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austere
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  • The same family portraits glared down at her, but now they seemed smug rather than austere.   (source)
    austere = stern (serious, strict, and expecting perfect discipline)
  • "But no one, repeat, no one in SPECWARCOM believes he is dead. I want you to understand that, clearly." The austere words of a professional must have hit home. Mom rallied after that,   (source)
    austere = undecorated
  • Looking in, he saw an austere room floored with hexagonal white tiles.   (source)
    austere = notable for absence of luxury, comfort, or decoration
  • He knew that Jeremiah de Saint-Amour lived in primitive austerity and that he earned much more with his art than he needed,   (source)
    austerity = a manner that lacks luxury, comfort, or anything beyond minimum requirements
  • In an era of fiscal austerity in Peru, they had managed to get the government to put up the money for...   (source)
    austerity = government spending less money than normal
  • The room she so seldom left was austere; had the bed been made, a visitor might have thought it permanently unoccupied.   (source)
    austere = lacking luxury, comfort, or decoration
  • She looked up at him and her face was pale and austere in the uplight and her eyes lost in their darkly shadowed hollows save only for the glint of them and he could see her throat move in the light and he saw in her face and in her figure something he'd not seen before and the name of that thing was sorrow.   (source)
    austere = without comfort
  • She felt nothing as she stared up at her father, whose face hovered against the dark sky like the moon: white, austere, pitted with black eyes like meteor craters.   (source)
    austere = stern (offering no comfort)
  • Monterrey was a city devoid of material comforts, so it was good that he had chosen a vocation that rewarded austerity.   (source)
    austerity = self-denial (of luxury and comfort)
  • The dispassionate mathematical laws of physics seem austere and impersonal, like a star or the moon.   (source)
    austere = stern (strict -- without consideration for human feelings)
  • He is not smiling. He stops at my desk and leans against it. I do not remember exactly what he said but it was something to the effect of, "I know we said we would try to get you some gentle editing, but . . ." and my heart froze.
      ". . . but we had to change the comma in your lead." And now he is smiling, and I know I have been had. I do not mind at all. I only hope he does not notice that my laughter is laced with something not too far from hysteria.
      This, I think, is the cold and austere New York Times?   (source)
    austere = stern and without comfort
  • His face was hard; it had an expression of severity, an inner severity directed at himself; it looked austere and lonely.   (source)
    austere = without comfort or luxury
  • Of the faiths that had existed before the coming of the Overlords, only a form of purified Buddhism-perhaps the most austere of all religions-still survived.   (source)
    austere = lacking luxury
  • a handsome, austere woman with snow-white hair and a dark and awful dignity.   (source)
    austere = stern; or practicing great self-denial
  • How could it be that among so many learned men, among so many Brahmans, among so many austere and venerable Samanas ... no one will find the path of paths?   (source)
    austere = practitioners of self-denial
  • Austerity pleased her--it gave her the comfort of sacrifice.   (source)
    austerity = a notable absence of luxury, comfort, or decoration
  • ...the silence made it harder, more austere.   (source)
    austere = uncomfortable
  • The austere devotee of military duty,   (source)
    austere = having stern demeanor; or practicing great self-denial
  • I looked back at the platform when we had left it far behind, and saw the tall, austere figure of Holmes standing motionless and gazing after us.   (source)
    austere = stern
  • he was touched by her child-like delight, and reproached himself for the austerity with which he had treated her.   (source)
    austerity = sternness (strict or grim manner)
  • He was austere with himself ... and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years.   (source)
    austere = strict in not enjoying luxury
  • It was a dreadfully austere inquiry, but levity was not our note,   (source)
    austere = having a notable absence of luxury, comfort, or fun
  • These descendants of the sect of Zoroaster—the most thrifty, civilised, intelligent, and austere of the East Indians...   (source)
    austere = stern in manner; or practicing great self-denial
  • It might be partly owing to the studied austerity of her dress,   (source)
    austerity = a notable absence of luxury, comfort, or decoration
  • This was a place ... more austere, more gloomy, and more pitiless than the other.   (source)
    austere = without luxury, comfort, or decoration
  • Nevertheless, his brow was armed with a severity more austere than ever.   (source)
    austere = stern (strict and unforgiving)
  • If by living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit in the woods, so long, it has acquired such wonderful purity,   (source)
    austere = practicing great self-denial
  • He was sure that the people's need and hunger experienced in the immediate postwar period would return with the far-reaching austerity measures following the crash.†   (source)
  • "If you're wondering why the Whispering Gallery is so austere," said Mr. Curtain, "the answer is security.†   (source)
  • Toronto is sober, but not austere; Gravesend is austere, but also pretty; Toronto is not pretty, but in the snow Toronto can look like Gravesend—both pretty and austere.†   (source)
  • She hated the thought of appearing austere.†   (source)
  • The house is austere, but not uncomfortable.†   (source)
  • The High Hall of the Arryns was long and austere, with a forbidding coldness to its walls of blue-veined white marble, but the faces around him had been colder by far.†   (source)
  • "Doesn't wash," said Boris austerely.†   (source)
  • I nearly swooned in the mill and flow of Stanleyville—people, cars, animals in the street, the austere gaze of windows in the tall concrete buildings.†   (source)
  • Islands rose out of the steel harbor waters with sheer cliff sides, reaching to uneven summits, and crowned with austere, soaring firs.†   (source)
  • After that, when even the ninth-graders who had Caught the Stupid Spirit were pretty much drooping, Principal Peattie announced that parents were to stay in the auditorium for an informational session on school expectations as well as a discussion of what supplies they were to provide in a year of austerity budgets.†   (source)
  • All part of the austerity program.†   (source)
  • This is the new austerity," he said.†   (source)
  • His room was austere, almost monkish.†   (source)
  • A sociopath must cut her teeth somewhere, like the austere marble halls of Wickshire Academy.†   (source)
  • Jessica lowered her gaze, glanced at the people seated nearest her—there was the round-faced water-shipper and his woman, the pale and austere Guild Bank representative (he seemed a whistle-faced scarecrow with his eyes fixed on Leto), the rugged and scar-faced Tuck, his blue-within-blue eyes downcast.†   (source)
  • There's no real profit to be made from wandering through it, yet like this high country of the material world all around us, it has its own austere beauty that to some people makes the hardships of traveling through it seem worthwhile.†   (source)
  • Slowly, details appeared—a low counter to the left where the secretary might have sat, a cushioned bench fixed into the wall on the right, austere overhead lights long bare of working bulbs.†   (source)
  • It occurred to her that she'd come to appreciate the quiet, almost austere beauty of this landscape.†   (source)
  • With only four pieces of furniture, the tent was austere even by military standards.†   (source)
  • In these austere times, people are looking for a simple, low-key affair, with locally produced organic snacks and—†   (source)
  • Finally we were allowed to enter the office area, where an austere but friendly Armenian-Iranian woman named Helen Balassanian listened quietly as I blurted out the story of our month-long imprisonment.†   (source)
  • His face dropped again into its incongruous, austere melancholy.†   (source)
  • The school sprawls atop Serra's eastern cliffs like a colossal vulture, a jumble of austere buildings enclosed by a black granite wall.†   (source)
  • It was too painful, I thought, for Levy and others (especially the middle-class prisoners) to admit that they had been classed as undesirables, compelled against their will into containment, and forced into scarcity without even the dignity of chosen austerity.†   (source)
  • It was surprisingly austere, considering that the English liked their comforts and that White was a peer.†   (source)
  • If the Balti respected Buddhism enough to practice their austere faith alongside extravagant Buddhist swastikas and wheels of life, Mortenson decided, as his eyes lingered on the carvings, they were probably tolerant enough to endure an infidel praying as a tailor had taught him.†   (source)
  • Esteban wanted her to take a trip, buy herself some clothes, and enjoy herself for the first time in her melancholy life, but she already had the habit of austerity and had spent too much time cooped up in her house.†   (source)
  • Milo carefully said nothing when Major — de Coverley stepped into the mess hall with his fierce and austere dignity the day he returned and found his way blocked by a wall of officers waiting in line to sign loyalty oaths.†   (source)
  • Then one of the doors with frosted glass was opened and I saw a tall austere-looking man in a white coat, beckoning to me with a chart.†   (source)
  • He was not austere.†   (source)
  • Out went the ornate bric-a-brac, the austere furniture carved with the family crest.†   (source)
  • Their faces were austere, inquisitorial.†   (source)
  • His room was so austere that it was good only for sleep, but in the morning the world started anew.†   (source)
  • ' McAllister studied the Ambassador's austere face, uncertain how to reply.†   (source)
  • Levity was not looked upon with favor anywhere in those austere offices, as I discovered for myself while attending a conference concerning my first assignment.†   (source)
  • The room was whitewashed with aseptic brightness, like that of a laboratory; it was dirt-free, spare, austere.†   (source)
  • …toward elegance, and admirable in its small way: superfluously strung: final) so that, knowing he was not his father, he had been satisfied with what he was, had cleverly revelled in it: had not built huge barns as the Congressman did--the austere gray buildings of Stony Hill Farm, each barn stern and intransigent under its sharp, high gables and neatly louvered cupolas lifting up lightning rods like safeguards against sorcery (gleaming copper, with globes of blue glass, or bluish…†   (source)
  • …dweller in the silent and most secret places, well-omened, and gentle, all-knowing, swift as thought, wearer of skulls, possessed of power, the twilight, invincible leader, pitiful one, opener of the way before those lost, granter of favors, teacher, valor in the form of woman, chameleon-hearted, practitioner of austerities, magician, pariah, deathless and eternal … Âryatarabhattarikanamashtottarasatakastotra (36-40) From Hellwell to Heaven he went, there to commune with the gods.†   (source)
  • I am not preaching Tolstoyan austerity and the return to the land, I am not trying to improve on socialism and its solution to the agrarian problem.†   (source)
  • When finally I emerged again from the protection of my dream, the undefined austerity of my love, I opened my eyes onto the blur of an empty beach.†   (source)
  • Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.   (source)
  • she looked more delicately austere than any among them.   (source)
    austere = lacking decoration or practicing self-denial
  • their cool, bright, austere and yet smiling wisdom.   (source)
    austere = undecorated (and without additions for comfort)
  • He had, without explanation, the impression of a slaggy cliff and on it, in silhouette against menacing clouds, a lone and austere figure.   (source)
    austere = stern; or without comfort
  • And even that austere and cautious man, though he frowned as he read the news of the "miracle," could not completely restrain some inner emotion.   (source)
    austere = stern and practicing great self-denial
  • ...an austere reserve about him, which had positively awed me into my tame compliance with his eccentricities,   (source)
    austere = stern in manner
  • Of old time there lived there an abbot and his monks.  ...they gave themselves to study of pious books, and spoke not the one to the other, or indeed to any, and ate decayed herbs and ... slept hard, and prayed much, and ... came they to be known of all the world by reason of these holy austerities, and visited by rich and poor, and reverenced.   (source)
    austerities = absences of basic comforts
  • This brown-skinned, broad-shouldered priest, hitherto condemned to the austere virginity of the cloister, was quivering and boiling in the presence of this night scene of love and voluptuousness.   (source)
    austere = self-denying
  • And they took an austere view of the visual.†   (source)
  • I had turned bold and adventurous, and he even more ascetic and emotionally austere.†   (source)
  • Inside the cramped lift, an austere businessman in a pressed suit gazed down at the boy beside him.†   (source)
  • Behind Newton's recumbent body rose an austere pyramid.†   (source)
  • The austere simplicity of it gave him chills.†   (source)
  • Medieval voices, austere and otherworldly.†   (source)
  • These rooms are designed as cold, austere places in which a Mason can reflect on his own mortality.†   (source)
  • And I hope," he said, with some austerity, "that maybe you can forgive me for that?"†   (source)
  • Teabing felt the truth come crashing down on him in excruciating austerity.†   (source)
  • The granite pyramid looked almost austere in the clean halogen light.†   (source)
  • The entrance opened on an austere kitchen that was cool and brown.†   (source)
  • I grow out my high school bangs and pin my hair back off my face, hoping to look austere.†   (source)
  • The food was delicious, a welcome change from her recent austere diet.†   (source)
  • He had a calling for both sacrifice and austerity.†   (source)
  • Your gray suit and your open collar …. you look so young, so austere, so sure of yourself ….†   (source)
  • But nothing had been allowed to come too close and detract from the building's austerity.†   (source)
  • She felt certain that he recognized her and she held his glance austerely for an instant.†   (source)
  • "Watch," said Francisco austerely, turning to Rearden.†   (source)
  • His face had that look of austerity with which she had always seen him meet facts.†   (source)
  • He spoke about discipline, unity, austerity and the patriotic duty of bearing temporary hardships.†   (source)
  • Galt was watching them; his glance was too austerely perceptive.†   (source)
  • It was Lillian's austerity that attracted him-the conflict between her austerity and her behavior.†   (source)
  • And now she wept, after her long austerity, as though she would never be able to stop.†   (source)
  • My love had somehow made me doubly austere in my observations of what went on about me.†   (source)
  • Emerging at last from the austerity which had plagued them since the second world war, but at the same time facing the loss of their great empire and the inevitable decline of their power in the world, the British had half-convinced themselves that the accession of the young Queen was a token of a fresh start-a new Elizabethan age, as the newspapers like to call it.†   (source)
  • The house is a stone one, and chilly and damp; but by temperament — it must be the old New Englander in him — Simon feels a certain contempt for material self-indulgence; and as a medical student he became habituated to a monkish austerity, and to working long hours under difficult conditions.†   (source)
  • On any other day she would have stood barefoot on the wet grass listening to the mockingbirds' early service; she would have pondered over the meaninglessness of silent, austere beauty renewing itself with every sunrise and going ungazed at by half the world.†   (source)
  • Directly in front of the car, the Lincoln Memorial rose with rigid austerity, its orthogonal lines reminiscent of Athens's ancient Parthenon.†   (source)
  • Only once before in his austere professional life had something similar happened to him, and that had been the day of his greatest shame, because the indignant patient had moved his hand away, sat up in bed, and said to him: "What you want may happen, but it will not be like this."†   (source)
  • Although the morning light was more evident there and the room had a high-ceilinged loftiness to it, it was, at the same time, austere—the towering portraits of former headmasters and faculty frowned grimly down upon us in their deep-black academic regalia.†   (source)
  • Looking at him, sitting with two of his students, young doctors in white coats, I imagined a nineteenth-century daguerreotype—the austere, august professor of medicine in a stiff high collar and a waistcoat.†   (source)
  • Since the implementation of Phase XVII of the Austerity Program, employees have been allowed to bring their own bathroom tissue from home.†   (source)
  • But if that meant austerity toward strangers it also meant mornings of glory such as this one, in which the snow, white almost to blueness, lay like a soft comforter over the hills, and birches and pines indestructibly held their ground, rigid lines against the snow and sky, very thin and very strong like Vermonters.†   (source)
  • And yet, even when he had the resources to live like the Roman emperor he resembled, Uncle Leo XII lived in the old city because it was convenient to his business, in such an austere manner and in such a plain house that he could never shake off an unmerited reputation for miserliness.†   (source)
  • Even austere.†   (source)
  • But the public gaze of the stairway mirror as she hurried toward it revealed a woman on her way to a funeral, an austere, joyless woman moreover, whose black carapace had affinities with some form of matchbox-dwelling insect.†   (source)
  • The cook's help, Doll, a thin girl from the village with her hair in an austere bun, was at the sink making a bad-tempered clatter scouring the saucepan lids, but she too was half turned to see what Betty had set upon the table.†   (source)
  • He looked to be about fifty, with refined features and an austere expression that left little doubt he was unamused by their presence here.†   (source)
  • We'd eaten an austere meal of canned green beans, canned cranberries, and brown rice with toasted almonds: "Our Vegetarian Socialist Thanksgiving," she'd called it.†   (source)
  • For despite her austere conduct and penitential habit, Aunt Escolastica had an instinct for life and a vocation for complicity, which were her greatest virtues, and the mere idea that a man was interested in her niece awakened an irresistible emotion in her.†   (source)
  • As the group moved through the rectangular annex toward the archway leading into the main church, Langdon was surprised by the barren austerity.†   (source)
  • As indifferent and irregular as he had been until then regarding food, that was how habitual and austere he became until the end of his days: a large cup of black coffee for breakfast, a slice of poached fish with white rice for lunch, a cup of cafe con leche and a piece of cheese before going to bed.†   (source)
  • Outside, sleet tapped at the windowpanes and drizzled over the canal; and though the brocades were rich and the carpet was soft, still the winter light carried a chilly tone of 1943, privation and austerities, weak tea without sugar and hungry to bed.†   (source)
  • Victarion looked across the hall, to where Ser Harras Harlaw sat drinking wine from a golden cup; a tall man, long-faced and austere.†   (source)
  • Across the pit the Graces sat in flowing robes of many colors, clustered around the austere figure of Galazza Galare, who alone amongst them wore the green.†   (source)
  • Alec and Jace were in one of the Gard's dizzying array of meeting rooms—not the same room Jace had been in earlier with Clary, but another more austere room in an older part of the Gard.†   (source)
  • The Lord of Casterly Rock was as lean as a man twenty years younger, even handsome in his austere way.†   (source)
  • The soft winter sunlight, combined with the austere natural beauty of the landscape, made the world appear dreamlike.†   (source)
  • Three screen doors led from the vestibule-one to an austere dining room that might hold ten people at the most, one to a closet with an empty hollow in the floor that Eragon could think of no discernible use for, and the last to a bedroom overlooking, and open to, the wide expanse of Du Weldenvarden.†   (source)
  • If ever I had any imagination, it is all quenched…… I believe I am grown more austere, severe, rigid, and miserable than I ever was.†   (source)
  • There was an austere beauty to the coastal lowlands, and I wove past farms and tobacco barns that looked almost abandoned.†   (source)
  • That I was all alone in my austere kitchen, staring out the window into the little patch of night sky, at the three bright stars I could see through it.†   (source)
  • This expression made his face extremely bitter, profoundly cruel, ageless; the nature, the ferocity, of his intelligence was then all in his eyes; the extraordinary austerity of his high forehead prefigured his maturity and decay.†   (source)
  • The High Sparrow received her in his sanctum, an austere seven-sided chamber where crudely carved faces of the Seven stared out from the stone walls with expressions almost as sour and disapproving as His High Holiness himself.†   (source)
  • The set consists of the future, which will be sparsely furnished, but will contain a good many cylindrical black columns and several austere flights of stairs.†   (source)
  • Commerce had enjoyed the rituals of military drill and had flourished in the environment of an austere and congenial discipline.†   (source)
  • The pioneers who founded Garden City were necessarily a Spartan people, but when the time came to establish a formal cemetery, they were determined, despite arid soil and the troubles of transporting water, to create a rich contrast to the dusty streets, the austere plains.†   (source)
  • General Dreedle waited in austere silence until the car door slammed and then demanded, 'Which one is this?'†   (source)
  • He is polite with dignity, affable without formality, distant without haughtiness, grave without austerity, modest, wise, and good.†   (source)
  • An austere suggestion by the representative of the Finance Department that, in the interest of economy, the quantity of this item might be reduced, providing the field party ( which was me) exercised all due restraint, sent me into an hysterical spasm of giggling.†   (source)
  • Because he reminded me irresistibly of a Royal Gentleman for whom I worked as a simple soldier during the war, I found myself calling the father of the family George, even though in my notebooks, he was austerely identified only as Wolf "A."†   (source)
  • The woman had a long, brooding oval face of burnt umber, with coarse graying black hair parted severely in the middle and combed back austerely behind her neck without curl, wave or ornamentation.†   (source)
  • He was as austere as a Franciscan.†   (source)
  • We had no time to ourselves, no time to think, no time to rest, no time to familiarize ourselves with the cramped, austere cells where we slept at night.†   (source)
  • All was served and presented with the utmost simplicity by the old servants of the house, who wore their everyday black aprons to give the celebration the appearance of a simple family gathering, because any display of extravagance was a sign of vulgarity that would be condemned as a sin of vanity and bad taste, according to the austere and somewhat lugubrious ancestry of that society descended from hard-working Basque and Spanish immigrants.†   (source)
  • At times he shook himself out of his indifference and showed up with some extraordinary, outsized present for his granddaughter, which only sharpened the contrast between the invisible wealth of his bank accounts and the austerity of the house.†   (source)
  • She stood straight, her arms at her sides, her face austere, as if in unflinching endurance; she stood under the praise as under a lashing of insults.†   (source)
  • Dr. Stadler leaned back a little, his face austere and scornful, the face of the nation's greatest scientist, and asked, "Who invented that ghastly thing?†   (source)
  • On the steps of the pedestal, under the statue of the austere, exultant figure, a ragged bum sat slumped in passive resignation, like a wing-plucked bird with no place to go, resting on any chance cornice.†   (source)
  • Her exquisite profile belonged to a cameo of the same period: its pure, proud lines and the lustrous, light brown waves of her hair, worn with classical simplicity, suggested an austere, imperial beauty.†   (source)
  • When she tore her mouth away from him, she was laughing soundlessly, in triumph, as if saying: Hank Rearden-the austere, unapproachable Hank Rearden of the monk like office, the business conferences, the harsh bargains-do you remember them now?†   (source)
  • She looked at the angular tiers of lights rising through the snowy curtain, and-glancing at him, at the grip of his gloved hands on the wheel, at the austere, fastidious elegance of the figure in black overcoat and white muffler-she thought that he belonged in a great city, among polished sidewalks and sculptured stone.†   (source)
  • -thought Rearden, and knew that the austerity of the marble face was the form of a disciplined capacity to feel too deeply.†   (source)
  • Galt's voice had the same unbending austerity as his eyes: "You have said everything I wanted to say to you.†   (source)
  • The austerity of Judge Narragansett's white-haired figure reminded her that she had once heard him described as a marble statue-a blindfolded marble statue; it was the kind of figure that had vanished from the courtrooms of the country when the gold coins had vanished from the country's hands.†   (source)
  • He remembered the austerely pitiless respect he had felt for his contract of marriage, for all his contracts and all his legal obligations-and he saw what sort of legality his scrupulous observance was expected to serve.†   (source)
  • Now she wore a gray evening gown that seemed indecent, because it looked austerely modest, so modest that it vanished from one's awareness and left one too aware of the slender body it pretended to cover.†   (source)
  • He told her the whole story, quietly, impersonally, pronouncing no verdict, expressing no opinion, never encroaching on her emotions by any sign of concern for them, speaking with the shining austerity and the awesome power of facts.†   (source)
  • Above it, cut in the granite, as the only feature of the building's rectangular austerity, there stood an inscription: I SWEAR BY MY LIFE AND MY LOVE OF IT THAT I WILL NEVER LIVE FOR THE SAKE OF ANOTHER MAN, NOR ASK ANOTHER MAN TO LIVE FOR MINE.†   (source)
  • Ma's freight cars were in California, where the soybeans had been sent to a progressive concern made up of sociologists preaching the cult of Oriental austerity, and of businessmen formerly in the numbers racket.†   (source)
  • Very "Nordic"-looking, attractive in a thin-lipped, austere, unbending way, the young officer had treated her frostily during their brief meeting, almost to the point of contempt and boorishness; nonetheless, she could not help but be taken by his arresting handsomeness, by—surprisingly—something not really effeminate but rather silkily feminine about his face in repose.†   (source)
  • And once again he thought that such austere surroundings would be conducive to patient, fruitful work.†   (source)
  • Picasso and the icons are so austere and barren in comparison.†   (source)
  • A noble Roman air hangs over these austere quadrangles.†   (source)
  • She spoke on a single, level tone, as if she were reciting an austere catechism of faith.†   (source)
  • Mozart has an austere elegance which we find very satisfying.†   (source)
  • The kitchen table was something visionary, austere; something bare, hard, not ornamental.†   (source)
  • The father sat, gaunt, grizzled, and austere, beneath the lamp.†   (source)
  • Instead of being austerely enclosed, this alleged temple is wide open, like a western saloon.†   (source)
  • She had never seen her mother stirred from her austere placidity, nor her personal appointments anything but perfect, no matter what the hour of day or night.†   (source)
  • It was true; my room had cast its austere winter garments, and, by not very slow stages, assumed a richer wardrobe.†   (source)
  • But he was all the same a little dubious and haunted, his black eyes in the long joke-austerity of his head often very melancholy.†   (source)
  • There are words for all the vile words in English and there are other words and expressions that are used only in countries where blasphemy keeps pace with the austerity of religion.†   (source)
  • But even the very bare austerity of that little room now seemed terribly alive with the presence of its recent black 524 tenant.†   (source)
  • In any case, the austere, not to say ascetic life of Joseph Grand was, in the last analysis, a guarantee against any anxiety in this respect.†   (source)
  • An austere emotion carried the eye upward from milk-blue roofs to the gray rock bastion above, tremendous as the Wetterhorn above Grindelwald.†   (source)
  • For the great plateful of blue water was before her; the hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst; and on the right, as far as the eye could see, fading and falling, in soft low pleats, the green sand dunes with the wild flowing grasses on them, which always seemed to be running away into some moon country, uninhabited of men.†   (source)
  • He fell in love contrary to all the tradition of his austere and jealous country raising which demands in the object physical inviolability.†   (source)
  • Saint Anthony, practicing his austerities in the Egyptian Thebaid, was troubled by voluptuous hallucinations perpetrated by female devils attracted to his magnetic solitude.†   (source)
  • And from the mellow gloom of the church, the rich distant organ, the quiet nasal voice of the Scotch minister, the interminable prayers, and the rich little pictures of Christian mythology which he had collected as a child under the instruction of the spinsters, he gathered something of the pain, the mystery, the sensuous beauty of religion, something deeper and greater than this austere decency.†   (source)
  • By the standards of the early twentieth century, even a member of the Inner Party lives an austere, laborious kind of life.†   (source)
  • The holy-days, which had been occasions of revelry under Padre Gallegos, were now days of austere devotion.†   (source)
  • I don't think He has the least inkling of that high and austere mystery to which we rise in the Miserific Vision.†   (source)
  • All the same I like to remember, for it gives humanity to his austere figure, that he was so struck, so normally and masculinely affected by Mrs Langtry's beauty, that he actually went to the play to see her.†   (source)
  • His room was filled with a strange jumble of objects—a harmonium in a gothic case, an elephant's-foot waste-paper basket, a dome of wax fruit, two disproportionately large Sevres vases, framed drawings by Daumier—made all the more incongruous by the austere college furniture and the large luncheon table.†   (source)
  • I had attained a certain serenity and elevation of life once more, submitting myself to the practice of abstract thought and to a rule of austere meditation.†   (source)
  • But then the kid crowed on Mildred's neck and he changed again from a sensual to a sad or austere face.†   (source)
  • The old man had come through the Terror, had been trained in the austerity of those days of the persecution of the clergy, and he was not untouched by Jansenism.†   (source)
  • The hall was as it had always been, grey and silent and austere, with the portraits and the weapons on the wall.†   (source)
  • …a knowing, self-important old gentleman in a sharp cocked hat made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and, planting himself before van Winkle—with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane; his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul—demanded in an austere tone what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village.†   (source)
  • Selfish Einhorn was, nevertheless; his nose in constant action smelled, and smelled out everything, sometimes austerely, or again without manners, covert, half an eye out for observers but not to be deterred if there were any, either.†   (source)
  • From a distance, quite faint though quite clear, he can hear the sonorous waves of massed voices from the church: a sound at once austere and rich, abject and proud, swelling and falling in the quiet summer darkness like a harmonic tide.†   (source)
  • The hills were austere.†   (source)
  • I had dreaded the formality of dinner in that austere dining-room, and now, because of the little fact that we had not changed, it was quite all right, quite easy, just the same as when we had dined together in restaurants.†   (source)
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