"Sconce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 windows had ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... lectures.... Upon occasion of one such imposition he said to Jorden:—"Sir, you have sconced [fined] me two pence for non-attendance at a lecture not worth a penny." Hawkins's Johnson, p. 9. A passage in Whitefield's Diary shows that the sconce was often greater. He once neglected to give in the weekly theme which every Saturday had to be given to the tutor in the Hall 'when the bell rang.' He was fined half-a-crown. Tyerman's Whitefield, i. 22. In my time (1855-8) at Pembroke College every Saturday when the bell ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... literary side, indeed, it has the advantage of The Book of Snobs: for it is nowhere unequal, and exhibits its author's unmatched power of historical-artistic imagination or reconstruction in almost the highest degree possible. But in other respects it certainly does show the omission "to erect a sconce on Drumsnab". There was (it has already been hinted at in connexion with the Eastern Journey) a curious innocence about Thackeray. It may be that, like ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... until 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
... 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 ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... 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
... conduct them to an apartment not so liable to molestation; and after having led them down the principal stairs, through the bar, and thence up a narrow flight of steps, deposited them in a chamber at the back of the house, and lighted a sconce therein, for it was now near the twilight. He then insisted on seeing after their evening meal, and vanished with his assistant. The worthy pair were now of the same mind; for guests known to Lord Hastings ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the 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 table had two ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... asleep, and 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 its most ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... the shore with carts, barrows, horses, asses, and oxen even, which were made to draw timber, bales, boxes, or anything that the raging waters might have cast up. Many a half-drowned sailor has had a knock on the sconce whilst trying to obtain a footing, that has sent him reeling back into the seething water, and many a house has been suddenly replenished with eatables and drinkables, and furniture and garniture, where previously bare walls and wretched accommodation only ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... 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 ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... noddle[obs3], pate; capsheaf[obs3]. high places, heights. topgallant mast, sky scraper; quarter deck, hurricane deck. architrave, frieze, cornice, coping stone, zoophorus[obs3], capital, epistyle[obs3], sconce, pediment, entablature[obs3]; tympanum; ceiling &c. (covering) 223. attic, loft, garret, house top, upper story. [metaphorical use] summit conference, summit; peak of achievement, peak of performance; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... live, beware, two are sooner seen than one; besides, bear a brain, master, if Block should be now spied, my madam would not trust this sconce neither ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... 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 ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... that's not learning, Skipper!" (She had been that ever since her first entirely seaworthy summer at Catalina.) "I can study, if I have to, but that's not saying I'll get anything into my sconce! I'm pretty slow ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... best way, as a dutiful son, Was to do as Old Royalty's self would have done.[3] So I sent word to say, I would keep the whole batch in, The same chest of tools, without cleansing or patching: For tools of this kind, like Martinus's sconce.[4] Would loose all their beauty if purified once; And think—only think—if our Father should find. Upon graciously coming again to his mind,[5] That improvement had spoiled any favorite adviser— That Rose was grown honest, or Westmoreland wiser— That ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... 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 it against the wind;—to the market-place; You have put me ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... we would desire things like unto 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... unbarb'd sconce?] The suppliants of the people used to present themselves to them in ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... drawers with an alarum clock by way of ornament, a very low bedstead with a coverlet flung over it—a red cloth with a black key border—all these things made part of a whole that told of a life reduced to its simplest terms. A triple candle-sconce of Egyptian design on the chimney-piece recalled the vast spaces of the desert and Montriveau's long wanderings; a huge sphinx-claw stood out beneath the folds of stuff at the bed-foot; and just beyond, a green curtain ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... make both change their opinions. Why did you not tell Griffyth(39) that you fancied there was something in it of my manner; but first spur up his commendation to the height, as we served my poor uncle about the sconce that I mended? Well, I desired you to give what I intended for an answer to Mrs. Fenton,(40) to save her postage, and myself trouble; and I hope I have done it, if ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... 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 ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... degree At some dull university, Puck found it handier to commence With a certain share of impudence, Which passes one off as learned and clever, Beyond all other degrees whatever; And enables a man of lively sconce To be Master of all the Arts at once. No matter what the science may be— Ethics, Physics, Theology, Mathematics, Hydrostatics, Aerostatics or Pneumatics— Whatever it be, I take my luck, 'Tis all the same to ancient Puck; Whose ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... friends! Sweet friends! Let me not stir your spirits up to mutiny. Though that cairn of granite stones lies very handy and inviting, I pray you refrain from it. Touch it not. I humbly entreat my friend with the dirty shirt not to break the sconce of the respectable gentleman whom I have in my eye, with that shillelah of his—though I must admit that he is labouring under strong and just provocation." "For mercy's sake, my dear sir!" he would exclaim to a third—"don't push my respected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... almost razed to the foundation, by those to whom they committed the custody of the word of their great Lord's patience; they in the mean time sheltering themselves under the shadow of a rotten lump of fig-tree leaf distinctions, which will not sconce against the wrath of an angry God in the ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... I am a Christian, answer me, In what safe place you have bestow'd my money; Or I shall break that merry sconce of yours, That stands on tricks when I am undisposed: 80 Where is the thousand ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... the Indian bauble, turning to examine it at the nearest candle sconce, even as I thrust the dainty little slipper of white satin again into the pocket of my coat. I was uncomfortable. I wished this talk of Elisabeth had not come up. I liked very little to leave Elisabeth's property ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave, now, to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? Humph! This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: Is this the fine of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... 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, and ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... cried the men, compassionating his thinly covered skull, and twisting their own ringlets, glossy and luxuriant, though unconscious of Macassar. "A thousand pities that so fine a fellow should have a sconce ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... which time had long been plowing furrows to plant disease. The interior of the house, when we entered it by the dingy and narrow hallway, 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 ascended ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... 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. van ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... 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; fifty years hence it ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... uncomfortable pause 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 ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... called out Fire, and got the old man down to the door in his shirt, when Lavender ran away with his night-cap, and threw it into the water in St. James's Square, whilst the Baronet put it in right and left at his sconce, and told him to hide his d——d ugly masard. This induced him to come out and call the Watch, during which time the buck Parson got into his house, and was very snug with the cook wench until the next evening, when old fusty ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... reply in words, but taking some matches from his pocket, and also a candle, he struck a light. He placed the candle in a sconce on the wall, and ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... see of the house with the help of the light from a solitary candle hanging in a sconce upon the wall, it had once been a handsome building. Now, however, it had fallen sadly to decay. The ceiling of the hall had at one time been richly painted, but now only blurred traces of the design remained. Crossing the hall, my guide opened a door ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... brought to bay, Padella turned and dealt Prince Giglio a prodigious crack over the sconce with his battle-axe, a most enormous weapon, which had cut down I don't know how many regiments in the course of the afternoon. But, Law bless you! though the blow fell right down on His Majesty's helmet, it made no more impression than ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... half-furnish'd room you rest, Whose dying fire denotes it had a guest. In those you pass'd, where former splendour reign'd, You saw the carpets torn, the paper stain'd; Squares of discordant glass in windows fix'd, And paper oil'd in many a space betwixt; A soil'd and broken sconce, a mirror crack'd, With table underpropp'd, and chairs new back'd; A marble side-slab with ten thousand stains, And all an ancient Tavern's poor remains. With much entreaty, they your food prepare, And acid wine afford, with meagre fare; Heartless you sup; and when a dozen times You've ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... to aduance there a kind of fortification, and to plot the making of a Bridge on barges ouer that strait, for inhibiting the enemies accesse by boates and Gallies, into the more inward parts of the hauen. But it may be doubted, whether the bridge would haue proued as impossible, as the Sconce fell ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... 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 Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... to school, It was the rule (Though 'twas hard to say he was really a fool) To send him at once, So thick was his sconce, To the block that was kept ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... 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 close ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... O'Neil in desperation inserted his fingers in the opening and tore at it. Through the aperture O'Connell saw Maruffi run to an open window at the rear, then pause long enough to snatch the taper from its sconce at the foot of the little shrine and, stooping, touch its flame to the long lace curtains. They promptly flashed into a blaze. Parting them, he bestrode, the sill, lowered himself outside, and disappeared. It was an old but effective ruse ...
— The Net • Rex Beach |
