Definition of "refuge"

Rocks, dens, and caves! But I in none of these / Find place or refuge.

1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,

One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with a fox terrier.

1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.

Since its conception, the European Union has been a haven for those seeking refuge from war, persecution and poverty in other parts of the world.

2011 December 21, Helen Pidd, “Europeans migrate south as continent drifts deeper into crisis”, in the Guardian

Their latest refuge / Was to send him.

c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act V, scene iii]

This is occaſioned by this, that too too often the Teaching of a Grammar School is the ordinary Refuge that deſperate Perſons as to any other Employment in good Learning betake themſelves to; whilſt but a few know themſelves ſuited with intellectual and moral Abilities, and fewer have that Encouragement, when they undertake it, their Pains deſerve.

a. 1639, Henry Wotton, An Essay on the Education of Children, in the First Rudiments of Learning, London: T. Waller, published 1753, page 17

Among these macaques, although activity cycles are quite variable from location to location, refuging is a common characteristic.

2011, Michael D. Gumert, Agustín Fuentes, Lisa Jones-Engel, Monkeys on the Edge