"Niche" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Swinburne. "There are one or two figures in the world of his work of which there are no words that would be fit or good to say. Another of these is Cordelia. The place they have in our lives and thoughts is not one for talk. The niche set apart for them to inhabit in our secret hearts is not penetrable by the lights and noises of common day. There are chapels in the cathedrals of man's highest art, as in that of his inmost life, not made to be set open to the eyes and feet ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... been to waste the best years of his life! His father would have opened to him a boundless career; he would have seen the world under the guidance of a master hand. And here he was to-day, the possessor of millions, a beggar in friends, no niche to fill, a wanderer from place ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... said, "I will take off my pinafore. Where can I niche you? There is only my bedroom, and I want that. What are we ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... of the lonesome hall, Stone stairs creep down where the slow tide flows, There, out of a niche in the mouldering wall, Low leaneth a royal tropical rose: Who set it there none cares, nor knows, Long years ago in the mouldering wall, But ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... said, I have never seen Delphine since her marriage. The beautiful statuesque girl occupies a niche into which the blazing and magnificent intrigante cannot crowd. I do not wish to be disillusioned. She has read me a riddle,—Delphine ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... grass-plot. Selma, when she saw the figure of her visitor in the door-way, congratulated herself that it had been removed. It would have pleased her to know that Mr. Littleton had already placed her in a niche above the level of mere grass-plot considerations. That was where she belonged of course; but she was fearful on the score of suspected shortcomings. So it was gratifying to be able to receive him in a smarter gown, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... away out of the hermit's big gnarled hand. But the birds came again and tried to wedge the foundation of the new home in between the fingers. Suddenly a shapeless and dirty thumb laid itself on the straws and held them fast, and four fingers arched themselves so that there was a quiet niche to build in. The ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... saw this mutable mood of nature—the sands would fly and seep and carve and bury; the floods would dig and cut; the ledges would weather in the heat and rain; the avalanches would slide; the cactus seeds would roll in the wind to catch in a niche and split the soil with thirsty roots. Years would pass. Cameron seemed to see them, too; and likewise destiny leading a child down into this forlorn waste, where she would find love and fortune, and the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... the wall at the rear of the stage, seamed and scarred, retains only a few fragments of the columns and pilasters and cornices and mosaics which once made it beautiful; the carvings and sculptures have disappeared; the royal portal, once so magnificent, is but a jagged gap in the masonry; the niche above it, once a fit resting place for a god's image, is shapeless and bare. And until the work of restoration began the whole interior was infested with mean little dwellings which choked it like offensive weeds—while rain and frost steadily ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... stone Saint occupied a retired niche in a side aisle of the old cathedral. No one quite remembered who he had been, but that in a way was a guarantee of respectability. At least so the Goblin said. The Goblin was a very fine specimen of quaint stone carving, and lived ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... institute a strict scrutiny as to the manner in which the escape had been effected. The door that opened into the prison, stood between the companion ladder and the recess occupied by the daughters of the Governor. To his surprise, Gerald found it locked, and the key that usually remained in a niche near the door, removed. On turning to search for it, he also noticed, for the first time, that the lamp, suspended from a beam in the centre of the cabin, had been extinguished. Struck by these remarkable circumstances, a suspicion, which he would have given much not ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... trefoiled, fill the head of the window, the composition of which, though comparatively rude, is illustrative of the taste of the age. On each side of the window, on the exterior, is a kind of semi-classic niche. In Stowe Church, Northamptonshire, are a number of windows inserted at a general reparation of the church in 1639; these are square-headed, and have a label or hood moulding over, and are mostly divided into three obtusely pointed-arched lights, without ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... of birth and genius. The strength of his imagination leads him to indulge in fantastic opinions; the elevation of his rank sets censure at defiance. He becomes a pampered egotist. He has a seat in the House of Lords, a niche in the Temple of Fame. Every-day mortals, opinions, things are not good enough for him to touch or think of. A mere nobleman is, in his estimation, but "the tenth transmitter of a foolish face:" a mere man of genius ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... cameo stand out in sharp relief from the glittering stone from which the artist has fashioned it. Marien looked at her from a distance, leaning against the fireplace of the farther salon, whence he could see plainly the corner shaded by green foliage plants where Jacqueline had made her niche, as she called it. The two rooms formed practically but one, being separated only by a large recess without folding-doors, or 'portires'. Hubert Marien, from his place behind Madame de Nailles's chair, had often before watched Jacqueline as he was watching her at this moment. ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... saw his duty to the nation and the emergency never more clearly than he knew his own defects. Canada never before had a mediocrity of such eminence; a man who without a spark of genius devoted a high talent to a nation's work so well that he just about wins a niche in our Valhalla—if we have one. It was the war that almost finished Borden; and it was the war ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... of worship. The building was of much architectural interest. The old Christian nave and aisles were preserved intact; but the Jews had destroyed the apse which must have existed, and had replaced it by a square Eastern sanctuary, and over the niche, within which were preserved the Holy Books of the Law, had adorned the wall with numerous Hebrew texts executed in gesso, forming an interesting example of Jewish taste and work in the middle ages. Some of the ancient Christian ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... perfectly, or even approximatively, true, Mr. Thorley would be well deserving of a niche in the temple of fame, and stock-feeders would ever regard him as a benefactor to his own and the bovine species; but I fear that Mr. Thorley's imagination outstripped his reason when he described in such glowing terms the wonderful virtues of ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... powders, which so many have censured, is, I am relieved to say, not mine at all but the Brownies'. Of another tale, in case the reader should have glanced at it, I may say a word: the not very defensible story of OLALLA. Here the court, the mother, the mother's niche, Olalla, Olalla's chamber, the meetings on the stair, the broken window, the ugly scene of the bite, were all given me in bulk and detail as I have tried to write them; to this I added only the external scenery ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... different practices that are in vogue in the Church and go under the name of devotions. Legion is the number of saints that have their following of devotees. Some are universal, are praised and invoked the world over; others have a local niche and are all unknown beyond the confines of a province or nation. Some are invoked in all needs and distresses; St. Blase, on the other hand is credited with a special power for curing throats, St. Anthony, for finding lost things, etc. Honor is paid them on account of ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... symbolical that religion triumphs over all, and St. Anthony still holds out his right hand as if to protect the sylvan and mute inhabitants of these groves that here once found secure shelter from the cruel gun and still more cruel dog. But he is tottering in his niche, and when the wind is high is seen to rock, as if his reign were drawing to ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... white ashes lying; But when the lady passed, there came A tongue of light, a fit of flame; And Christabel saw the lady's eye, 160 And nothing else saw she thereby, Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall, Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall. O softly tread, said Christabel, My ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by the pleasant foliage of many creeping plants, that made a [v]tapestry for the naked rock by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. At a small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure, there appeared a [v]niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure. Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended and threw a look of familiar kindness around upon his audience. They stood, or sat, or reclined upon the grass, as seemed good to each, with the departing sunshine falling over them. In another direction ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... N. place, lieu, spot, point, dot; niche, nook &c (corner) 244; hole; pigeonhole &c (receptacle) 191; compartment; premises, precinct, station; area, courtyard, square; abode &c 189; locality &c (situation) 183. ins and outs; every hole and corner. Adv. somewhere, in some place, wherever ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... comrade's suffering, the Yankee lad at once set to work to make him as comfortable as circumstances would permit, and soon had him lying on a sleeping bag, in a niche formed by two uptilted slabs of ice. Profiting by past experience, they had procured and brought with them an Eskimo lamp with its moss wick, a small quantity of seal oil, and a supply of matches, so that, after a while, Cabot procured enough ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... all soft dusk when she came to the kinsman's house which had opened to her. Crowded though it was with refugee kindred, with soldier sons coming and going, it had managed to give her a small quiet niche, a little room, white-walled, white-curtained, in the very arms of a great old tulip tree. The window opened to the east, and the view was obstructed only by the boughs of the tree. Beyond them, through ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... was an ornamented niche, which at one time contained an image but of which no knowledge can be obtained. It may have held a statue of the Virgin and Child and be the origin of the school seal, as a writer in the Giggleswick Chronicle, March 1907, suggests, but the chantry was not dedicated to the Virgin, it was ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... oven-shaped, and hardly twelve feet high at the highest point. At the farther end I saw a sort of deep recess where lay my bed on the ground, and consisting, as I thought I could see, of a huge bear-skin above, and I could not tell what below, and within this yet another smaller niche with a figure of the Virgin Mary carved out of the same granite, and crowned with ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... two stories of block after block of hewn and squared stone. The lower of the two stories is decagonal and has in every side a vast archway or niche, one of which forms the gateway. Within we find a huge cruciform chamber lighted by six square openings. The upper story, now reached by two stairways, built with ancient materials in 1774, is circular, ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... next mastaba (E) is of a curious form; the S. niche is over one of the wells instead of being in the outer wall. Both wells were cleared until we were stopped by water. From one came the fragments of a pottery ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell
... which we are now going to deal I regard as the greatest work that Thackeray did. Though I do not hesitate to compare himself with himself, I will make no comparison between him and others; I therefore abstain from assigning to Esmond any special niche among prose fictions in the English language, but I rank it so high as to justify me in placing him among the small number of the highest class of English novelists. Much as I think of Barry Lyndon and Vanity Fair, I cannot quite say this of them; but, as a chain ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... maintenance, clothing, and education of twenty-five girls, and the clothing and education of eighty boys. The intentions of the founder are still carried out, as recorded on a stone slab on the front of the building, which is a neat brick edifice, with a group of a woman and child in stone in a niche high up, and an appropriate ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... the audience the music of the reed which he held in his hand. Three damsels, resembling the Graces in the beautiful proportions of their limbs, and the slender clothing which they wore, lurked in different attitudes, each in her own niche, and seemed but to await the first sound of the music, to bound forth from thence and join in the frolic dance. The subject was beautiful, yet somewhat light, to ornament the study of such a sage as Agelastes represented himself ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... mosaic, bronze-work or bas-relief, wood-carving or panelling in marble, baked clay or enamelled earthenware was never carried to such perfection in Gothic buildings of the purer type; nor had sculpture in the North an equal chance of detaching itself from the niche and tabernacle, which forced it to remain the slave of architecture. Thus the comparative defects of Italian Gothic were directly helpful in promoting those very arts for which the people had a ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... himself a sacrifice to the costly honors and emoluments of East Indian official life. One great thought fired his soul in all the perils and privations of that deadly climate. It was to ascend one niche higher in knowledge of oriental tongues than Sir William Jones. He labored to this end with a desperate assiduity that perhaps was never surpassed or even equalled. He died hugging the conviction that he had attained it. This little village was ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... for the care Miss Leroy gave our Daisy. Money can buy services, but it cannot purchase tender, loving sympathy. I was also determined to let my employes know that I, not they, commanded my business. So, do not crown me a hero until I have won a niche in the temple of fame. In dealing with Southern prejudice against the negro, we Northerners could do it with better grace if we divested ourselves of our own. We irritate the South by our criticisms, and, while I ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... approval. I was many heartfuls glad that thine August Mother was taking tea in a far-off village, as Li-ti even wanted to install a new God in the kitchen. This I would not permit. Canst thou imagine thy Mother's face if a God from a stranger family was in the niche above the stove? Happily all was over when thine Honourable Mother returned. She is not pleased with this, her newest, daughter-in-law, and she talks— and talks— and talks. She says the days will pass most slowly until she sees the father of Li-ti. She yearns to tell him that a man knows ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... found the ambry niche in the wall of the ruin at the side of the place where the altar had been. She laid her baby there. That was his cradle, and by sunlight and moonlight she was heard singing loud songs to him. The people were afraid of going too near her at that time. 'It is dangerous,' said they, ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... flash of light straight ahead. Ernol had reached the outer corridor. And the doctor heard a great commotion going on outside the door in the ravine; a smashing and thudding, which filled the corridor with noise. Next second the door gave way, and simultaneously young Ernol leaped into the niche behind the thing which the doctor thought a machine gun. Another second, and he ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... kind of daze, and see visions. Miss X. has this susceptibility in a remarkable degree, and is, moreover, an unusually intelligent critic. She reports many visions which can only be described as apparently clairvoyant, and others which beautifully fill a vacant niche incur knowledge of subconscious mental operations. For example, looking into the crystal before breakfast one morning she reads in printed characters of the {315} death of a lady of her acquaintance, the date and other circumstances ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... trunk of a maupei tree, his face in the shadow of his hat, which he had pulled down over his forehead. The supper had been eaten with little conversation, the Professor being the only one who showed conversational powers of any note. With the notebook already partly filled he felt certain of a niche in the Pantheon of Fame, and he could not resist a desire to prattle childishly about the sensation which his discoveries would cause. It's a terrible thing for a man to get the applause craving in its worst form. It is liable ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... willows crossed and left projecting at the corners each one inch beyond the next. The corners were tied together with white cotton cord, and each corner was ornamented with the under tail feather of the eagle. These articles were laid in a niche behind the theurgist, whose permanent seat was on the west side of the lodge facing east. The night ceremony commenced shortly after dark. All those who were to participate were immediate friends and relatives of the invalid excepting the theurgist or song-priest, ...
— Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the - Navajo Indians • James Stevenson
... since yistiddy," he exclaimed. He got to his feet slowly, whereat Plutina looked toward the entrance cleft, ready if the need came, to fly from him to the more merciful abyss. But Hodges moved toward the back of the cave where he brought out a stone jug from its niche, and returned to the bed of boughs. Seated again, he filled the tin cup full of spirits, and drank it down. With the pipe recharged and burning, he continued to sit in silence, regarding the girl with an unswerving intentness that tortured her. At short intervals, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... company with Coligny and other leaders, to the spacious and imposing church of the Holy Rood (Sainte Croix), he undertook, with blows and menaces, to check the furious onslaught. Seeing a Huguenot soldier who had climbed aloft, and was preparing to hurl from its elevated niche one of the saints that graced the wall of the church, the prince, in the first ebullition of his anger, snatched an arquebuse from the hands of one of his followers, and aimed it at the adventurous iconoclast. The latter had seen the act, but was in no wise daunted. Not desisting ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... indeed no word for it—shine though she might, in her screened narrow niche, as with the liquefaction of her pearls, the glimmer of her tears, the freshness of her surprise. "You won't come in—when you've had ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... formed by the weathered joints, Eustace found a rugged niche, somewhat dryer than the rest, and laid Cleer gently down in it, on a natural spring seat of tufted rock-plants. Then he settled down beside her, with what cheerfulness he could muster up, and taking off his wet coat, ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... flickered,—flickered on something tall and white,—something white and shadowy, standing erect, and shrinking aside, behind the counter. My heart stood still; a sepulchral chill came over me. My old self, trembling, angry, foreboding, stepped suddenly within the niche whence the self-confident, full-grown, sensible woman had vanished utterly. For an instant, I felt like a ghost myself. It seemed natural that ghosts, if such there were, should spy me out, and appall my heart with their presence. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... a man of some poetical fancy, and if not worthy to be classed "among the chief of English poets," he is at least entitled to a niche in the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... her head seemed bursting with pain, and rings of fire danced before her eyes. She never would have succeeded but for Uncle Sam, who proved a most efficient member of the household, fitting in every niche and corner, until Aunt Eunice, with all her New England aversion to negroes, wondered how she had ever lived without him. Particularly did he attach himself to Willie, relieving Adah from all care, and thus enabling her to devote every spare moment ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... herself, for her father was a rich man, and only took advantage of the Great Shirley education because it was incomparably the best in the place. There was no rule against any one attending the school, and he had long ago secured a niche in it for his favorite daughter. Florence loved it and hated it at the same time. She was fond of her own companions, but she could not bear the foundation girls. These girls made a large percentage in the school. In all respects they were ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... are among the grandest triumphs of civilization, and attest as well as demand no ordinary force of genius. Art claims to be creative, and to be based on eternal principles of beauty, and artists in all ages have claimed a proud niche in the temple of fame. They rank with poets and musicians, and even philosophers and historians, in the world's regard. They are favored sons of inspiration, urged to their work by ideal conceptions of the beautiful and the true. Their productions are material, but the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... a sort of verandah, formed by the floor above projecting over it, and being supported by wooden pillars or other frame-work in front. In the Parsee houses of this kind, there is usually a niche in this lower portion for a lamp, which is kept always burning. In some places, the houses are enclosed in courtyards, and at others a range of dwellings, not very unlike the alms-houses in England, are divided from the road by a low wall, placed a few yards in the front, and entered at either ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... and a quarter wide, on the side fronting the largest angle. The upper story is disposed into five niches, and there were formerly as many pinnacles at the corners; but one of them has been destroyed: each niche contained a statue. The first appears to have been intended to represent a bishop, another seems like the Virgin and Jesus; a third appears to be Saint John the Evangelist; the others are too much mutilated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... worst, an amorous one—to feed one's eyes on the molten colour that drops from the hollow vaults and thickens the air with its richness. It is all so quiet and sad and faded and yet all so brilliant and living. The strange figures in the mosaic pictures, bending with the curve of niche and vault, stare down through the glowing dimness; the burnished gold that stands behind them catches the light on its little uneven cubes. St. Mark's owes nothing of its character to the beauty of proportion or perspective; there is nothing ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... frieze here of graceful although conventional floral decoration with gold leaves. In the wall are two windows giving light to two now empty rooms. The end central receptacle or niche is gaudily ornamented with Venetian looking-glasses cut in small triangles, and it has a pretty ceiling with artichoke-leaf pattern capitals in ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... but a treadmill, manned by some thirty half-naked coolies, who go through a regular treadmill drill, urging the boat along at perhaps three miles an hour. In addition to their deck passengers, these boats have rows of little covered niches for superior personages, and in every niche sits a grave, motionless Chinaman, looking for all the world like those carved Chinese cabinets we sometimes see, with a little porcelain figure squatting in ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... said she, in a grating voice, "and what now? Oh! Mr. Summers, is it you? You're welcome, sir! I wishes I could offer you a glass of summut, but the bottle's dry—he! he!" pointing, with a revolting grin, to an empty bottle that stood on a niche within the hearth. "I don't know how it is, sir, but I never wants to eat; but ah! 't is the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... trumpets blared. Perhaps they carried some Madonna by With tossing ensigns in a sea of flowers, A painted Virgin with a painted Child, Who saw for once the sweetness of the sun Before they shut her in an altar-niche Where tapers smoke against the windy gloom. I gathered roses redder than my gown And played that I was Saint Elizabeth, Whose wine had turned to roses in her hands. And as I played, a child came thro' the gate, ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... toupees ... even the most expensive ones could always be detected. He couldn't quite understand why the two men wore them. They were often used by playboys, actors, self-styled over-age Romeos, people whose niche in society depends upon their looks. But not scientists or technicians. In fact Harry couldn't remember ever having known one such person who shunned his baldness in this manner. That didn't mean they had no right. But it did seem peculiar ...
— The Observers • G. L. Vandenburg
... shrine," continued Mary. "Komatsu says it's to the Compassionate God, Jizu. He's sitting cross-legged in a little niche in the hillside below the bridge and he has a beautiful frame of clematis vines around him. I think ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... the street where these were situated, they came to one of the gates of the city. Beside this was a niche in the wall, used as a sentry-box, upon which, all the party gazed with a profound interest; for in that sentry-box those who disentombed the city found a skeleton, in the armor and with the equipment of a Roman soldier. Evidently the sentry ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... accommodated their buildings to such irregularities. This is very noticeable in the center cluster of Mummy Cave (in Canyon del Muerto, Arizona), where a large mass of sandstone, fallen from the roof of the rocky niche in which the houses were built, has been incorporated into the house cluster. Between this and another kiva to the north the mesa top is nearly level. The latter kiva is also subterranean and was built in an accidental break in sandstone. On the very margin of this fissure stands a curious isolated ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... escarpment that formed the west wall of the canon, the sun lingered for a good-night kiss of the eastern cliffs which it loved to paint every evening with all the brilliant colors of the spectrum; it lingered over loving memories of ancient days when every niche of the Mancos cliffs held its little bronze-hued line of primitive worshippers, old and young, devout, prostrate, fearful of their Red God's nightly absences, suppliant of his return and continued largess; over memories of ceremonials and pastimes barbaric ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... were living. The young were ignorant of it, but the old knew. Mrs. Pendleton, who was born a great lady, remained one when the props and the background of a great lady had crumbled around her; and though the part she filled was a narrow part—a mere niche in the world's history—she filled it superbly. From the dignity of possessions she had passed to the finer dignity of a poverty that can do without. All the intellect in her (for she was not clever) had ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand! Ah, Psyche, from the ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... pathway tended upward, so that, through a crevice, a little daylight glimmered down upon them, or even a streak of sunshine peeped into a burial niche; then again, they went downward by gradual descent, or by abrupt, rudely hewn steps, into deeper and deeper recesses of the earth. Here and there the narrow and tortuous passages widened somewhat, developing themselves ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hedges of roses and jasmine ringed it round, making the sweetest and daintiest bower imaginable. To the right and left of the waterfall opened out a wonderful grotto, its walls and arches glittering with many-coloured rock-crystals, while in every niche were spread out strange fruits and sweetmeats, the very sight of which made the princess long to taste them. She hesitated a while, however, scarcely able to believe her eyes, and not knowing if she should enter the enchanted spot or fly from it. But at length curiosity prevailed, and she and her ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... made famous this hamlet buried in a niche in the valley that led down to the sea, a poor little peasants' hamlet consisting of ten Norman cottages surrounded ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of every creed. Statesmen have arisen "fit to govern all the world and rule it when 'tis wildest." Orators have appeared who have rivaled the great masters of antiquity. The doors of the American Parthenon are ever open to invite the humble but aspiring youth to enter and fill the loftiest niche. The highest dignity is within the grasp of all; for the lowly boy, born and reared in our own sweet valley of Cumberland, shall, when the spring comes round again, be clothed by the people with the first of mortal honors—that of guiding for a time ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... Pope Clement XII (who himself belonged to the Corsini family and who was an uncle of Cardinal Corsini) is in a niche between two columns of porphyry, and there is a bronze statue of the Pope. On the opposite side is a statue of Cardinal Corsini, and in the crypt below are tombs of the Corsini family. On the altar—always lighted—is ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... the ministry of Death the separator, and should tread with patience the lonely road, do calmly the day's work, and tarry till He comes, though those that stood beside us be gone? We may look forward with the assurance that 'God keeps a niche in heaven to hide our idols'; and 'albeit He breaks them to our face,' yet shall we find them again, like Memnon's statue, vocal in the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... and Huxley's Invertebrata, together with a disarticulated human skull. On one side of the fireplace two thigh bones were stacked; on the other a pair of foils, two basket-hilted single-sticks, and a set of boxing-gloves. On a shelf in a convenient niche was a small stock of general literature, which appeared to have been considerably more thumbed than the works upon medicine. Thackeray's Esmond and Meredith's Richard Feveret rubbed covers with Irving's Conquest of Granada and a tattered line of paper-covered novels. Over the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... alive but is still a comparatively young man in the height of his powers. A pure and simple biography cannot always determine with any satisfaction its subject's literary standing. Critical studies of classic authors do not usually give any preciseness about the exact niche the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... with your clothes; for if you do, you will die instantly. At the end of the third hall, you will find a door which opens into a garden, planted with fine trees loaded with fruit. Walk directly across the garden to a terrace, where you will see a niche before you, and in that niche a lighted lamp. Take the lamp down and put it out. When you have thrown away the wick and poured out the liquor, put it in your waistband and bring it to me. Do not be afraid that the liquor will spoil your clothes, for it is not oil, and the ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... shop," went on Mr. Hazen, "there was, as I told you, a young neophyte by the name of Thomas Watson. Tom had not found his niche in life. He had tried being a clerk, a bookkeeper, and a carpenter and none of these several occupations had seemed to fit him. Then one fortunate day he happened in at Williams's shop and immediately he knew this was the place where he ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... in reflection, my eyes fell upon a narrow ledge in the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit upon which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen inches, and was not more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it gave it a rude resemblance to one of the hollow-backed chairs used by our ancestors. I made no doubt that here was the 'devil's seat' alluded to in the MS., and now I seemed to grasp the ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... and spending the fruits of their criminal daring; there they dance and sing, feast on fricasseed rabbits and olives, and drink the muddy but strong wine of the Alemtejo. An enormous fire, fed by the trunk of a cork-tree, was blazing in a niche on the left hand on entering the spacious kitchen; by it, seething, were several large jars, which emitted no disagreeable odour, and reminded me that I had not yet broken my fast, although it was now nearly ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... may the niche of glory haplier grace, None may the crown of greatness proudlier wear, Than he upon whose tomb the silent tear Falls slowly down from many ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... week of new life for Garrison, such as he had never dreamed of living. Even in the heyday of his fame, forgotten by him, unlimited wealth had never brought the peace and content of Calvert House. It seemed as if his niche had long been vacant in the household, awaiting his occupancy, and at times he had difficulty in realizing that he had won it through deception, ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... four pillars of red oriental granite of the finest quality: those which decorate the niche of the Apollo were taken from the church that contained the tomb of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle. The floor is paved with different species of scarce and valuable marble, in large compartments, and, in its centre, is placed a large octagonal ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... matron was forgotten, and I was a child again, even little Mary Day. I felt glad of an assurance from Miss Bond, that so fondly had my name been cherished, even by those in the institution who had never met me, that it was regarded as a "household word," and that enshrined in the most sacred niche of the temple of love was the image of Mary L. Day. As a testimony of this continued affection I was fondly urged to remain in the institution while in the city, but, as I had so many resident ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... charming Diana," he went on, "come out, my beauty, destined for a lofty niche in the temple of canine glory! Come out, worthy scion of a race deemed worthy by the Egyptians to be a companion of the great god, Anubis, by the Christians, to be a friend of the good Saint Roch! Come out and partake of a glory before which the stars of Montargis and of ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... old man's arm still further through his own, shook his trembling fingers towards the spot where Jonas sat, as though he would wave him off. But, Anthony remaining quite still and silent, he relaxed his hold by slow degrees and lapsed into his usual niche in the corner; merely putting forth his hand at intervals and touching his old employer gently on the coat, as with the design of assuring himself that he ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain, from the ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... little room left for doubting the truth. Their presence in the death-cells surely was more than suspected, judging from the actions of yonder redskins, who flashed the light over and into each angle and corner, each niche and jog, where a human being might ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... to raze the ruined walls. The lock held fast and, as Helge tugged fiercely at the mouldered gate, suddenly a sculptured image of the deity, rudely summoned from his ancient sleep, started from his niche above. ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... been perfect darkness but for artificial light. On a table was a large student's lamp and in a niche in the wall was another. Besides this there was a lantern hanging from the roof of the chamber, but this ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... decree that every duellist was to have his head cut off, and that head was to be set up on the scene of the fight. The veintiquatro got out of the difficulty like a clever man. He had the head sawed off a statue of the king, and set that up in a niche in the middle of the street in which the murder had taken place. The king and all the Sevillians thought this a very good joke. The street took its name from the lamp held by the old woman, the only witness of the incident. The above is the popular ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... charpoy in one corner, and under the charpoy a locked box. There were no windows, and the narrow door opened into a passage that ran abruptly into a wall, a few feet farther on. So nobody saw Sunni when he carried his chirag, his little chimneyless, smoking tin lamp, into his room, and set it in a niche on the wall, took off his shoes, and threw himself down on his charpoy at eleven o'clock that night. For a long time he had been listening to the bul-buls, the nightingales, in the garden, and thinking of this moment. Now it ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... wait is a great secret; to patiently bide the time when one may step into the niche that right living and preparation has made possible. She will try to be contented and will strive for power to conquer her work, and herself to be ready for the day when opportunity will open her door to a larger and more responsible life. The beautiful part about this is that she will be ready ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... almost always the result of some avoidable error or misconception. With the rare exception of a man who is by nature a criminal or a waster, there need be no such thing as failure. Every man has a career before him, or, at worst, every man can find a niche in the social order into which he can fit ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... and opal-tinted sea. But still there was no sound except the murmur from the shore, and nothing stirred except the sunbeams as they climbed the carved balustrade of the great staircase and gleamed on the frozen faces of a marble group in a niche. I did not ring at first, for it seemed as if my mother or Helen must come out—that they were close at hand, picking roses on the terrace or descending from their rooms. But it was Mills who presently issued from the dining-room and saw me. He greeted me as if I were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... great comic writer of France, lived in Paris, was pointed out to me one day while near the Rue St. Honore; and I have often noticed on one of the prominent streets a very neat monument to the memory of the great man. It is a niche, with two Corinthian columns, surmounted by a half-circular pediment, which is richly ornamented. A statue of Moliere is placed in the niche in a sitting posture, and in a meditative mood. In front of the columns on each side, there are allegorical figures—one representing his ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... - Go to the left, along the corridor beyond the gateway, to the second niche - this ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... handsome in my disguise, and pleased myself better than in my formal Sunday clothes. I made gestures, and leaped, as I had seen the dancers do at the fair-theatre. In the midst of this I looked in the glass, and saw by chance the image of a niche which was behind me. On its white ground hung three green cords, each of them twisted up in a way which from the distance I could not clearly discern. I therefore turned round rather hastily, and asked the old man about the niche ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... ineffable types, not of darkness nor of day—not of morning nor evening, but of the departure and the resurrection, the twilight and the dawn of the souls of men—together with the spectre sitting in the shadow of the niche above them;[67] all these, and all else that I could name of his forming, have borne, and in themselves retain and exercise the same inexplicable power—inexplicable because proceeding from an imaginative perception almost superhuman, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... without pretension, but with a great deal of quiet devotion—in his charming art. His work will remain; it is too original and exquisite to pass away; among the men of imagination he will always have his niche. No one has had just that vision of life, and no one has had a literary form that more successfully expressed his vision. He was not a moralist, and he was not simply a poet. The moralists are ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... placed just behind the prophet two little figures which are like attendant spirits. They seem to sympathize with Jeremiah's sorrows. The figures ornamenting the sculptured niche remind us of those in the background of the Holy Family and have a similar ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... could not consistently give EMANUEL SWEDENBORG a niche among the bibliomaniacal heroes noticed towards the conclusion of Part V. of this work, I have reserved, for the present place, a few extracts of the titles of his works, from a catalogue of the same, published in 1785; which I strenuously advise the curious to get possession ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... crowd, went on with incredible celerity. Some were armed with axes, some with bludgeons, some with sledge-hammers; others brought ladders, pulleys, ropes, and levers. Every statue was hurled from its niche, every picture torn from the wall, every wonderfully-painted window shivered to atoms, every ancient monument shattered, every sculptured decoration, however inaccessible in appearance, hurled to the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... tone thereof was weak; so I rose, glad to hear the silence broken, and followed the sound until I reached a closet whose door stood ajar. Then peeping through a chink I considered the place and lo! it was an oratory wherein was a prayer niche[FN311] with two wax candles burning and lamps hanging from the ceiling. In it too was spread a prayer carpet whereupon sat a youth fair to see; and before him on its stand[FN312] was a copy of the Koran, from which he was reading. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... also, found her niche, when the King's stirring proclamation announced the coming of Indian troops. There was to be a camp on the estate. Later on, there would be convalescents. Meantime, there was wholesale need of 'comforts' to occupy her ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... most difficult studies; so difficult that nuclear physics actually preceded it!) I told her that the Zen had been, all evidence indicated, the toughest, hardest, longest-lived creatures God had ever cooked up: practically independent of their environment, no special ecological niche; just raw, stubborn, tenacious life, developed to a fantastic extreme—a greater force of life than any other known, one that could exist almost anywhere under practically any conditions—even floating in midspace, which, asteroid or no, this Zen ...
— Zen • Jerome Bixby
... study in green and gold, with strange tropical plants having golden flowers. There are entrances right and left. In the centre, up-stage, is a niche with a gold table and a couple of gold chairs, and behind these a stand with the "coronation cup"; to the right the golden throne from Nibelheim, and to the left a gold fountain splashing gently.] [At rise: The stage is empty. The strains of an ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... with anxious precaution, he led the way to a niche hollowed deeply out in the thickness of the wall, and turning his lamp aside so that not the faintest glimmer of it could be perceived, he took Theos by the hand, and drew him into what seemed to be a huge cavernous recess, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... narrow ledge and scrambled with great difficulty into a niche above, holding on by the weeds and sparse grass which grew out of the crannies of the barren crag. Followed by his companion, he went steadily up, clinging to projecting rocks—long trails of tough grass and anything else he could hold on to. Every ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... a cruciform building, as old as the vanished monastery, and the burial place of generations of noble blood; the dust of royalty even lay under its floor. A knight of stone reclined cross legged in a niche with an arched Norman canopy in one of the walls, the rest of which was nearly encased in large tablets of white marble, for at his foot lay the ashes of barons and earls whose title was extinct, and whose lands had been inherited by the family of Lossie. Inside as well as ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... unintentionally, was on the same principle. "It is the beggar's fear of cold," said he, "that prevails over such parents, and so they pull the poor thing's head down, and give it the look of a baby that plays about Westminster Bridge, while the mother sits shivering in a niche." ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the pack lay, slung it over his shoulder, and we once more tramped on, till a suitable spot was found for our camp—a regular niche in the side of the valley, with a small pine spreading ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... a space on the tufa wall which helps to face the cave on the west. This is a smoothed surface which shows a narrow cornice ledge above it, and a narrow base below. In it are a number of irregularly driven holes. Delbrueck calls it a votive niche,[120] and says that the "viele regellos verstreute Nagelloecher" are due to nails upon which votive ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... time the day was gone, and the night so near, that in the shadows of the tree all was dusky and dim. But there was still light enough to discover that in a niche of the tree sat a huge horned owl, with green spectacles on his beak, and a book in one foot. He took no heed of the intruders, but kept muttering to himself. And what do you think the owl was saying? I will tell you. He was talking ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... window was a little altar, with a crucifix and two candlesticks, a holy-water stoup by the side, and there was above the little deep window a carving of the Blessed Virgin with the Holy Child, on either side a niche, one with a figure of a nun holding a taper, the other of a bishop ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... puff-ball, I know not. He once came to my house, and, since that time, may have known Margaret Fuller in New York; but probably never saw any letter of Sterling's or heard the contents of any. I have not read again Sterling's letters, which I keep as good Lares in a special niche, but I have no recollection of anything that would be valuable to you. For the American Public for the Book, I think it important that you should take the precise step of sending Phillips and Sampson the early copy, and at the earliest. I saw them, and also E.P. Clark, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... was of carved mahogany, rich and beautiful. Over this division of the long room hung a silken curtain, concealing three niches, which contained an image of the "Virgin," the "Child," and in the center one, a tall gilt cross. Heavy silver candlesticks were placed in front of each niche, and a dozen candles were now burning dimly. A variety of relics, too numerous to mention, were scattered on the altar, and in addition, several silver goblets, and a massive bowl for holding "holy water." A few tin sconces, placed against the wall, were the only provision for lighting ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... he carved his niche in the Hall of Junior Tennis fame by defeating Harold Godshall of California, W. W. Ingraham of Providence and Morgan Bernstein of New York on successive days in the junior championship. He forced Richards to a bitter ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... help thinking that Loie Fuller should have a niche in the hall of fame, among the "Immortals," for having given the last century her exquisitely beautiful ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... very happy—which villains have no right to be, but often are, meseemeth; they were sitting in a niche of rock, with the lantern in the corner, quaffing something from glass measures, and playing at pushpin, or shepherd's chess, or basset, or some trivial game of that sort. Each was smoking a long clay pipe, quite of new London ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... audaciousness fairly takes one's breath away. Our heaviest battery is turned against ourselves. Every cherished dream of the good time coming goes up at a blast. Instead of freedom at last to do that for which we are made, and to fit into the niche where we belong, we are shown a State's-prison. Instead of an age of joy and of elastic step, we are pointed to an iron rule of repression and cheerlessness. Instead of leisure to ripen, of a full summing of our powers, of the exhilaration of new ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... into the stable, Beate carrying the lantern. The courtyard lay dark and still; a strong perfume rose from the high manure-piles. The lovely girl opened the old, worn door, and they entered. A warm breath blew into their faces. From a niche in the wall an oil lamp threw down a faint glimmer of yellow on the white back of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... came into the shop, seeing no chair or stool, I went behind the compter, and sat down under an arched kind of canopy of carved work, which these proud traders, emulating the royal niche-fillers, often give themselves, while a joint-stool, perhaps, serves those by whom they get their bread: such is the dignity of ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... forehead, but singular to relate, he still lived, though lunatic, and evidently beyond hope. Death had drawn blue and yellow circles beneath his eyes, and he muttered incomprehensibly, wagging his head. Two men, perfectly naked, lay in the middle of the place, wounded in bowels and loins; and at a niche in the weather-boarding, where some pale light peeped in, four mutilated wretches were gaming with cards. I was now led a little way down the railroad, to see the Confederates. The rain began to fall at this time, and the poor fellows shut their eyes to avoid the pelting of ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... rows of almshouses, in red brick, face one another; on the exterior wall of each wing is the half-length effigy of a man in a niche. Beneath that on the northern wing is the inscription: "Mr. Emery Hill, late of the parish of St. Margaret's, Westminster, founded these almshouses Anno Domini 1708. Christian Reader, in Hopes of thy Assistance." On each side ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant |
