"Sconce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gone 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 maid said ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... drinke is of a most hot nature, as being compos'd of Spices, and if it once scale the sconce, and enter within the circumclusion of the Perricranion, it doth much accelerate nature, by whose forcible atraction and operation, the drinker (by way of distribution) is easily enabled to afford blowcs to his brother. In Taylor. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... its oddly-shaped houses, its by-ways 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 ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... "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 ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... lighter. But as to the slow commanders, I have known none to equal Brigadier Baumgarten, also of the Imperial service. He would break up his winter-quarters and sit down before some place of strength, where he would raise a sconce here, and sink a sap there, until his soldiers were sick of the very sight of the place. So he would play with it, as a cat with a mouse, until at last it was about to open its gates, when, as like as not, he would raise the leaguer ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The gas was out, the stove was out, and according to his custom he was reading himself to sleep by the light of a candle in a sconce attached to the bed's head. His eyes ran along line after line and down page after page, and transmitted nothing coherent to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... with one of these Stoke begins to fence. Alas! a dispute arose about a stroke, the by-standers interfered, and Stoke's opponent drew his hanger (extraxit cultellum vocatum hangere), and hit one John Felerd over the sconce. On this the Proctors come up, and the assailant is put in Bocardo, while Stoke goes off to a "pass-supper" given by an inceptor, who has just taken his degree. These suppers were not voluntary entertainments, but enforced by law. At supper the talk ranges over University gossip, they ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... door found nothing to interest them, and turned away, but the gendarme stayed beside us. Eagle glanced at him as if resenting his intrusion, and asked me to bring her a candle and hold it near a mark on the tracery. The gendarme himself, apologetic but firm, stepped to the sconce and took the candle. I do not know how the thing was done, or why the old spring and long unused hinges did not stick, but his back was toward us—she pushed me against the panel and it ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... at this distance, but I vaticinate a row in Italy; in whilk case, I don't know that I won't have a finger in it. I dislike the Austrians, and think the Italians infamously oppressed; and if they begin, why, I will recommend 'the erection of a sconce ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Jack's, who was singing the "Bay of Biscay O," at the same time. Gortz and Fips were all the time lunging at each other with a pair of single-sticks, the barrister having a very strong notion that he was Richard the Third. At last Fips hit the West Indian such a blow across his sconce, that the other grew furious; he seized a champagne-bottle, which was, providentially, empty, and hurled it across the room at Fips: had that celebrated barrister not bowed his head at the moment, the Queen's Bench would have lost one of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as long as ye plaised, fur me sconce got used to being cracked at the fairs in the ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... she waiting on me very gently; but now, being weary of painful writing, and hearing the call to the refectory, and the brethren trampling thither, I must break off, for, if I be late, they will sconce me of my ale. Alas! it is to these little cares of creature comforts that I am come, who have seen the face of so many a war, and lived and fought on rat's ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... way some folks have got of laughing out, yaw-haw! when they see a gentleman ketching a reg'lar hyst; a long gentleman, for instance, with his legs in the air, and his noddle splat down upon the cold bricks. A hyst of itself is bad enough, without being sniggered at: first, your sconce gets a crack; then, you see all sorts of stars, and have free admission to the fire-works; then, you scramble up, feeling as if you had no head on your shoulders, and as if it wasn't you, but some confounded disagreeable feller in your ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various |
