"Vantage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... antagonism practically equivalent to the most vigorous attraction. What one knows the other is but half aware of; neither knowledge nor ignorance being mutual, there is a scintillation of exchange, from opposing vantage grounds, followed by harmless snaps of thunder. Culture and refinement take on airs—it is the deepest artificial instinct of enlightenment to pose—in the presence of naturalness; and there is a certain style of ignorance which attitudinizes ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... New England, but still had a press and, what was better, a fresh outfit of type, sent over by the corporation and entrusted to the keeping of John Eliot, the Apostle. Samuel Green had become a printer, though without previous training, and was at this time printer to the college, a position of vantage against a rival, because it must have carried with it countenance from the authorities in Boston, and public printing then as now constituted an item to a press of some income and some perquisites. By seeking to marry Green's daughter before his ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... sat the couples in whom the soft night and the moonlight and the music were arousing sentiment. More than one young fellow watched Friedrich and Sydney as they disappeared behind the willows on the bank, and wished that he had been the first to suggest the bridge, and envied the two their vantage point. ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... it all from his post of vantage near the big viol, but he was not interested in the visitors, he knew what they could do. He was waiting to see his master "lay 'em all in the shade bimeby." Of course he would open the ball. He wasn't fond of dancing but it was the custom ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... called the border town between England and Scotland; at any rate it was a vantage-ground in days gone by that was of a great value to one faction and a thorn in the side to the other. The conquering and unconquered Scots are the back-bone of Britain, there's no denying that; and Carlisle is near ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... light on the walks, and the shadows lay deep on the ground. Most of the benches were vacant; but here and there a waif or a belated homegoer sat in drowsy isolation. The stars were too dim even from this vantage-ground to afford Keith much satisfaction. His thoughts flew back to the mountains and the great blue canopy overhead, spangled with stars, and a blue-eyed girl amid pillows whom he used to worship. An arid waste of years cut them off from the present, and his thoughts came back to a sweet-faced ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... his quiet vantage point of observation says—"The present civilization arms us with the forces of earth, air and water, while it weakens our hold upon the sources of ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... inhospitable though tantalizing lane. For large estates, shut off by walls and hedges, are between you and the harbor. Unless you are lucky enough to know one of the owners, you will not see the harbor of Villefranche from the best of the lower vantage points. This side of Villefranche is so sheltered that one resident, an American, has been able to transform his garden into a bit of old Japan where the cherry trees blossom ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... high-speed armored craft fighting against one another over ranges extending up to 17,000 yards. There is a constant evolution in the position of the ships which it is impossible to follow from the low point of vantage of a periscope, for the different formations of ships mean nothing to the submersible commander. He is so placed that his range of vision is extremely limited, and, on account of the low speed of ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... stepped quickly behind the huge stove which had not as yet been taken down for the summer. Bridge made his purchases, the volume of which required a large gunny-sack for transportation, and while he was thus occupied the fox-eyed man clung to his coign of vantage, himself unnoticed by the purchaser. When Bridge departed the other followed him, keeping in the shadow of the trees which bordered the street. Around the edge of town and down a road which led southward the two went until Bridge passed through a broken fence ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... inspect the minaret itself and the dressed stone parapet against which we leaned; and there we found the name of the everlasting English (or American) snob who seems to pervade the universe for the sake of cutting or writing his name and the date of his visit upon every coign of vantage to which he can get access. Our Armenian friend, Mr. A——, pointed out that there were few Italian names in this record of fools, and scarcely any French or German; but Herostratus appears weak in comparison with our ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... street a gentleman always takes the outside of the walk, when with a lady, the custom having come down from the days when dangers beset the path, and the man had to be at the point of vantage for the ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... we suddenly heard the report of a great gun from the fort at the Needles. The explosion was followed by three plaintive answering notes from a fog-horn. "They're firing at a ship," said someone, and out we all rushed to the nearest vantage-point, and even as we ran another gun went off and again the fog-horn answered with its bleat. The searchlights were striking great shafts of light along the Solent, and far away their beams outlined the shape of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... with the deadly expanses of Fifth Avenue, with their rush of all manner of vehicles over the smooth asphalt surface. There I stand long at the brink; I look for a policeman to guide and guard my steps; I crane my neck forward from my coign of vantage and count the cabs, the taxicabs, the carriages, the private automobiles, the motor-buses, the express-wagons, and calculate my chances. Then I shrink back. If it is a corner where there is no policeman to bank the tides up on either hand and lead me over, I wait for some bold, big team to make ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Selecting a point of vantage, I stood for some time examining the materials out of which this vast congregation was made up, and I have never seen a population whose general appearance would endure so close a ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... for a moment, climbed to a point of vantage on the boom, and swept his glasses to and fro along the course ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... never heard of a spirit that cried like this one, or of a spirit that was frightened, and he rose to his feet that he might look over the gunwale and into the derelict. From this vantage he beheld the head of a little child, and he could see, also, that this very real child, and not the much feared spirits, was the source of the loud ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... having a favorable opportunity when for a moment no one was at hand, Dick went out through the yard, past the gardens and fields, and climbed the first knoll. From that vantage point he looked out over the little hamlet, somewhat to his right, and was surprised at its extent, its considerable number of adobe houses. The overhanging mountains, ragged and darkening, a great heave of splintered rock, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... met that appointed Mary of Guise regent. The church, although "purged" in 1559, was not injured, and was used in 1567 for the coronation of James VI., then but thirteen months old. When General Monk in 1651 was besieging the castle, the church tower was one of the points of vantage seized by his soldiers, and the little bullet pits all over it indicate how hot must have been the fire directed against them. It was held by the Highlanders in 1746, and its bells pealed in honour of the victory at Falkirk. John Knox has preached ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... Mr. Rufus Bennett, gazing on the scene from this point of vantage and mopping with a large handkerchief a scarlet face, which, as the result of climbing three flights of stairs, had become slightly soluble. ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... feelings, and a reflecting mind, negations involve impediments not less formidable than sophistication and vicious intermixture. I am convinced, that for the human soul to prosper in rustic life a certain vantage-ground is prerequisite. It is not every man that is likely to be improved by a country life or by country labours. Education, or original sensibility, or both, must pre-exist, if the changes, forms, and incidents of nature are to prove a sufficient stimulant. And where these are not ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... his eye with unusual seriousness upon Halbert Glendinning, as he asked him sternly, "Does this bode treason, young man? And have you purpose to set upon me here as in an emboscata or place of vantage?" ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... speak of her. Would she be a friend? any one to whom these many thoughts might come out? So Wych Hazel sat, gazing out upon the lengthening shadows, leaning her head somewhat wearily in her hand, wishing the journey over and herself on her own vantage ground at Chickaree. It would be such a help to be mistress of the house!—for these last two days she had been nothing but a brown parcel, ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... this scene of horror she perceived an officer, mounted upon a noble charger and followed by several horsemen, take a position upon a hillock not far from the spot where she and her companions were concealed. From this point of vantage the officer, who was evidently a general, ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... gave directions to the chauffeur. Then he did a very strange thing. He hailed another taxi and, climbing in, started off in the wake of the two women. From a point of vantage near the corridor leading to the "American bar," he saw Hetty sign her slips and move off toward the lift. Whereupon, seeing that she was quite out of the way, he approached the manager's ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... nuffin, an' you knows, yo' own sef, dat dey ain't 'sponsible. An' deah Lord, good Lord, it ain't like yo' mercy, it ain't like yo' pity, it ain't like yo' long-sufferin' lovin' kindness for to take dis kind o' 'vantage o' sick little chil'en as dose is when dey's so many ornery grown folks chuck full o' cussedness dat wants roastin' down dah. Oh, Lord, spah de little chil'en, don't tar de little chil'en away f'm dey frens, jes' let 'em off jes' dis once, and ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... God-damned," yelled the captain from the safe vantage of the bridge, "fetch me my pistol," to the cabin boy, "I'll have to ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... see what was the best plan of attack, and decided that they would not wait for the Indians to begin the trouble, but would make war on them. They decided that they would beat the bushes for Indians down in the river-bottom, while Stanley would sit at a certain point of vantage in a clump of willows, and as the Indians ran past him, ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... influential people in the South as to the capacity of the negro, and to do anything which would make the work in these brigade schools less extensive, or less thorough, will push him and his friends off this hard-won vantage-ground." ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... of beauty was a brilliant success, and from many points of vantage did we spy upon the vast expanse of golden grain and fresh green meadows in which cattle were grazing, or ruminating in the shade of friendly elms. Here gush clear springs, whose courses may be traced by tall waving ferns and creeping vines that weave their spell of green. Swift ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... and unjust to push this criticism home. The architectural setting provided for the figures and the pictures of the Sistine vault is so obviously conventional, every point of vantage has been so skilfully appropriated to plastic uses, every square inch of the ideal building becomes so naturally, and without confusion, a pedestal for the human form, that we are lost in wonder at the synthetic imagination which here for the first time combined the arts of architecture, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... and narrow jealousy, Numbers reject each new expression, won, Perchance, from language richer than our own, O! with glad welcome may the POET see Extension's golden vantage! the decree Each way exclusive, scorn, and re-enthrone The obsolete, if strength, or grace of tone Or imagery await it, with a free, And liberal daring!—For the Critic Train, Whose eyes severe our verbal stores review, Let ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... the watch on Robert Delamater's wrist found him seated in the bow of a speed-boat the following morning. They patrolled slowly up and down the shore. There were fellow operatives, he knew, scores of them, posted at all points of vantage along the docks. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... itself, and seemed not in the least damped by Mademoiselle Therese's evident gloom. He conducted her up to the gallery at one end of the school, and explained that she could watch every movement from that vantage-point. ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... his tenth year, he and his parents had commenced hostilities. Many were their efforts to subdue some peculiarities of his temper which then began to appear. Phelim, however, being an only son, possessed high vantage ground. Along with other small matters which he was in the habit of picking up, might be reckoned a readiness at swearing. Several other things also made their appearance in his parents' cottage, for whose presence there, except through his ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... Paris, they seized the Hotel de Ville, and hoisted the tricolor flag on its roof. Marmont wrote to the King, declaring the position to be most serious, and advising concession; he then put his troops in motion, and succeeded, after a severe conflict, in capturing several points of vantage, and in expelling the rebels ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... eldest of Ragnar and Aslaug's sons, although crippled from birth, and unable to walk a step, was always ready to join in the fray, into the midst of which he was borne on a shield. From this point of vantage he shot arrow after arrow, with fatal accuracy of aim. As he had employed much of his leisure time in learning runes[1] and all kinds of magic arts, he was often of great assistance to his brothers, who generally chose him leader of their expeditions. [Footnote 1: See Guerber's Myths of ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... interrupted by an episode giving the story of Narcissus. Meanwhile the Lover has seen among the flowers of the garden one rose-bud on which he fixes special desires. The thorns keep him off; and Love, having him at vantage, empties the right-hand quiver on him. He yields himself prisoner, and a dialogue between captive and captor follows. Love locks his heart with a gold key; and after giving him a long sermon on his duties, illustrated ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... "coign of vantage" in the reading-desk the next morning, Mr. Fullarton surveyed a crowded congregation, serenely complacent and hopeful, as a farmer in August looking down from the hill-side on golden billows of waving grain. Visitors had been pouring in rather fast during ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... fearless, generous, and unworldly woman, and had probably found in the subsequent independent exercise of her abilities the shield for these virtues. How much the passionate, vehement, susceptible, and most suffering nature was banefully fostered at the same time, I can better judge from the sad vantage-ground of my own experience. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... scrap of lace handkerchief, and then stepped demurely down into her place at the head of the bridesmaids. Simultaneously the organ burst into the opening strains of Mendelsohn's march—I suppose Robin had been waiting at some point of vantage to pass the signal on—and we advanced up the aisle, amid a general turning of ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... doings, judged from the vantage point of the knoll, are very inconsistent. The spot occupied by the drying yard is the most suitable place for the new strawberry bed, and is in a direct line between the fence gap, where my fragrant things are to be, and the Rose Garden. Several of the walks that have been laid out according ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... vantage the eight croupiers alternately did their business and regarded the assembly with a ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... to the door, and rang the bell for the servant. From his vantage point he saw the pale-blue chauffeur hold open the door of the pale-blue limousine. A few loiterers gaped. By an ironical chance a barrel-organ in the next street began to grind out the riotous, familiar gallop. It sounded ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... superlative loveliness in the wildest environment. Deep down they lie, the two silvery sheets of water with their verdant holms, making a little world of peace and beauty, a toy dropped amid Titanic awfulness and splendour. The vantage ground is on the edge of a dizzy precipice, but the picture thus sternly framed is too exquisite to be easily abandoned. We gaze and gaze in spite of the vast height from which we contemplate it; and when at last we tear ourselves away from the engaging scene, we are in a ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... tiles. The heavy mahogany tables and sideboards were glittering with their costly equipments of shining silver, sparkling cut glass, and rare, translucent china. Large oval mirrors in heavy carved frames, duplicated the lovely adornments of this brilliant room from a dozen points of vantage. The dazzling effect of this home of the feast, was intensified by cascades of light from the two unrivaled chandeliers. They supported a great number of slender bulbs containing the electric lights, which were arranged ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... took Caroline to the turret of the lighthouse to enjoy the extensive view which such a point of vantage afforded. A better day for the purpose could scarcely have been chosen, for the fleecy clouds floated gracefully, the air was calm, and the sun shone forth in splendour. The ocean had not recovered from the effects ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... sense in disobeying, and I accommodated myself to his design, which was clearly to get into the house unobserved from without. In this he was successful, or at any rate I saw no one during our crawl from one point of vantage to another up to the back entrance. Now his lordship skipped gaily from behind me and opened the door. He stepped softly in, and I was pushed after him by ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... as to grumble inwardly at the hardships endured by the hard-pressed Caesarian army. The campaign was not going well. Pompeius had broken through the blockade; and now the two armies had been executing tedious manoeuvres, fencing for a vantage-ground ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... dissolved—was a scheme which she could now plainly see must be abandoned as hopeless, in the case of Michael Vanstone's son. The father's habits of speculation had been the pivot on which the whole machinery of her meditated conspiracy had been constructed to turn. No such vantage-ground was discoverable in the doubly sordid character of the son. Noel Vanstone was invulnerable on the very point which had presented itself in his father ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... of vantage,' said Ethel, seating herself on a step a little way up the staircase. 'How those people have taken possession of that ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to pursue him, but Wallace checked the motion. "Let us not hunt the lion till he stand at bay!" cried he. "He will retire far enough from the Scottish borders, without our leaving this vantage ground to drive him." ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... There were buildings on Sagres headland as old as the eleventh century; Greek geography had made this the starting-point of its shorter and continental measurements for the length of the habitable world, and the Genoese, whose policy was to buy up points of vantage on every coast, were eager to plant a colony there, but Portugal was not ready to become like the Byzantine Empire, a depot for Italian commerce, and Henry had his own reasons for securing a ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... taking him in rear. Hose are dragged through neighbouring houses, trailing their black coils like horrid water snakes, through places were such things were never meant to be. If too short, additional lengths are added, again and again, till the men who hold the branches gain points of vantage on adjoining roofs or outhouses, until, at last from below, above, in front, and behind, cataracts of water dash ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... white hollows were first scooped out of the chalk, or the dewponds made on the heights. Ever since there were people in Sussex—whether it is five thousand years ago or fifteen thousand—the short wind-swept turf has been grazed by woolly flocks. Before ever a Norman castle held a vantage- height the tansy grew dark and rank in cottage gardens and the children went gathering woodruff and speedwell and the elfin gold of "little socks and shoes." Any change, good or bad, is a loss to some one—the land is so full of the ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... vantage which I found on the side of the hill was not only to a great extent sheltered from the bullets, but afforded an extensive view of the general action, and for the rest of the day I remained with Lord Dundonald watching its development. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... travel, and were beforehand with the reinforcements. Their tactics were on a par with their resolution. The left of their attack grasped and held a knoll north of the conical hill, and from this position of vantage brought a cross fire to bear on Clark's detachment. As their direct attack developed itself it encountered from the conical hill a heavy rifle fire, and shells at short range tore through the loose rush of ghazees, but the fanatics sped on and up without wavering. As they gathered behind a mound ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... rooms, and soon Patty was all dressed and had returned to her post of vantage on the wistaria porch, to look for the return of the lost ones. And at last, through the gathering dusk, she saw a baby carriage being propelled along ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... the tramp?" Who is the walking person seen from the vantage ground of these pages? He is necessarily a masked figure; he wears the disguise of one who has escaped, and also of one who is a conspirator. He is not the dilettante literary person gone tramping, nor the pauper vagabond ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... found the crowd choosing places of vantage for the Snake Dance, which would begin just before sundown and last perhaps half an hour. Owners of houses were charging a dollar a seat on their roofs, and they could have sold many more seats had ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... means of victory. Broken as the stockade was by his desperate onset, the shield-wall of the warriors behind it still held the Normans at bay till William by a feint of flight drew a part of the English force from their post of vantage. Turning on his disorderly pursuers, the Duke cut them to pieces, broke through the abandoned line, and made himself master of the central ground. Meanwhile the French and Bretons made good their ascent ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... orchard fence from which, as a post of vantage, she was apparently looking over all the place. Her brown eyes, however, swung repeatedly around to the calico ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... "you will have to find some secret spring of inspiration, some point of vantage from which you can get your outlook and ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... pathway. Woe be to him if head grew dizzy, foot slipped, or strength gave out; he would be broken to pieces on the hard sand below. That second stage once passed, the ascent thence to the top would be easier; for though nearly as steep, it had more ledges, and offered fair vantage to a man with a foot like a mountain goat. Ranulph had been aloft all weathers in his time, and his toes were as strong as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... worked out! He now surveyed the butchers' and the bakers' (and yes, the servants') entrance with casual or philosophic interest from the vantage point of the other side of the street. It wasn't different from any other of the entrances of the kind but it held his gaze. Then he walked across the street again and went in—or down. It didn't really seem ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... main road. I had not seen anything like that for weeks, so resolved to go along the road myself in the hope of seeing some other strange sights. Immediately on arriving there I had to take cover in a corner of an orchard to avoid another light, which was rapidly overtaking me. From this point of vantage I was soon able to see that the light was on a bicycle, and the rider not a tin soldier, complete with helmet and curling moustache, but a peaceably dressed young woman. Encouraged by the promising trend of events, I stole some apples ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... suppose there were only one fireman for the whole city, that he alone were responsible for the safety of every house, that instead of telegraphic signaling he must depend on his trusty horse to carry him to suitable vantage points, and on his eyesight when there; suppose that he knew there was a likelihood of fire every hour out of the twenty-four, and that during the season he could be sure of two or three a week, don't you think that fireman would have a ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... a picturesque, spacious house artistically situated at the vantage point of a domain of twenty acres and furnished with the soothing elegancies of modern ingenuity and taste. Among the attractions were a terrace garden, a well-accoutred stable, a tennis court, and a steam yacht. Mrs. Dale, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... the King, of being at least free from any of the embarrassments of a Parliamentary grant. Apart from the actual money paid, the Treasury was relieved of an expenditure of about one hundred and twenty thousand pounds annually. Of all such vantage posts abroad, Dunkirk was perhaps the least useful, and the most risky to hold. Trifling as was the price obtained according to our reckoning, it was nevertheless of importance in the actual state ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... British air force owed much to the labours of those who befriended it before it was born, and who, when it was confronted with the organized science of all the German universities, endowed it with the means of rising to a position of vantage. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... Kagig, from the vantage point of his great horse, "is like the brave Zeitoonli wives! They fight! They can lead in a pinch! They are as good as men—better than men, for ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... the flames. Suddenly from one of the windows sprang a black figure, waving a white handkerchief. It was Jerry Letlow. Regaining consciousness after the effect of Josh's blow had subsided, Jerry had kept quiet and watched his opportunity. From a safe vantage-ground he had scanned the crowd without, in search of some white friend. When he saw Major Carteret moving disconsolately away after his futile effort to stem the torrent, Jerry made a dash for the window. He sprang forth, and, waving his handkerchief ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... new set of problems or any particular increase in discrimination. It seemed rather that the black serviceman, after the first flush of victory over segregation, was beginning to perceive from the vantage of his improved position that other and perhaps more subtle barriers stood in his way. Whatever the reason, complaints of discrimination within the services themselves, rarely heard in the Pentagon in the late 1950's, suddenly reappeared.[20-1] Actually, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... the very nature of our knowing faculties and of knowledge. The true intellectual worker, encountering interruption through any of these conditions, goes back to view his difficulty from a better vantage ground, or attempts to approach it from either side, or, failing these resources, bows to the necessity, and suffers no harm, other than stoppage and loss of time. Thus, the second characteristic of true study is in the rigidly natural and unfailing CONSECUTION of the steps and processes by ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of vantage, she looked down on the three upturned British faces—and her eyes went calmly from one ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... have I felt that this passive resistance of mine, this clinging to an individual conviction, was the best moral training I received at Rockford College. During the first decade of Hull-House, it was felt by propagandists of diverse social theories that the new Settlement would be a fine coign of vantage from which to propagate social faiths, and that a mere preliminary step would be the conversion of the founders; hence I have been reasoned with hours at a time, and I recall at least three occasions when this was followed ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... in his careworn face the trials of three years in this moist capital. After the Governor, one by one, the waiting Associations fell in line, each with its own distinguishing sash. So the procession moved off into the narrow streets of the city, the people in the Place dispersed to new vantage points, and Monsieur Vigo signed me to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... presence in the vicinity. It was equally certain their scouts would be watching our every move throughout the day, and there was not one chance in a thousand of our crossing the range without attack from some ambush of such vantage as to leave small ground for hope that we could survive it. All but Cress and Thornton urged me to turn back, although we were all nearly afoot, and had no food left except two or three pounds of flour, and a little meat. After very short deliberation I decided ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... iron in the shape of telescope-tubes, worms for stills, bodies and coils for boilers, vacuum-pans, wort-refrigerators and various bent and contorted forms which evince the excellence of the material and of the methods. This is hardly enough, however, to justify the occupation of the position of vantage, and the trumpery collection of ropes, lines, nets, rods and hooks which is intended for a fishing exhibit only emphasizes the decision, acquiesced in by the public, which pays ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... infirm to get close to "The Falcon." For with the daylight her work had begun, and she was surrounded on all sides by a melee of fishing-boats. Some were discharging their boxes of fish; others were struggling to get some point of vantage; others again fighting to escape the uproar. The air was filled with the roar of the waves and with the voices of men, blending in shouts, orders, expostulations, words of anger, and ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... itself as such. When one compares Rome with Paris or Berlin or London or New York, the newer capitals suffer. The mighty ruins have such authority over all that is new. It is one of the greatest standing-grounds and points of vantage in the world. It has been interpreted as the mountain of temptation from which Satan showed the kingdom of this world. It is the birthplace of Caesardom and the modern idea of world-imperialism. It was once ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... and with a final effort of strength landed nose and knees on the timbers, which formed his supports. A moment to take breath, and press his torn and bleeding fingers to his lips; then, reaching down, he gave a hand to his companion and dragged him to the same place of vantage. ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... stream was no child's play, for ugly corners had to be passed, slippery rocks to be skirted, and many breakneck leaps to be effected. Her spirits rose as the spray from little falls brushed her face and the thick screen of the birches caught in her hair. When she reached a vantage-rock and looked down on the chain of pools and rapids by which she had come, a cry of delight broke from her lips. This was living, this was the zest of life! The upland wind cooled her brow; she washed her hands in ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... hoofs of horses beat steadily on the road leading from the valley up to Zillenstein. John from a coign of vantage saw approaching a young man in a gray German uniform, followed by four hussars, also in German gray. Anyone who came to Zillenstein was of interest, and as John looked the leading figure became familiar. Doubt soon changed ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the reflections which Manning was careful to pour into the receptive car of Monsignor Talbot. That useful priest, at his post of vantage in the Vatican, was more than ever the devoted servant of the new Archbishop. A league, offensive and defensive, had been established between the two friends. 'I daresay I shall have many opportunities to serve you in Rome,' wrote Monsignor Talbot modestly, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... him. He also informed her that a ring made of gold, which he himself had mined deep in the mountain's heart, was on the way to her —that his own hands had helped to fashion the rude circlet-and that it was significant of the truth that he sought her not from the vantage ground of wealth, but because of a manly devotion that would lead him to delve in a mine or work in a shop for her, rather than live a life of luxury with any one else in ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... on the piazza. It was that dreamy hour when women find it easy to be silent and men to talk. Madeline and her mother sat close, with hands restfully clasped in their joy at being together. Mr. Elton eyed the two young men from his vantage of years of shrewd wisdom. Both the boys were clean-shaven, after the manner of the day, a fashion that seems to become clean manliness, vigorous and self-controlled. Both were good to look at; but here the resemblance ended, for Dick's long slender face and body lithe with its athletic ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... Even as President, with the most fascinating possible vantage point, there were times when I was so busy helping to manage progress and lead change that I didn't always show the joy that was in my heart But the biggest thing that has happened in the world in my life, in our lives, is this: By the grace of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... always at his command, and his clients were rich men who did not mind paying for an opinion. To have an opinion from Mr. Dove, or some other learned gentleman, was the every-day practice of his life; and when he obtained, as he often did, little coigns of legal vantage and subtle definitions as to property which were comfortable to him, he would rejoice to think that he could always have a Dove at his hand to tell him exactly how far he was justified in going in defence of his clients' interests. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... that the value of neutral participation will come in. Whatever ambitions the neutral powers may have of their own, it may be said generally that they are keenly interested in preventing the settlement from degenerating into a deal in points of vantage for any further aggressions in any direction. Both the United States of America and China are traditionally and incurably pacific powers, professing and practicing an unaggressive policy, and the chief outstanding minor States are equally concerned in securing a ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... republic. Let us renounce and throw off forever the yoke of a tyranny more oppressive than any in the annals of the world. As those standing on the mountain tops first discern the coming beams of morning, let us, from the vantage-ground of liberal institutions, first recognize the ascending sun of a new era. Lift high, the gates and let the King of glory in—the King of true glory, of peace. I catch the last words of music from the lips ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... exercise of criticism; and his remarks were amusing enough. He had more than once painted a sign-board for a country inn, which fact formed a bridge between the covering of square yards with color and the painting of pictures; and he naturally used the vantage-ground thus gained to enhance his importance with his wife and Miss Clare. He was rather a clever fellow too, though as little educated in any other direction than that of his ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... time to light the evening fire. When it drops off a note—but you will not know it except the Douglas squirrel tells you with his high, fluty chirrup from the pines' aerial gloom—sign that some star watcher has caught the first far glint of the nearing sun. Whitney cries it from his vantage tower; it flashes from Oppapago to the front of Williamson; LeConte speeds it to the westering peaks. The high rills wake and run, the birds begin. But down three thousand feet in the canon, where you stir the fire under the cooking pot, ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... would turn to wind-blown chaff; I should grow weak, might weary of my kind, Misunderstood the most where almost known, Baffled and beaten by their unbelief: Years could not place me where I stand this day High on the vantage-ground of confidence: I might for years toil on, and reach no man. Besides, to leave the thing that nearest lies, And choose the thing far off, more difficult— The act, having no touch of God in it, Who seeks the needy for the pure need's sake, Must ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... tickets of admission for all. But this was only the beginning. Once inside the tent he procured accommodations in the reserved-seat section for himself and those who accompanied him. From such superior points of vantage the whole crew of them witnessed the performance, from the thrilling grand entry, with spangled ladies and gentlemen riding two by two on broad-backed steeds, to the tumbling bout introducing the full strength of the company, which came at ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... interest in these affairs and expressed his opinions freely and forcibly in his letters to his parents. His father was a strong Federalist and bitterly deprecated the declaration of war by the United States. The son, on the contrary, from his point of vantage in the enemy's country saw things from a different point of view and stoutly upheld the wisdom, nay, the necessity, of the war. His parents and friends urged him to keep out of politics and to be discreet, and he seems, at any rate, to have followed their advice in the latter respect, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... towers, which rise up proud and patient and defiantly erect beneath the curse of time. When at length what used to be the castle town of Les Baux is reached, you find a naked mountain of yellow sandstone, worn away by nature into bastions and buttresses and coigns of vantage, sculptured by ancient art into palaces and chapels, battlements and dungeons. Now art and nature are confounded in one ruin. Blocks of masonry lie cheek by jowl with masses of the rough-hewn rock; fallen cavern vaults are heaped round fragments of fan-shaped spandrel and clustered column-shaft; ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... of no avail here. Vollied musketry has little chance against backwoods sharpshooters occupying every vantage ground that their knowledge of the country enabled them to do. The day was wearing on. Noon found them a disorganized mass, flying through Lexington streets, the scene ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... momentary view I had of her—and wildly incongruous she looked in that place—and she had disappeared from sight, having approached someone invisible who sat upon the divan immediately beneath our point of vantage. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... "windy hills" in the distance; and again, on the other hand, Chatham, and beyond, the Thames, with the sunset tingeing the many-colored sails. We were not easily persuaded to descend from our picturesque vantage-ground; but the master's hand led us gently on from point to point, until we found ourselves, before we were aware, on the grassy slope outside the castle wall. Besides, there was the cathedral to be visited, and the tomb of Richard Watts, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... 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 ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in a black coat elbowed his way to the base of the statue from which vantage point he tried to address the crowd. "Friends," he quavered, as the uproar died, the idle mob ever ready for some new amusement, "friends, don't be too rash. Look before you leap. We are only a handful ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... a point of vantage, partly hidden by a cleft rock, from which he could look fully into the interior of the shack. It was obviously not a habitation, although a fire was burning briskly within it. Near by stood a small keg or ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... for poetry; or that if there is any preference to be given, those that are the meanest and most unpromising are the best, as they leave the greatest scope for the unbounded stores of thought and fancy in the writer's own mind. Poetry had with them "neither buttress nor coigne of vantage to make its pendant bed and procreant cradle." It was not "born so high: its aiery buildeth in the cedar's top, and dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun." It grew like a mushroom out of the ground; or was hidden in it like a truffle, which it required ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... this a game of skittles," he thought to himself. "We shall see, my man. In the mean time I wish I knew your shield." So saying he forded the brook, stayed, called out again, "Whose shield is that, Galors?" and again got no reply. "Black dog!" cried he in a rage, "take your vantage and expect no more." Whereupon he set his horse at the hill and rode up ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... Jerry saw, from his coign of vantage, the white figure of the miller coming quickly down the road, waving his arms as if he had once owned a wind-mill instead of a water-mill, and was imitating the action ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... Valley 2000 feet below. A few green streaks and patches in the brown and barren low country denote streams and irrigated areas. To the northeast beyond the low country the towering peaks of the San Miguel and La Plata mountains rise more than 4000 feet above the vantage point on the North Rim at 8000 feet. To the northwest, in the hazy distance 90 miles away in Utah, lie the isolated heights of the La Sal Mountains, and 70 miles away, the Abajo Mountains ...
— Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado • Sydney Anderson
... through the open arch, in a pleasant study, one could see a good Zorn, a Venom portrait, and some prints. This nook, formerly the library, had been given over to the energetic Miss Hitchcock. It was done in Shereton,—imitation, but good imitation. From this vantage point the younger generation planned an extended attack ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick |
