"Sconce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he remembered every small detail of the room as he looked down it and then across to Ruby again: the motion of the fiddle-bows; the variegated dresses of the women; the kissing-bush that some tall dancer's head had set swaying from the low rafter; the light of a sconce gleaming on Tresidder's bald scalp. Years after, he could recall the exact poise of Ruby's head as she answered some question of her companion. The stranger left her, and strolled slowly down the room to the fireplace, when he faced round, ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in little, I am with your worships reverence Sir, a Rascal: one that upon the next anger of your Brother, must raise a sconce by the high way, and sell switches; my wife is learning now Sir, ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... laths, the step of the domestic altar of the fireplace, with its huge hobs and boiler, and its hinged arm above the smoky mantel-shelf for roasting. The plain kitchen table is opposite the fire, at her elbow, with a candle on it in a tin sconce. Her chair, like all the others in the room, is uncushioned and unpainted; but as it has a round railed back and a seat conventionally moulded to the sitter's curves, it is comparatively a chair of state. The room has three doors, one on the same side as the ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... I'm an ass. Do you set your shavers upon me, and then cast me off? must I condole? have the Fates played the fools? am I their cut? now the poor sconce is taken, must Jack march ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... Savoy and list for a Soldier. I amused myself as I walked, with the thought that chance might so bring it about for the Sergeant who would give me the King's shilling to be the selfsame grenadier whose sconce I had broken years agone in Charlwood Chase ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... door eight wax candles flickered slightly in the faint stir of air. But his astonished and inquisitive eyes had barely become aware of these details when Andrew Henderson turned towards the circular sconce in which the candles were set and began to extinguish them one by one. As the light died, he stepped forward and John drew back sharply; but at his movement a stone, loosened by his heel, went rolling down into the hollow. And a moment later his uncle, glancing up, ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Seraphina's unstirring head was lighted strongly by a two-branched sconce on the wall; and when I stood by her side, not even the shadow of the eyelashes on her cheek trembled. Carlos' lips moved; his voice was almost extinct; but for all his emaciation, the profundity of his eyes, the sunken cheeks, the hollow temples, he remained attractive, with the charm of his gallant ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... boldly to the scratch; as he only weighed sixty-five pounds more than his opponent, and with the slight difference of one foot six inches higher, he pitched in most valiantly, and received a splendid hit on the sconce, which made him feel as if a flea bit him. After full ten minutes skirmishing, during which time neither struck the other, both retired to the further corner of the ring, until time ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... it came again to the other two, wherwith they tooke counsel and came all, 3 together against our ship, because we lay in the lee of al our ships, and had the Island of S. George on the one side in stead of a sconce, thinking to deale so with vs, that in the end we should be constrained to run vpon the shore, whereof we wanted not much, and in that manner with their flagges openly displayed, came lustily towardes vs, sounding their Trumpets, and sayled at the least three times about vs, beating vs with ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... Porter, "Bring forward one of the bitches." He brought her forward, dragging her by the chain, while the bitch wept, and shook her head at the lady who, however, came down upon her with blows on the sconce; and the bitch howled and the lady ceased not beating her till her forearm failed her. Then, casting the scourge from her hand, she pressed the bitch to her bosom and, wiping away her tears with her hands, kissed her head. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... This Poet, who that time much squanderd thought, Of which some might bring Coyn, whilst some none brought, As Men that hold their Brains of powerful sense, Will least on Poet's Tales bestow their pence, Tho he such Dispensations to endear, Had notch'd his Sconce just level with his Ear. An Emblem in these days of much import, When Crop-ear'd Wits had such a Modish Court. Tho some from after-deeds much fear the Fate, That such a Muse may for its Lugs create. As ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... the 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 ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... white as snow; The flowers are set on every sconce; And e'en the cushioned pin-heads show Your formal "welcome," for the nonce, To the sweet home ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... of head is now comic or ignoble; it was not so once; as is plain from its occurrence in the Prayer Book Version of the Psalms (Ps. vii. 17); as little was 'noddle', which occurs in one of the few poetical passages in Hawes. The same may be said of 'sconce', in this sense at least; of 'nowl' or 'noll', which Wiclif uses; of 'slops' for trousers (Marlowe's Lucan); of 'cocksure' (Rogers), of 'smug', which once meant no more than adorned ("the smug bridegroom", ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... of the will, It has caprices of its own: When most pursued,—'tis swiftly gone; When courted least, it lingers still. With its vagaries long perplext, I turned and turned my restless sconce, Till one bright night, I thought at once I'd master ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 may ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... greatly interested, but in the very act of turning over to look at his enemy, and to find out whom he was addressing, he fell into a deep sleep. The next time he came back to consciousness it was dark, except for a sickly burning oil lamp on a sconce fixed against a wall at a little distance. He began to be aware of the fact that he was amazingly hungry, and the memory of what he imagined to have been his last meal came back to him. He laughed ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... maiden and his host, and finding no one, had sauntered in extreme weariness and impatience into the little withdrawing-closet, where as it was now dusk, burned a single candle in a melancholy and rustic sconce; standing by the door that opened on the garden, he amused himself with watching the peacock, when his friend, following Madge into the chamber, tapped ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Duncan," answered the persevering commander, "I would premonish you, as a friend, to trace out a sconce upon that round hill, with a good graffe, or ditch, whilk may be easily accomplished by compelling the labour of the boors in the vicinity; it being the custom of the valorous Gustavus Adolphus to fight as much by the spade and shovel, as by sword, pike, and musket. ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... movements of an otherwise noiseless tread, there sounded ever the faint note of the little bell. At the toe of shoes otherwise silent, there peeped in and out the flash of diamonds, and in the dark masses of her hair, shifting as she trod beneath each new sconce in turn, and catching more and more brilliance as she advanced, there smoldered the flame of a mass of scintillating gems. A queen's raiment was that of this unknown beauty, and she herself might have been a queen as she swept down the great hall, scornfully careless ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... character, the absence of which had surprised Aramis. This being done, he made free, or affected to make free with his host, and entered his chamber without ceremony. Aramis was asleep or feigned to be so. A large book lay open upon his night-desk, a wax-light was still burning in its silver sconce. This was more than enough to prove to D'Artagnan the quiescence of the prelate's night, and the good intentions of his waking. The musketeer did to the bishop precisely as the bishop had done to Porthos—he tapped him on the shoulder. ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and as I did so, I saw the candle in the right sconce of one of the mirrors wink and go right out, and almost immediately its companion followed it. There was no mistake about it. The flame vanished, as if the wicks had been suddenly nipped between a finger and a thumb, leaving the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... 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. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Why may 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 fines, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Jester, upon which Job passed out of the door and went about his business and on such wise made his escape. Next the Herbalist stood up and opening his basket brought out fragrant herbs and fell to scattering them over his sconce and about it and over his ears,[FN416] till such time as all his face was hidden in greens, after which he also went out and accosting the house-master said, "The Peace be upon you!" And when the man returned the salam he asked him, "Hath Job the Ulcered passed by thee ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... supposed mirrors, instead of seeing his own face he will perceive the object that is in the front of the other; so that, if two persons present themselves at the same time before these mirrors, instead of each one seeing himself, they will reciprocally see each other. There should be a sconce with a candle or lamp placed on each side of the two glasses in the wainscot, to enlighten the faces of the persons who look in them, otherwise this experiment will have no remarkable effect. This recreation may be considerably improved by placing the two glasses in the wainscot in adjoining ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... man's, 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 mug ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... cheeks, and lent a fierce, congested glare to his eyes. He felt how woeful and irretrievable a thing it would be for him just then to lose his countenance, and at the thought the flush burned deeper and merged higher. It overspread his high, bald, intellectual forehead, and incarnadined his sconce up to the very top of it. At this moment it was that Mrs. Kilgore broke off her narrative with the exclamation, "Why, Joseph, what's ...
— Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment - 1898 • Edward Bellamy |
