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More "Sackcloth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Bible needs any description of Oriental mourning for the dead. The rent garments and sackcloth (2 Sam. iii. 31), loud weeping and wailing (ver. 32), protracted lamentation as for Jacob (Gen. 1.10 and 11), and for Moses (Deut. xxxiv. 8), and the hired mourning women (Jer. ix. 17, and Matt. ix. 23), were to be found ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... it were to mark the day Of penitence and prayer divine, When pilgrim-chiefs, in sad array, Sought Melrose, holy shrine. With naked foot, and sackcloth vest, And arms enfolded on his breast, Did every pilgrim go; The standers-by might hear aneath, Footstep, or voice, or high-drawn breath. Through all the lengthened row; No lordly look, no martial stride, Gone was their ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... entered the dome Of thy neighbor, and stolen the wife from her home; Thou hast slaughtered the husband with treacherous wile, And the vengeance of Heaven rewardeth thy guile! The child of thy love from thy arms shall be torn— And in sackcloth and ashes thy proud head shall mourn— The wives of thy household thy rivals shall be— As thou didst unto others, so be it to thee! And the sword thou hast taken, with murderous art, From thy heaven-doomed lineage ne'er ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... through the apostle's soul when he thought that he, as a survivor of death's reign on earth, might behold the resurrection without himself entering the grave! Upon a time when he should be perchance at home, or at Damascus, or, it might be, at Jerusalem, the sun would become as blood, the moon as sackcloth of hair, the last trump would swell ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... a darken'd conscience clothes The world in sackcloth; and, I fear, The stain of life this new heart loathes, Still clouds my sight; but ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... interest, contributed little to conciliate esteem. He was often strangely rapt—it may have been from his genius; and, had its grandeur and darkness been then divulged, susceptible of explanation; but, at the time, it threw, as it were, around him the sackcloth of penitence. Sitting amid the shrouds and rattlins, in the tranquillity of the moonlight, churming an inarticulate melody, he seemed almost apparitional, suggesting dim reminiscences of him who shot ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... for advantages like these, etc. And to all these things, which were so true and sensible, I could find only one word to say: his name, Gontran, Gontran, Gontran! Gontran or the convent, and the most rigorous one of all, the Carmel, in sackcloth and ashes! Oh, Aunt Louise, do look at him! He listens to all this with an unbearable ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... it took Jonah three days to go from one end to the other with his message of destruction; but at the end of the first day "the people of Nineveh believed God; and when the word came unto the king of Nineveh he arose from his throne, and laid his robe from him, and put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes and said: Let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yea, let them turn, every one from his evil way. And God saw their works, that they ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... with whom she shall or shall not correspond, now that she is no longer a child. Doubtless you remember that I warned you against her from the first day I ever set my eyes upon her, and predicted that you would repent in sackcloth and ashes your charitable credulity? I swore then she would prove a thief; you vowed she was a saint! But, nevertheless, I have no intention of turning spy at this late day, and assisting you in the eminently honorable work of waylaying letters from ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... with spices. At the intercession of Reuben they did not kill Joseph. Threw him alive into a pit. Ishmaelites took him down into Egypt. Sold him to Potiphar. Judah advised that he be raised from the pit. Jacob recognized the coat. Refused comfort. Rent his clothes and put on sackcloth. They took his coat. Killed a kid and dipped the coat in its blood. Brought it to Jacob. "This have we found; know now whether it be ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... the dress, except her wearing of it. There is a grace of carriage that will make purple of sackcloth. Still, the gown was well cut of fawn-coloured stuff, which her stockings and shoes matched. Her face was generous—proud, too, yet tender and very beautiful. The soft rose of her cheeks, the misty blue of her eyes stood ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... although she knew death awaited her there; and, if Grandfather had been correctly informed, an incident had then taken place, which connects her with our story. This Mary Dyer had entered the mint-master's dwelling, clothed in sackcloth and ashes, and seated herself in our great chair, with a sort of dignity and state. Then she proceeded to deliver what she called a message from Heaven; but in the midst of it, they ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... denounced against all these offences; and the persecution of the Quakers was again renewed. A Quaker woman had recently frightened the Old South congregation in Boston by entering that meeting-house clothed in sackcloth, with ashes on her head, her feet bare, and her face blackened, intending to personify the small-pox, with which she threatened the colony, in punishment ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... sort. My tales if often professional (as you remarked just now) have never been technical. So I'll just tell you that the ship was of a very ornamental sort once, with lots of grace and elegance and luxury about her. Yes, once! She was like a pretty woman who had suddenly put on a suit of sackcloth and stuck revolvers in her belt. But she floated lightly, she moved nimbly, she was ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... the memory of those who are acquainted with Italian history innumerable pictures of multitudes commoved to tears, of tyrannies destroyed and constitutions founded by tumultuous assemblies, of hostile parties and vindictive nobles locked in fraternal embraces, of cities clothed in sackcloth for their sins, of exhortations to peace echoing by the banks of rivers swollen with blood, of squares and hillsides resonant with sobs, of Lenten nights illuminated with bonfires of Vanity.[1] In the midst of these melodramatic ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... at the first moment that time must pass by. He had become certain that her mad love for the man had perished. He had been made sure that she had repented her own deed in sackcloth and ashes. It had been acknowledged to him by her father that she had been anxious to be separated from her husband, if her husband would consent to such a separation. And then, remembering as he did his last interview with her, having ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... American soil for liberty, one of these descendants of the youth who landed on American soil with Columbus, in 1492, has been found. They disliked Andros, and the members of this now extensive and widely scattered family were in sackcloth and ashes, so to speak, when King James, in 1688, gave Andros a vice-regal commission to rule New York ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... Joseph from Canaan was complete. It was an evanishment for which there was neither sackcloth nor surprise; and though there came no news of him it cannot be said that Canaan did not hear of him, for surely it could hear itself talk. The death of Jonas Tabor and young Louden's crime and flight incited ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... bowl. These are the consequences of a persistency in sectional strife and domination, foreseen and foretold by me in the "Southern Monitor," published in Philadelphia; no one regarded the warning. Now hundreds of thousands are weeping in sackcloth and ashes over the untimely end of hundreds of thousands slain in battle! And thousands yet must fall, before ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the true occasion for them they were absent. So, too, at the first meal in the new house, there was none of that desirable sense of setting up a family altar, but a calamitous impression of irretrievable upheaval, in honor of which sackcloth and ashes seemed the only wear. Yet even the next day the Lares and Penates had regained something of their wonted cheerfulness, and life had begun again with the first breakfast. In fact, I found myself already so firmly established that, meeting ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not. Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which were done in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgement than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works which have been done in thee ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... an eloquent sermon by the eminent Darius Borwell, a Presbyterian divine of considerable repute, and asked him why it was that, as he seemed to set forth, God had changed His mind after creating spiritual man, and had created a man of dust. She had later repented her scandalous conduct in sackcloth and ashes; but it did not prevent her from abruptly leaving the chapel on a subsequent Sunday when another divine, this time a complaisant Methodist, quite satisfied with his theories of endless future rewards and fiery punishments, dwelt at ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... food nor of clothing; but I suffered less from hunger than from cold. In hottest summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost in a state of nudity; no shoes, no stockings, no jacket, no trowsers; nothing but coarse sackcloth or tow-linen, made into a sort of shirt, reaching down to my knees. This I wore night and day, changing it once a week. In the day time I could protect myself pretty well, by keeping on the sunny side of the house; and in bad weather, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... with a leer, "sitting in sackcloth and ashes, more ashes than sackcloth. Have you got some clothes ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... vigorously enforced in olden time than it is now. A certain couple having been guilty of illicit intercourse, and also within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity, appeared before the Presbytery of Lanark, and made confession in sackcloth. They were ordered to return to their own session, and to stand at the kirk-door, barefoot and barelegged, from the second bell to the last, and thereafter in the public place of repentance; and, at direction of the session, thereafter to go through the whole kirks of the presbytery, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... that he seemed to be much dirtier than any that had been seen on the preceding day. On a nearer inspection, his head, and the whole of his body were found to be covered with ashes, and a very dirty piece of sackcloth fastened round his loins; besides this he appeared to be suffering great distress of mind, and presented a most wretched and woeful appearance. Lander asked him the cause of his grief, and why he had covered himself with ashes in such a manner, when ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... you did I don't know as I blame you, George. A night like that is enough to lose any one's temper. I lost mine. The Foam Flake ran away with it. But he's repentin' in sackcloth and ashes, I guess. Judah says the old horse is lamer than ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... were seldom shut against the returning penitent; but a severe and solemn form of discipline was instituted, which, while it served to expiate his crime, might powerfully deter the spectators from the imitation of his example. Humbled by a public confession, emaciated by fasting and clothed in sackcloth, the penitent lay prostrate at the door of the assembly, imploring with tears the pardon of his offences, and soliciting the prayers of the faithful. [147] If the fault was of a very heinous nature, whole years of penance ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... tears, and forms of woe, Are turn'd to joy and praises now; I throw my sackcloth on the ground, And ease and gladness ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... under those climates. From thence it commeth that the people of the East partes did breake and rent in peeces their garmentes when they had understanding of euil newes. Wherefore they did lye weltering and tumblinge upon the ground, put on sackcloth, put on ashes, or dust upon their heads, yea then, when they pretended to shew some repentance, and to manifest or set out an inward greefe: all which thinges would bee founde, and thought rediculous, foolish, and to bee laughed at amonge nations & peoples, on this side ...
— A Treatise Of Daunses • Anonymous
... was bidden to wait the Pope's pleasure; and here, in the midst of that bitter winter weather, while the fierce winds of the Apennines were sweeping sleet upon him in their passage from Monte Pellegrino to the plain, he knelt barefoot, clothed in sackcloth, fasting from dawn till eve, for three whole days. On the morning of the fourth day, judging that Gregory was inexorable, and that his suit would not be granted, Henry retired to the Chapel of S. Nicholas, which stood within this second precinct. There he called ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... not the fact, but this savage glee over it. It's as though a lot of caged animals set up a howl of delight every time the cage door was opened and a new pair was introduced into the pen. They ought to perform the wedding ceremony in sackcloth and ashes, after duly fasting, accompanied by a few faithful friends garbed ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... men of high standing in society, like Isaiah and Daniel; humble men, like the ploughman Elisha and the herdsman Amos; men married and unmarried, are numbered among the Prophets. Living poorly, wearing sackcloth, feeding on vegetables, imprisoned or assassinated by kings, stoned by the people, the most unpopular of men, sometimes so possessed by the spirit as to rave like madmen, obliged to denounce judgments and woes against kings and people, it is no wonder that they often ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... back of our warlike minds, and a yearning for that world of beauty which might have been, but which the acts of the clever and the practical have turned into carrion among the ruins. Would it matter now if we were bankrupt, and our Empire among the things that were, if only we were turning to sackcloth and ashes because of that dousing of the glim in the heart of ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed fasting, and arrayed themselves in sackcloth, as well the great as ...
— The Story Of The Prophet Jonas • Anonymous
... is in no danger of perishing and needs no memorial. Sackcloth and silence are what it suggests to those who have guided the action of England; and Englishmen must bear the responsibility for that action and share its shame. It is too early for atoning memorials; nor is it possible for those who take part ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... healthier sign, however, that the more recent biographers of Burns snap their fingers in the face of convention, and, looking to the legacy he has left the world, refuse to sit in sackcloth and ashes round his grave, either in the character of moralising mourners or charitable mutes. Whatever has to be said against them nowadays, the 'cant of concealment'—to adopt another of Gilfillan's phrases—is not to be laid to their charge. Rather have they rushed to the other extreme, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... their class from the frying-pan of qui, quae, quod, into the fire of English demonstrative and relative pronouns get a foretaste of the fire that dieth not. Facilis descensus Averni. Happy if they do not lose heart, and step downward from the fire to ashes—reinforced with sackcloth. ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... questions would be very hard to answer, were there not other questions that I could ask. Of course I was wrong to marry him. I know that now, and I repent my sin in sackcloth and ashes. But I did not leave him after I married him till he had brought against me horrid accusations,—accusations which a woman could not bear, which, if he believed them himself, must have made it impossible for him to ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... say unto you, It shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city. 13 Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which were done in you, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14 But it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment, than for you. 15 And thou, Capernaum, shalt thou be exalted unto heaven? thou shalt be brought down unto Hades. 16 He that heareth you heareth me; and he that rejecteth ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... but how much of her time had been occupied in doing the tasks of others? He knew well that she disliked the Carrolls. She would speak of her own dislike of them as of her great sin, of which it was necessary that she should repent in sackcloth and ashes. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... this 'entrainement de jeunesse?' I have repented in sackcloth and ashes, and made what reparation I could by adopting and giving my name to one who is a perpetual reminder to me of a moment's infatuation. He little knows, poor boy, and never will, I hope. 'Il n'a plus que moi ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... card, and when out among the people he was always figuratively clothed in sackcloth and ashes. A few extracts from his book may be ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... salvation to mourning Jerusalem, in which the covenant-people appears to the Prophet as personified. (Jerusalem does not stand for "the carried away Zionites;" it is an ideal person, the afflicted and bowed down widow sitting on the ground in sackcloth; the distressed and mourning mother of the children partly carried away, and partly killed,—compare chap. iii. 26, where Jerusalem, desolate and emptied, sits upon the ground.) But this salvation can be granted to those ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... can the moral perversity of a young woman who never regrets a witty deception or a graceful subterfuge, but repents sometimes in sackcloth and ashes for her truth-telling. I'd give half my forest now to have back the letter I sent you yesterday. But since I cannot recall it, I wish you to bear in mind that what was true of a woman's heart yesterday, to-day ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... Sackcloth, The Transfigured. By William L. Watkinson Saints Converse with God, The. By Francis Fenelon Salvation, Making Light of Christ and. By Richard Baxter Satan, The Fall of. By George C. Lorimer Saurin, Jacques, Paul Before Felix and Drusilla Savonarola, Girolamo, The Ascension of Christ Schleiermacher, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... eyes fell upon a shop where were no jewels, nor gold, nor costly silks, nor pearls of great price; but all that was in it was coarse sackcloth, and rough and hairy garments, and heaps of ashes, and here and there a loaf of bitter bread, and bitter herbs, and bottles wherein tears were stored. As he gazed on this shop something seemed to whisper to his heart, "Go and buy." So he went with his sorrowful heart, as one not ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... the trifle enclosed, $20, as a token of my friendship to the good cause, whose mighty burden of enlightenment is to hold the growth of future cycles with an all-controlling destiny. I am glad to see that those who have been willing to wear the sackcloth and ashes are beginning to receive the crowns of the olive and the bay upon their consecrated heads. Many will find it very agreeable, now, to sail in upon the sunny and ardent tide of the rippling river, forgetting that once it was a darksome, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... accursed astronomy. Boccaccio and the Troubadours should have been burned instead, and if this had been done all the abominable modern literature which would persuade the faithful that this world is not all sackcloth and ashes would never have been written. Away with him who says that the earth is as beautiful as heaven," and Gautier's phrase, "Moi, je trouve la terre aussi belle que le ciel, et je pense que la correction de la forme est la vertu," has ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... "How do you wear sackcloth and ashes?" he cried, catching me in his arms as he made the query. "If you've got any in the house bring 'em along and I'll put them on. Seriously, girl, I'm awfully sorry I let my temper out of its little cage. No nice thing getting angry at your bride, because she doesn't like cats. I'll ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... come back again—safe enough," commented Phil, philosophically, holding paint-brush No. 1 in his mouth, while he manipulated with No. 2. "He will come back in sackcloth and ashes; he is just that sort, you know,—thunder and lightning, fire and tow. And they will make it up ecstatically in secret, and pretend that nothing has been the matter, and there will be no going into the parlor ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid ashen-gray; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... your mother's touching dream of becoming a boor, and repenting your sins in sackcloth and ashes! That maternal idyl still troubles your poor, shallow brain, does it? For my part, I think no spectacle on earth is so ridiculous as that of the repentant sinner. It is the most humiliating character in which a man can appear before the world, and it is unworthy of you, Carlo. Hold ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... enjoyed him long enough; I must have him now;' at which bold civility of theirs, though I were astonished, yet it added unto my wonder, that his person could not be thought, at most, but ordinary handsome; his hair, which was cut very short, half grey, his doublet but of sackcloth, cut to his shirt, and his breeches only of plain grey cloth. Informing myself of some standers by who he was, I was told he was one of the gallantest men in the world, as having killed eight or nine men in single fight; and that, for this reason, the ladies made so much ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... not yet effected—that there is neither sense nor force in our baptism—and that instead of the Apostolic command, 'Rejoice, and again I say unto you, rejoice'; baptized Christians are to be put on sackcloth and ashes, and try, by torturing themselves and others, to procure a rescue from the devil. Again, let me thank you for your remembrance of me, and believe me from the hour we first met at Bristol, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... of flowers and confetti on hand, which they were anxious to dispose of suddenly—since in ten minutes the horses would run, and then the carriages must leave the Corso. It was the last day of Carnival, and to-morrow—sackcloth and ashes. How the masks crowd around them; how the beautiful faces, unmasked, are smiling! Look at them well, stamp them on your heart, for many and many one shall we see never again. Another Carnival will bring them ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Assyria. (34) He descended from his throne, removed his crown, strewed ashes on his head instead, took off his purple garments, and rolled about in the dust of the highways. In all the streets royal heralds proclaimed the king's decree bidding the inhabitants fast three days, wear sackcloth, and supplicate God with tears and prayers to avert the threatened doom. The people of Nineveh fairly compelled to God's mercy to descend upon them. They held their infants heavenward, and amid streaming ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... mulberries, apricots and almonds, twisted fig-trees and climbing roses, grow joyfully wherever the parcelled water flows in its many channels. Above this line, on the sides of the vale, everything is bare and brown and dry. But the depth of the valley is an embroidered sash of bloom laid across the sackcloth of the desert. And in the centre of this long verdure runs the parent river, a flood of clear green; rushing, leaping, curling into white foam; filling its channel of thirty or forty feet from bank to bank, and making the silver-leafed ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... to commemorate the deeds of the last 25 years! This is the state which not to be proud of, Mr. Vansittart said was proof of baseness in an Englishman! It is in this situation of the country, that Pitt Clubs have the insolence to hold their triumphal carousals!—Shall we never see these men in sackcloth? These insolent men, while wallowing in wealth, do not reflect on the pangs which must wring the poor man's heart before he can so far subdue the feelings of the husband and the father as to make him "desert his family;" or, if they do reflect on them, they must be ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... and who so joyful as all the AEthiop people? For they had stood watching the monster from the cliffs, wailing for the maiden's fate. And already a messenger had gone to Cepheus and Cassiopoeia, where they sat in sackcloth and ashes on the ground, in the innermost palace chambers, awaiting their daughter's end. And they came, and all the city with them, to see the wonder, with songs and with dances, with cymbals and harps, and received their daughter back again, as ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... resumed Romeo. "We soaked it in kerosene, and put our suits into the back seat—our caps and goggles and everything. We took out all the pieces of iron and steel and gave 'em to the junk man, and then we repented in sackcloth and ashes." ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... about indulgences. He amused himself, on his sick bed, by reading the lives of the saints. His enthusiastic mind was affected, and he resolved to pass from worldly to spiritual knighthood. He became a saint, after the notions of the age; that is, he fasted, wore sackcloth, lived on roots and herbs, practised austerities, retired to lonely places, and spent his time in contemplation and prayer. The people were attracted by his sanctity, and followed him in crowds. His heart burned to convert heretics; and, to prepare himself for his ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... voices. All the melody is in walk and gesture; they are as graceful as cats, and the women have exactly the 'breasts like pomegranates' of their poetry. A tall Bedaween woman came up to us in the field yesterday to shake hands and look at us. She wore a white sackcloth shift and veil, und weiter nichts, and asked Mrs. Hekekian a good many questions about me, looked at my face and hands, but took no notice of my rather smart gown which the village women admired so much, shook hands again with the air of a princess, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... when fashionable people finish the season by going to Goodwood—and to Goodwood Elinor was going with a party, Lady Mariamne and a number of the "set." She told her mother, to amuse her, of the new dresses she had got for this important occasion. "Phil says one may go in sackcloth and ashes the remainder of the year, but we must be fine for Goodwood," she said. "I wanted him to believe that I had too many clothes already, but he was inexorable. It is not often, is it, that one's husband is more anxious than ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... light a heart or felt so well satisfied as since I smashed those murder mills. For years I had an aching, weeping heart. I would often put ashes on my head. I felt like wearing sackcloth. I can see the hand of God in my life. From a small child I loved the world, used to be fond of pets. It seemed that my pets always came to grief. Then I was very anxious to be thought smart. Would try to write and wanted a thorough education. I became ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... needs and answering those questions,—this is inexpressibly precious; and with the light thus given we must let our spirits sing a new song, for we are nigh to God, and it is still true that "none enter the king's gate clothed with sackcloth." Joy and praise have their dwelling ever within those boundaries; for He inhabiteth the praises ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... Congo I got my first glimpse of the native fashion in mourning. It is a survival of the biblical "sackcloth and ashes." As soon as a death occurs all the members of the family smear their faces and bodies with ashes or dirt. Even the babies show these rude symbols of woe. It gives the person thus adorned a weird and ghastly appearance. When ashes and dust are not available for this purpose, ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... because they changed not their minds. [11:21]Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works which have been done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have changed their minds long ago in sackcloth and ashes. [11:22]But I tell you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in a day of judgment than for you. [11:23]And you, Capernaum, which are exalted even to heaven, shall go down even to hades; for if the mighty works which have been done in you had ...
— The New Testament • Various
... were wise that ye should wear a sackcloth garment next your skin, for penance;" and in this also did Sir Bors as he was counselled. And afterwards he armed himself and ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... was really dead, and so she put up a monument to her memory, and showed it to King Pericles, when after long years of absence he came to see his much-loved child. When he heard that she was dead, his grief was terrible to see. He set sail once more, and putting on sackcloth, vowed never to wash his face or cut his hair again. There was a pavilion erected on deck, and there he lay alone, and for three months he ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... three of us had better go up in sackcloth, and throw ashes on our foreheads as we meet Hopkins in the garden," said Lily, "and then I know he'll heap coals of fire on our heads by sending us an early dish of peas. And Dingles would bring us in a pheasant, only that pheasants don't grow ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... I have tried to while away the hours. I intended this morning to make the necessary arrangements for the marriage. After my interview with Judith I had not the heart. I put it off till to-morrow. I have observed the day as a day of mourning. I have worn sackcloth and ashes. I have done such penance as I could for the grievous fault I have committed. Carlotta is in bed and asleep. She went early, says Antoinette, having a bad headache. No ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... whom God had bound together was shocking and wicked. Lady Susanna was louder and less just. She did not believe that Mary had done anything to merit expulsion from the family; but she did think that her return to it should be accompanied by sackcloth and ashes. Mary had been pert to her, and she was not prone to forgive. Lady Alice had no opinion,—could say nothing about it; but would be happy if, by her services, she ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... he, a British officer, in a mad impulse (I am like him) marries my mother, nobody's daughter, and a ballet dancer, during a run he made to New York city just thirty-five years ago; my sire repents in sackcloth and ashes, dragging us with him; sells out; living by his wits anyhow and anywhere, chiefly at gaming places abroad. At a German suburb once he had left us, my late husband came to our cottage to enquire his road; as he was an ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... lapse of many centuries, when Jonah came to Nineveh, and prophesied the overthrow of the city on account of the evil done by the people, it was Pharaoh who, seized by fear and terror, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes, and with his own mouth made proclamation and published this decree through Nineveh: "Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not feed nor drink water; for I know there ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... a space that I met her— Just for a day in the train! It began when she feared it would wet her, That tiniest spurtle of rain: So we tucked a great rug in the sashes, And carefully padded the pane; And I sorrow in sackcloth and ashes, Longing ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... are turned to frowns, Her laugh a sigh, Sackcloth and ashes for ball gowns— Ah, ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... laughed inwardly at the folly: but he must obey orders. Yet he hesitated, when he landed and saw the Jews come to him in thousands, covering the country like a cloud, young and old, rich and poor, unarmed, many clothed in sackcloth and with ashes on their heads, and beseeching him that he would not commit this abomination. He rebuked them sternly. He had a whole army at his back, and would compel them to obey. They answered that they must obey God rather than man. Petronius's heart relented; ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... itself with still larger revelations of the Divine Truth. The great opportunities for renunciation come not in the guise of temporal and material things; whether one shall eat or drink this thing or the other; whether he shall forego the theatre, or deprive himself of music, or array himself in sackcloth and ashes, or in purple and fine linen. The real question comes in the guise ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... got fairly into the wine. The cura had thrown aside his sanctity and become human like the rest; the padres had forgotten their sackcloth and bead-roll, and the senior of them, Padre Joaquin, entertained the table with spicy adventures which had occurred to him before he became a monk. Echevarria related anecdotes of Paris, with many adventures he had encountered ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... remained in the isolation to which they had been condemned by reason of their disease. But they think to themselves of the hollow eyes in Samaria there, and the hideous meals, that might stay hunger but brought no nourishment, and of the king with sackcloth beneath his royal robes, and, forgetting everything but their abundance and these people's empty stomachs, they say, 'Not thus must we do,' as the Hebrew might be translated, 'this is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace; and that is a sin. And if we continue dumb, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the years whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah,—that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem. And I set my face to the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes" (Dan 9:2,3). So that I say, as the Spirit is the helper and the governor of the soul, when it prayeth according to the will of God; so it guideth by and according to, the Word of God and his promise. Hence it is that our Lord Jesus ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... land, such a wholesale conversion of a foreign city, even if such a visit as Jonah's were likely, must be regarded as extremely improbable, to say nothing of the impossibility of the animals fasting and wearing sackcloth, iii. 7, 8. The miraculous fish and the miraculous tree which grew up in a single night forbid us to look for history in the book. Nineveh's fame is a thing of the past, iii. 3; the book is written after, probably long after, its fall in ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... my papa is the medium of that punishment. Well, then, there's a Providence proved. But, in the mean time, mamma, what has become of my beauty? It is gone—it is gone—and now for humility and repentance—now for sackcloth and ashes. I am now no longer beautiful!—so off, off go the ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... poop. Among them was Christobal, interested, like the rest, in the floating of the mine. And forthwith Elsie fell from the clouds, and was brought back, shuddering, to cold reason again. She was sick at heart; she hated herself for her self-abasement. She must gird her with sackcloth and mourn; and the fight must be fought now, without parley or hesitation, unless the sweetness were to go forth from life for ever, and all things should turn ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... that you've no patience with such stuff As by Renan is writ, and when you read (Why do you read?) have hardly strength enough To hold your hand from flinging the vile screed Into the fire. That were a wasteful deed Which you'd repent in sackcloth extra rough; For books cost money, and I'm told you care To lay up treasures Here ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... Daniel, which is still more striking,—"They that wear soft clothing are in kings' houses." Daniel was first in power in the palace of the greatest monarchs of his time. Yet what do we read of him? First of his living upon pulse and water, afterwards of his fasting in sackcloth and ashes, at another time of his mourning three full weeks, eating no pleasant bread, neither flesh nor wine coming in his mouth, nor anointing himself at all, till those three weeks were fulfilled. Can any thing more clearly show the duty of self-denial, even in lawful things, in the case of ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... looked like a Maypole siding a marrow-bone. Ash Wednesday got wedged in (as was concerted) betwixt Christmas and Lord Mayor's Days. Lord! how he laid about him! Nothing but barons of beef and turkeys would go down with him—to the great greasing and detriment of his new sackcloth bib and tucker. And still Christmas Day was at his elbow, plying him the wassail-bowl, till he roared, and hiccup'd, and protested there was no faith in dried ling, but commended it to the devil for a sour, windy, acrimonious, censorious, hy-po-crit-crit-cri-tical mess, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... infamy by posterity. As he approached the spirit land he was tortured with the dread of the scenes which he might encounter there. His crimes had condemned thousands to death and other thousands to live-long woe. He sought by priestcraft, and penances, and monastic vows, and garments of sackcloth, to efface the stains of a soul crimsoned with crime. He died, and his guilty spirit passed away to ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... eternal glory! Heaven, forgive My feebleness of arm that reached him not, And take thy servant to thy mercy. 'Tis A glorious triumph still; proud Babylon's No more; the Harlot of the Seven Hills Hath changed her scarlet raiment for sackcloth And ashes! ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... canst thou make me thus to sorrow for my son? Needs must I punish thee, and as for Alaeddin, he will assuredly be hanged.' 'And I will die for love of him,' answered Jessamine. Then Khatoun stripped her of her jewels and silken raiment and clothing her in sackcloth drawers and a shift of hair-cloth, sent her down into the kitchen and made her a scullery-wench, saying, 'Thy punishment shall be to split wood and peel onions and set fire under the cooking pots.' Quoth she, 'I am ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... words of bitterness and passion, are unworthy to receive the pledge of love. My eyes are opened to the enormity of my offence, and I abhor myself in dust and ashes; my spirit shall clothe itself in garments of sackcloth and mourning, and drink of the bitter cup of humiliation. Hear, then, my solemn vow;—nay, my mother, nay, Gabriella,—I must, I will speak. My Saviour fasted forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... He turned to her, "Look here, whatever I've done, it's all over. I've taken my punishment, and repented in sackcloth and ashes. But you can't go on for ever repenting. It wears you out. It seems to me that, after all this time, I might be allowed to leave off the sackcloth and brush the ashes out of my hair. I want to forget it if I can. But you are never—never—going to forget ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... orphans and widows may weep, but the world must not pause in its regular routine of business and of pleasure. This is natural and right. It was not intended that men should walk perpetually in sackcloth and ashes because of the sorrows that surround them. But equally true is it that they were never meant to shut their eyes and ears to those woes, and dance and sing through life heedlessly, as far too ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... inclined to argue a point; "when I like people, I should like them just the same as if they went about yelling Te Deums at the top of their voices; and when I don't like them, it wouldn't make me like them to see them dressed from head to foot in sackcloth and ashes." ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... congratulate you upon your marriage. But seriously, Herr Comrade, I ought to call you to account for your robbery of an artist from our midst. Please tell your wife that the whole city is in sackcloth and ashes over ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... women of Ely walked out barefoot to St. Etheldreda's well, with Torfrida at their head clothed in sackcloth, and with fetters on her wrists and waist and ankles; which she vowed, after the strange, sudden, earnest fashion of those times, never to take off again till she saw the French host flee from Aldreth before the face of St. Etheldreda. So they prayed, while Hereward and his men worked at the ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... Lord: "The holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months. And I will give power unto My two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.... And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... official vigilance upon it; there had been a scare about spies carrying explosives in small objects, and one of those experimental orders which pass like waves over bureaucracy had decreed first that all visitors should change their clothes for a sort of official sackcloth, and then (when this method caused some murmurs) that they should at least turn out their pockets. Colonel Morris, the officer in charge, was a short, active man with a grim and leathery face, but a lively and ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... assistance of those that were spoiled; he also seized upon a great number of those that followed Eleazar, and slew more of them. And as for the rest of the multitude of those that went so zealously to fight with the Samaritans, the rulers of Jerusalem ran out clothed with sackcloth, and having ashes on their head, and begged of them to go their ways, lest by their attempt to revenge themselves upon the Samaritans they should provoke the Romans to come against Jerusalem; to have compassion upon their country and temple, their children and their wives, and not bring ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song. In the one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one—the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... returned gladly, for he liked the rest and quiet, and the dictations gave him employment. A part of his entertainment was a trio of kittens which he had rented for the summer—rented because then they would not lose ownership and would find home and protection in the fall. He named the kittens Sackcloth and Ashes—Sackcloth being a black-and-white kit, and Ashes a joint name owned by the two others, who were gray and exactly alike. All summer long these merry little creatures played up and down the wide veranda, or chased butterflies ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... that the present manner of living must soon prove unendurable to her. It was essential that a change should be made, and that speedily, for she was aware of the limitations to her own patience. Her temperament was not one to let her sit down in sackcloth and ashes to weep over the ruins of romance. Rather, she would bestir herself to create a new sphere of activity, wherein she might find happiness in some other guise. Yet, despite the ingenuity of her mind, she could not for some time determine on the precise ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... repented marrying me," added Mrs. Yorke, who liked occasionally to crack a dry jest against matrimony, even though it should be at her own expense. "He has repented it in sackcloth and ashes, Robert Moore, as you may well believe when you see his punishment" (here she pointed to her children). "Who would burden themselves with such a set of great, rough lads as those, if they could help ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... into our streets; and if that were to haunt us by day and night, a phantom from which there was no escape, to remain till the sins of Europe were expiated, we should soon forget politics and arguments, and be in sackcloth and ashes, positive no longer, but down on our knees before Heaven in awe at this revelation of social guilt, asking simply what we ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... is going to repent of that business in sackcloth and ashes before he dies; he has received his first instalment of punishment this morning, and there is more ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... all, old chap, I was talking at random. Very well. I'll do penance in sackcloth and ashes by remaining here, and applauding your poetic efforts. I'll even help. I'm ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... chose otherwise, an inalienable asset. The renowned Sheikh had a rival—nearly as holy and more enterprising than himself. From him the young priest might expect a warm welcome. Nevertheless he did not yet abandon his former superior. Placing a heavy wooden collar on his neck, clad in sackcloth and sprinkled with ashes, he again returned to his spiritual leader, and in this penitential guise implored pardon. He was ignominiously ejected. Nor did he venture to revisit the unforgiving Sheikh. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... sick, I put on sackcloth, and humbled my soul with fasting: and my prayer shall turn ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... aware of the frauds of the fiend, resolved to hold the balance himself.—He began by throwing in a pilgrimage to a miraculous virgin.—The devil pulled out an assignation with some fair mortal Madonna, who had ceased to be immaculate.—The saint laid in the scale the sackcloth and ashes of the penitent of Lenten-time.—Satan answered the deposit by the vizard and leafy robe of the masker of the carnival. Thus did they still continue equally interchanging the sorrows of godliness with the sweets of sin; and still the saint was distressed ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... empty, some being filled, others stacked in readiness for the carriers: a Babel of sounds, of hammering clamps, of creaking barrows, of horses by the open doors rattling their heavy harness and trampling the flagstones with their heavy hoofs; a ceaseless rushing of brawny men in sackcloth aprons, of dusty men with stumps of pencils and note-books and crumpled invoices, counting and checking and reporting to other men in narrow glass offices against the wall. Outside stood the great wagons laden with the white ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... scarce quitted the apartment, when this cynic, attending him to the door with a look of morose disdain, "Were I an absolute prince," said he, "and that fellow one of my subjects, I would order him to be clothed in sackcloth, and he should drive my asses to water, that his lofty spirit might be lowered to the level of his deserts. The pride of a peacock is downright self-denial, when compared with the vanity of that coxcomb, which was naturally arrogant, but is now rendered altogether ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... childhood, one by one Did leave me dark before the natural sun, And I astonied fell, and could not pray, A thought within me to myself did say, "Is God less God that thou art left undone? Rise, worship, bless Him! in this sackcloth spun, As in that purple!"—But I answer, Nay! What child his filial heart in words can loose, If he behold his tender father raise The hand that chastens sorely? Can he choose But sob in silence with an upward gaze? And my great ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... grieve Anne, who hath been to you a loyal wife and a true, and she desires that you do forthwith renounce your evil ways and return to the new house at Stratford, and in ashes and sackcloth repent of your wanderings from the straight ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... which should go throughout all generations to the children of the nation. Then Judith went to the House of the Lord and fell upon her face and called upon the Lord who breakest the battles to bless her purpose. She went thereafter to her house, put off the garments of widowhood and of sackcloth, and bathed, and anointed herself with precious ointment, and put on the garments of gladness, with bracelets and chains and rings and ornaments to lure the eyes of all the men that should see her. Then she went forth with her maid out of the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... came to pass, when the king heard the words of the woman, that he rent his clothes; and he passed by upon the wall, and the people looked, and, behold, he had sackcloth within ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... azure expanse, bespangled with unnumbered stars, and adorned with the moon 'walking in brightness;' while the transparent surface both received and returned her silver image. Here, instead of being covered with sackcloth,[A] she shone with resplendent lustre; or rather with a lustre multiplied in proportion ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... had to desist from many of her undertakings, or perform them without his knowledge, when he feared that her severe fasts and her long prayers were wearing out her health; and Elizabeth would steal from her chamber to pray when she thought him asleep, and would wear a coarse sackcloth skirt beneath ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... prayer-meeting was called outside of Shushan. The Ark containing the scroll of the law, covered with sackcloth and strewn with ashes, was brought thither. The scroll was unrolled, and the following verses read from it: "When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, in the latter days ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... I didn't know that that was what one meant by sackcloth and ashes—do please get ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... interest that is visible in Europe. The plausible argument is that the mass of such tourists are inferior in intellect and taste to the general level of Europeans who display curiosity about history or art. Which is probably true. But it ought to be remembered by us Europeans (and in sackcloth!) that the mass of us with money to spend on pleasure are utterly indifferent to history and art. The European dilettante goes to the Uffizi and sees a shopkeeper from Milwaukee gazing ignorantly at a masterpiece, and says: "How inferior this shopkeeper from Milwaukee ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... preference for Eugene so openly, must be secretly brokenhearted, she thinks, and she looks for heavy eyes and a smileless face. But no, while there was hope Lucia waited; now that he is gone irrevocably, she bestirs herself instead of donning sackcloth. She is twenty, and of the eligibles about she must select a husband; so she no longer snubs the young men, but makes herself amiable and seductive, is always going or having company. There is no grave buried in her heart, only a rather mortifying sense of failure that she will eradicate as ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Missouri question, there was a fair trial of strength between the friends of Slavery and the friends of the Constitution. The former triumphed, and by the prime agency of one whose raiment, the remainder of his days, ought to be sackcloth and ashes,—because of the disgrace he has continued on the name of his country, and the consequent injury that he has inflicted on the cause of Freedom throughout the world. Although all the different Administrations, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... forgotten. Among the Chinese, white, and not black, is the appointed sign of mourning. The four wives of the deceased and the members of his family were accordingly dressed in the coarsest of white sackcloth, with ashes sprinkled over their faces, and they walked behind the hearse, howling. It was a piteous spectacle, reminding one of the professional and hired wailers in Palestine, where "the mourners go about the streets," uttering dismal lamentations which can be bought for money. Far ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... certain Rarey among the Friends in those days, who could control a mad bull that would rend any other man. But it was oftener the Quakers who needed the Rareys. Running naked through the public streets,—coming into meeting dressed in sackcloth, with ashes on their heads and nothing on their feet,—or sitting there with their hats on, groaning and rocking to and fro, in spite of elders, deacons, and tithing-men: these were the vagaries of the zealots, though always repudiated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... put on the sackcloth and ashes, when the striped bug came at four o'clock A.M., and we watched the tender leaves, and watered night and morning the feeble plants. "I tell you, Polly," said I, uncorking the Bordeaux raspberry vinegar, "there is not a pea here that does ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... black as sackcloth and hair, and the moon became as blood, and the stars fell unto the earth ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... about the dog when old Solmes came to say good-bye to him, and do a little more penance in sackcloth and ashes. I am using Torrens's words. The old chap made a scene—went down on his knees and burst out crying—and the dog tried to console him. Torrens seemed quite clear about what was passing ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... fighting with their neighbors; when at peace with them, worshiping their gods and giving them their daughters in marriage, then the Lord is angry, and vents His wrath on them. Thus, they are continually between two fires; now repenting in sackcloth and ashes, and now, with the help of the Lord, blessed ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... so I flee to Thee. I know that Satan, the Old Lion, is hunting me; for he is the father of the gods of Egypt, and I have insulted them and destroyed their images. I have no hope but in Thee. See, I have cast off all my beautiful robes and ornaments; I sit here in sackcloth and ashes; I have fasted and wept these seven days, because I know that I have done wrong in worshipping dumb idols, and in speaking scornfully against Joseph. But, Lord, I did it in ignorance; save me, and above all watch over Joseph, whom I love more than ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James
... when He had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... in yonder green bush, Clothed in sackcloth—a little gray friar, Like the druid of old in his temple—but hush! He's at vespers; you must not ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... flatter. My heart is dreadful weak, and prone to the vanities of this world. It makes me abhor myself in dust and sackcloth fer you to say such things ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... tenderest of human sympathy; how much more severe was the conflict of dark passions only half subdued, or malignant depravity only partially reformed. These dark lines of human nature were sometimes prominent, even when the monk was clothed in sackcloth and ashes; and are markedly visible in the life of William de Trompington. But let not the reader think that he was appointed with the hearty suffrages of the fraternity, he was elected at the recommendation of the "king," ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... the book entitled, "Truth cleared of Calumnies." His ability and sincerity have never been doubted; but some distrust of his reason may be forgiven, when we find the Quaker, a grave and happily married man, walking through the streets of Aberdeen, clothed in sackcloth and ashes, under the notion that he was commanded by the Lord to call the people unto repentance; he appealed to witnesses to prove the "agony of his spirit," and how he "had besought the Lord with tears, that this cup might ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... Scotland, in bygone times, contain many allusions to the repentance stool. A very good specimen of this old-time relic may be seen in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries, at Edinburgh. It is from the church of Old Greyfriars, of Edinburgh. In the same museum is a sackcloth, or gown of repentance, formerly used at the parish church ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... our equivalent for sackcloth and ashes, the steamer looks mournful indeed as she drives southward towards the Cape. But with lower latitudes comes warmer weather, and a sea so unutterably smooth that one loses faith in the agony of the Bay or the Gulf of Lyons, while the hellish frenzy of the North Atlantic ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... struggling sufferers, hurt to death, she lay! Shuddering, they drew her garments off—and found A robe of sackcloth next the smooth, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... stubborn rebels, ready to spurn every offer of reconciliation. He saw us, not on our knees pleading for mercy, but scorning the humble attitude of suppliants, and raising our puny arms against the authority of Heaven. He beheld us, not as the Ninevites once were, in sackcloth and ashes, but recklessly violating all his holy laws. It was in view of all the deformity, bitterness, rage and heaven-daring impiety of our naked hearts, that Christ left his throne of glory and died on the cross. It was for such beings that he voluntarily endured ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... and escapes from danger. When Holofernes came against the western nations, and spoiled them, then were the Jews terrified, and they fortified Judaea, and cryed unto God with great fervency, and humbled themselves in sackcloth, and put ashes on their heads, and cried unto the God of Israel that he would not give their wives and their children and cities for a prey, and the Temple for a profanation: and the High-priest, and all the Priests put on sackcloth and ashes, and offered ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... been pronounced against them, yet they repented. "And God saw their work, that they had returned from their evil ways, and God bethought Himself of the evil which He had spoken that He would do to them, and He did it not." Therefore say the Rabbis, "Our brethren, neither sackcloth nor fasting will gain forgiveness for sins; but repentance of the heart and good deeds; for it is not said of the men of Nineveh, 'God saw their fasting and sackcloth,' but 'God saw their work, that they had turned from their ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... every good. You cannot diffuse education, but you diffuse the taste for rubbish and something worse, in the shape of books. No good thing but has its shadow of evil attendant upon it. And if we had only to estimate by visible or human forces, we might well sit down and wrap ourselves in the sackcloth of pessimism. 'We see not yet all things put under Him'; but 'we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour,' and the vision that cheered the first martyr—of Christ 'standing at the right hand of God'—is the rebuke of every ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... impending dangers, and escapes from danger. When Holofernes came against the western nations, and spoiled them, then were the Jews terrified, and they fortified Judaea, and cryed unto God with great fervency, and humbled themselves in sackcloth, and put ashes on their heads, and cried unto the God of Israel that he would not give their wives and their children and cities for a prey, and the Temple for a profanation: and the High-priest, and all the Priests put on sackcloth and ashes, and offered daily burnt offerings ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... needs any description of Oriental mourning for the dead. The rent garments and sackcloth (2 Sam. iii. 31), loud weeping and wailing (ver. 32), protracted lamentation as for Jacob (Gen. 1.10 and 11), and for Moses (Deut. xxxiv. 8), and the hired mourning women (Jer. ix. 17, and Matt. ix. 23), were to be found nowhere in greater ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... at the top of a sad little hill. It is a crucifixion infinitely more real, more intense than Dore's. Another scene—also engraved by Le Keux: On a stony platform, vast and crowded, the people kneel in sackcloth and ashes; the heavens thunder over the weeping millions of Nineveh, and the Lord of Hosts will not be appeased. Stretching to the clouds are black basaltic battlements, and above rear white-terraced palaces as swans that strain their throats ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Aiah, took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until the water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest upon them by day, nor the beasts of the field ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... king stood still Till the last echo died: then throwing off The sackcloth from his brow, and laying back The pall from the still features of his child, He bowed his head upon him and broke forth In the resistless ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... first time that there was an opportunity for a quiet word. "The General shall have his way, and everything shall be charming into the bargain. I know of a dressmaker who could make sackcloth elegant. She will manufacture even the hat with blue feathers, so that you will never have had anything so becoming in your life. Fortunately the General does not confine you to one shade of blue. And the muslins and blue ribbons will be wonderful filmy creations, as different from the ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... like people, I should like them just the same as if they went about yelling Te Deums at the top of their voices; and when I don't like them, it wouldn't make me like them to see them dressed from head to foot in sackcloth and ashes." ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... Mother would not scold her for what she had done, when suddenly another cliff, white as the cliffs of Dover, glimmered through the haze. Then she forgot her sackcloth, for, according to the Frenchman, this was old Grisnez, pushing its inquiring nose into the sea; and beyond loomed the ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... resolved to hold the balance himself.—He began by throwing in a pilgrimage to a miraculous virgin.—The devil pulled out an assignation with some fair mortal Madonna, who had ceased to be immaculate.—The saint laid in the scale the sackcloth and ashes of the penitent of Lenten-time.—Satan answered the deposit by the vizard and leafy robe of the masker of the carnival. Thus did they still continue equally interchanging the sorrows of godliness with ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... as Perseus, and who so joyful as all the AEthiop people? For they had stood watching the monster from the cliffs, wailing for the maiden's fate. And already a messenger had gone to Cepheus and Cassiopoeia, where they sat in sackcloth and ashes on the ground, in the innermost palace chambers, awaiting their daughter's end. And they came, and all the city with them, to see the wonder, with songs and with dances, with cymbals and harps, and received their daughter back again, ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... many sleeping-chambers, where were rows of beds, mostly calculated for two occupants, and provided with sheets and pillow-cases that resembled sackcloth. It appeared to me that the sense of beauty was insufficiently regarded in all the arrangements of the almshouse; a little cheap luxury for the eye, at least, might do the poor folks a substantial good. But, at all events, there was the beauty of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... not concern the books of the year which (at the moment of writing) seem to have most interested me—apart from my own, bien entendu: H.G. Wells's "New Worlds for Old." If it is not in its fiftieth thousand the intelligent masses ought to go into a month's sackcloth. "Nature Poems," by William H. Davies. This slim volume is quite indubitably wondrous. I won't say that it contains some of the most lyrical lyrics in English, but I will say that there are lyrics in it as good as have been produced by anybody at all in the ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... captive!—close thine eye, And draw the ashen sackcloth o'er, And in thy speechless woe deplore The fate that would ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... quitted the apartment, when this cynic, attending him to the door with a look of morose disdain, "Were I an absolute prince," said he, "and that fellow one of my subjects, I would order him to be clothed in sackcloth, and he should drive my asses to water, that his lofty spirit might be lowered to the level of his deserts. The pride of a peacock is downright self-denial, when compared with the vanity of that coxcomb, which ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... nothing of attics and cellars. In beginning the world, friend Lionel, if you don't wish to get chafed at every turn, fold up your pride carefully, put it under lock and key, and only let it out to air upon grand occasions. Pride is a garment all stiff brocade outside, all grating sackcloth on the side next to the skin. Even kings don't wear the dalmaticum except at a coronation. Independence you desire; good. But are you dependent now? Your mother has given you an excellent education, and you ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and Peter! all ye saintly host!" I do not think there walks on earth this day Man so remorseless, that he hath not yearn'd With pity at the sight that next I saw. Mine eyes a load of sorrow teemed, when now I stood so near them, that their semblances Came clearly to my view. Of sackcloth vile Their cov'ring seem'd; and on his shoulder one Did stay another, leaning, and all lean'd Against the cliff. E'en thus the blind and poor, Near the confessionals, to crave an alms, Stand, each his head upon his fellow's sunk, So most ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... savours of making amends, dissembling, of stubbornness. ..... Wherefore confession is the discipline of a man's prostrating and humbling himself, enjoining such a conversation as invites mercy. It restrains a man even as to the matter of dress and food, requiring him to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to hide his body in filthy garments, to afflict his soul with sorrow, to exchange for severe treatment the sins in which he indulged; for the rest to use simple things for meat and drink, that is, for the sake of the soul, and not to please the appetite: for ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... tone of her usual day's work, but how much of her time had been occupied in doing the tasks of others? He knew well that she disliked the Carrolls. She would speak of her own dislike of them as of her great sin, of which it was necessary that she should repent in sackcloth and ashes. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... to the children of the nation. Then Judith went to the House of the Lord and fell upon her face and called upon the Lord who breakest the battles to bless her purpose. She went thereafter to her house, put off the garments of widowhood and of sackcloth, and bathed, and anointed herself with precious ointment, and put on the garments of gladness, with bracelets and chains and rings and ornaments to lure the eyes of all the men that should see her. Then she went forth with her maid out of the city of Bethulia into the camp of the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... the firmament stretched its azure expanse, bespangled with unnumbered stars, and adorned with the moon 'walking in brightness;' while the transparent surface both received and returned her silver image. Here, instead of being covered with sackcloth,[A] she shone with resplendent lustre; or rather with a lustre multiplied in proportion to ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... earth moves. A pretty set of difficulties they have involved us in with their accursed astronomy. Boccaccio and the Troubadours should have been burned instead, and if this had been done all the abominable modern literature which would persuade the faithful that this world is not all sackcloth and ashes would never have been written. Away with him who says that the earth is as beautiful as heaven," and Gautier's phrase, "Moi, je trouve la terre aussi belle que le ciel, et je pense que la correction ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... high-priest, and with their hands mutually interfolded, one upon the other, he vowed to renounce, then and there, the world with all its cares and temptations, and to observe with obedience the doctrines of Buddha. This done, he was clad afresh in sackcloth, and led from the temple to the royal monastery, Watt Brahmanee Waid; with bare feet and eyes downcast he went, still chanting ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... of the envious, clad in sackcloth, sat leaning for support and humiliation, partly against the rocky wall of the circle, and partly on one another's shoulders, after the manner of beggars that ask alms near places of worship. Their eyes were sewn ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... a page, who had thoughtfully presented himself, and gave directions to have the Remorse Apartments of the palace put in order, and for the court tailor to prepare an evening suit of sackcloth-and-ashes. Then summoning the hawk, he seized and dashed him to the ground, killing him very dead. Rejoining his retinue, he dispatched an officer to remove the body of the serpent from the fountain, lest somebody else should get poisoned. There wasn't any serpent—the ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... Joan looking so charming. Of course she was in grey—that was in the nature of a certainty on such an occasion, but she might have been in sackcloth for all the attention Vane paid to her clothes. It was her face that held him, with the glow of perfect health on her cheeks, and the soft light of utter happiness in her eyes. She was pretty—always; but with a sudden catch of his breath Vane told himself that this morning she was the loveliest ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... his reputation after this, but rather detracted from it. He lived very quietly and devotedly, and died in 1695, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. It was found after his death that he was in the habit of mortifying himself with a shirt of sackcloth. ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... where for a moment the child sobbed heartbrokenly. Then, with a mighty gulp, she swallowed back her grief and explained, "I heard Hope reading about the people who put on ash-cloth and sashes—I mean sackcloth and ashes whenever any one of their family died, so's the angels would let the soul into heaven. No one did that when papa died—and we don't know whether he ever got to heaven or not—but he's a man and could take ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the last echo died; then, throwing off the sackcloth from his brow, and laying back the pall from the still features of his child, he bowed his head upon him, and broke forth in the resistless ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... what? The Glenn girl? Why, my dear man, that was nearly thirteen years ago. I am sorry that she had to go the way she did, but, good Lord, I can't go through life in sackcloth and ashes because she died—as a lot of people do, every year, you know. Hers was not an uncommon case. There are thousands just like it happening every year. It's the price we all pay, men and women. There's no use being ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... I crave,' she said. 'I would have the glory of advising thee to this. Before God I would escape from being thy Queen if escape I might. I would live as the Sibyls that gave good counsel and lived in rocky cells in sackcloth. So would I fainer. But if you will have me, upon your oaths to me of this our affiancing, I beseech you to give me no jewels, neither the revenue of provinces for my dower. But grant it to me that in after ages men may conceive of me as of such a ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... Armenian. To pacify the clamors of conscience, he became an inmate of a monastery far in the interior, where he undertook to perform the most menial services for the monks. Failing to find peace in this, he penetrated into the depths of a wilderness, clothed himself in sackcloth, and lived on the coarsest fare, away from the abodes of man. Here also he was disappointed. Returning to Constantinople, he united himself to the papal Armenians, hoping in their communion to find the ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... space that I met her— Just for a day in the train! It began when she feared it would wet her, That tiniest spurtle of rain: So we tucked a great rug in the sashes, And carefully padded the pane; And I sorrow in sackcloth and ashes, Longing to do ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... vain, I know; how very vain in their attempt to soothe or comfort me. Dearest Lionel, you cannot guess what I have suffered during these long months. I have read of mourners in ancient days, who clothed themselves in sackcloth, scattered dust upon their heads, ate their bread mingled with ashes, and took up their abode on the bleak mountain tops, reproaching heaven and earth aloud with their misfortunes. Why this is the very luxury of sorrow! thus one might go on from day to day ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... worrier. He ever sits on the "stool of repentance," clothing himself in sackcloth and ashes for what he has done or not done. He cries aloud—by his acts—every five minutes or so: "We have done those things which we ought not to have done and have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and there is no health in us." Everything past is regretted, everything ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... for that world of beauty which might have been, but which the acts of the clever and the practical have turned into carrion among the ruins. Would it matter now if we were bankrupt, and our Empire among the things that were, if only we were turning to sackcloth and ashes because of that dousing of the glim in the heart ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... back to the camp was he sensible of the murmurs of censure at his hypocrisy in joining the penitential procession at all. Dame Idonea, in a complete suit of sackcloth, was informing her friends that she had made a vow not to wash her face till the whole adder brood of Montfort had been crushed; and that she trusted to see the beginning of justice done to-morrow. She had offered a candle to St. James to that effect, hoping to induce him to turn away ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... divine of considerable repute, and asked him why it was that, as he seemed to set forth, God had changed His mind after creating spiritual man, and had created a man of dust. She had later repented her scandalous conduct in sackcloth and ashes; but it did not prevent her from abruptly leaving the chapel on a subsequent Sunday when another divine, this time a complaisant Methodist, quite satisfied with his theories of endless future rewards and fiery ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... with scissors. No Turk could have more indignantly resented the process than did that small quadruped,—his Celtic feelings being so severely wounded by it, in fact, that he abstained from sustenance for three days, putting himself into moral sackcloth and ashes for that period by retiring into his penitential cell ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... even to his inmost self as to admit he had sinned without deep provocation. He thought it all over in his heart, just there, exactly as it all happened, that simple and natural tale of a common wrong, that terrible secret of a lifetime that he was still to repent in sackcloth ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... saints serve us as saving beacons to guide our course during the tempest. Many a feeble soul would have suffered shipwreck had it not taken refuge near those tutelary towers where are suspended the memorial deeds of the sainted heroes whose armor was sackcloth, whose watchword the sigh of repentance poured out ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... with rich confusion of plume, and scarf, and banner, where purple, and scarlet, and green, and orange, and every gay colour, were mingled with cloth of gold and fair embroidery; instead of this, crept on the gloomy pageant of superstition, in cowl and sackcloth; with cross and coffin, and frightful symbols of human suffering. In place of the frank, hardy knight, open and brave, with his lady's favour in his casque, and amorous motto on his shield, looking, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... in Scotland, in bygone times, contain many allusions to the repentance stool. A very good specimen of this old-time relic may be seen in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries, at Edinburgh. It is from the church of Old Greyfriars, of Edinburgh. In the same museum is a sackcloth, or gown of repentance, formerly used at the parish church ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... hurrying and colored crowds in the shadow, with the blue sky in narrow strips high above, of gorgeous marriage processions, and the "voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride," of glittering trains of mandarins, of funeral processions, with the wail of hired mourners clad in sackcloth and ashes, of the Tartar city with its pagodas, of the hills of graves, great cities of the dead outside the walls, fiery-red under the tropic blue, of the "potter's field" with its pools of blood and sacks of heads, and crosses for crucifixion, now, as on Calvary, symbolical ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... would be among the first to hail his reformation with heartfelt satisfaction; but when I hear that while he no longer sells liquor, that he constantly offers it to his guests, I feel that he should rather sit down in sackcloth and ashes than fireside at sumptuous feasts, obtained by liquor selling. When crime is sanctioned by law, and upheld by custom and fashion, it assumes its most dangerous phase; and there is often a fearful fascination in the sin ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... like these it were well to lift the veil on the sackcloth of home, where weepeth the faithful, stricken mother, and the bruised father bendeth his aching head; where the bereft wife or husband, silent and alone, looks [10] in dull despair at the vacant seat, and the motherless little ones, wondering, huddle together, and repeat with quivering ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... a little above the ankle-bones—of discomfort, rather, in comparison with the anguish throbbing and biting across her shoulder-blades. Some one—it may have been in unthinking mercy—had drawn down the sackcloth over her stripes, and the coarse stuff, irritating the raw, was as a ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... city of Nineveh, and after the lapse of many centuries, when Jonah came to Nineveh, and prophesied the overthrow of the city on account of the evil done by the people, it was Pharaoh who, seized by fear and terror, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes, and with his own mouth made proclamation and published this decree through Nineveh: "Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not feed nor drink water; for I know there is no god beside Him in all the world, all His words are truth, and all His ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... but Dona Matilde, the senora aunt of Dona Luz, lay sick in the house. As for Dona Luz, yes, Dona Luz had gone to the chapel, as she often did of an evening lately, to pray for her aunt's recovery. Dona Luz had vowed to wear sackcloth for six months if her dear patron saint, Maria de la Luz, would but hear her petition. Out of ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... came in and announced that a picture had come for me. We poured into the hall. Yes, it had come. In the charge of two messenger-boys and a taxi, carefully shrouded in sackcloth. Berry touched the latter and nodded approval. Then he turned ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... under the wall of the terrace; the sellers of cakes, of syrups and lemon-water, and of the big and luscious watermelons that are so popular in Cairo, display their wares beneath awnings of orange-colored sackcloth, or in the full glare of the sun, and, their prayers comfortably completed or perhaps not yet begun, the worshippers stand to gossip, or sit to smoke their pipes, before going on their way into the city or the mosque. ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... Catering. (Kate. Her ring.) Hero. (He row.) Tennessee. (Ten, I see.) The following are also good charade words: Knighthood, penitent, looking-glass, hornpipe, necklace, indolent, lighthouse, Hamlet, pantry, phantom, windfall, sweepstake, sackcloth, antidote, antimony, pearl powder, kingfisher, football, housekeeping, infancy, snowball, definite, bowstring, carpet, Sunday, Shylock, earwig, matrimony, cowhiding, welcome, friendship, horsemanship, coltsfoot, bridegroom, ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... Grand Duke Nicholas sent off, and everyone knows the Czar of Rooshia is a pro-German and the Allies have no ammunition and Bulgaria is going against us. And the end is not yet, for England and France must be punished for their deadly sins until they repent in sackcloth and ashes.' 'I think myself,' I said, 'that they will do their repenting in khaki and trench mud, and it seems to me that the Huns should have a few sins to repent of also.' 'They are instruments in the hands of the Almighty, to purge the garner,' ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... here, in the midst of that bitter winter weather, while the fierce winds of the Apennines were sweeping sleet upon him in their passage from Monte Pellegrino to the plain, he knelt barefoot, clothed in sackcloth, fasting from dawn till eve, for three whole days. On the morning of the fourth day, judging that Gregory was inexorable, and that his suit would not be granted, Henry retired to the Chapel of S. Nicholas, which stood within this second ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the three of us had better go up in sackcloth, and throw ashes on our foreheads as we meet Hopkins in the garden," said Lily, "and then I know he'll heap coals of fire on our heads by sending us an early dish of peas. And Dingles would bring us in a pheasant, only that pheasants don't ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... crime, to spare a mother whose conduct had been otherwise irreproachable. But her tears and pleadings produced no effect on Ali, who ordered her to be taken, loaded with fetters and covered with a piece of sackcloth, to the prison of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... me thus to sorrow for my son? Needs must I punish thee, and as for Alaeddin, he will assuredly be hanged.' 'And I will die for love of him,' answered Jessamine. Then Khatoun stripped her of her jewels and silken raiment and clothing her in sackcloth drawers and a shift of hair-cloth, sent her down into the kitchen and made her a scullery-wench, saying, 'Thy punishment shall be to split wood and peel onions and set fire under the cooking pots.' Quoth she, 'I am willing to brook all manner of hardship and servitude, but not thy son's sight.' ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... hands of the divine Raphael. The age may be unsympathetic, but for those who will worship, the fire burns. Whereas art was once uplifted by the joyous acclaim of the whole people, she must now fight for space in a jostling competition. But is it not more reasonable that the prophet lay aside his sackcloth and accept the conditions of the new era, acknowledging that art has had its day in the sanctuary and has now come to adorn the home and that of necessity therefore the conditions of subject and of size ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... (who has been biting her nails) And then ... and doubtless ... and strangely ... And not more thriftiness in Bergthorsknoll Where Njal saves old soft sackcloth for his wife. Oh, I must sit with peasants and aged women, And keep my head ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... Audran engraving of that same man grown old and stripped of beauty and of glory, as the leaf that falls and the flower that fades. The somber habit of an order has replaced scarlet and gold; and sackcloth, satin. Between the two pictures hangs an old crucifix. For that is Armand De Rance, glorious sinner, handsomest, wealthiest, most gifted man of his day—and his a day of glorious men; and this is Armand De Rance, become the sad austere reformer ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... of the Arno. You shall wander over ancient battle-fields, encounter the fierce Apennine blast, and be rocked on the Mediterranean wave, which the sirocco heaps up, huge and dark, and pours in a foaming cataract upon the strand of Italy. Finally, we shall tread together the sackcloth plain on which Rome sits, with the leaves of her torn laurel and the fragments of her shivered sceptre strewn around her, waiting with discrowned and downcast head the bolt of doom. Entering the gates of the "seven-hilled city," we shall climb the Capitol, and survey a scene which has its equal ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... any separation between those whom God had bound together was shocking and wicked. Lady Susanna was louder and less just. She did not believe that Mary had done anything to merit expulsion from the family; but she did think that her return to it should be accompanied by sackcloth and ashes. Mary had been pert to her, and she was not prone to forgive. Lady Alice had no opinion,—could say nothing about it; but would be happy if, by her services, she could ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... giving way to their grief, the mourners filed into the room. Some had cymbals, some flutes, some pieces of sackcloth which they put over their heads before turning their faces to the wall. "Alas the lion—alas the hero—alas for him!" wailed the mourners. "Woe! Woe! Death hath entered into the place of the living and hath taken ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... of austerities, others of ale,—that matters not; he was a learned man and a cunning. 'Nephew Nicholas,' said he on his death-bed, 'think twice before you tie yourself up to the cloister; it's ill leaping nowadays in a sackcloth bag. If a pious man be moved to the cowl by holy devotion, there is nothing to be said on the subject; but if he take to the Church as a calling, and wish to march ahead like his fellows, these times show him a prettier path ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... much as a ball of cotton. But what do you care so you can get your brandy-and-water? There's the girls, too—the things they want! They're never dressed like other people's children. But it's all the same to their father. Oh, yes! So he can go with his Skylarks they may wear sackcloth for ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... of confession repentance is born; by repentance God is appeased. And thus exomologesis is a discipline for man's prostration and humiliation, enjoining a demeanor calculated to move mercy. With regard, also, to the very dress and food, it commands one to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to cover the body as in mourning, to lay the spirit low in sorrow, to exchange for severe treatment the sins which he has committed; furthermore, to permit as food and drink only what is plain—not for the stomach's ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... instruct also apply themselves to their left side, but more in front. They, too, reprove, but mildly, and then teach them how they ought to live. They also appear dark, yet not, like the former, as clouds, but as if clothed with sackcloth. These are called Instructors, but the former, Chastisers When these spirits are present, angelic spirits are also present, sitting at the head, which they fill in a peculiar manner: their presence there is also perceived as a gentle breathing, for they fear lest their approach and ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... not find it in his heart to wish him in heaven if he preferred staying here. In his letter of April 23, he mentions going to the play immediately after hearing this news, 'although,' as he says, 'he ought to have stayed at home in sackcloth for "unc."' ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Benton to which, as to prosperity, I had hopefully purchased my ticket ages ago. And here cowered I, holed up—pillaged, dishonored, worthless in even this community: a young fellow in jaunty frontier costume, new and brave, but really reduced to sackcloth and ashes; a young fellow only a husk, as false in appearance as the Big Tent itself and many another of those ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... light which hath no end. Having said thus, he stript himself of the royal robes adorned with gold in which he was arrayed, and took the crown from his head and placed it upon the altar; and he put sackcloth upon the carrion of his body, and prayed to God, confessing all the sins which he had committed against him, and took his acquittal from the Bishops, for they absolved him from his sins; and forthwith he there received extreme unction, and strewed ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... no doubt that John Bold, had he so much power, would shut up all cathedrals, and probably all parish churches; distribute all tithes among Methodists, Baptists, and other savage tribes; utterly annihilate the sacred bench, and make shovel hats and lawn sleeves as illegal as cowls, sandals, and sackcloth! Here was a nice man to be initiated into the comfortable arcana of ecclesiastical snuggeries; one who doubted the integrity of parsons, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... charitable and religious duties leave them time to do so. They may be paid for this labor in necessities for themselves or their brethren, but never may they receive coin or money. Those may wear shoes who cannot get along without them. They may repair their garments with sackcloth and other remnants. They must live in absolute obedience to their superior and may not, of course, marry nor may ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... more undulating. His heart harshly ticking like a clock, he viewed, as in a vision, the march of the nations, the crash of falling theocracies, of dying dynasties. On a stony platform, vast and crowded, he knelt in sackcloth and ashes; the heavens thundered over the weeping millions of Nineveh; and the Lord of Hosts would not be appeased. Stretching to the clouds were black, basaltic battlements, and above them reared white terraced palaces, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... companions with whom he had so long rioted in every manner of wickedness, and Ferdinand lived henceforward as became a saint. He builded two churches a year, and fared edifyingly on roots and herbs; he washed the feet of three indigent persons daily, and went in sackcloth; whenever he burned heretics he fetched and piled up the wood himself, so as to inconvenience nobody; and he made prioresses and abbesses of his more intimate and personal associates of yesterday, because he knew that people ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... blush upon the face of a virtuous patriot; so you must be contented with your lot, while crime, cowardice, cupidity or low cunning have handed you down from the high tower of a statesman to the black hole of a gambler . . . . Crape the heavens with weeds of woe; gird the earth with sackcloth, and let hell mutter one melody in commemoration of fallen splendor! For the glory of America has departed, and God will set a flaming sword to guard the tree of liberty, while such mint-tithing Herods as Van Buren, Boggs, Benton, Calhoun, and Clay are thrust out of the realms of virtue as fit subjects ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... moral perversity of a young woman who never regrets a witty deception or a graceful subterfuge, but repents sometimes in sackcloth and ashes for her truth-telling. I'd give half my forest now to have back the letter I sent you yesterday. But since I cannot recall it, I wish you to bear in mind that what was true of a woman's heart yesterday, to-day ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... the medium of that punishment. Well, then, there's a Providence proved. But, in the mean time, mamma, what has become of my beauty? It is gone—it is gone—and now for humility and repentance—now for sackcloth and ashes. I am now no longer beautiful!—so off, off go the trappings ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... in the days when my father wooed her, she forgot for a spell in the strong arms of that fierce ghibelline the pattern upon which it had become her wont to weave her life; so that in all that drab, sackcloth tissue there was embroidered at least one warm and brilliant little wedge of colour; so that in all that desert waste, in all that parched aridity of her existence, there was at least one little patch of ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... "is not the fact, but this savage glee over it. It's as though a lot of caged animals set up a howl of delight every time the cage door was opened and a new pair was introduced into the pen. They ought to perform the wedding ceremony in sackcloth and ashes, after duly fasting, accompanied by a few faithful friends garbed in ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... regret some day to have shown such disdain for advantages like these, etc. And to all these things, which were so true and sensible, I could find only one word to say: his name, Gontran, Gontran, Gontran! Gontran or the convent, and the most rigorous one of all, the Carmel, in sackcloth and ashes! Oh, Aunt Louise, do look at him! He listens to all this with an unbearable little ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... fairly into the wine. The cura had thrown aside his sanctity and become human like the rest; the padres had forgotten their sackcloth and bead-roll, and the senior of them, Padre Joaquin, entertained the table with spicy adventures which had occurred to him before he became a monk. Echevarria related anecdotes of Paris, with many adventures he ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... a cold frost within us, when our friend is in the glow of a summer sunset: and we call him unsympathetic and unfeeling. If we let him know the state of our world, we should see the rosehues fade from his, and our friend put off his singing robes, and sit down with us in sackcloth and ashes, to share our ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... the poison of them entered her soul, corroded her sentiments towards him, dissolved the love she had borne him, and transformed it into venom. She would not have him now if he did penitence for his disaffection by going in sackcloth and crawling after her on his knees for a full twelvemonth. But neither should he have Ruth if she could thwart his purpose. On that she ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... royal officials there that, in consideration of the poverty which the discalced Recollect fathers in Philipinas profess in accordance with their rule (as they cannot possess incomes), there be given to them annually from the royal treasury what is necessary for their sackcloth, medicines, breviaries, missals, and other things, as is now given to them every year. The said order has a procurator in Mexico who is urging that those articles be sent every year. Inasmuch as the nuns of the said convent of St. Clare have no income, because they profess the first rule of St. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... in keen self-reproach, and her voice thrilled him like the subtle melody of a passion song. "Howard, dear, I—I'm sitting in sackcloth and ashes. I saw it all—with my own eyes, and I could neither run nor scream. Oh, it was splendid! I never dreamed that any man could rise by the sheer power of his will to such a pinnacle of courage. Does that make amends—just a little? And won't you come ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... zibelo. Sabot ligna sxuo. Sabre hakglavo, sabro. Sacerdotal pastra. Sack sako. Sack (pillage) rabadi. Sackcloth sxtofego. Sacrament sakramento. Sacred sankta. Sacredness sankteco. Sacrifice oferi. Sacrilege malpiajxo. Sad malgxoja. Sadden malgxojigi. Saddle selo. Sadness malgxojeco. Safe (money) monkesto. Safe sendangxera. Safety sendangxereco. Saffron safrano. Sagacious ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... blessed him and gave him the honourable name of Israel, Gen. xxxii.; and yet [Pg 97] he had soon thereafter to experience grievous distress on account of Dinah and Joseph; and in chap. xxxvii. 34, 35, we are told concerning him: "And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted, and he said, I shall go down into the grave unto my ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... have startled the friends who had seen in him nothing but the perfectly self-possessed, cold-natured, well-mannered man of the world, "what a fool a man can make of himself in his youth, and repent it all his life afterwards in sackcloth and ashes—yet ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... works, and wherein the people repented not: "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... hardly to dare speak to Him at all, and I'm a good deal that way myself. Dear, dear! I wish I had something besides a million dollars! If Jack were three inches taller I'd marry him alive and go back to Redhorse and wear sackcloth again to the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... remembered thee at once, boy though thou wert when thy steps shook off the dust against Granada. I remembered thee, I say, at once, on thy return; but I have kept thy secret, trusting that, through thy soul and genius, thy fallen brethren might put off sackcloth and ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... shall repent of this in sackcloth and ashes! Detest and loathe as you please, you shall feel my lips upon your ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... are fighting with their neighbors; when at peace with them, worshiping their gods and giving them their daughters in marriage, then the Lord is angry, and vents His wrath on them. Thus, they are continually between two fires; now repenting in sackcloth and ashes, and now, with the help of the Lord, ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... bringing to mind the afflictions of Joseph. But providentiall exemption of us hereby from the late warres and temptations of either party we account as a favour from God; the former cloathes us with sackcloth, the latter ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... unendurable to her. It was essential that a change should be made, and that speedily, for she was aware of the limitations to her own patience. Her temperament was not one to let her sit down in sackcloth and ashes to weep over the ruins of romance. Rather, she would bestir herself to create a new sphere of activity, wherein she might find happiness in some other guise. Yet, despite the ingenuity of her mind, she could not for some time determine on the ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... said to the young women who put off their colors and took to sackcloth in the presence of Mr. Holland. Don't be too sure that you will like any man because other women like him. Now, I have, as usual, remained too long with you. I'm greatly impressed with the situation of the moment. I don't say that I think you are wrong, mind you. Girls ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... before the memory of those who are acquainted with Italian history innumerable pictures of multitudes commoved to tears, of tyrannies destroyed and constitutions founded by tumultuous assemblies, of hostile parties and vindictive nobles locked in fraternal embraces, of cities clothed in sackcloth for their sins, of exhortations to peace echoing by the banks of rivers swollen with blood, of squares and hillsides resonant with sobs, of Lenten nights illuminated with bonfires of Vanity.[1] In the midst of these melodramatic scenes towers the single form of a Dominican or Franciscan ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... the Jews of old) the fast which I have chosen? Is it a day for a man to afflict his soul, and bow down his head like a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him (playing at being sad, while God has not made him sad)? Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... remarkable about the dress, except her wearing of it. There is a grace of carriage that will make purple of sackcloth. Still, the gown was well cut of fawn-coloured stuff, which her stockings and shoes matched. Her face was generous—proud, too, yet tender and very beautiful. The soft rose of her cheeks, the misty blue of her eyes stood there for gentleness, the curve of the red lips ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... the rest and quiet, and the dictations gave him employment. A part of his entertainment was a trio of kittens which he had rented for the summer—rented because then they would not lose ownership and would find home and protection in the fall. He named the kittens Sackcloth and Ashes—Sackcloth being a black-and-white kit, and Ashes a joint name owned by the two others, who were gray and exactly alike. All summer long these merry little creatures played up and down the wide veranda, or chased butterflies and grasshoppers down the clover ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a long while, because they wished to satiate themselves with the sight of the man whom they had previously dreaded, and who stood before them now with his head bowed upon his breast, and dressed like a penitent in sackcloth, and with a rope around his neck, upon which was suspended ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... trifle enclosed, $20, as a token of my friendship to the good cause, whose mighty burden of enlightenment is to hold the growth of future cycles with an all-controlling destiny. I am glad to see that those who have been willing to wear the sackcloth and ashes are beginning to receive the crowns of the olive and the bay upon their consecrated heads. Many will find it very agreeable, now, to sail in upon the sunny and ardent tide of the rippling river, forgetting that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... something in his appearance which attracted the attention of Lander, and he fancied that he seemed to be much dirtier than any that had been seen on the preceding day. On a nearer inspection, his head, and the whole of his body were found to be covered with ashes, and a very dirty piece of sackcloth fastened round his loins; besides this he appeared to be suffering great distress of mind, and presented a most wretched and woeful appearance. Lander asked him the cause of his grief, and why he had covered himself with ashes ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... burned the automobile," resumed Romeo. "We soaked it in kerosene, and put our suits into the back seat—our caps and goggles and everything. We took out all the pieces of iron and steel and gave 'em to the junk man, and then we repented in sackcloth and ashes." ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... Bejant, Son of the Morning, Fresh as a daisy dipt in the dew, Hearken to me and receive my warning: Though rents be heavy, and bunks be few And most of them troubled with rat or mouse, Never take rooms in a corner house; Or sackcloth and ashes and sad self-scorning Shall be for a portion ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... is dreadful. I didn't know that that was what one meant by sackcloth and ashes—do please ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... there was nothing left her but to die, and all that sort of thing; and for three days she was little better than a mad woman. At the end of that time, after the fashion of her people, she retired to her own room, covered herself with sackcloth and ashes, and remained hidden from all eyes for the space of a fortnight, weeping and wailing constantly and touching nothing but ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... means either stupid or weak. He is recklessly untidy as to his person; but the worst effects of his neglect are mitigated by a powdering of flour and mill dust; and his unbrushed clothes, made of a fashionable tailor's sackcloth, were evidently chosen regardless of expense for ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... they fasted that day, and put on sackcloth, and cast ashes upon their heads, and rent ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." Rev. ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... well be dressed plainer than you are, unless you go in sackcloth at once. 'Tis your excitement is what makes you look so ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... They could not sacrifice, because a sacrifice could only be made at Jerusalem, and the only book of the Scriptures that they had to read from was painted over with the hateful idol figures of the Greeks. And the huge army of enemies was ever coming nearer! The whole assembly wept, and put on sackcloth and prayed aloud for help, and then there was a loud sounding of trumpets, and Judas stood forth before them. And he made the old proclamation that Moses had long ago decreed, that no one should go out to battle who was building a house, or planting ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forgive me this 'entrainement de jeunesse?' I have repented in sackcloth and ashes, and made what reparation I could by adopting and giving my name to one who is a perpetual reminder to me of a moment's infatuation. He little knows, poor boy, and never will, I hope. 'Il n'a plus que ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... returned to Boston, although she knew death awaited her there; and, if Grandfather had been correctly informed, an incident had then taken place which connects her with our story. This Mary Dyer had entered the mint-master's dwelling, clothed in sackcloth and ashes, and seated herself in our great chair with a sort of dignity and state. Then she proceeded to deliver what she called a message from Heaven, but in the midst of it they dragged her ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... before Tunis, without having dealt the Mussulmans of the East even the shadow of an effectual blow, having no strength to do more than utter, from time to time, as he raised himself on his bed, the cry of Jerusalem! Jerusalem! and, at the last moment, as he lay in sackcloth and ashes, pronouncing merely these parting words: "Father, after the example of our Divine Master, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!" Even the crusader was extinct in St. Louis; and only ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... watched us year by year bringing him garlands and the sweet incense of young love, to have seen this gay company approach his shrine with laughter and roses, a very bacchanal, where he had looked for sympathetic sackcloth and ashes—surely it must have all seemed a silly sacrilegious jest. However, he is long since slandered beyond all hope of restitution. So long as the spring moves in the blood, lovers will doubtless continue to take his name in vain, and feign his saintly sanction for their ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... here, at times, Within these walls, where all should be at peace, I have my trials. Time has laid his hand Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it, But as a harper lays his open palm Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations. Ashes are on my head, and on my lips Sackcloth, and in my breast a heaviness And weariness of life, that makes me ready To say to the dead Abbots under us, "Make room for me!" Only I see the dusk Of evening twilight coming, and have not Completed half my task; and so at times The thought ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... respond "Love ye those who have wrong'd you." These are those who, having sinned through envy, can be freed only by the exercise of charity. Then, bidding Dante gaze fixedly, Virgil points out this shadowy host, clothed in sackcloth, sitting back against the rocks, and Dante takes particular note of two figures supporting each other. He next discovers that one and all of these victims have their eyelids sewn so tightly together with wire that passage is left only ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... quarter to an eastern sky from which a sun that seldom sleeps bakes the grey stones, bares every detail of a crumbling ruin, and intensifies the wistful odor of decay. This, the remnant of Solomon's glory, is the Wailing Wall of the Jews. Clad in sackcloth and covered with ashes, patriarchal figures sway to and fro, press their lips to the hot granite, beat now their chests and now the wall, and today, as every day for eighteen hundreds of years, wail in ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... will come back again—safe enough," commented Phil, philosophically, holding paint-brush No. 1 in his mouth, while he manipulated with No. 2. "He will come back in sackcloth and ashes; he is just that sort, you know,—thunder and lightning, fire and tow. And they will make it up ecstatically in secret, and pretend that nothing has been the matter, and there will be no going into the parlor for weeks without whistling ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and, as these trains used to bump and jolt in the most unpleasant manner, we made ourselves as comfortable as we could in a sort of 'zariba' composed of our valises and a number of large packages sewn up in sackcloth. Our feelings when we later on discovered that these packages were corpses may be ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... star under which you were born. That's why. You think a chintz kerchief can conceal the blot of the nobleman from the eyes of the people? We'll recognize a priest even if he's wrapped in sackcloth. Here, for instance, you put your elbows on a wet table, and you started and frowned. Besides, your back is too straight ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... mechanically. "That is what you have arranged for me—that I go on living as before with Rudyard, while I am not to know from him anything has happened; but to accept what has been arranged for me, and to be repentant and good and live in sackcloth. It has been arranged, has it, that Rudyard is ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fashionable people finish the season by going to Goodwood—and to Goodwood Elinor was going with a party, Lady Mariamne and a number of the "set." She told her mother, to amuse her, of the new dresses she had got for this important occasion. "Phil says one may go in sackcloth and ashes the remainder of the year, but we must be fine for Goodwood," she said. "I wanted him to believe that I had too many clothes already, but he was inexorable. It is not often, is it, that one's husband is more anxious than one's self ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... began the life of an itinerant preacher. He and his followers were subjected frequently to cruel persecution, both in England and America. In exceptional cases, they fell into extravagances of enthusiasm, interrupted public worship, walked in the streets clothed in sackcloth, or in some instances naked. They condemned war, practiced non-resistance, objected to oaths and to a paid ministry, and set an example of the utmost plainness and simplicity in speech and dress. Among ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... and love of that Creator meeting those needs and answering those questions,—this is inexpressibly precious; and with the light thus given we must let our spirits sing a new song, for we are nigh to God, and it is still true that "none enter the king's gate clothed with sackcloth." Joy and praise have their dwelling ever within those boundaries; for He inhabiteth the praises ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... before God; whereas your forced and strained confessions made in public, they are merely taken on then, and proceed from no inward principle. There is no shadow of any soul humiliation, in secret, but as some use to put on sackcloth when they come to make that profession, and put it off when they go out, so you put on a habit of confession in public, and put it off you when you go out of the congregation. To be mourning before the Lord, in your secret retirements,—that ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... in the street, and was at once confronted with a worldly-looking bit of silk! How can you! Why don't you follow my example and dress in sackcloth and ashes? I think however, if you will be worldly you have done it very prettily, and on the whole don't know that it is any wickeder than I have been in translating a "dramatic poem" in five acts from the German, only you've got your dress ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... peculiar people, who can run the career of history exempted from the passions which have disturbed and corrupted the rest of mankind? If we are like other races of men, with similar follies and vices, then I greatly fear that our posterity will have reason to deplore in sackcloth and ashes ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... interposition. Hastily summoning the Bishops of the realm, and gathering a body of men-at-arms, the Archbishop Desiderius proclaimed from the Jesus altar of the High Church the deposition of the King Orgulous. Talisso was seized and stripped of his royal robes; a width of sackcloth was wrapped about his body, and with a rope round his neck he was led to the Mound of Coronation. There, on the height whereon he had thrust his sword into the four regions of ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... and tears, and forms of woe, Are turn'd to joy and praises now; I throw my sackcloth on the ground, And ease ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... little gray friar in yonder green bush, Clothed in sackcloth—a little gray friar, Like the druid of old in his temple—but hush! He's at vespers; you ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... stage curtain consists of a large piece of threadbare sackcloth pasted over with tricolored paper on which they have painted the national coat of arms. Their wardrobe too is of the very simplest description. When they play a piece in which kings and queens appear, they borrow the gold bespangled dresses ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... didst smother mankind in Thy flood, The sun is as sackcloth, the moon is as blood, The stars fall to earth as untimely are cast The figs from the fig-tree that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... headlong into another mood. "Oh, well, the end of the world hasn't come if we are frozen out. And perhaps we're not, anyway; the invite may get round to-morrow—who knows? So don't let's order our sackcloth and ashes quite yet awhile. Life is still worth living, and we have got several other strings to ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... you've no patience with such stuff As by Renan is writ, and when you read (Why do you read?) have hardly strength enough To hold your hand from flinging the vile screed Into the fire. That were a wasteful deed Which you'd repent in sackcloth extra rough; For books cost money, and I'm told you care To lay up treasures Here as ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... know that we performed it, and a merciful Providence may forgive it; but the inexorable monitor of our deeds was all the time beside us writing the record, and the history of that act is inscribed forever in the tissues of our brain. It may be repented of bitterly in sackcloth and ashes and be discontinued, but its effects can never be quite effaced; they will remain with us a handicap till our dying day, and in some critical moment in a great emergency we shall be in danger of defeat from that long past and ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... instant later, the old professor could have bitten out his tongue for his unholy jest. His penitence was in no wise lessened by the quality of Scott's answering laugh. Best leave those fellows to their ministerial sackcloth, without questioning the quality of the flax from which it was spun. A man of Scott Brenton's calibre would do no harm by his preaching. What was the sense of seeking to upset any orthodox beliefs he might happen to have ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... technical. So I'll just tell you that the ship was of a very ornamental sort once, with lots of grace and elegance and luxury about her. Yes, once! She was like a pretty woman who had suddenly put on a suit of sackcloth and stuck revolvers in her belt. But she floated lightly, she moved nimbly, she ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... it had been in the country, I should most assuredly have carried up the poor creature's bundle for her; but I am sorry to say I had not moral courage to offer to do so in town: for a parson with a great sackcloth bundle on his back, would be greeted in that district with depreciatory observations. But I kept close by her, to help her if she fell; and when I got to the top of the steps I passed her and went on. I looked sharply at the poor old face in passing; I see it yet. I see ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... to the consciences of all his fellow-citizens, almost recalling the passionate utterances of the prophets of Israel. Like those witnesses for Jehovah the "little poor man" of Assisi had put on sackcloth and ashes to denounce the iniquities of his people, like theirs was his courage and heroism, like theirs the divine ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... hermit, "it were wise that ye should wear a sackcloth garment next your skin, for penance;" and in this also did Sir Bors as he was counselled. And afterwards he armed himself and took ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... tasteful gaiety of tint, which he had at the time thought very well of. But now, as he spread out the whole array on his bed, it seemed too emblematic of a light and blameless spirit for his wear. He ought to put on something as nearly analogous to sackcloth as a modern stock of dry-goods afforded; he ought, at least, to wear the grave materials of his winter costume. But they were really insupportable in this sudden access of summer. Besides, he had grown thin during ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... days, therefore, Jahveh, without pity for His people, called them to "weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth: and behold, joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine: let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die. And the Lord of hosts revealed Himself in mine ears, Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord, the Lord of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... about four years of age, was extremely ill of the small-pox; and it is a rule with Hindoos never to undertake any journey, even one of pilgrimage to a holy shrine, while any member of the family is afflicted with this disease; they must all sit at home clothed in sackcloth and ashes. He was told that he had better defer his journey to Benares till the child should recover; but he could neither sleep nor eat, so great was his terror, lest some dreadful calamity should befall the whole family before he could expiate his crime, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... common soldier, has a heart and feelings which would do no dishonour to a gentleman of education, would have preferred coming into Melbourne, after the loss of his officers, at least unostentatiously, if not in sackcloth and ashes. But he was greeted with a howling and shouting more suitable to the reception of some notorious bush-ranger recently captured. Many, in common with myself, considered the ovation out of place and ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... are hungering after the dry bread I throw away, and who never know what a good meal is. Oh now I can fully enter into your feelings, ye holy saints, whom the world scorns and scoffs at, ye who did scatter your all, even down to your very raiment, among the poor, and did gird your loins with sackcloth, and did resolve as beggars to undergo the gibes and the kicks wherewith brutal insolence and swilling voluptuousness drive the needy from their doors, that by so doing you might thoroughly purge yourselves from the foul sin ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... administered: the appeal was in vain, and, worse, an extra aid was sent to the truculent churchmen. Happily for them, the small- pox broke out, and the ruler was persuaded by his subjects to do the required penance. Appearing at the convent, unattended, with a large rope round his neck, clad in sackcloth, crowned with thorns, unshod, and carrying a crucifix, he knelt down and kissed the feet of the priest, who said to him, "If thou hast sinned like David, imitate him ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... my two great physical troubles. I could neither get a sufficiency of food nor of clothing; but I suffered less from hunger than from cold. In hottest summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost in a state of nudity; no shoes, no stockings, no jacket, no trowsers; nothing but coarse sackcloth or tow-linen, made into a sort of shirt, reaching down to my knees. This I wore night and day, changing it once a week. In the day time I could protect myself pretty well, by keeping on the sunny side of the house; and in bad weather, in the corner of ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... for me—in their sickness my clothing was sackcloth, With fasting I humbled my soul, And my prayer into my own ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... are houses of refuge, from which it has been thought expedient to banish everything pleasant, as though the only repentance to which we can afford to give a place must necessarily be one of sackcloth and ashes. It is hardly thus that we can hope to recall those to decency who, if they are to be recalled at all, must be induced to obey the summons before they have reached the last stage of that misery which I have attempted to describe. To me the mistake which we ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... Cupid, a Sabine who must be coy when the Romans were at their banquet boards. Man had found her waist achievable and her lips desirable. The sudden and amatory Seeders had, as it were, performed for her a miraculous piece of one-day laundry work. He had taken the sackcloth of her uncomeliness, had washed, dried, starched and ironed it, and returned it to her sheer embroidered ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... did not appear at the feast. She was quietly resting in bed. One night she awoke, and beheld in a moonbeam that crept through the window something that looked like a moving shadow. It was an old man clad in sackcloth, who resembled a hermit. A rosary dangled at his side and he carried a beggar's sack on his shoulder. He approached the foot of the bed, and without opening his lips said: "Rejoice, O mother! Thy ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... ashes not only on its own head but on the neighbourhood's too - after the manner of those pious persons who do penance for their own sins by putting other people into sackcloth - it was customary for those who now and then thirsted for a draught of pure air, which is not absolutely the most wicked among the vanities of life, to get a few miles away by the railroad, and then begin their walk, or their lounge in the fields. Sissy and Rachael helped themselves ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... and ghastly night, That dreads the darkness, and yet loathes the light, 1130 That winds around, and tears the quivering heart! Ah! wherefore not consume it—and depart! Woe to thee, rash and unrelenting Chief! Vainly thou heap'st the dust upon thy head, Vainly the sackcloth o'er thy limbs dost spread:[188] By that same hand Abdallah—Selim bled. Now let it tear thy beard in idle grief: Thy pride of heart, thy bride for Osman's bed, She, whom thy Sultan had but seen to wed,[hf] Thy Daughter's dead! 1140 Hope of thine age, thy twilight's lonely beam, The ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... the belligerents or criticise the powers, or sit in sackcloth and ashes ourselves is absolutely of no consequence ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... there are many in every market place, to consult the destiny in regard to his future fortunes; and they use the same forms before celebrating their marriages, to ascertain the lucky times. When a person of note dies, the kindred clothe themselves in canvas or sackcloth, and accompany the body to the funeral, both men and women, people being employed to play on musical instruments, and singing all the way prayers to their idols; and being come to the place, they cast into ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... large village situated a short distance from Montserrat, he determined to procure a garment to wear on his journey to Jerusalem. He therefore bought a piece of sackcloth, poorly woven, and filled with prickly wooden fibres. Of this he made a garment that reached to his feet. He bought, also, a pair of shoes of coarse stuff that is often used in making brooms. He never wore ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... inquired—a scene of blood, Of resignation amid mortal pangs, And other things, exceeding all belief. Hither the aged Opas of Seville Walked slowly, and behind him was a man Barefooted, bruised, dejected, comfortless, In sackcloth; the white ashes on his head Dropped as he smote his breast; he gathered up, Replaced them all, groaned deeply, looked to heaven, And held them, like ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... that upon the true occasion for them they were absent. So, too, at the first meal in the new house, there was none of that desirable sense of setting up a family altar, but a calamitous impression of irretrievable upheaval, in honor of which sackcloth and ashes seemed the only wear. Yet even the next day the Lares and Penates had regained something of their wonted cheerfulness, and life had begun again with the first breakfast. In fact, I found myself already so firmly established ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... on the poop. Among them was Christobal, interested, like the rest, in the floating of the mine. And forthwith Elsie fell from the clouds, and was brought back, shuddering, to cold reason again. She was sick at heart; she hated herself for her self-abasement. She must gird her with sackcloth and mourn; and the fight must be fought now, without parley or hesitation, unless the sweetness were to go forth from life for ever, and all things should turn ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... of defeat, his austere and rigid character turned it into disaster; and as he possessed but one line of defence, the failure of his tactics was the ruin of his cause. Although he despaired prematurely, and was vociferously repentant of his part in the great days of June, parading his sackcloth before Europe, he never faltered in the conviction that the interests of no class, of no family, of no man, can be preferred to those of the nation. Napoleon once said with a sneer: "You are still the man of 1789." Mounier replied: "Yes, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
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