"Sconce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on a broad fender of iron laths, the step of the domestic altar of the fireplace, with its huge hobs and boiler, and its hinged arm above the smoky mantel-shelf for roasting. The plain kitchen table is opposite the fire, at her elbow, with a candle on it in a tin sconce. Her chair, like all the others in the room, is uncushioned and unpainted; but as it has a round railed back and a seat conventionally moulded to the sitter's curves, it is comparatively a chair of state. The room has three doors, one on the same side as the fireplace, near the ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... which, it is perhaps needless to note, belong to those "dismal dark subjects, neither entertaining nor ornamental," against which we have already heard the painter inveigh. Upon the ceiling, with a nice sense of decorative fitness, is Pharaoh in the Red Sea. From a sconce at the side, a Gorgon surveys the proceedings with astonishment. Hogarth has used a similar idea in the Strolling Actresses, where the same mask seems horrified at the airy freedom of the lightly-clad lady who there ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... stairs, and a few minutes after the Junker was standing in Peter's study, face to face with Maria. The shutters were closed, and the sconce on the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... shame, lass," the sergeant said good temperedly; "an I had been there I would have broke the fellow's sconce for him; but another time, lass, you should not overstay the hour; it is not good for young girls to be roaming at night in a town full of soldiers. There, I hope your mother won't beat you, for, after ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... throwing a darkness, as if from the branch of a sconce, over the forehead of a fair girl.—They are not married yet, and I do not think they will be. But I loved the youth who loved her. How he started! It was a revelation ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... greatly interested, but in the very act of turning over to look at his enemy, and to find out whom he was addressing, he fell into a deep sleep. The next time he came back to consciousness it was dark, except for a sickly burning oil lamp on a sconce fixed against a wall at a little distance. He began to be aware of the fact that he was amazingly hungry, and the memory of what he imagined to have been his last meal came back to him. He laughed feebly, ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... clouds like Leucas top spreads underneath A sea of mists; the peaceful billows breathe Without all noise, yet so exactly move They seem to chide, but distant from above Reach not the ear, and—thus prepar'd—at once She doth o'erwhelm him with the airy sconce. Amidst these tumults, and as fierce as they, Venus steps in, and without thought or stay Invades her son; her old disgrace is cast Into the bill, when Mars and she made fast In their embraces were expos'd to all ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... this remote atheneum was sconce for Mr. Holliday's candle I do not hazard. It seems I have heard him say that his cousin, Professor Wilbur Cortez Abbott (of Yale) was then teaching at the Kansas college, and this was the reason. It doesn't matter now; ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... Also, the head; whence Shakspeare's pun in making Dromio talk of having his sconce ensconced. Also, the Anglo-Saxon for a dangerous candle-holder, made to let into the sides or posts in a ship's hold. Also, sconce of the magazine, a ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... his lord." Quoth the fox, "O stupid dullard who seekest a vain thing, I marvel at thy folly and thy front of brass in that thou biddest me serve thee and stand up before thee as I were a slave bought with thy silver; but soon shalt thou see what is in store for thee, in the way of cracking thy sconce with stones and knocking out thy traitorous dog-teeth." So saying the fox clomb a hill overlooking the vineyard and standing there, shouted out to the vintagers; nor did he give over shouting till ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... of the knob. Still she hesitated to reply. Uncertainly she moved toward the nearest wall-sconce and lifted her hand to the switch. She was sadly confused and unstrung, her thoughts awhirl and nerves ajangle. The last thing she wished just then was to meet ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... whereinto I am accustomed to bring a marrow-bone, when it has been set before me on a toast, with a white napkin wrapped round it. Nothing trundles along the high road of preferment so trimly as a well-biassed sconce, picked clean within and polished without; totus teres atque rotundus. The perfection of the finishing lies in the bias, which keeps it trundling in the given direction. There is good and sufficient reason for the fig being barren, but it is not therefore ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... an old woman on which time had long been plowing furrows to plant disease. The interior of the house, when we entered it by the dingy and narrow hall-way, that night, well corresponded with the exterior. A tallow candle in a tin sconce was burning on the wall, half hiding and half revealing the grime on the plastering, the cobwebs in the corners, and the rickety stairs by which it might be supposed that the occupants ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... ourselves, and object violently to whatsoever is unlike. And also we desire that the benefits we shed be appreciated. If Ipley understands neither our music nor our intent, haply we must hold a performance on the impenetrable sconce of Ipley. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... him. His bag had slightly burst, and the flour, showering from it with every blow, well-nigh blinded his adversary, whom he drove to the very edge of the table. At this critical juncture Will managed to bring down his bag full upon his opponent's sconce, and the force of the blow bursting it, Patch was covered from crown to foot with flour, and blinded in his turn. The appearance of the combatants was now so exquisitely ridiculous, that the king leaned back in his chair to indulge his laughter, and the mirth of the spectators ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... engaged until fatigue at length drove the old man to seek his bed. The town was wrapped in darkness as they passed through its quiet streets, and the ancient Spanish lantern, hanging crazily from its moldering sconce on the corner of Don Felipe's house, threw the only light into the black mantle that ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Seraphina's unstirring head was lighted strongly by a two-branched sconce on the wall; and when I stood by her side, not even the shadow of the eyelashes on her cheek trembled. Carlos' lips moved; his voice was almost extinct; but for all his emaciation, the profundity of ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... commanded the castle, in a manner that would have pained Sir Dugald Dalgetty, Mr. Macrae had erected, not a 'sconce,' but an observatory, with a telescope that 'licked the Lick thing,' as he said. Indeed it was his foible 'to see the Americans and go one better,' and he spoke without tolerance of the late boss American millionaire, the celebrated J. P. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... hold a constant brightnesse, as if rust there was not a quality incident to Iron. Their houses they keep cleaner than their bodies; their bodies than their souls. Goe to one, you shall find the Andirons shut up in net-work. At a second, the Warming-pan muffled in Italian Cutworke. At a third the Sconce clad ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... way past Kitty's barricade, stared at her doubtfully. This was a clever girl; she had proved her cleverness frequently. She might have some reason other than fear in keeping him out. So he put a fresh candle in the sconce and began to prowl. He pierced the attic windows with a ranging glance; no one was in the yard or on the Street. The dust on the ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... and holding them out from the side of the cave, discovered a very small arched chamber, which, as well as the one where Fleetword had just partaken of "the creatures comforts," was lighted by a small iron sconce, carefully guarded by a horn shade. Directly opposite the entrance a female was seated after the Eastern fashion, cross-legged, upon a pile of cushions. She placed her finger on her lip in token of silence, and the Buccaneer returned the signal by beckoning her ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... grandson of the defunct, he is a sober, sensible, worldly minded fellow, too intent upon schemes of interest to give in to reveries. He would have willingly concealed the affair; but he bawled out in the first transport of his fear, and, running into the house, exposed his back and his sconce to the whole family; so that there was no denying it in the sequel. It is now the common discourse of the country, that this appearance and behaviour of the old man's spirit, portends some great calamity to the family, and the good-woman has actually taken to her ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... for some moments after she had seated herself, during which Ruth noted how, as the candle-light from the sconce behind fell upon her father's head, each silvery hair seemed to speak of quiet ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... cierge, rushlight, serge; pl. chandlery. Associated Words: chandler, wick, snuff, socket, accensor, petrostearine, sconce, sweal. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... lucubrations, doubtless under Athenian (Pisistratean) influence." The poet is here denied a sense of humour. That a veteran military Polonius should talk as inopportunely about tactics as Dugald Dalgetty does about the sconce of Drumsnab is an essential part of the humour of the character of Nestor. This is what Nestor's critics do not see; the inopportune nature of his tactical remarks is the point of them, just as in the case of the laird of Drumthwacket, "that ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... and he was alone in the tiny hall, where the light was dim from one pearly-shaded sconce, and walls, carpet, everything was silvery, making the walled-in space all ghostly, he could only think ridiculously: 'Shall I go in with my overcoat on, or take it off?' The music ceased; the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sepia tint—and for all furniture, half-a-dozen chairs with lyre-shaped backs and blue leather cushions were ranged round the room. The two clumsy arched windows that gave upon the Place du Murier were curtainless; there was neither clock nor candle sconce nor mirror above the mantel-shelf, for Mme. Sechard had died before she carried out her scheme of decoration; and the "bear," unable to conceive the use of improvements that brought in no return in money, had left ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... untruth, by toleration of State, is to build a sconce against the Walls of Heaven, to batter God out ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... and crooked little flights of steps leading to nowhere, its gables and slanting roofs, and its utter absence of all structural proportion. A shrine here, a broken statue there,—a half-obliterated coat-of-arms over an old gateway,—a rusty sconce fitted fast into the wall to support a lantern no longer needed in these days of gas and electricity,—an ancient fountain overgrown with weed, or a projecting vessel of stone for holy water, in which small birds bathe and disport themselves after a shower of rain,—those are but a few of ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... go show them my unbarbed sconce? Must I With my base tongue, give to my noble heart A lie that it must bear? Well, I will do't: Yet were there but this single plot to lose, This mould of Marcius, they, to dust should grind it, And throw ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... he reached a bazaar of jewels near the temple square. An armed watchman stood before the tightly closed front of the lapidary's booth, above the portal of which a flaring torch was stuck in a sconce. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... for the love drove him mad, the insanity developing itself on the return voyage. The captain had to be imprisoned in his own state-room, where he committed suicide in a terrible manner by tearing his throat open with the point of a candlestick or sconce. The second mate, who was as coarse a brute as a common sailor could be, took command, and as he at once got drunk, and kept so, the passengers rose, confined him, and gave the command to the third, who was ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... this?" "Here," cried the Jester, upon which Job passed out of the door and went about his business and on such wise made his escape. Next the Herbalist stood up and opening his basket brought out fragrant herbs and fell to scattering them over his sconce and about it and over his ears,[FN416] till such time as all his face was hidden in greens, after which he also went out and accosting the house-master said, "The Peace be upon you!" And when the man returned the salam he asked ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton |
