, under any other condition of mind, of extricating himself from the meshes which this woman ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... afterward, notified me that there was to be a meeting of the Church authorities in the Temple, and he asked me to attend it. Since I had never before been invited to one of these conferences in the "holy of holies," I inquired the purposes of the conclave. He replied that they desired to consider the situation in which our people had been placed by my action in the St. Louis convention, and to discuss the perceptible trend of public opinion in the state. I saw, then, that Senator Proctor's ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... of Scripture leave room to believe, that an articulate voice came forth from the propitiatory, or holy of holies, beyond the veil of the tabernacle, and that this voice was heard by the high-priest. If the Urim and Thummim did not make answer, it was a sign of God's anger. Saul abandoned by the spirit of the Lord, consulted it in vain, and obtained no sort of answer. It appears by some ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... when prostrated there was a wide space between each of them (Rashi says about four ells), so that they could not hear each other's confession, which might have caused them to blush. They had, however, when prostrated, to extend eleven ells behind the Holy of Holies. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... would receive me and welcome me as a dear son; and that at any moment, should I be called out of the world, I should be sure of eternal happiness. I also learned another glorious truth, namely, that Christ the great High Priest, who has entered into the Holy of Holies, is now at the right hand of God, and having taken my flesh upon Him, knows all my infirmities, and can be touched by them, having been tempted as I am, and thus acts as my mediator, my intercessor, ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston

... intellect. It is a man who tries to apprehend God through his logic and psychology; a woman understands Him better through emotions and deeds. It is the men who are concerned about the cubits, the cedar wood, the Urim and Thummim of the Tabernacle; woman walks straight into the Holy of Holies. Men constructed the Cross; women wept for the Crucified. It was a man—a Jew defending his faith in his own supernatural revelation—who tried to ram a sponge of vinegar into the mouth of Christ, dying; it was women who gathered at the sepulchre of Resurrection. If Christ could have had a ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... a column of monks marching with dimmed flambeau of their worship. Angled metal monks of some god of metal, carrying tapers of electric fire, withdrawing slowly from a Holy of Holies whose metallically divine Occupant knew nothing of ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... ducked low and held his square head in his hands as if he feared that the next assault would be on that. But Davis led his associates out of the room through the door which Briggs had flung open, summoned by the crash in his master's holy of holies. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... a fur bag after the damp, cold berths we had occupied in the ship. Teddy Nelson became my particular friend in the shore party and shared a sledging tent with me. The rest of the shore staff paired off and slept in the small tents, while Captain Scott had one to himself. We called it the "Holy of Holies," and from the privacy of this tiny dwelling Scott issued his directions, supervised, planned, and improved whenever improvement could be made in anything. He had a marvellous brain and a marvellous ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... was about a dozen feet from the principal part of the building, which looked very impressive in its dignity and blaze of colour. It was the altar, or the place where the holy of holies was preserved. The top of the altar reached to the ceiling, and consisted of two great tables incrusted with lapis-lazuli and covered with white letters, like strings of arabesques, in a rich and fantastic design, in which the initiated eye could read the Ten Commandments. The tables ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

... gold-studded cases weigh two hundred pounds each? Are not pictures of the Redeemer, of the Mother of God, of angels, prophets and evangelists suspended between the twelve columns of solid silver which are the Holy of Holies in the temple? Are not the faithful moved to tears at the sight of the crucifix and at the remembrance that the gilded cross of silver is an exact copy of that which, more than five hundred years ago, was set up ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... Cursed be the tongue that dares speak evil of the household bed! By its side oscillates the cradle. Not far from it is the crib. In this sacred precinct, the mother's chamber, lies the heart of the family. Here the child learns its prayer. Hither, night by night, angels troop. It is the Holy of Holies." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... ignorant conquerors. These mysteries were probably, at bottom, a body of scientific truths. They undoubtedly had to do with a store of information, painfully gleaned for generations, about those facts of reproduction, selection and beneficient fertility which are so close to the Holy of Holies of creation itself. Probably these precious mysteries could be simmered down to a few fundamentals and such as are now generally practiced by all plant and animal breeders. And they are not fully understood today, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various

... design of the final Praise of the Almighty was evidently conceived in the main as a service. An actual depiction, or a direct expression (such as is attempted in the prologue of Boito's Mefistofele) was thereby avoided. The Holy of Holies is screened from view by a priestly ceremony,—by the mask of conventional religion. Else we must take the composer's personal conception of such a climax as that of an orthodox Churchman. And then the whole work, with all its ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... as she discovered that the soul of her lover was filled with religious ecstasy. She felt that the place whereon she stood was holy ground, and reverently awaited the emergence of the worshiper from the holy of holies into which he ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... offering): intestinal congestion and premeditative defecation (holy of holies): the bath (rite of John): the funeral (rite of Samuel): the advertisement of Alexander Keyes (Urim and Thummim): the unsubstantial lunch (rite of Melchisedek): the visit to museum and national library (holy place): the bookhunt along Bedford row, Merchants' Arch, Wellington Quay ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... games naked in the theatre, joined in riotous processions, carrying ivy in honor of Bacchus, the god of wine, and offered incense to the idols; and the worst of all these was the false high priest, Menelaus, who led the King Antiochus into the Temple itself, even into the Holy of Holies, and told him all that would most desecrate it and grieve the Jews. So a little altar to the Roman god Jupiter was set up on the top of the great brazen altar of burnt offerings, a hog was offered up, and broth ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of the public that watches the comings and goings of the Street is the conviction that Standard Oil is the holy of holies among stocks. The world has been taught to believe that the owners of Standard Oil regard the shares of the great oil corporation as their most precious, most sacred possessions. Yet while "Standard Oil" has been so scientifically spreading abroad ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... all the sacred edifices of antiquity: even its measurements are singularly in unison with some of the most ancient temples in Upper Egypt. It consisted of a propylaeon, a temple, and a sanctuary; called respectively the Porch, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. Yet in some respects, if the measurements are correct, the Temple must rather have resembled the form of a simple ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... such their religion, and such their law. But as to our country and our race, as long as the well-compacted structure of our Church and State, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple,[20] shall stand inviolate on the brow of the British Sion,—as long as the British monarchy, not more limited ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... edifice with a very large and magnificent cupola, into which the Gentiles do not bring any image or effigy, but they merely come there to pray. In front of this place is the western wall, which is one of the walls of the Holy of Holies. This is called the Gate of Mercy, and thither come all the Jews to pray before the wall of the court of the Temple. In Jerusalem, attached to the palace which belonged to Solomon, are the stables built by him, forming a very substantial structure, composed of large ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela

... his three hundred aeons. There also is the Perfect Mind. All these surround a Basket (9) that knows no death. The Ineffable face of the Overseer, who is the Warden of the Holy Place, gazes into the Holy of Holies upon the Boundless One. Now this Warden has faces twain. One is disclosed from the side of the Deep, the other from the side of the Overseer called the Child (or Servant). For there is a Deep [within the Holy of ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh

... not even come out to his meals, and fed solitarily in his holy of holies from a tray covered with a white napkin. Our steward used to bend an ironic glance at the perfectly empty plates he was bringing out from there. This grief for his home, which overcomes so many married seamen, did not deprive Captain ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... surprised him even more than it surprised any one else; above all, when it refused to be separated from his holy of holies, crept, danced, smiled its way through the most portentous scores—a thrilling sense of Jenny Bligh, all crotchets and quavers, smiles and thrills, quaint homeliness, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... Holy of holies, my bare feet draw nigh: Jesus, thy body is the shining veil By which I look on God, nor grow death-pale. I know that in my verses poor may lie Things low, for see, the thinker is not high! But were my song as loud as saints' all-hail, As pure as prophet's cry of warning wail, As holy as ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... his own mental diseases; like those insects which deposit their eggs in the living bodies of others. And when the war broke out, he took him at once to a recruiting station and made him enlist. For a man of his sort, "Country" was the noblest of things—the holy of holies; he did not need to breathe the thrilling suggestion of the crowd, his head was already turned, and, besides, he never went with the crowds; he carried "Country" about with him;—The Country and ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... spot, Has grown colossal, and can only find A fit abode wherein appear enshrined Thy hopes of immortality; and thou Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined, See thy God face to face, as thou dost now His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... without belief; in this like its central interest, the Grail: a mystery, a cup, a stone; a thing which heals, feeds, speaks; animate or inanimate? Stone of the Caaba or chalice of the Sacrament? Merely a mysterious holy of holies and good of goods, which does everything and nothings means nothing ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... door. Montgomery and Folkestone—the latter in knickerbockers—took their seats in the buggy, and whirled away down the horse-paddock fence. Then all was still, save for the faint pling-plong of a piano in the Holy of Holies. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... a sanctity about her,—a divinity which made it almost a profanity to have talked about her at all to such a one as Dolly Longstaff. She was his Holy of Holies, at which vulgar eyes should not even be allowed to gaze. It had been a most unfortunate interview. But this was clear; that, as he had announced his engagement to such a one as Dolly Longstaff, the matter now would admit of no delay. He would explain ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... interpretation of these books of Mormon. The future prophet sat behind a screen with the supposed gold plates in his hat. He dictated through the stones Urim and Thummim. With a keen imagination and natural aptitude for the strikingly dramatic, he was able to present formally his ritual, tabernacle, holy of holies, priesthood and tithings, constitution and councils, blood atonement, anointment, twelve apostles, miracles, his spiritual manifestations and revelations, all in reminiscence of the religious ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... place was merely a ruin I went on quite comfortably ... and suddenly we found ourselves in a sort of Holy of Holies ... a queer, pillared place with an enormous idol in a kind of recess—an altar, I suppose." His voice was tense. "It was at that moment we both realized someone was watching us, malignantly, from some unseen vantage-point. I turned to Miss Ryder to suggest, as quietly as ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... God, even among the most awful sanctities of his faith. These sanctities may be too awful for "fiction"—but fiction is not the word here, any more than disputation was the word there. Substitute for it the word poetry; and then, reflecting on that of Isaiah and of David, conversant with the Holy of Holies, we feel that it need not profane those other sanctities, if it be, like its subject, indeed divine. True, that those bards were ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... experiences of the morning was added a wholesome sense of his own unworthiness to lay a hand upon her. In that illumined moment he was vouchsafed a glimpse into the temple of Love; a temple he had desecrated and defiled time and again; whose holy of holies he had ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... yet it grinned an evil, skeleton grin over his shoulder, and he could not make his ears deaf to the whisper that though he could and would hold Virginia to the keeping of her bargain, her heart would always have a holy of holies ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson

... tabernacle or temple signified the distinction of those things that are subject to God, and from which we arise to the worship of God. Now the tabernacle was divided into two parts: one was called the "Holy of Holies," and was placed to the west; the other was called the "Holy Place" [*Or 'Sanctuary'. The Douay version uses both expressions], which was situated to the east. Moreover there was a court facing the tabernacle. Accordingly there ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... who has disbelieved in his youth in the sanctity of Love, and then later has knelt in its Holy of Holies, has escaped that pang? ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... temple; where you were brought up. There was a time when you dared not have crossed the first sacred enclosure. You are in the third. Look round! There is the holy of holies. At my will the stones that mask the entrance will roll back, and the goddess will be unveiled. Except the High Priest and the Pharaoh, no mortal, if he be not priest himself, may look on her and live—save at the hour of the annual Festival of Prodigies, which is upon us now. Do ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux

... sacrifice for sin. Sin cannot exist beyond the sacrifice designed to take it away. He is represented as taking away the sin of the world under the figure of a Lamb. Sin will come to a finish, under the first covenant, exactly where Christ said "it is finished," at which moment the vail, concealing the "holy of holies," will be rent in twain, and the second covenant be opened. If we step beyond what Christ has said, we may as well give up the Scriptures, and trust to our own vain imaginations. There sin will end; ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods

... wear their robes of transfiguration. Behind the screen are the carved oaken stalls of the Chapter and Prebendaries, the Bishop's throne, the pulpit, the altar, and whatever else may furnish out the Holy of Holies. Nor must we forget the range of chapels (once dedicated to Catholic saints, but which have now lost their individual consecration), nor the old monuments of kings, warriors, and prelates, in the side-aisles of the chancel. In close contiguity to the main body of the Cathedral is the Chapter-House, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... led away, Lured by the colour of the sun-rich day. The gay romance of song Unto the spirit life doth not belong: Though far-between the hours In which the Master of Angelic powers Lightens the dusk within The holy of holies, be it thine to win Rare vistas of white light, Half parted lips through which the Infinite Murmurs her ancient story, Harkening to whom the wandering planets hoary Waken primeval fires, With deeper rapture in celestial choirs Breathe, ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell

... numerical preponderance. But this preponderance itself grew out of a difference of systems. We have said before, and it cannot be said too often, that in making Canada a citadel of the state religion—a holy of holies of exclusive Roman Catholic orthodoxy,—the clerical monitors of the Crown robbed their country of a trans-Atlantic empire. New France could not grow with a priest on guard at the gate to let in none ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... high-priest of the good things to come"; for which reason the priesthood of Christ is said to be eternal. Now this consummation of Christ's sacrifice was foreshadowed in this, that the high-priest of the Old Law, once a year, entered into the Holy of Holies with the blood of a he-goat and a calf, as laid down, Lev. 16:11, and yet he offered up the he-goat and calf not within the Holy of Holies, but without. In like manner Christ entered into the Holy of Holies—that is, into heaven—and prepared the way for us, that we might enter by the virtue of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... self-unfoldings, embodied in rhythmic speech. They moved me more profoundly even than the suppressed feeling of his awe-struck prayers, [136] or the fluent fervor of his pulpit addresses; for they raised the veil, and admitted one into his Holy of holies. At other times, literary or artistic themes, the newest poem, novel, picture, concert, came up for discussion; and as these ladies were verse-writers, essayists, critics, and lovers of beauty in ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... therein with her. There was a common world in which all met in mutual interests, but she possessed the peculiar power of holding for each of her children their own "inner shrine" which was truly "The Holy of Holies." ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... Roman New Year's day (March 1) by the primitive method of friction.[287] The Vestals beyond doubt represented the unmarried daughters of the primitive Latin family, and the penus Vestae, a kind of Holy of Holies of the Roman State, recalled the penus or store-closet of the agricultural home; this penus was cleansed on June 15 for the reception of the first fruits of the harvest, and then closed until June 7 of ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... trace behind it in its passage through the heavens. The soul of the spectator was filled with the sense of its beauty, whilst admiration was sublimed into awe. Speaking to us strange and wonderful things of the hidden Holy of Holies which it seemed to have left, it passed on its headlong journey of billions and trillions of miles with the glad speed of a love-inspired emanation from the Most High. It left us to wonder at its transient visit, and to wish in ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... perfunctory and exercises practically little control over its believers. Yet Christianity has come here, as it has entered all the other sacred cities of India, and under the very shadow of the Hindu holy of holies, within the circle that bounds the favored gate of heaven, it has set up and maintained several of the most prosperous and well attended schools in India. The government has established a college of high standard in a handsome gothic building, ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... that music is an unfathomable mystery, like all half truths has wrought much mischief, and has greatly retarded musical progress in social life. Behind the Divine Art, as behind Religion, lies the inscrutable mystery of Life, and in both there is a Holy of Holies only the consecrated may enter. Before the portals of this are reached there is a broad, fertile field for intellectual activity that all may work to advantage, preparing the way to the ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... eye followed those paths of ancient pilgrimage; and through the silence of the arid and endless hills, stretching even to the dim peak of Sinai, the whole history of those forty years was unfolded before him, and the mystery of his own ministries revealed to him; and that other Holy of Holies, of which the mountain peaks were the altars, and the mountain clouds the veil, the firmament of his Father's dwelling, opened to him still more brightly and infinitely as he drew nearer his death?—until at last, on the shadeless summit, from him on ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... the character of drop-scenes, are apt to be paltry, indeed the irreverent stranger may even be reminded of painted caravans at village fairs. But in large cathedrals the screen which stands between the people in the nave and the priests in the holy of holies, presents a vast facade, upon which are ranged, in three, four, or five stories, a multitude of sacred pictures covered with gold and decked with jewels. These elaborate contrivances correspond to the reredos ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... desire to defend our present matrimonial and family arrangements, there will be no difficulty in making out an overwhelming case against them. No doubt until then we shall continue to hold up the British home as the Holy of Holies in the temple of honorable motherhood, innocent childhood, manly virtue, and sweet and wholesome national life. But with a clever turn of the hand this holy of holies can be exposed as an Augean stable, so filthy that ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... that life's greatest secrets must be sought. The philosophies excogitated by the insulated intellect help nothing toward even a glimpse of these secrets. In one of his later poems, that entitled 'House', he has intimated, and forcibly intimated, his sense of the impossibility of penetrating to the Holy of Holies of this wondrous human heart, though assured as he is that all our hopes in regard to the soul's destiny are warmed and cherished by what radiates thence. He quotes, in the last stanza of this poem, from Wordsworth's sonnet on the Sonnet, "With ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... friend and comrade; could he hope for more than that in so short a time? In making haste might he not lose all he had gained? Besides, in the service and worship of the one dear woman in the world, a man is his own High Priest, and none save himself may enter into the Holy of Holies. And what could this peach-picker of Paris pavements know of such a Holy of Holies? Nothing, absolutely nothing. So he sat silent, doubly tongue-tied ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... Temple, so that all who are capable of receiving it may follow its lines of published thought; and secondly, Occult Christianity will again descend into the Adytum, dwelling behind the Veil which guards the "Holy of Holies," into which only the Initiate may enter. Then again will occult teaching be within the reach of those who qualify themselves to receive it, according to the ancient rules, those who are willing in modern days to meet the ancient demands, made on all ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... portion of a half-known corner of the world. But for us it is sufficiently grave. The Peking-Paotingfu railway is being rapidly destroyed; Fentai station, but six miles from Peking—think of it, only six miles from this Manchu holy of holies—has gone up in flames; a great steel bridge has succumbed to the destroying energy of dynamite. All the European engineers have fled into Peking; and, worst of all, the Boxer banners have been unfurled; and lo and ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... the infinite in the finite, shows the problem of philosophy, the identity of the real and the ideal, solved in sensuous appearance. Art is the true organon and warrant of philosophy; she opens up to philosophy the holy of holies, is for philosophy the supreme thing, the revelation of all mysteries. Poesy and philosophy (the aesthetic intuition of the artist and the intellectual intuition of the thinker) are most intimately related; they were united in the old mythology—why should ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... allegory, to grub among the dust and sticks and straws of the floor. In the times of the French Revolution, French soldiers, it is said, stabled their horses in some of the magnificent cathedrals of France; but some of us are guilty of a far worse sacrilege in that holy of holies which we call the soul. "Ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold," but with blood, precious blood, even the blood of Christ. And the soul which cost that, we are ready to sell any day in the open market for a ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson

... waiting-rooms, made more or less magnificent by glorious paintings, wonderful Gobelin tapestries, and unique sculptures, till they reached at last what is called the anti-camera segreto, where none but Cardinals are permitted to enter and wait for an audience with the Supreme Pontiff. At the door of this "Holy of Holies" stood a Guarda Nobile on sentry duty,—but he might have been a figure of painted marble for all the notice he took of their approach. As they passed into the room, which was exceedingly high and narrow, Monsignor ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... holy of holies: in the farther apartment of that building which you saw rising amid ...
— Gems Gathered in Haste - A New Year's Gift for Sunday Schools • Anonymous

... line of the Euphrates. The Black Sea was held securely by a Roman fleet. Pompey passed down into Syria. Antioch surrendered without resistance. Tyre and Damascus followed. Jerusalem was taken by storm, and the Roman general entered the Holy of Holies. Of all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean Egypt only was left independent, and of all the islands only Cyprus. A triumphal inscription in Rome declared that Pompey, the people's general, had in three years captured fifteen hundred cities, and had slain, taken, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... point in 1841, in the order of the fulfillment of the types in Leviticus and New Testament testimony, (which we have referred to in the Way Marks) Jesus received his Bride and the kingdoms of this world, and entered the Holy of Holies as our Great High Priest, and commenced the cleansing of the Sanctuary. Why? Because here the 2300 days ended:—The appointed time. At this point too, commenced the trial of God's people. Surely you never ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates

... gloried in giving utterance to the most fearful blasphemies, in destroying and profaning the altars, in overthrowing the statues of saints, in treading the host beneath their feet or casting it to dogs.—At the village of Berg in Weingarten, they set up in the holy of holies the image of the devil, which they had taken from the representation of the temptation of the Saviour in the wilderness. In the village of Boos, they roasted a crucifix before a fire."—Vide Hurter's Memorabilia, concerning the French allies in Swabia, who attempted to found ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... church and all who were gathered there to witness her happiness, and the soft, dark eyes looked straight before her to the altar, where her husband to be awaited her, as though that altar was to her as the entrance to the holy of holies; ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... fighting like wild beasts. When the lance was broke, the knife was the weapon; when the knife failed, they tore with their hands and teeth. But the Romans advanced against all. They advanced till they were near the inner temple. A scream of wrath and agony at the possible profanation of the Holy of Holies rose from the multitude. I leaped from the battlement, called upon Israel to follow me, and ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... every assimilable element of the Chasters doctrine; he had either assimilated and transmuted it by the alchemy of his own temperament, or he had reacted obviously and filled in Chasters' gaps and pauses. Chasters could beat a road to the Holy of Holies, and shy at entering it. But in spite of all the man's roughness, in spite of a curious flavour of baseness and malice about him, the spirit of truth had spoken through him. God has a use for harsh ministers. In one man God ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... house of the Lord'; and there—dwelling between the cherubim, the types of the whole order of creatural life, and above the mercy-seat, that spoke of pardon, and the ark that held the law, and behind the veil, in the thick darkness of the holy of holies, where no feet trod, save once a year one white-robed priest, in the garb of a penitent, and bearing the blood that made atonement—shone the light of the glory of God, the visible majesty ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... was only following out the common practice when he smashed with his battle-axe the hideous gods of the Mexicans, and washed and purified with clean water, the reeking, gory, ill-smelling slaughter-houses which were the Aztec Holy of Holies, and adorned them with crosses and images of the Blessed Virgin Mary. When Charles the IX. offered Henry of Navarre a choice of death, mass, or the Bastille on the night of Saint Bartholomew, he gave him one more chance than ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... overstepped the limits of "das Ewig-Weibliche." No act of hers ran counter to the most exalted requirements of morality. Her being was pervaded by high seriousness, noble dignity, serene cheerfulness. "She dwelt always in the Holy of holies of thought, and even her most daring wishes for herself and mankind leapt shyly heavenwards like pure sacrificial flames." Nothing more touching can be found in the history of the human heart than her confession before death: "With sublime rapture I dwell upon my ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... to your wasted and burnt out affections—you would ask Him. You would seek for Him. You would change this well curb into an altar of prayer. You would change this noon-tide glare into an inner temple, into a holy of holies where the soul and God would meet and ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... disturbances, imbalances and instabilities, before mating, presents another field. It remains to be seen whether we shall thereby, in one generation, be able to affect at all the germplasm, hitherto revered by all pious biologists as an environment-proof holy of holies. No one can deny, in the face of the multitude of evidence available, that internal secretion disturbances occur in the mother, which, when grave, offer in the infant gross proof of their significance, and therefore when slight must more subtly work upon it. Endocrine disturbances ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... girls, ravishingly beautiful in their dark, semi-mysterious way, had been brought from some out-of-the-way French convent to the life of the great city, where to gain entree into society's holy of holies became ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... as they went in. He felt nervous as he crossed the threshold, but ascribed the momentary trepidation to the fact that he was breaking the strictest rule of the whole establishment, which forbade a boy under severest penalties to come near this holy of holies where the masters ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... again; perhaps with the hope of obtaining one of those brilliant revenges which please all women, even the noblest and least worldly,—for may we not believe that even the angels retain some portion of their self-love as they gather in serried ranks before the Holy of Holies? ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Holy of holies" :   sanctum sanctorum, tabernacle, sanctuary, sacredness, Judaism



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