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Penance   /pˈɛnəns/   Listen
Penance

noun
1.
Remorse for your past conduct.  Synonyms: penitence, repentance.
2.
A Catholic sacrament; repentance and confession and atonement and absolution.
3.
Voluntary self-punishment in order to atone for some wrongdoing.  Synonyms: self-abasement, self-mortification.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Penance" Quotes from Famous Books



... weary hours of my penance in arranging the memoirs which follow. Science has again wooed me with her allurements; the stars continue their correspondence. I have not despaired of the great secret of immortality; and though these hairs are few and white, I shall be rejuvenated ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... hand—she had seen it before, restless and betraying, and she knew it meant that Francis was angry or unhappy. She felt curiously out of it all. She had made up her mind once and for all to go through with her penance, if one could call it that. Her mind was so unsettled and hard to make up that, once made up on this particular point, she felt it would be more trouble to stop than to go on. She leaned a little back against Peggy's guarding arm, and let the ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer

... with the frivolousness of a child, or with a sullen reproach that he "did nothing but worry her." For any purposes of companionship, his wife was a nonentity; far better that he had been without one. She made his whole life a penance; she betrayed the frivolous folly of her nature ten times a day; she betrayed her pettish temper, her want of self-control, dyeing Lionel's face of a blood-red. He felt ashamed for her; he felt doubly ashamed for himself—that his mother, that Lucy ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... didst dawn a common benefit upon mortals, wretched Prometheus, as penance for what offense art ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus

... then went out and wrote a note to Eliab Hill. Then she went into the room of the invalid mother. How sweet she looked, reclining on the bed in the pretty alcove, doing penance for her unwonted pleasure of the night before! The excited girl longed to throw her arms about her neck and weep. It seemed to her that she had never seen any one so lovely and loveable. She went to the bedside and took the slender hand ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... I have done," said Marianne; "let the whole world be your convent, and your reception-room the cell in which you do penance, by compelling men to kneel before you and adore you. instead of kneeling yourself, and mortifying your flesh. Lay your unhappiness and your disgrace like a halo around your head, and boldly meet ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... patience the highest penance, long-suffering the highest Nirvana; for he is not an anchorite (pravragita) who strikes others, he is not an ascetic ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown

... to judge a great king? For my part I never believed that monstrous sin was upon him." Here he jumped up. "I am going home, Milo," he said; "I am going home. I am going to my father's tomb. I will do penance there, and serve my people, and live clean. Look now, Milo, shrive me if thou hast the power, for my need is great." The thought was blessed to him. He confessed his sins then and there, all a huddle of them, weeping so bitterly that I should have ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... and sound of song: And they who, kindling fires with torch of Truth, Burn on a hidden altar-stone the bliss Of youth and love, renouncing happiness: And they who lay for offering there their wealth, Their penance, meditation, piety, Their steadfast reading of the scrolls, their lore Painfully gained with long austerities: And they who, making silent sacrifice, Draw in their breath to feed the flame of thought, And breathe it forth to waft the heart on high, Governing the ventage of ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold

... you Catholics are still insisting upon their reality—that Hell is eternal, that sin is the deliberate opposition of the human will to the Divine, and that suffering therefore is judicial. Sin, Penance, Sacrifice, Purgatory, and Hell—these are the old nightmares of dogma; and their fruits are tears, pain, and terror. What is wrong with Catholicism, then, is its gloom and its sorrow; for this is surely not the Christianity of Christ as we are ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... virtues to idols; the setting up of little oratories, altars, and statues in the streets and highways, and on the tops of mountains; the carrying of images and relics in pompous procession, with numerous lights and with music and singing; flagellations at solemn seasons under the notion of penance; a great variety of religious orders and fraternities of priests; the shaving of priests, or the tonsure as it is called, on the crown of their heads; the imposing of celibacy and vows of chastity on the religious of both sexes—all ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... courtesan." A "Day of Humiliation," with a special prayer composed by himself, was his suggestion for mending matters; and Madame von Kruedener, not to be outdone in coming to the rescue, preached the necessity of "public penance." Thus taken to task, Ludwig solemnly declared in writing that he had "never exacted the last favours" from Lola Montez, and furnished the entire episcopal bench with a copy ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... they were read oftener during the liturgical year than we now are called on to repeat them. They are sometimes referred to as the preces flebiles, tearful prayers, because they are said in times of penance, and are formed to excite tears. In choir recitation they are said kneeling. When the preces or the preces feriales are said the sign of the cross is made from the forehead to the breast, at the words Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini. Then ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... this kind of penance may be still perceived in the east, where the followers of Mahomet have been found to adopt it. In the history given by Hanway of the Persian monarch, Mir Maghmud, we have an account of a process similar to that above, which this prince thought proper to ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... successive attempts which he made at general farming. He became unfortunately embroiled also with the Church, which (the Presbyterian denomination) exercised a very strict control in Scotland. Compelled to do public penance for some of his offenses, his keen wit could not fail to be struck by the inconsistency between the rigid doctrines and the lives of some of the men who were proceeding against him; and he commemorated the feud in his series of overwhelming but ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... story of Alvira has brought a charm and a balm. Seeking to impart to others its interest, its amusement, and its moral, we cast it afloat on the sea of literature, to meet, probably, a premature grave in this age of irreligion and presumptuous denial of the necessities of penance. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... Dynasty, and the great-grandfather of the reigning Shah. His vanity and ostentation, his passion for money and for women, his love of flattery, his discreet deference, to the priesthood (illustrated by his annual pilgrimage, in the garb of penance, to the shrine of Fatima at Kum), his royal state, his jewels, and his ambrosial beard, form the background of every contemporary work, and are vividly reproduced in these pages. The royal processions, whether in semi-state when he visited the house of a subject, or in full state when he ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... and he saw with some regret that the mere animal excitement of the stroll seemed to draw the attention too much from religious considerations, and, in particular, to make the exercises of the morning seem like a preparatory penance to the enjoyments of the afternoon, nevertheless, when Mr. James looked back to his own boyhood, and remembered the frigid restraint, the entire want of any kind of mental or bodily excitement, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... beautiful that who can say When time shall conquer that immortal grace? Thus my own model I was born to be— The model of that nobler self, whereto Schooled by your pity, lady, I shall grow. Each overplus and each deficiency You will make good. What penance then is due For my fierce heat, ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... a word of penance, or fasting itself, for I'm thinking the Lord has brought you great teaching in the blindness of your eyes; so you've no call now to be fearing me, but let you kneel down till ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge

... exacted in secret which are scarcely preferable to open humiliation. The love which Mark feels for his young wife, by its very intensity dooms him to a perpetual penance. For the barrier between them is not yet completely broken down; sometimes he fears that it never will be, though nothing in her manner to him gives him any real reason to despair. But he is always tormenting himself with the ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... Wives as have silk Cloaths silk clothes into a canonical be-daubed with Lace, and coat, thus warned Mrs. Herbert their heads hanged about against this egregious folly with painted Ribands, were of striving for precedency:— enjoyned Penance for their "You are now a minister's pride: And their Husbands wife, and must now so far forget punisht for being so tame, or your father's house, as not so lovingly-simple, as to suffer to claim a precedence of any them; for, by such Cloaths, ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton

... Soul of old that was, May now be damn'd to animate an Ass; Or in this very House, for ought we know, Is doing painful Penance in ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... some old staircase, corresponding to that by which Mont S. Michel in Normandy is ascended. One thing is tolerably certain—that the three walls of which we hear so much from the chroniclers, and which played so picturesque a part in the drama of Henry IV.'s penance, surrounded the cliff at its base, and embraced a large acreage of ground. The citadel itself must have been but the acropolis or keep of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... with what Words to express to you the Sense I have of the high Obligation you have laid upon me, in the Penance you enjoined me of doing some Good or other, to a Person of Worth, every Day I live. The Station I am in furnishes me with daily Opportunities of this kind: and the Noble Principle with which you have ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... gloom. For years he and his had been fighting various impending disasters. In the end he had torn his family apart and set out on a weary pilgrimage to pay, for long financial unwisdom, a heavy price—a penance in which all, without complaint, had joined. Now, just when it seemed about ended, when they were ready to unite and be happy once more, when he could hold up his head among his fellows—in this moment of supreme triumph had come the message that Susy's lovely and blameless life was ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... something better to do too, I'm thinking. . . . After doing wrong, is she? Maybe she is, the boght millish, maybe we all are, ma'am, and have need of God's mercy and forgiveness. But I never heard that praying is the only kind of penance He asks of us, ma'am. And if it is, I wouldn't trust but there are poor women who are praying as well when they're working over their wash-tubs as some ones when they're saying their rosaries and singing their ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... each summer, Annie pressed her father to return to the old place, and he agreed, chiefly because it mattered little to him where he went. He regarded the summer trip in the light of a penance to be paid for the sin of being a member of society and the head of a household, and placed every minute so wasted to the debit of the profit and loss account in the mental ledger of his life's affairs, for it must not be supposed that Mr Webster's character ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... in England. Upon this we parted, and the same bawd presently provided her another keeper. I was not so much concerned at our separation as I found, within a day or two, I had reason to be for our meeting; for I was obliged to pay a second visit to my surgeon. I was now forced to do penance for some weeks, during which time I contracted an acquaintance with a beautiful young girl, the daughter of a gentleman who, after having been forty years in the army, and in all the campaigns under the Duke of Marlborough, died a lieutenant on ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding

... knock! The bell has just gone twelve, and there is the clang again upon the iron door of the tomb. The few people of Lanesboro who are paying the penance of misdeeds or late suppers, by lying awake at that dread hour, gather their blankets around their shoulders and mutter a word of prayer for deliverance against unwholesome visitors of the night. Why is the old Berkshire town so troubled? ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... they must pay. If God had blessed you, you should show your gratitude. The Sacrament of Penance consists of three parts: Repentance, Confession, Satisfaction. The intent of Penance is educational, disciplinary and medicinal. If you have done wrong, you can make restitution to God, whom you have angered, by ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... practical first stage of punishment; he always commenced with starving us for any offence against his laws and ordinances, and then wound up his trilogy of penance with a proportionate number ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... one daughter, he appointed these invasive sons of Eric to be sent for, and if he died to become king; but to "spare his friends and kindred." "If a longer life be granted me," he said, "I will go out of this land to Christian men, and do penance for what I have committed against God. But if I die in the country of the heathen, let me have such burial as you yourselves think fittest." These are his last recorded words. And in heathen fashion ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle

... which the itinerant musicians give us, have considerable beauty and character. There is less monotony, I think, in their general style than in the Venetian music; and perhaps less sentiment, less softness. When left alone to-night, to do penance on the sofa, for my late walks, and recruit for our journey to-morrow,—I tried to adapt English verses to one or two very pretty airs which Annoni brought me to-day, without the Italian words; but it is a most difficult ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... replied, "they knelt there during the confessions, and during Mass. I am not excusing them, but did you ever hear of the ancient penance of wearing peas in pilgrims' shoes? Some, I believe, and I think Erasmus is the authority, had the wisdom to boil those peas. But you cannot boil cobblestones. I never realized this part of our people's sufferings till a poor fellow one morning, whilst I sat comfortably by the fire, interrupted ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... receiued an oth. Matth. Paris.] Shortlie after, the archbishop considering further of this oth which he had taken, repented himselfe greeuouslie therof, in so much that he absteined from saieng of masse, till he had by confession and fruits of penance (as saith Matth. Paris) obteined absolution of the pope. For addressing and sending out messengers with all sped vnto the pope, with a certificat of the whole matter as it laie, he required to be assoiled of the bond which he had vnaduisedlie entred into. This suit was soone ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed

... of the High Father, that light within a maid, and bought all the souls out of thrall: so did Sir Galahad deliver all the maidens out of the woful castle. Now, Sir Gawaine, said the good man, thou must do penance for thy sin. Sir, what penance shall I do? Such as I will give, said the good man. Nay, said Sir Gawaine, I may do no penance; for we knights adventurous oft suffer great woe and pain. Well, said the good man, and then he held his ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... so," said Philip, and he turned purposely so that the four people at the next table could hear him. "I think she twisted her ankle. It's an occasional penance the women make for wearing these ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... Holy Week, "shedding their blood with such fervor that it became necessary to restrain them. Nor was there less fervor among the children;" and these, when too young to be allowed to scourge themselves, invent another penance of their own. In Leyte a notable disturbance among the natives, arising from the murder of a prominent chief, is quelled by the influence of the Jesuits, who reconcile the different factions and restore harmony, besides reclaiming ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... stain upon his fair pages. It reads thus: 'After a variety of vicissitudes, she had embraced the Romish faith: that religion which relieves from all personal responsibility in spiritual matters; and which teaches that earthly penance and ascetic observances will open the gates of heaven to the vilest of criminals.' We have studied Westminster, Episcopal, and Catholic catechisms, the teachings in all three of which are that faith in Christ and sorrow for and renunciation ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... mentioned had complied with the laws, and sacrificed to the Roman deities. By producing these false declarations, the opulent and timid Christians were enabled to silence the malice of an informer, and to reconcile in some measure their safety with their religion. A slight penance atoned for this ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... the magnitude of the sacrifice which the young novice was making appealed irresistibly to her admiration of the morally sublime. There was in that relinquishment of all the joys of earth a self-surrender to a passionless life of mortification, and penance, and prayer, an apparent heroism, which reminded Jane of her much-admired Roman maidens and matrons. She aspired with most romantic ardor to do, herself, something great and noble. While her sound judgment could not but condemn this abandonment of life, she ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... nothing to do with a battlefield. It was his attempt to secure a dispensation from the Pope for marrying his cousin in defiance of the canon law. Almost a year passed before the Pope gave his decision on the point, and then he ordered the unhappy cousins a horribly tedious penance. For four years they might not eat meat; they might not drink wine on Wednesdays, and at the six fasts they might only eat the second-best kinds of fish, and not those which were most agreeable to them. They had to feed four poor persons daily, and wait upon them themselves; ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... to the Church. They are founded upon those feelings inseparable from every human heart, vanity and affection. Our dead friends must be as well prayed for as those of others, and who knows but that they may be in deadly need of prayers! To shorten their fiery penance by one hour, who would not fast for a week? On these anniversaries a black-bordered advertisement appears in the newspapers, headed by the sign of the cross and the Requiescat in Pace, announcing that on this day twelve months ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... health, the King, having recovered from his illness, commanded me to do penance,—almost ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... now that the sign of the Red Bull was a sign for me as well as for thee. All Desire is red—and evil. I will do penance and ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... ancientness and glorious charms! The innocent Forest lent him arms; But bitter indeed was her regret; For the wretch, his axe new-helved and whet, Did nought but his benefactress spoil Of the finest trees that graced her soil; And ceaselessly was she made to groan, Doing penance for ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various

... wait for the day to come. They have talked of building a new academy this summer, but I do not believe they will. My room is not fit to stay in and I have promised myself that I would not pass another winter in it. If I must forever teach, I will seek at least a comfortable house to do penance in. I have a pleasant school of twenty scholars, but I have to manufacture the interest duty compels me to exhibit.... Energy and something to stimulate is wanting! But I expect the busy summer vacation spent with my dearest and truest friends will give me new life and fresh courage ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... permit me to laugh at the thought of Montfanon's choler when I relate to him this baptism. If I knew where to find the old leaguer! But he has been hiding since our duel. He is in some retreat doing penance. As I have already told you, the world for him has not stirred since Francois de Guise. He only admits the alms of the Protestants and the Jews. When Monseigneur Guerillot tells him of Fanny's religious aspirations, he raves immoderately. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... lagged behind until nature asserted her rights. The forcing process accomplished very little with him. He was quick-witted, however, and fond of fun. The gloomy doctrines of his learned father made him shudder, and he came to the conclusion that Sunday was a day of penance, and the Catechism a species of torture invented for the punishment of dull boys. At the age of ten, he was sent to a boarding-school in Bethlehem, where he studied by shouldering his gun and going after partridges. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... He was an indifferent actor but an excellent lecturer. One of his discourses, a lecture on Heads, was immensely popular in England, and not less so in Boston and Philadelphia. Prior to the affluence which he won by his lecture tours he had frequently to do "penance in jail for the debts of the tavern." He was, as Campbell says, a leading member of all the great Bacchanalian clubs of his day, and had no mean gift in writing songs in praise of hard drinking. One of these deserves a better fate than the oblivion into which it has ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... relating to the canons of Scripture, seven sacraments, sacrifice of the mass, private and solitary mass, communion in one kind, transubstantiation, image worship, purgatory, indulgences, confession and penance, absolution, &c., are clearly established as being in direct opposition to the opinions of the early fathers, and ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... gods detained me many days in Egypt to sacrifice and do penance, for I had forgotten to make proper offerings to them. The island of Pharos lies just off the coast of Egypt. There I remained until the daughter of the Ancient Sea King, seeing my distress, came ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer

... fir-forest, to meet that array, Forth paces a gray-haired magician: To none but Perun did that sorcerer pray, Fulfilling the prophet's dread mission: His life he had wasted in penance and pain:— And beside that enchanter Oleg drew ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... a learned Brahmin sitting in the shade of a huge umbrella. A characteristic feature of this hillside is the number of these large umbrellas, each of which marks the place of a priest or a holy man who has done some marvels of penance that give him a strong hold on the superstitious natives and induce them to pay him well for prayers or a ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... you, Domini? Can I wake day after day to the sunshine, and know that I shall never see you again, and go on living? Can I do that? I don't feel as if it could be. Perhaps, when I have done my penance, God ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... sinking so low, it seems, as to take orders in the Church of England. Later he returned—probably he was now penniless—"and prostrated himself before the whole brethren with weeping and howling." He was put to such shameful and continued acts of public penance up and down the country that any spirit which he had left awoke in him, and the Kirk knew him no more. Thus "the world might see what difference there is ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... his ostensible conversion, the king was obliged daily to perform the most humiliating ceremonies, by way of penance; and it was not till 1594 that he was absolved by Clement VIII. The Leaguers then had no further pretext for rebellion, and the League necessarily was dissolved. Its chiefs exacted high terms for their submission; but the civil wars had so exhausted the kingdom, that tranquillity ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... life, he yet seemed to have relinquished all the pleasures and even the passions of life. Austere, even rigid, in those acts of piety and personal mortifications enjoined by his religion—voluntary fasts, privations, nights supposed to be past in vigil and in penance; occasional rich gifts to patron saints, and their human followers; an absence of all worldly feeling, even ambition; some extraordinary deeds of benevolence—all rendered him an object of actual veneration to the priests and monks with which the goodly ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... a nose," as Laura rather slangily put it, and the girls, glowing and breathless, looked like anything else than confessed law-breakers doing penance. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr

... which serves its country should be pure. Ambition, selfish love, vain lust of power Ravage thy head and heart! and would'st thou hold The judgment balance with a hand still red With royal blood? Would'st thou dare speak a penance On guilt, thyself so guilty? Canst thou hope Castile will trust her to thee? God forbid! Mad is that nation, mad past thought of cure, Past chains and dungeons, whips, spare food, and fasting, Who yields ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... face. But she thrust her arm through his and forced a little laugh. "Mouston is becoming rather incorrigible, I'm afraid I've spoiled him hopelessly. I'll tell him you inquired, it will cheer him up, poor darling. He's doing penance with a bone upstairs. Shall we ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... Auburn (American) prison, the Middlesex magistrates, in their judicial wisdom, have adopted an entirely opposite system; by imposing an awful silence in their house of correction. This penance must press sorely on the criminals of the softer sex, to whom tea and conversation (errors excepted) constitute the principal comforts of life. CATULLUS seems to allude to this infernal art of ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam

... more from having been accustomed to go in our bare feet on board the training-ship, and boots in themselves being irksome, without the hard road we had to travel adding to the penance. ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... pride he has! Late one October, after his mates and companions had long since gone south, I noticed one for several successive days in the dense part of this next-door wood, flitting noiselessly about, very grave and silent, as if doing penance for some violation of the code of honor. By many gentle, indirect approaches, I perceived that part of his tail-feathers were undeveloped. The sylvan prince could not think of returning to court in this plight, and so, amid the falling leaves and cold rains of autumn, was patiently biding ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... And breife with all: eather betwixt you too [sic] Make frendly reconsilement, and in presence Of this your brotherhood (for what is fryar But frater, and that's brother?), or my selfe Out of my power will putt you to a penance Shall make you in ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... wrote their books in such a way that the reader was ready to release all mankind if he might revenge himself on the author. Shaw, in Captain Brassbound's Conversion, really showed at its best the merry mercy of the pagan; that beautiful human nature that can neither rise to penance nor sink to revenge. Many had proved that even the most independent incomes drank blood out of the veins of the oppressed: but they wrote it in such a style that their readers knew more about depression than oppression. ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... that the Southern man has a good deal of the knight you spoke of in him, and, like the Frenchman, marries inconsiderately, and does penance in infidelity, at least to the form, if not ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... into Father Zossima's cell, and all confessed aloud their sins of the day, their sinful thoughts and temptations; even their disputes, if there had been any. Some confessed kneeling. The elder absolved, reconciled, exhorted, imposed penance, blessed, and dismissed them. It was against this general "confession" that the opponents of "elders" protested, maintaining that it was a profanation of the sacrament of confession, almost a sacrilege, though this was quite a different thing. They even represented to the diocesan ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... some morning visitors were at the Homestead, prosy neighbours whose calls were always a penance to Rachel, and the butler, either from the manner of the inquiry or not regarding him as drawing-room company, put him into the dining-room and announced, "Mr. Mauleverer to see Miss Rachel." Up jumped Miss Rachel, with "You'll excuse ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... days we did penance, checking off the hours, meeting doggedly one after another the disagreeable things. We were bathed in heat; we inhaled it; it soaked into us until we seemed to radiate it like so many furnaces. A condition of thirst became the normal condition, to be only slightly ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... companion and confidant of her sovereign: and yet fate willed that she should be buried alive in a Westmoreland valley, seeing the same hills and streams, the same rustic faces, from year's end to year's end. Surely it was a hard fate, a heavy penance, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... mercy des pecheurs He hath mercy of the synnars Qui cognoistre se veullent; Which hem selfe wyll knowe; De ceulx qui ont repentance, Of them that haue repentaunce, Qui fasse vraye confession, Which make verry confession, 4 Et leur penance parfacent And theyr penaunce fuldoo Que le confesseur leurs charge. That the confessour them charge. Et le faulx mauuais, And the false euyll, Que damender nont cure, That to amende them recche not, 8 Selon la saincte escripture, After the holy scripture, Sont ...
— Dialogues in French and English • William Caxton

... the ball-room by Mr. Coverley, Mr. Lovel, and Lord Merton, who looked as if he was doing penance, and sat all the evening next to Lady Louisa, vainly endeavouring to ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... Egyptians, and we Gitanos, who, notwithstanding that they are sent by the Turks into Spain for the purpose of acting as spies upon the Christian religion, pretend that they are wandering over the world in fulfilment of a penance enjoined upon them, part of which penance seems to be the living by fraud and imposition.' And shortly afterwards he remarks: 'Nor do they derive any authority for such a practice from those words in Exodus, (24) "et ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... authorised one of my sisters to do it, who at the same time sunk their ship. You have lost the goods you had on board, but I will compensate you another way. As to your two brothers, I have condemned them to remain five years in that shape. Their perfidiousness too well deserves such a penance." Having thus spoken and told me where I might ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... Hackin must be boiled by Day-break, or else two young Men took the Maiden by the Arms, and run her round the Market-place, till she was ashamed of her Laziness. And what was worse than this, she must not play with the Young Fellows that Day, but stand Neuter, like a Girl doing penance in a ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... had already fled the kingdom (January 25), abdicating in favour of his brother Federigo. His avowed object was to withdraw to Sicily, retire from the world, and do penance for his sins, for which no doubt there was ample occasion. The real spur was probably—as opined by Commines—cowardice; for, says that Frenchman, "Jamais homme cruel ne ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... glides away 'Mid mirth and music, flattery's whispered tone, Her dreary penance—ever to be gay, Yet longing, oh! how oft—to be alone; But when all other hearts seek needful rest, And heavy sleep the saddest eyelids close, Her dreams are those the wretched only know, As memory o'er her soul its ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... had formerly used. She was sure Marjorie had never seen it, so if it fell into her hands she could not trace it to her. Once more she practiced the back-handed scrawl. Then, with an energy born of the remorse which was to serve as a continual penance ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... Having done penance for some time in the damp alleys which line the borders of these lazy waters, I was led through corkscrew sand-walks to a vast flat, sparingly scattered over with vegetation. To puzzle myself in such a labyrinth there was no temptation, so taking advantage of the lateness of ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... asked Els in surprise, a look of anxious suspense clouding her pretty, frank face. "The reckless Swiss, whom Countess Cordula said yesterday was the pike in the dull carp pond of the court, and the only person for whom it was worth while to bear the penance imposed in the confessional?" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... massacre of the inhabitants, in which numbers variously estimated at from 7,000 to 15,000 perished. The emperor quickly felt remorse for the atrocity of which he had been guilty, and submitted to do public penance under ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... social animal. The very follies for which he was doing penance had been bred of his excessive sociability. And here, in the fourth year of his exile, he found himself in company—which were to travesty the word—with a morose and speechless creature in whose sombre eyes smouldered a hatred as bitter as it was ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... legal punishment can scarcely be said to be in theory possible; the sacredness of the blood-tie lending to any chastisement that may be inflicted on an erring kinsman the purely religious complexion of a sacrifice, an act of excommunication, a penance, or what not. Thus almost insensibly we are led on to the subject of religion from the study of the legal sanction; this very term "sanction," which is derived from Roman law, pointing in the same direction, since it originally stood for the curse which was appended ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... and talked wildly about the future of English poetry, till they drove in under the archway of the Manor and his penance was ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... leaped upon thee!" repeated the good father with evident vexation. "What next? I tell thee, child, those foolish fears are most unmeet for thee, and must be overcome, if necessary, with prayer and penance. Frightened by a toad! Blood of the Martyrs! 'T is ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... has been raining, I fancy, as the pavement looks wet, and it seems cold too; but as a little penance for my unkindness to you, I shall run to the post with bare feet. But be not alarmed, child; if inflammation of the lungs carries me off in three weeks' time I shall not be vexed with you, but shall look down smilingly from the sky, and select ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... King Agramant, for penance, smite His cheek, and rash Marsilius rue the hour; This, when all trained with lance and sword to fight, He led from Africa to swell his power; That other when he pushed, in fell despite, Against the realm of France Spain's martial flower. 'Twas thus Orlando came where Charles was tented ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... virtue with admirable clearness. A pious man, toiling onward in poverty, proud of his good conscience, at peace with himself, and steadfastly true to himself in his heart in spite of the spectacle of exultant vice, was a fallen angel doing penance, who remembered his origin, foresaw his guerdon, accomplished his task, and obeyed his glorious mission. The sublime resignation of Christians was then seen in all its glory. He depicted martyrs at the burning stake, and almost stripped them of their merit by stripping them of their sufferings. ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac

... poet, when he suddenly announces the death of the king of France, and makes the princess postpone her answer to the young prince's serious advances till the expiration of the period of her mourning, and impose, besides, a heavy penance on him for his levity, drops the proper comic tone. But the tone of raillery, which prevails throughout the piece, made it hardly possible to bring about a more satisfactory conclusion: after such ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... behaved,' said Guy, colouring. 'If you knew the madness of those first moments of provocation, you would think that the penance of a lifetime, instead of only one winter, would scarce ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of Acre's walls," replied the emperor, sadly, "the sole remains of that gallant train of close on ninety thousand knights who followed the banner of the Cross from distant Ratisbon. Greek traitors and Arab spears have slain the rest, and I am come, a simple pilgrim, to do deep penance at the holy shrines, and thereafter to help thee, noble boy, in thy struggles ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... 'Senor Guevara, do you believe that God will pardon any crime, a murder for instance, solely by a man's telling it to a priest—a man after all and one whose duty it is to keep quiet about it—by his fearing that he will roast in hell as a penance—by being cowardly and certainly shameless into the bargain? I have another conception of God,' he used to say, 'for in my opinion one evil does not correct another, nor is a crime to be expiated by vain lamentings or by giving alms to the Church. Take this example: if I have killed the father ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... for the first time to-day. Oh! my heart was glad when looking up, outside the temple, I caught sight of you clad in that strange Eastern armour, and knew that you had returned safe from your long wanderings. Yet afterwards I must do penance for it by saying two added prayers, since at such a time my thoughts should have ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... and title Should have more weight than merit has in the army. I would fain not be meaner than my equal, So in an evil hour I let myself Be tempted to that measure. It was folly! But yet so hard a penance it deserved not. It might have been refused; but wherefore barb And venom the refusal with contempt? Why dash to earth and crush with heaviest scorn The gray-hair'd man, the faithful veteran? Why to the baseness of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... me I trow I'd do penance for half a year)— For once I saw a flame there and the smoke of a sacrifice, And a voice spake out of the thicket that froze ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... The law doth sometimes mediate, thinks it good Not ever to steep violent sins in blood: This gentle penance may both end your crimes, And in the example better these ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... to a remarkable degree.' Here is another picture of an almost contemporaneous event, equally vivid in its suggestiveness: 'John Tyndale, the translator's brother, and Thomas Patmore, merchants, were condemned to do penance by riding with their faces to their horses' tails, with their books fastened thick about them, pinned, or tacked, to their gowns or clokes, to the Standard in Cheap; and there with their own hands to fling them into the fire, kindled ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... in high civil station when he was raised to a great ecclesiastical position; each was in middle age. Each had led an upright, virtuous life before his elevation; and each, on being elevated, changed it for a life of extraordinary penance and saintly devotion. Each was promoted to his high place by the act, direct or concurrent, of his sovereign; and each showed to that sovereign in the most emphatic way that a bishop was the servant, not of man, but of the Lord of heaven and earth. Each boldly confronted his sovereign in a great ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... thrust into the straps of the runner-like skees, Alwin stamped with exasperation. "You need not tell me that again. I know as well as you that it is a sin. But will not penance ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz



Words linked to "Penance" :   remittal, penalty, remorse, compunction, absolution, remission of sin, self-reproach, sacrament, self-mortification, penalisation, self-abasement, repentance, remission, penalization, punishment, penitence, confession



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