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Purgatory   /pˈərgətˌɔri/   Listen
Purgatory

noun
1.
A temporary condition of torment or suffering.
2.
(theology) in Roman Catholic theology the place where those who have died in a state of grace undergo limited torment to expiate their sins.






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"Purgatory" Quotes from Famous Books



... the graces I asked. I felt myself truly a queen and took advantage of my title to obtain every favour from the King for His ungrateful subjects. No one was forgotten. I wished that every sinner on earth might be converted; that on that day Purgatory should set its captives free; and I bore upon my heart this letter containing what I ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... bent On pouring out its poison"—one could pray That the day's end might see the madness done And saner souls rise with the morrow's sun. But this incarnate hell that yawns before Your bright, brave soul keyed to the fighter's clench— This purgatory that men call the "trench"— This modern "Black Hole" of a modern war! Yea, Love! yet naught I say can save you, so I lay my heart in yours and let ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... reality: instead of being an extension to the natural world myth has become its substratum. Religion no longer reveals divine personalities, future rewards, and tenderer Elysian consolations; nor does it seriously propose a heaven to be reached by a ladder nor a purgatory to be shortened by prescribed devotions. It merely gives the real world an ideal status and teaches men to accept a natural life on supernatural grounds. The consequence is that the most pious can give an unvarnished description of things. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... of the people in the bath, with nothing but their heads and hands above water, with the height of the walls that environ the bath, gave me a lively idea of several pictures I had seen, of Angelo's in Italy of Purgatory, with heads and hands uplifted in the midst of smoke, just as they are here. After bathing, you are carried home in your chair, in the same ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe

... agreeable conditions were drawing to an end. Thenceforth Butler allowed himself to gradually drift back into his former exacting and autocratic ways, until at length life in the camp again became a veritable purgatory for everybody concerned, Butler himself included, the natural result of his tyrannical conduct being that everybody—Harry excepted—did everything in his power to thwart him, while even the lad himself ceased to attempt the apparently ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... have helped the world better by denying himself, and not painting; or Casella by denying himself, and not singing! The real virtue is to be ready to sing the moment people ask us; as he was, even in purgatory. The very word "virtue" means not "conduct" but "strength," vital energy in the heart. Were not you reading about that group of words beginning with V,—vital, virtuous, vigorous, and so on,—in Max Muller, the other day, Sibyl? Can't you tell the ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... do ye keep honest men a-waiting for at the gate," said a gruff voice from the pitchy darkness without, "in a night that would make a soul wish for a dip into purgatory, just by way of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... of Weltin, composed by a monk, eleven years after the death of Charlemagne, shows him in purgatory, with a vulture, who is perpetually gnawing the guilty member, while the rest of his body, the emblem of his virtues, is sound and perfect, (see Gaillard tom. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... too. I' hate an imbecile. An imbecile to my mind is the fellow without the capacity to err intentionally. God takes care of the fellow who errs ignorantly. Give me the fellow who is bright enough to do the bad things which might admit him to purgatory in good standing, and I'll trust him to do the good things that will let him into heaven. I often wonder where these chaps go after they die—I mean the Yale and Harvard chaps who bore you. It takes a clever chap to have any standing at all in purgatory. Where do they go, Jane? ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... world, and then Gambling Hansel made straight for the door of Heaven, and knocked at it. "Who is there?" "Gambling Hansel." "Ah, we will have nothing to do with him! Begone!" So he went to the door of Purgatory, and knocked once more. "Who is there?" "Gambling Hansel." "Ah, there is quite enough weeping and wailing here without him. We do not want to gamble, just go away again." Then he went to the door of Hell, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... there was a driving party; it was to drive out of town to Purgatory, a pretty place, where there is a brook in a deep ravine with a verdant meadow-floor; and there they were to take food and drink, as is the way of humanity in pretty places. Now it so happened that the Austins, Miss Warfield, Breeze, and Pinckney were going to drive in a party, the Austins ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... merits of what its author declares to be "perhaps a better translation" than any other. He says that "the whole Divine Comedy of which these ten cantos are a specimen will appear in due time." If the specimen be a fair one, the translation of the "Purgatory" and the "Paradise" will not appear until after the publication of Dr. Carlyle's prose version, for which we may yet have to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... shoulder, exclaimed in a voice broken by sobs, "Oh, tell me, where may I go to become an anchorite! There's no other safety! I'll give all my portion, and spend all my time in prayer for my father and the other poor souls in purgatory." ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... mingles with the melancholy "whoo-whooa" of the great horned owl; which, unseen, sweeps on silent wing through the shadowy aisles of the forest, leading the lone traveller to fancy them peopled by departed spirits in torment from the pains of Purgatory. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... the working of the Spirit in them that by faith receive them. Belief in the literal transubstantiation of the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper was rigidly enforced and substituted for that spiritual presence and spiritual manducation which the earlier church had maintained. The doctrine of a purgatory after this life was invented, and the virtue of masses for the dead therein detained was persistently taught and required to be believed. The Roman church was affirmed to be the mother and mistress of the churches, and its head to be the successor of St Peter ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... curse you if you call his Ikons images, And damns your soul to Hell—no purgatory, if you please! About Procession of the Ghost he's prickly as a burr, But he believes, as we all believe, in ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice

... Bertin; and had masses sung for the souls of all whom he had slain, according to a rough list which he furnished,— bidding the monks not to be chary of two or three masses extra at times, as his memory was short, and he might have sent more souls to purgatory than he had recollected. He gave great alms at his door to all the poor. He befriended, especially, all shipwrecked and needy mariners, feeding and clothing them, and begging their freedom as a gift from Baldwin. He feasted the knights of the neighborhood, who since ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... Italians, after centuries of deception and soul-bondage, have at last discovered their blindness; they now see that money is the aim of their Church and her priests. Money is paid for forgiveness of sins, for fresh indulgence in the same, for their souls to be delivered from purgatory when they die, for everything which God gives His children freely and lovingly, and this for the sole and ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... that some of her friends who had visited Charleston had described it as a city where the yellow-fever and the "yells of whipped negroes, which assail your ears from every house," and the extreme heat, rendered life a mere purgatory. She had heard, too, that in South Carolina the men were absorbed in hunting, gaming, and racing; while the women, robbed of their society, had no pleasures but to come together in large parties, sip tea, and ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... see, and I'll teach Aleck to read, for nobody is here to see, at least nobody whose seeing I mind; and I'll teach every other creature that wants to learn. I haven't much more than a week to remain in this blessed purgatory, in that last week perhaps I may teach the boy enough to go on alone when ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... off The Funeral black, (your rich heir wears with joy, When he pretends to weep for his dead Father) Your gathering Sires, so long heap muck together, That their kind Sons, to rid them of their care, Wish them in Heaven; or if they take a taste Of Purgatory by the way, it matters not, Provided they remove hence; what is befaln To his Father, in the other world, I ask not; I am sure his prayer is heard: would I could use one For mine, ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... relevant particulars this strange venture had proved a huge success. To leave the fever of the stage for the quiet life of the village had been to Mrs. Abel like the escape of a soul from the flames of purgatory. She had rightly discerned that the Rev. Edward Abel was a man of large heart, high character, and excellent wit—partly clergyman, but mostly man. He, on his part, valued his wife, and his judgment was backed by every humble soul in the village. ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... has taught us not to receive the Devil's Testimony in any thing. The Papists are justly condemned for bringing Diabolical Testimony to confirm the Principles of their Religion. Peter Cotton the Jesuite[56] enquired of the Devil in a possessed Person, what was the clearest Scripture to prove Purgatory. At the time when Luther died, all the possessed People in the Netherlands were quiet: The Devils in them, said the Reason was, because Luther[57] had been a great Friend of theirs, and they owed him that respect as to go ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... sixteenth century, was asked the value of an office which he had purchased in the Court of Wards, he replied:—"Some thousands to any one who wishes to get to heaven immediately; twice as much to him who does not mind being in purgatory; and nobody knows what to him who is ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... to embrace the superior merits of celibacy, the institution of the monastic life, the use of the sign of the cross, of holy oil, and even of images, the invocation of saints, the worship of relics, the rudiments of purgatory in prayers for the dead, and the tremendous mystery of the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, which insensibly swelled into the prodigy of transubstantiation. In these dispositions, and already more than half a convert, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... MacMorroghs in the forefront of things to steal and cheat and make trouble with the labor, and Mr. North in the rear to back them up and to retard matters generally, we are in for a siege to which purgatory, if we ever go there, will seem restful, Richard my son. Our one weapon is my present ranking authority over the general manager. If he ever succeeds in breaking that, you fellows in the field would better hunt ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... A bishop with little learning—Camudio. A notorious excommunicate—Tenorio. Right well they deserve the Purgatory Of Hell, these three friends; For they are the enemies of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various

... of disposing of the bodies of the dead. While the body is being reduced to ashes the priests tell their beads and chant prayers for the soul of the departed, as the followers of almost every religious sect in Japan believe in a state of purgatory. ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver

... in his luxurious chair and musing over his cigar, "the purgatory idea is one of the cleverest schemes ever foisted upon the unthinking masses, and it has proved a veritable Klondike. Gad! if I could think up and put over a thing like that I'd consider myself ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... our settlers face a long purgatory of peril and privation, Captain Parish," came the sober response. "Without powder, lead, and salt, they cannot live. The ways must be held open. Communication must remain intact. Forts must be maintained—and the ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... a droll dog, fair to look upon, dark and fat. It will take a lot of holy water to save her from purgatory. ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... the believing heart surrender; sink into spell-bound sleep, under the night-mare, Unbelief; and, in this hag-ridden dream, mistake God's fair living world for a pallid, vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But through such Purgatory pain,' continues he, 'it is appointed us to pass; first must the dead Letter of Religion own itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if the living Spirit of Religion, freed from this its charnel-house, is ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... sincerity, as well as of our freedom from ambition. Is, then, fraud and falsehood become the distinctive character of Englishmen? Whenever your enemy chooses to accuse you of perfidy and ill faith, will you put it into his power to throw you into the purgatory of self-humiliation? Is his charge equal to the finding of the grand jury of Europe, and sufficient to put you upon your trial? But on that trial I will defend the English ministry. I am sorry that on some points I have, on the principles I have ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... extremely, until an incident occurred which robbed her evening of its sweetness and plunged her into the purgatory of the child who has inadvertently broken ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... that I am begging you still to be my friend—to send me now and then a little letter; that I may feel in the night that you are holding out your hand to me. There can be no greater punishment than your complete silence, no greater purgatory than the thought that I have forfeited your respect. Looking into the future I can see no way to regain it, but if the day ever comes when a Blind Beggar can serve you, you will show that you have forgiven him by asking that service ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey

... have been needed and should have been boasted of with such violent vulgarity was almost more than Mrs. Western could stand. She came down-stairs and then underwent the additional purgatory of listening to the silver-tongued farewell. That she, she with her high ideas of a woman's duty and a woman's dignity, should have put herself into such a condition was a marvel to herself. Had some one a year since told her that she should become thus afraid of a fellow-creature ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope

... living soul:" nevertheless, the Catholic, at this day, rejects this system of divine emanation, seeing that it supposes the Divinity divisible: which would have, been inconvenient to the Romish idea of purgatory, or to the system of everlasting punishment. Although Moses, in the above quotation, seems to indicate that the soul was a portion of the Divinity, it does not appear that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul was established in any one of the books attributed ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... sick man heard the sound of bells, it was a sign that death would soon come. He feared also that the old man might die without a priest and without confession, and therefore go, if not to hell, then at least for long centuries to purgatory; therefore he determined to resume their journey, in order to reach, as soon as possible, some parish in which Macko could receive ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... ff. Cf. Perdrizet, Rev. des etudes anc., 1905, p. 32; Audollent, Melanges Louis Havet, 1909, p. 575.—The refrigerii sedes, which the Catholic Church petitions for the deceased in the anniversary masses, appears in the oldest Latin liturgies, and the Greeks, who do not believe in purgatory, have always expressed themselves along the same lines. For instance, Nubian inscriptions which are in perfect agreement with the euchology of Constantinople hope the soul will rest [Greek: en topoi chloeroi, en topoi anapsuxeos] ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... saints. It is admitted by such men that we are not wrong in asking the living to pray for us. Surely, therefore, it is not wrong to make a like request of the dead. In the same way, to those who believe in purgatory, to pray for the dead is as natural and as rational as to pray for the living. Next, as to this doctrine of purgatory itself—which has so long been a stumbling-block to the whole Protestant world—time goes on, and the view men take of ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... and we find from some old account books that the good folk were very careful to have all their bell-ropes and bells in good order for All-hallow Even. This ringing was supposed to benefit the souls of the dead in Purgatory, and ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... 1769, where the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory or 'a middle state,' as Johnson calls it is discussed, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... and suffering eyes, studies you, your face, your thoughts, uncertain on which side you will strike, and his distracted mind frames thousands of plans in an instant, but he is still afraid to speak, afraid of giving himself away! This purgatory of the spirit, this animal thirst for self-preservation, these humiliating moments of the human soul, are awful, and sometimes arouse horror and compassion for the criminal even in the lawyer. And this was what we all ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... bad business,' said she; 'you must see if you can't get him sent to Purgatory, to demand tribute.' The squire therefore made his way to the men's quarters, to speak to Hans, and it took him all his time to push his way along the walls, under the eaves, on account of the fish that filled the ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... contravention of a kingdom not of this world, boldly to usurp the temporal dominion of it all: instead of the overwhelming incomprehensibility of an eternal doom, to comfort the worst with false assurance of a purgatory longer or shorter; that after all, vice may be burnt out; and who knows but that gold, buying up the prayers and superfluous righteousness of others, may not make the fiery ordeal an easy one? In lieu of a God brought near to his creatures, infinite purity in contact with the grossest sin, as the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... also related of a woman of forty-five who had lost her only son. One day she fancied she beheld him beseeching her to release his soul from purgatory by prayers and fasting every Friday. The following Friday, which was in the month of August, and for five succeeding Fridays she had a profuse bloody perspiration, the disorder disappearing on Friday, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... Captain's side, Weldon glanced at the orderly, then, turning, looked across the veldt to the four gray walls surrounding the clump of trees a mile away. His hand tightened on the curb, and he straightened in the saddle, as the Captain led the way into the purgatory beyond, an orderly purgatory, but crossed with leaden lines of shot ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... of 'em, and he can afford the luxury of a wife brought up the way Eloise Evringham has been. That's right, Zeke. Unfasten the check-rein, though the doctor don't use a mean one, I must say. I only hope there's a purgatory for the folks that use too short check-reins on their horses. I hope they'll have to wear 'em themselves for a thousand years, and have to stand waiting at folks' doors frothing at the mouth, and the back of their necks half breaking when the weather's down to zero and ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... passions of the populace, had exchanged smiles and compliments with the perjured informers, had roared down the arguments feebly stammered forth by the prisoners, and had not been ashamed, in passing the sentence of death, to make ribald jests on purgatory and the mass. As soon as the butchery of Papists was over, the butchery of Whigs had commenced; and the judges had applied themselves to their new work with even more than their old barbarity. To these scandals the Revolution had put ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... and damned can speak together. There is much dispute about the population of Al-A'arf, the general idea being that they are men who do not deserve reward in Heaven or punishment in Hell. But it is not a "Purgatory" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... an unfair representation is already found in the halls of our Congress and in the ranks of our forces, lest similar outbreaks occur again. Did you but know that this eye only lately saw the members of that same Congress at Mass for the soul of a Roman Catholic in purgatory, and participating in the rites of a Church against whose anti-Christian corruptions your pious ancestors would have witnessed with their blood? The army must not witness similar outbreaks of religious zeal in ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... come out they are far from white, however. They are of a uniform dirty brown hue. But the colors have lost their gripe. When the rags shall have been submitted to the grinding and washing in pure water, as we shall see them presently, they are easily whitened. The lime bath is the purgatory of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various

... craw nor bill rair intill 't my lord. I cum to you wi' 't i' the houp ye 'll help to redd (clear) it up, for I dinna weel ken what we can du wantin' ye. There 's but ane kens a' the truth o' 't, an' she 's the awfu'es leear oot o' purgatory —no 'at I believe in purgatory, but it 's the langer an' lichter word to mak' ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... might be taken to indicate a joint ownership of territory, but it is more likely that the Kiowa territory adjoined the Comanche on the northwest. In fact Pope[61] definitely locates the Kiowa in the valley of the Upper Arkansas, and of its tributary, the Purgatory (Las Animas) River. This is in substantial accord with the statements of other writers of about the same period. Schermerhorn (1812) places the Kiowa on the heads of the Arkansas and Platte. Earlier still they appear upon the headwaters of the Platte, which is the region assigned ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... Miguel, an ominous light flashing from his eyes. "Those golden pesos so lightly earned will just about pay for a thousand masses in order to avert excommunication and enable the Church to snatch the soul of the Chiquita from the fires of purgatory as a punishment for conduct unbecoming the ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... on you lads, I call it, to be dumped on this bit o' purgatory," said the coxswain to Peter Tobey. "The great Cap'n Teach must ha' been in ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... one side were all the insidious dangers lurking in a wild, tropical forest; on the other, the relentless hostility of the Spaniards. The environment of the hunters made them rough and cruel, and for many an engage his three years of servitude must have been a veritable purgatory. The servants of the planters were in no better position. Decoyed from Norman and Breton towns and villages by the loud-sounding promises of sea-captains and West Indian agents, they came to seek an El Dorado, and often found only despair ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... of such as cry up and maintain the cheat of pardons and indulgences? that by these compute the time of each soul's residence in purgatory, and assign them a longer or shorter continuance according as they purchase more or fewer of these paltry pardons? By this easy way of purchasing pardons, any notorious highwayman, any plundering soldier, any ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various

... heaven or hell, as the case may be, without waiting for the archangel's trump and the grand assize. On the whole this is the dominant theory of the situation in Protestant circles, and is much less reasonable than the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, however much the latter may have been abused. But under this view what is the exact significance of the Judgment Day and the physical Resurrection? One would think they might be accounted superfluous. What is the good of tormenting a soul in hell ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... this notwithstanding their willingness to include in their affirmation a denial of Mariolatry, purgatory, and other vital ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... far light an angel clothed with the brilliancy of the sun. With the speed of lightning he plunged far down the purgatory fire; his brightness was so great that Alvira could follow him even through the flames. There the angel found a young, beautiful soul, deep in agony, clothed with crimson fire. A smile of ineffable joy lit up the countenance of the sufferer—the message from heaven was understood. The angel ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... particularly offensive lie. If the newspapers, which the convicts who occasionally passed through our hall in the transaction of their duties, some times smuggled into us, were discovered in any man's hands or cell, woe be unto him—a first class sinner could be easier prayed out of purgatory, than ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... "when I was in England, I turned the whole Bible over to find Purgatory, and because I could not find it there I believed there was none. But now that I have come to Spain, I have found it here, and that your Highness is in it; whence that you may be released, we, your Highness's servants, who are ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... this "free country" to be ready to observe the law of "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and life for life;" and who, besides, had her naturally warm temper rather spoiled from her continual rencontres with her mistress on such subjects as confession, priests' celibacy, purgatory, and other subjects too profound for the understanding of her mistress to know any thing about them, and too sacred in the eyes of Norry to allow them to be irreverently handled without saying something in their defence. It requires not only a perfect acquaintance with the sublime and heavenly ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... and women were afraid of each other: there was no good fellowship. Nothing real. Only gallantry copied out of novels, and as vulgar and affected as it could be. Maidenly reserve! gentlemanly chivalry! always saying no when you meant yes! simple purgatory ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... She had not asked it; but the old mother, as the last act of her tender pity, had requested the sexton to make the grave there,—putting together those whom earth had so violently parted, and whose souls were now reunited through repentance in purgatory. ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... attention to the fact that, quite apart from our Grail texts, we possess a romance which is, plainly, and blatantly, nothing more or less than such a record. I refer, of course, to Owain Miles, or The Purgatory of Saint Patrick, where we have an account of the hero, after purification by fasting and prayer, descending into the Nether World, passing through the abodes of the Lost, finally reaching Paradise, and returning to earth after Three Days, ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... on her development; serious admirers were not lacking, and with one of these, a young man some eight years older than herself, she had had for the past three months a sort of understanding. For her, as for so many others, the time she had still to spend at school was as purgatory before paradise. To top all, one of the day-scholars in Laura's class was actually engaged to be married; and in no boy-and-girl fashion, but to a doctor who lived and practised in Emerald Hill: he might sometimes ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... ideal of Purgatory is exhibited, consisting of wood carvings. The making-up of the scene appears to be a kind of cage, like those one sees in a menagerie, with bars in front of it to prevent the escape of the unhappy mortals ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic

... senators, the "creatures of a renegade priest, himself the creature of a foreign mercenary, its hundred tribunes who are to talk and do nothing, and its three hundred legislators whom the constitution orders to be silent." What a ludicrous Purgatory, adds he, "for three hundred Frenchmen!" Very vigorous, moreover, is he on the ministerial rejection of the French proposals of peace in 1800, arguing against the continuance of the war on the very sound anti-Jacobin ground that if it were unsuccessful it would inflame ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... echoed the advocate: "ask his mother; yes, sir, ask his dam. Oh, Monsieur Veuillot, is there not deep damnation in thus having an idiot for one's child? Here is your purgatory:—purgatory? no: for purgatory is a kind of half-way house to heaven, but this son of mine is to me a slippery stepping-stone to perdition. Sir, a child should be a cherub to lift its parents' spirit to the skies; but mine, oh!"—and a spasm of agony passed over the old man's ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... to the same school than to that of Burns, though never degrading itself by Elliott's ferocity, is that extraordinary poem, "The Purgatory of Suicides," by Thomas Cooper. As he is still in the prime of life, and capable of doing more and better than he yet has done, we will not comment on it as freely as we have on Elliott, except to regret a similar want of softness and sweetness, and also of a clearness and ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... projected marriage was concerned. He was determined to do his best to accomplish it, for he would have done anything to get the command of ready money; if he was not successful, at any rate he need not remain in the purgatory of Grey Abbey. The Queen's Bench would be preferable to that. He was not, however, very doubtful; he felt but little confidence in the constancy of any woman's affection, and a great deal in his own powers of fascination: he had always been successful in his appeals to ladies' hearts, ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... punishes by relegating the rebellious angels to a vast place of shadows called "Ondera" during the period of an entire mononthour. A mononthour is four hundred and twenty-six millions of our years. But God deigned to pardon the guilty after five thousand years, and their ondera was only a purgatory. ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... of marriage? I take't, as those that deny purgatory; It locally contains or heaven or hell; There's no ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various

... earth—with flying banners and a brass-band, I suppose— where he will reign a thousand years. At the conclusion of this felicitous period Satan is to be loosed for a little season, and after he has pawed up the gravel with his long toe-nails and given us a preliminary touch of Purgatory, we are to have the genuine pyrotechnics. Some of the divines did not agree with the spectacular ceremonies arranged by Dr. Seasholes for the Second Coming; but he seems determined to carry out his program or enjoin the procession. The editor was musing on this remarkable controversy and wondering, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... successively. The heady liquor combined with his agitation to throw him into a species of rage. He laid violent hands on the tales. In one instant more, their faults and beauties would alike have vanished in a glowing purgatory. But, all at once, I remembered passages of high imagination, deep pathos, original thoughts, and points of such varied excellence, that the vastness of the sacrifice struck me most forcibly. I caught ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... regard as made in the image of our Saviour,[493] was unfaithful to his marriage vows,[494] Bradford had spoken generally of the king's vulgar amours; other accounts convinced her too surely that he was consoling himself for his long purgatory in England, by miscellaneous licentiousness. Philip was gross alike in all his appetites; bacon fat was the favourite food with which he gorged himself to illness;[495] his intrigues were on the same level of indelicacy, and his unhappy ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... bliss or woe? If the victim were heathen, these brief pangs were but the faint prelude of an undying flame; and if a Christian, they were the fiery portal of Heaven. They might, indeed, be a blessing; since, accepted in atonement for sin, they would shorten the torments of Purgatory. Yet, while schooling themselves to despise the body, and all the pain or pleasure that pertained to it, the Fathers were emphatic on one point. It must not be eaten. In the matter of cannibalism, they were loud and ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... the fact. "You are going to purgatory," he said, "and I am going to perdition. Do you know, I sometimes wonder if we shouldn't do better to turn and fly in the face of the gods when they drive us too hard? Why do we give in when we've nothing to gain and ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... intermingled other ideas with them of a sad and painful nature; that it spoke of tears before joy, a cross before a crown; that it laid the foundation of heroism in penance; that it made the soul tremble with the news of Purgatory and Hell; that it insisted on views and a worship of the Deity, which to their minds was nothing else than mean, servile, and cowardly. The notion of an All-perfect, Ever-present God, in whose sight we are less than atoms, and who, while He deigns to visit us, can punish ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... to get out of the artificial Newport and to come into scenery that Nature has made after artistic designs which artists are satisfied with. A favorite drive of our friends was to the Second Beach and the Purgatory Rocks overlooking it. The photographers and the water-color artists have exaggerated the Purgatory chasm into a Colorado canon, but anybody can find it by help of a guide. The rock of this locality is a curious study. It is an agglomerate made of pebbles and cement, the pebbles being elongated ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... consciousness of a general relation to the Divine nature and a special personal relation. The litany should count a prayer for them in the list of its supplications; masses should be said for them as for souls in purgatory; all good Christians should remember them as they remember those in peril through travel or sickness ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... detail what the condition the outcast will be, and what will be the constituents of their suffering? We cannot. Rome has impiously traded upon this weakness of humanity. She has parcelled out her purgatory, as we delineate this upper world on a map. This is the machinery whereby she is enabled to traffic in the souls of men. No; that condition lies in outer darkness; I cannot see through the veil, and tell the specific sufferings that lie beneath it. My Lord has told ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... combination of Retribution and Salvation, was pictured in various ways and with some elaboration of detail. Paradise and Hell were mapped out, and the comfortable compartments to be occupied by the saints and the miserable quarters of sinners were specified with the precision of an Ordnance Survey. Purgatory was an institution not limited to the Roman Catholic Church; it had a strong hold on the mediaeval Jewish mind. The intermediate state was a favourite escape from the theological necessity of condemning ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams

... divided us from our destination, but surely the most impracticable eighty miles out of Arabia Petraea! We were bound for a certain little town called St. Enimie, but between us and St. Enimie stretched a barrier, insurmountable as Dante's fog isolating Purgatory from Paradise, or as the black river separating Pluto's domain from the region of light. We seemed as far off the Causses as Christian from the heavenly Jerusalem when imprisoned in Castle Doubting, or as the Israelites from Canaan when in ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... nun, sinking upon her knees and raising her hands imploringly to the king; "I want the love you once promised me—the love which is my earthly happiness and my salvation—your love, without which I must die; wanting which, I suffer the tortures of purgatory!" ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... to Lagg in ferreting out rebels, used to sit in court with him to advise him of the prisoners' characters, and generally make himself obnoxious to the Covenanters. He was also accused of leaning to popery, and is said on one occasion to have openly defended the doctrine of purgatory; on another he maintained Papists to be much better subjects than Presbyterians—as, indeed, from the Government's point of view they certainly were. How far Peirson deserved this character we cannot surely tell. The fact of his being hated ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris

... hunger-staru'd, Whose griefe hath parch'd thy body, dry'd thy blood. Thou which hast scorned life, and hated death, And in a moment mad, sober, glad, and sorry, Thou which hast band thy thoughts and curst thy breath, With thousand plagues more then in purgatory. Thou thus whose spirit Loue in his fire refines, Come thou and reade, ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton

... is, its shock tore a sail in two, as I tear this sheet of paper. The most ingenious person I see is "the master of the sails." He sews most excessively quick and well. Towards evening the wind calmed, but the ship, tossed upon a horribly swelled sea, became a mortal purgatory. Still the wind is lulled, though Humboldt and others say a Norte must last forty-eight hours, and we have only had it for twenty-four. We ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... the House, Jacintha met him, and begged that some Masses might be sung for the repose of Elvira's soul, which She doubted not was suffering in Purgatory. He promised not to forget her request; But He perfectly gained the old Woman's heart by engaging to watch during the whole of the approaching night in the haunted chamber. Jacintha could find no terms sufficiently strong to express ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... ripple of the woodland streams. Invariably throughout the drama, in the midst of all human pain and passion, great Nature is there, peaceful, harmonious in all her loveliest moods, a paradise in which dwell souls who make of her their own purgatory. ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis

... pleasure, sir—that is the actual transit. And sleeping cars and electric-lighted steamers and hotels do not mitigate the suffering. If Dante was writing now he might depict a constant round of personally conducted tours in Purgatory. I should think the punishment adequate for any offense. But I like arriving at places. New York has given me a lot of new sensations to-day, and I have forgotten the ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr

... for the repose of his soul. Hoping you're well and not in hell. Nice change of air. Out of the fryingpan of life into the fire of purgatory. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... look for the secret of the popular acceptance of beliefs that to him seemed most outrageous, in some possibly finer side which they might possess for others, appealing not to the lower but to the higher qualities of a nature with instincts of perfection. Take his account of Purgatory, for instance. The priests, he says, drew up so minute and comprehensive a table of sins that nobody could hope to escape from censure. Here you come upon one of the most lucrative branches of the sacerdotal trafficking; people were ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley

... he tells us, this immaterial substance, this soul, shall experience the action of the element of fire, which he allows to be material; when he confidently says this soul shall be burnt; shall suffer in purgatory; have we not a right to believe, that either he has a design to deceive us, or else that he does not himself understand that which he is so anxious we should take upon ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... particularly curious in astronomy. We heard great things of her, beforehand; and we were all ready to make much of her. We asked her to our parties. She came, with a look upon her as if some unpleasant duty had forced her temporarily into purgatory. She shied round like a cat in a strange garret, as if all she wanted was to get out. She wouldn't dance; she wouldn't talk; she went home early,—to her studies, I suppose, and her plans for next day's unmitigated usefulness. She took it ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... myself to books, as my uncle counselled, but what think you? By ill hap Bob, coming in to ask some question, found me studying the Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri, and hit upon one of the engravings representing the torments of purgatory. What must he do but report it, and immediately a hue and cry arises that I am being corrupted with Popish books. In vain do I tell them that their admirable John Milton, the only poet save Sternhold and Hopkins that my ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... have had a purgatory of hot wind and dust, such as I never saw—impossible to stir out of the house. So in despair I have just engaged a return boat—a Gelegenheit—and am off to Cairo in a day or two, where I shall stop till Inshallah! you come to me. Can't you get leave to come at the beginning of November? ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... lasted three months. I used to press this reason against myself: The trials and sufferings of living as a nun cannot be greater than those of purgatory, and I have well deserved to be in hell. It is not much to spend the rest of my life as if I were in purgatory, and then go straight to Heaven—which was what I desired. I was more influenced by servile fear, I think, than by ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... I know? Have I not said that, until this day, when I have seen him in the flesh standing in this room, I had believed him to have been in purgatory for twenty-five ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... up by the Press. "Purgatory is no name for it," "The Old Bailey Scandal," and other startling headlines failed to move Bumbledom. The most celebrated Criminal Court in the world, situated in the richest city, to this day remains a public scandal and a purgatory ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... Mrs Tabitha revolted at this dogma, which filled her at once with horror and indignation — She had recourse to the opinion of Humphry Clinker, who roundly declared it was the popish doctrine of purgatory, and quoted scripture in defence of the fire everlasting, prepared for the devil and his angels — The reverend master Mackcorkendal, and all the theologists and saints of that persuasion were consulted, and some of them had doubts about ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... just now, 'specially October, but yesterday we thought the bottom had dropped out. Perfect panic in No. 2, red; No. 2, Chicago Spring, 73-7/8. Dull, my Christian friend, dull is no name for it. More fellers got pinched yesterday than would patch purgatory fifteen miles. What you doing, buying ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... they passed, cried out, "What beauties!"—another, looking under her veil, greeted her with, "Good morning, my love!" We were in advance, and heard nothing of these civilities. Struggling through this fishy purgatory, we caught sight of the Tower, as we drew near the end of the street; and I put all my party under charge of one of the Trump Cards, not being myself inclined to make the rounds of the small part of the fortress that is shown, so soon after ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Terence, that man Schultz has the key to my state-room in his pocket. Now if you could manage to tap that Dutchman on the head with something hard and heavy, take the key out of his pocket and throw him overheard, you could let me out of this purgatory I'm in. Then I wouldn't be surprised if the sight of me and the absence of Mr. Schultz would put a bit of heart in that little cockney steward—and maybe he'd bring a drink to hearten you for what's ahead of ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... farther off—from the wild denizens of the wilderness; cries of the cougar in contralto, wolf-barkings in mezzo-soprano, screaming of eagles in shrill treble, snorting of bears in basso, and hooting of scared owls in lugubrious tone, to be likened only to the wailing of agonised spirits in Purgatory. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... Everybody was there, including the party guests. Satan was there, too; which was proper, for it was on account of his efforts that the funerals had happened. Nikolaus had departed this life without absolution, and a collection was taken up for masses, to get him out of purgatory. Only two-thirds of the required money was gathered, and the parents were going to try to borrow the rest, but Satan furnished it. He told us privately that there was no purgatory, but he had contributed in order that Nikolaus's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... But when one goes to sift it, and find if there be a real meaning, it eludes search. Whole sheets of warm, florid writing are here, in which the eye is caught by "sapphire," "heliotrope," "dragon," "aloes," "Magna Dea," "limboes," "stars," and "purgatory," but can connect all this, or any part of it, with no ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... the maledetto morbo," returned the lay- brother; "one hour you are well—as well, that is to say, as one can ever be in such a place as this—and the next you are down on your back shivering and burning like—like the poor souls in purgatory. Doubtless the more of it one has had, the less there is to ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... have alleged this text for their purgatory. Here is indeed a purgatory, and a fire of purgatory, and such a purgatory that we must needs go through it before we can come to heaven. But this purgatory is in this world, not in the world to come. The flesh must go through it, and not ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... Roman model, "that the English are mad, signor. For has not the padre told me so? and does he not say that the fires of Purgatory burn within them? Else why do they roll about in a tub of water every morning, if not to cool their vitals? It is an insult to an Italian to wash him: we only wash dead bodies;" and Beppo draws his huge frame up to its full height, while ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... them think dark death Ends all existence; think the worshipped child Cold in its mother's arms is but a clod And has not gone to God; That souls united by love undefiled And holy can by death be torn asunder To meet no more. It must be true that under This earth of ours there lies a Purgatory For those who seek to rob grief of the glory That shines through hope of life immortal. In Sin's lexicon this is the vilest sin - Needless and cruel, ugly, gaunt and mean, Without one poor excuse on which to lean, A ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... insolently, "the affairs of purgatory are in my ministry, and I am bound to inform you that there is sorcery going ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... much of this desert unsurveyed," he said, "that no man can tell whether he's just inside or just outside of Purgatory." ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... words of Satan in Eden, "Ye shall not surely die." The pagans had their nether world of spirits, or their transmigration of souls with its ceaseless round from body to body, and the Roman Catholics their purgatory with its purifying fires. From these sources and not from the Word of God, the traditional view has come into modern Christendom, representing the Lord as unable or unwilling to end sin, but keeping the sinner ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer

... so called, where you risk little, and are cheated a good deal: 'Club,' a pleasant purgatory, where you lose more, and are not supposed to be cheated ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... last, thys pece of the show dothe susteyne a company of poure people. Me. Thys is of my faythe a godely cotemplacyo, but I maruayll greatly, seyng you ar thus mynded, that ye neuer dyd vysyte saynt Patryckes purgatory in Yerlande, of the || whiche the comyn people boost many wonderouse thynges, whiche seme to me not lyke to be true. Ogy. Of a suerty ther is not so meruelouse talkynge of it here, but the thynge it selffe doth fare excede. Me. Hast thou bene ther than, & gonne thorow saynt ...
— The Pilgrimage of Pure Devotion • Desiderius Erasmus

... his son to be sure and pray for the repose of his soul and that of his mother, to help them out of purgatory, he gave him three farewell counsels, saying; "My dear son, I advise you first of all never to stay in the house of a friend who gives you black bread to eat. Secondly, never gallop your horse in a valley. Thirdly, never choose a wife of a foreign nation. Always bear these three things in ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... else, the continuance of progress, and shows humanity striving to make forward steps and actually making them so long as the universe shall exist. As between a stationary paradise and a progressive purgatory, I should prefer the latter, for the sake of the permanent well-being of the human race; but what I should choose in preference to either is a progressive paradise. The capacity for further improvement is the essential trait of the best condition ...
— Social Justice Without Socialism • John Bates Clark

... commission, as well as the Government authorities who engaged him,—and entreated he would "get away," and let me take my chance of proceeding how I could, for his presence simply made my position one of purgatory. He laughed in scorn, wishing to know if I thought I could do anything without him,—and said he had only to turn his back an instant, and the Dulbahantas were ready to devour me. I still persisted; and then he said, "If you ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... evolution by word, letter, allegory, yea, punning, which they applied to detached sentences or single phrases of Holy Writ, it would not be easy to imagine a position which they could not 'shew in Scripture.' Let this be elucidated by the texts even now cited by the Romish priests for the truth of purgatory, indulgence, image-worship, invocation of dead men, and the like. The assertion therefore must be thus qualified. The ancient Fathers anathematized any doctrine not consentaneous with Scripture and ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... morality, that the book might be taken for the fruit of those later and sadder years that bring the philosophic mind. Its frank confessions and calm analysis of motive and action have been compared with Montaigne's: if Montaigne had been graduated after a due education in Purgatory, or if his pedigree had been remotely crossed with a St. Anthony and he had lived to see the fluctus decumanus gathering in the tide of Puritanism, the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... of the devil," retorted Joannes Frollo, "these four hours and more; and I hope that they will be reckoned to my credit in purgatory. I heard the eight singers of the King of Sicily intone the first verse of seven o'clock mass in ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... the great games of which I had heard so much while among the Tharks convinced me that I had but jumped from purgatory ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... many and not a few hells. But unlike the places of reward and punishment connected with Christianity, they represent nothing final. They are more like the purgatory of the Catholics, and represent only steps in the progress of the soul ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... angry when certain sins are committed, and full of pity for the unfortunate and miserable, whom He sometimes condescends to assist. He judges souls after death, and pronounces on each a sentence which sends them to paradise or condemns them to a kind of purgatory. The hope of escaping the torments of this latter place influences their conduct. Puluga, this Deity, inhabits a house of stone; when it rains, He descends upon the earth in search of food; during the dry weather He is asleep." ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson

... of Dante, to which I could not settle down before, has accompanied me. I have passed through his Inferno, and am now at the gate of Purgatory. Really I am in need of this purgatory; for if I consider it rightly, I was brought to London by a really sinful degree of thoughtlessness, which now I have to repent with fervour. I must, I must be resigned; my experience long ago convinced ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... with a shrug of her pretty shoulders. "Well, no one even in this life is altogether without a taste of purgatory: mine (this is a delicate compliment to you, Owen, so listen to it) might have been worse. Do you ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... spite of the scorchings of disappointment, with springs of perpetual solace,—the love which, purified and spiritualized by the bitterness of separation and trial, led him through the hard paths of Philosophy and up the steep ascents of Faith, bringing him out of Hell and through Purgatory to the glories of Paradise and the fulfilment of Hope,—such a love is not only a spiritual experience, but it is also a discipline of character whose results are exhibited in the continually ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... whole provinces uninhabited; many of the old towns had disappeared, the roads were obliterated and no one in Spain knew for certain the geography of the country though few were ignorant of the situation of heaven and of purgatory. The farms of any fertility were not occupied by granges but by convents, and along the few highways bivouacked bands of robbers, who took refuge, when they found themselves pursued, in the monasteries, where they were welcomed for their ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... is and has been. As in Africa, it is all trees trees, trees with no other world conceivable; so is it here—it is all vice and poverty and crime. To many the world is all slum, with the Workhouse as an intermediate purgatory before the grave. And just as Mr. Stanley's Zanzibaris lost faith, and could only be induced to plod on in brooding sullenness of dull despair, so the most of our social reformers, no matter how cheerily they may have started off, with forty pioneers swinging blithely their ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... trace the likeness of men so accurately that a physiognomist could discover the ruling passion to which they were subject. Dante's characters, in his view of Purgatory, are drawn with accurate reference to the principles of physiognomy; and Shakspeare and Sterne, particularly the latter, were clever in the art; while Kempf and Zimmermann, in their profession, are said seldom to have erred as physiognomists. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... palaces of the Americans, and particularly those of the Catholics and Episcopalians. Their religious customs are beyond belief. As an illustration, their religion teaches them that the dead, if they have led a good life, go at once to heaven, though the Catholics believe in a purgatory, a half-way house, out of which the dead can be bought by ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... recently franchised Contadini and all kinds of 'novi homines.'[2] The Divine Comedy, written after the culmination of the Guelf and Ghibelline dissensions, yields the measure of their animosity. Dante finds no place in Hell Heaven, or Purgatory for the souls who stood aloof from strife, the angels who were neither Guelf nor Ghibelline in Paradise. His Vigliacchi, 'wretches who never lived,' because they never felt the pangs or ecstasies of partisanship, wander ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... sardonically. "Through it with many a lamentable groan and a beating of the breast, and with squeaky little wails of remorse—and on through it, out onto the pleasant slopes of forgetfulness and new mischief. Take my condolences on your fearful passage through your purgatory. I fear me it will take you the best part of a week to pass entirely out of it. It's only a man-built hell, that of yours. And, according to the modern theologians, God has no worse one ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... This wintry purgatory wore away; the icy stalactites that hung from the cliffs fell crashing to the earth; the clamor of the wild geese was heard; the bluebirds appeared in the naked woods; the water-willows were covered with their soft caterpillar-like ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... all his other work, both in form and matter. It is a long, prosaic and entirely unmystical homily in riming couplets, of a very ordinary mediaeval type, stirring men's minds to the horrors of sin by dwelling on the pains of purgatory and hell. It would seem almost certain, on internal evidence, that the same hand cannot have written it and the Fire of Love, and recent investigation appears to make it clear that Rolle's part in it, if any, was merely of the nature of compilation or translation ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... the ascent of the Scala Santa makes no allusion to any such experience. He merely says that when he reached the top of the stairs, which he climbed in the hope of getting the soul of an ancestor out of Purgatory, he thought to himself, "Who knows whether this prayer will avail?" Luther began his lectures on Romans in 1515, and his dynamic experience probably belongs near ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... I suppose; but morally, no. In France you must never say nay to your mother, whatever she requires of you. She may be the most abominable old woman in the world, and make your life a purgatory; but, after all, she is ma mere, and you have no right to judge her. You have simply to obey. The thing has a fine side to it. Madame de Cintre bows her head ...
— The American • Henry James

... above described, the dancing-lessons had gone on regularly, and Anton, having got over the purgatory of the first introduction, began to feel perfectly at home. Indeed, he became a useful member of the association, and was a pattern of assiduity and punctuality, and a striking contrast to Fink, who horrified the dancing-master by declaring that the galop step was fitted ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... sitting long enough? Take a fresh cigar, and we will walk. That was Purgatory where your quondam friend, Jake Beloo, is. He will remain there awhile longer, and, if you desire it can go, though it cost much exertion to entice him here, and then only after he had ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... God that thy doom does not remain in my hands. My squire and two archers shall carry thee captive to the worshipful Sir John de Walton, Governor of the Castle and Valley, that he may deal with thee as seems meet; nor is he a person to believe in your apparitions and ghosts from purgatory.—What ho! Fabian! Come hither, and bring with thee ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... not yet been delivered from purgatory by our prayers, and all the masses for your soul, which ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... this expression of the Greek ideal of sculpture, I wish you to join the early Italian, summed in a single line by Dante—"non vide me' di me, chi vide 'l vero." Read the 12th canto of the "Purgatory," and learn that whole passage by heart; and if ever you chance to go to Pistoja, look at La Robbia's coloured porcelain bas-reliefs of the seven works of Mercy on the front of the hospital there; and note ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... popular girl in the whole bevy of them. The studious ones admired her for her facility of learning, and her extraordinary appetite for every form of instruction, and the showy girls, who were only enduring school as the purgatory that opened into the celestial world of society, recognized in her a very handsome young person, who would be like to make a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... night-passage it is delightful to steam into the harbour of St. Malo. If the sea has been rough and unkindly, you at once pass from Purgatory to Paradise, with a relief those will understand who have experienced it. The scene is very charming. The coast, broken and undulating, is rich and fertile; very often hazy and dreamy; the landscape ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various

... in flames; may all periwigs, bobwigs, scratchwigs, and Ramillies cocks, frizzle in purgatory from this day forth to the end of time! Mine was the ruin of me: what might I not have been now but for ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and Babette; and he, with something of their little mistress's spirit, declared that he had no doubt but that 'one way or the other they should be out of it: either get safe home, or be blessed martyrs, without even a taste of purgatory.' ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... solid worth till it has been tried by fire,—is all the better for being hammered and beaten; stone is as much improved as an unruly boy by a good dressing; while bricks, like ghosts, come forth from their purgatory for the express purpose of being laid. All of these, by appropriate treatment, are invested with graces and glories that by nature they never owned. But a tree, graceful, noble, and grand beyond all human imitation, is ignominiously hewn down, every natural beauty ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... Campo Santo of Pisa the mysteries of Divine Justice. These works were drawn according to the account in verse which Dante Alighieri, a man very learned in Theology and in Canon Law, wrote in days gone by of his journey to Hell and Purgatory and Paradise, whither by the singular great merits of his lady, he was able to make his way alive. So everything in these paintings was instructive and true, and we may say surely less profit is to be had of reading the most full and ample Chronicle than from contemplating such representative, ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... from a belief in divine wrath rather than divine love. The genius of monasticism, ancient and modern, is the propitiation of the Divinity who seeks to punish rather than to forgive. It invented Purgatory, to escape the awful burnings of an everlasting hell of physical sufferings. It pervaded the whole theology of the Middle Ages, filling hamlet and convent alike with an atmosphere of fear and wrath, and creating a cruel spiritual despotism. The recluse, isolated and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... some opinions peculiar to themselves about purgatory, the creation of souls, and some of our mysteries. They repeat baptism every year, they retain the practice of circumcision, they observe the Sabbath, they abstain from all those sorts of flesh which are forbidden by the law. Brothers espouse the wives of their brothers, and to conclude, they observe ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo

... Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping and Adoration, as well of Images as of Reliques, and also invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England

... I tells yous all about it; and, if iver you mintion a word of it, may your sowl never lave purgatory till it is burnt to a cindther! Now, do you mind, there's a naiger concayled in the hould of the boat, that wants to correspond with a faymale ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... bonds which, even after waking, made me feel powerless in all my limbs. I lay still, suffering acutely from a renewed sense of existence, unable to lift an arm, and wondering why I was not at sea, how long I had slept, how long Therese had been talking before her voice had reached me in that purgatory of hopeless longing and unanswerable questions to ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... Wilt thou go to purgatory to meet him? for we trust his penitence has saved him from going farther and faring worse. Keep silence, and do not further interrupt the course of justice. We can pity thee, believing thee to be incapable ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... blushing mortification more diverting to behold than to experience;—but, upon being kindly treated by his gentle partner, he recovers, in the galop finale, feeling truly grateful to the guardian spirit that has conducted him through the purgatory. Ladies, be gentle with youthful bashfulness—it often arises from pure feelings, modest diffidence, or unselfishness;—such, unlike many proficient dancers, carry their brains in their hats, and not in their boots:—weigh your ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner

... I shall have a long purgatory.' She shuddered as she spoke. 'And oh! I do hope the dear sisters will remember me in their ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... The curse of all my brethren and sisters awaits me—eternal damnation and punishment. With thousands of torments and tortures of the rack, will the Holy Fathers put me to death; and as they kill my body and throw it as food to the beasts of prey, they will curse my soul and deliver it over to purgatory." ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... own to fry. I do not rob for greed, like Calvert and Williams, or kill for lust, like the departed Cosh. To me it's a game, which I play by honest rules. I never laid finger on a bodle's worth of English stuff, and if now and then I ease the Dons of a pickle silver or send a Frenchman or two to purgatory, what worse am I doing than His Majesty's troops in Flanders, or your black frigates that lie off Port Royal? If I've a clear conscience I can more easily take order with those that are less single-minded. But maybe the chief reason is that I've some ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... hard and fast she had him. Moreover the contrast between her joyous present and her anxious past was alone enough to make her run over with gayety. All her troubles had vanished in a pack; she had gone at one bound from purgatory to paradise. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... religio-philosophic studies the names are different; some have tartarus, some purgatory, some paradise. The last is the name ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan



Words linked to "Purgatory" :   situation, purgatorial, divinity, imaginary place, fictitious place, mythical place, theology



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