"Coign" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to engage in the open field, where the gain would lie wholly with the enemy, he lay stoutly embattled on ground where the citizens must reap advantage; since, as he doggedly persisted, to march out meant to be surrounded on every side; whereas to stand at bay where every defile gave a coign of vantage, would give ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... to see, after all, as the Reverend Billy remarked when they had reached a coign of vantage below the curve. A string of use-worn bunk cars; a "dinkey" caboose serving as the home on wheels of the chief of construction and his assistant; a crooked siding with a gang of dark-skinned laborers at ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... the lower shelf and ensconced myself where I was shaded from the sun and had a clear view of the road both ways. From my coign I watched the traffic. I judged that the northern supply of arena- beasts was already overtaxed. The procession of wagons was no longer continuous. They came now in trains of a hundred or so with some miles between the convoys. Just as I settled myself no beast-wagons ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... went aimlessly out on to the landing, and, since I was not allowed to go downstairs, what more natural than that I should involuntarily turn towards the alcove on the landing? Yet before I had time to establish myself in my usual coign of vantage behind the door I found myself pounced upon by Mimi—always the ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... the wall stood a watch-tower, and from this coign of vantage the guards saw the fleeing fugitives, outlined ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... reached a certain point, Richard drew back, and, from a coign of vantage, saw Barbara try the study-window and fail. He then followed her as she went round to the door, and, still covertly, saw her ring the bell. The door was opened with what seemed to him a portentous celerity, and she ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... clowns had rolled into the ring, the master was cracking his whip, the horses, awaiting their turn impatiently, were pawing and breathing loudly. Mr. Bloxford, still in his fur coat, with a big cigar in full blast, was seated in a coign of vantage from which he could see everything, his Simian eyes darting everywhere, his jewelled hand ready to wave on the various items of the programme. The huge audience received the opening turns with a kind of judicial silence; ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... Morgan's right flank by a running fight, stinging it at every vulnerable point, and reporting Morgan's course to Judah in the neck-and-neck race. Aided by the local militia, O'Neil now dashed ahead and fearlessly skirmished with the enemy's flankers from every coign of vantage. He reached the last descent to the river-bottom near Buffington Bar, and near the historical Blennerhasset's Island, early on ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... and live under the lawe, And that thei scholde also forthdrawe 330 Bestaile, and seche non encress Of gold, which is the breche of pes. For this a man mai finde write, Tofor the time, er gold was smite In Coign, that men the florin knewe, Ther was welnyh noman untrewe; Tho was ther nouther schield ne spere Ne dedly wepne forto bere; Tho was the toun withoute wal, Which nou is closed overal; 340 Tho was ther no brocage ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... Still, his principal work, The Mountain Cot (Heiarbli)—one of the longest cycles in Icelandic fiction—is his greatest. The little outlying mountain cot becomes a separate world in its own right, a coign of vantage affording a clear view of the surrounding countryside where we get profound insight into human nature. Like the bulk of his best work, this novel has a foundation in his own experiences. In reading the story by him included in this volume, the reader ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... in the place, ten altogether, so Birkin had found out: two artists, three students, a man and wife, and a Professor and two daughters—all Germans. The four English people, being newcomers, sat in their coign of vantage to watch. The Germans peeped in at the door, called a word to the waiter, and went away again. It was not meal-time, so they did not come into this dining-room, but betook themselves, when their boots were changed, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... been a part of a long plan that he and Eunice should have seen Italy together, but for the moment he did not wish her there. He was sure she would have been in the way of his getting something that glimmered at him from the coign of castellated walls all awash about their base with purpled shadow, that strove to say itself in intricate fine tracery of tower and shrine, and failed and fell away before the sodden quality of ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... be interesting to note how, in some Houses, the library slowly expanded itself, occupying, one after another, every coign of vantage-ground. An excellent example of this growth is to be found in the abbey of Saint Germain des Pres, Paris; and fortunately there are several views, taken at different periods before the Revolution, on which the gradual extension of the library ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... I descried Jane and her partner far below their proper level. The howdah was coming round, and our steed was eleven feet high! Agonised yells to the gentleman who guided the deliberate steps of the pachyderm from a coign of vantage on the back of his neck, awoke him to an appreciation of the situation. The elephant was "hove to" with all possible despatch, and we crawled off his back with the greatest celerity. We then ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... and many more, our puzzled trio went to the Stock Exchange on the last day of September. We were conducted into the safe seclusion of the Visitors' Gallery, from which coign of vantage we could look down unharmed upon the frantic multitude below. The room is large and very lofty, its prevailing tint a warm brown, relieved by bright decorations of the Byzantine order. Across one end runs a small gallery for visitors, without seats, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... rustic St. Cecilia of the Coast Range began to sing. The shell of the little building dilated with the melody; the sashes of the windows pulsated, the two ejected linnets joined in timidly from their coign of vantage in the belfry outside, and the limp vines above the porch swayed like her curls. Once she thought she heard stealthy footsteps without; once she was almost certain she felt the brushing of somebody outside against ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... just twenty years, marked by the opening Session, since I first had the opportunity of viewing the House of Commons from a coign of 'vantage behind the Speaker's Chair. It is more than twenty years since I looked on the place with opportunity for closely studying it. But, as I am reminded by an inscription in an old rare copy of "Dod," it was in February, 1873, that I was installed in the Press Gallery in charge of the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... interview further. An hour elapsed before the final arrangements were made and Mr. Prime left the office. He was to start in business as soon as possible, and make frequent reports of his progress to Mr. Chelm. Meanwhile I sat within hearing distance, and occasionally took a peep at them from my coign of vantage. I could perceive from Mr. Chelm's manner that he was pleased with the tone and alertness of the other in putting matters into shape. He had shown me beforehand certain letters which he had received in answer to inquiries ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... From his coign of vantage the watch now called out: "She's a long ship,—five hundred tons, anyhow! Lord! the metal that ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... tosses great branches to and fro; but the Muse was not favourable. A few birds scattered here and there at wide intervals on either side of the valley sang the little broken songs of late autumn; and there was a great stir of insect life in the grass at my feet. The path up to this coign of vantage, where I think I shall make it a habit to ensconce myself a while of a morning, is for a little while common to the peasant and a little clear brooklet. It is pleasant, in the tempered grey daylight of the olive shadows, to see the people picking their way ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spurs, and yet keeps to a ridge between the folds of the ravine which it discloses on each side, with here and there a contadino cutting rock on the steep hillsides, or a sportsman wandering with his dog; or often at twilight, from some coign of vantage, you may see the goats trooping home across the distant sands by the sea. It debouches through great limestone quarries on the main road. There, seen from below, Taormina comes out—a cape, a town, and a hill. It is, in fact, a long, steep, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... two hours passed. The wind had abated, the sun was struggling to dissipate the murky bank of cloud that hung from zenith to the eastern horizon. From his coign of vantage at the little port hole Dan saw Madame de la Fontaine pick her way across the Dunes and come upon the little beach. A small boat had put off from the schooner and was being rowed to shore by two seamen. The French lady gathered her skirts ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... Ugombo; nothing but a low dun-brown irregular range, running parallel with its northern shore at the distance of a mile; nothing but a low plain stretching from its western shore far away towards the Mpwapwa Mountains and Marenga Mkali, then apparent to us from our coign of vantage, from which extensive scene of dun-brownness we were glad to rest our eyes on ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... into the garden, through means of which, according to a chance which had hitherto attended his passion, he hoped to communicate with, or at least obtain sight of, the object of his affections, from some such turret or balcony window, or similar "coign of vantage," as at the hostelry of the Fleur de Lys, near Plessis, or the Dauphin's Tower, within that Castle itself. Isabelle seemed still destined, wherever she made her abode, to be ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... see! The pig! The big ox!" cried Molly now, looking from her coign of vantage down the wide, grass-grown lane between ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... which were mounted the most modern and the most destructive artillery ever devised by man, commanded the whole country far beyond the Moselle into Germany. Every hill-top bristled with them, smaller batteries were in every coign of vantage, while those narrow mountain passes could also be closed at any moment by being blown up when the signal was ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... emerged from the prison door and was greeted by a roar that curdled the blood in at least one woman's heart there, an old Irish hag, who sat in a coign of vantage, hugging her knees and crooning, a little black pipe held in her toothless jaws, ceased her dismal hum to concentrate all her ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the cleverer swordsman. This was decidedly a man of talent, but he was shorter in the arm than my master and had the disadvantage of standing on the ground, whereas M. Etienne was up one step. He could not force home any of his shrewd-planned thrusts; nor could he drive M. Etienne out of his coign to where in the open the two could make short work of him. The rapiers clashed and parted and twisted about each other and flew apart again; and then before I could see who was touched the attacker fell to his knees, with M. Etienne's ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... point of common agreement from which to survey and distinguish more exactly these two diverging tendencies. Such a coign of vantage is offered by the nature of the aesthetic attitude,—for since Kant there has been among aestheticians no essential difference of opinion on this point. The aesthetic attitude, all agree, is disinterested. We care for the image or ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... as a rare tidbit. Then his nesting-habits are the most diverse of all. Now he is a tree-builder in the fork of a trunk or on a horizontal branch, then a builder in vines or rosebushes around your porch, then on some coign of vantage about your house or barn, or under the shed, or under a bridge, or in the stone wall, or on the ground above a hedge. I have known him to go into a well and build there on a projecting stone. He even nests beyond the Arctic Circle, and it is said he never sings ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... about how the job of casing a joint should be done. I did it the same way. I dug back and forth, collecting the layout from the back door of my building towards the nearest puff of dead area. This coign of safety billowed outward from the pattern towards the building like an arm of cumulus cloud and the top of it rose like a column to a height above my range. It sort of leaned forward but it did ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... eighteen—thanks to the comprehensive visual education in the business of life which she could hardly have failed to assimilate from a coign of vantage overlooking every table of a Soho restaurant—there were precious few things she didn't understand. But her insight into Papa Dupont's mind in respect of herself was wholly devoid of sympathy. She was just a little bit afraid of him, and she despised ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... sit where you are, ladies," the aide remarked, "for the inn is full of men;" and the two accepted his suggestion, and from their coign of vantage surveyed the scene, while the squire, tumbling off the waggon, demanded ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford |
