"Octagon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the P'hra-mene is a lofty octagon; and directly under the great spire is a gorgeous eight-sided pyramid, diminishing by right-angled gradations to a truncated top, its base being fifty or sixty feet in circumference, and higher by twenty feet than the surrounding buildings. On this pyramid stood the urn ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... twisted and intertwined pillars, from top to bottom. Up these stairs the military boots, or perchance the gouty shoes, of many a governor have trodden as the wearers mounted to the cupola which afforded them so wide a view over their metropolis and the surrounding country. The cupola is an octagon with several windows, and a door opening upon the roof. From this station, as I pleased myself with imagining, Gage may have beheld his disastrous victory on Bunker Hill (unless one of the tri-mountains intervened), and Howe have ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... date where we all are. Once more I am seated at my table in the half octagon study under the south verandah. Never did the Grove look more charming. Its general features the same, but the growth of the trees and shrubbery greatly increased. Faithful Thomas Devoy has proved himself to be a truly honest and efficient overseer. The whole farm ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... grimly erect, stood the octagon-shaped Fort Sumter, mid-way of the harbor entrance, the Stars and Stripes proudly waving from its lofty central flagstaff, its guns bristling on every side through the casemates and embrasures, as if with a knowledge of their ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... is this:—1. If you can only answer the question A, you must seek for the lost path by the tedious circle plan; or, what is the same, and a more manageable way of setting to work, by travelling in an octagon, each side of which must be equal to four-fifths of P D. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... The magnificent Octagon of Ely Cathedral, at the intersection of the nave and transepts, belongs in the same category with these polygonal chapter-house vaults. It was built by Alan of Walsingham in 1337, after the fall of the central tower and the destruction of ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... cypress-trees, one obtains his first view of the great dome of the Taj. It looks like about three-fourths of a globe, capped with a slender spire. From this point, through the trees, may be seen a forest of minarets, cupolas, towers, and inferior domes. The mausoleum is in the form of an irregular octagon, the longest side being one hundred and twenty feet in length. Each facade has a lofty Saracenic arch, ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... three light-rooms. These three chambers revolve on clockwork wheels, with such precision that the man on watch who sees them from sea can invariably take ten steps during their irradiation, and twenty-five during their eclipse. Everything is based on the focal plan, and on the rotation of the octagon drum, formed of eight wide simple lenses in range, having above and below it two series of dioptric rings; an algebraic gear, secured from the effects of the beating of winds and waves by glass a millimetre thick[6], yet sometimes broken by the sea-eagles, which dash themselves ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... to the octagon dining-room, where the supper was ready, a special supper, on a table by a window, a table laden with exotics and brilliant with glass and silver. The supper was, of course, perfect in its way. Mr. Smithson's chef had been down to see about it, and Mr. Smithson's ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... central, broad arena, Of the square, right-angle outlines, Has been leveled to the surface Of the streets and roads around it, Bears no pile of architecture,[9] To be seen afar and nearer, To be seen from hill and valley, By the traveler wand'ring hither. On the summit of the tower, Of the octagon bell-tower, Of this new and gorgeous building, With its porticos and stairways, With its halls and council chambers, Is a high observatory, Whence is viewed the distant landscape, Whence is seen the rural beauties Of this land of agriculture. Near this pinnacle so lofty, Is the ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... at the party, who had returned from Rome, with his red beard, and his picture of the murder of the Red Comyn, which made but a dim effect in the Octagon Room of the Royal Academy, where the bleeding agonies of the dying warrior were veiled in an unkind twilight. On Sandy and his brethren little Rosey looked rather coldly. She tossed up her little head in conversation with me, and gave me to understand that this party was only an omnium ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... by green hills. The sun shone brightly, the sky was without a cloud; it appeared to him that he had never beheld a more graceful scene. It was a temple worthy of the divinity it enshrined. A facade of four Ionic columns fronted an octagon hall, adorned with statues, which led into a salon of considerable size and fine proportion. Ferdinand thought that he had never in his life entered so brilliant a chamber. The lofty walls were covered with an Indian paper of ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... to take charge of the hospital, and that she had drawn supplies from the Sanitary Commission. General Slocum declared that he could have no partiality in his brigade, and proposed to take two large buildings, the Powell House and the Octagon House, as hospitals, and instal Miss Bradley as lady superintendent of the Brigade Hospital. This was done forthwith, and with further aid from the Sanitary Commission, as the Medical Bureau had not yet made any arrangement for brigade hospitals, Miss ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... a house looming out of the bareness of the slope. It dominated that long white incline. Grim, lonely, forbidding, how strangely it harmonized with the surroundings! The structure was octagon-shaped, built of uncut stone, and resembled a fort. There was no door on the sides exposed to Shefford's gaze, but small apertures two-thirds the way up probably served as windows and port-holes. The roof appeared to be made of poles covered ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... were taken to clear away the whole of the ivy, so that now it is quite bare,—nothing but homely gray stone, with marks of age, but no beauty. The most curious thing about the church is the font. It is a massive pile, composed of five or six layers of freestone in an octagon shape, placed in the angle formed by the projecting side porch and the wall of the church, and standing under a stained-glass window. The base is six or seven feet across, and it is built solidly up in successive steps, to the height of about six feet,—an octagonal pyramid, with the basin of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a pretty room, with chintz curtains and chintz-covered easy-chairs, low, luxurious, inviting; the only ponderous piece of furniture an old Japanese cabinet, rich in gold work upon black lacquer. On the dainty little octagon table there was a large shallow brown glass vase full of Christmas roses; and there was an odour of violets from the celadon china jars on the chimney-piece. Aunt Betsy's favourite Persian cat, a marvel of fluffy whiteness, rose from the hearth to welcome them. It was a delightful picture ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... valley, where it became the main street of the village—a congregation of two or possibly three hundred houses, mostly cottages with gambrel and lean-to roofs. At the left of the village, and about an eighth of a mile distant, was an imposing red brick building with wings and a pair of octagon towers. It stood in a forest of pines and maples, and appeared to be enclosed by a high wall of masonry. It was too pretentious for an almshouse, too elegant for a prison; it was as evidently not a school-house, and it could not be an arsenal. Lynde puzzled ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... igloos made of the same material, but none so large, clean, or elegant as this one. The walls, which were perpendicular, were composed of about thirty large square blocks, cemented together with snow, and arranged in the form of an octagon. The roof was a dome of snow. A small porch or passage, also of ice, stood in front of the low doorway, which had been made high enough to permit the owner of the mansion to enter by stooping slightly. In front and ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... 3221 was the home of Dr. William Thornton, the architect of the Capitol; the Octagon House, built by John Tayloe; of Tudor Place, and also of Woodlawn. He was later the first Superintendent of Patents from ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... Urban, and he restored it at the commission of the Pope, who took him to those parts one summer in his train. And at the request of Cardinal Farnese he built two little temples on the island of Visentina in the Lake of Bolsena, one of which was constructed as an octagon without and round within, and the other was square on the outer side and octagonal on the inner, with four niches in the walls at the corners, one to each; which two little temples, executed in so beautiful a manner, bore testimony to the skill with which Antonio ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... many tombs, with Armenian and Portuguese inscriptions, more than two hundred years old, and promises, with ordinary care, long to continue in good preservation, owing to the great dryness of the air and soil. The mausoleum of the Sumroo family is a handsome octagon building, surmounted by a low dome rising out of a cornice, with a deep drip-stone, something in the style of a Constantinople fountain. The inscription is in Portuguese a proof, most likely, that there were no French or English in Agra at the time of its ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... humid. He shoved a brown velvet curtain aside and entered a small, dark room which opened from his study. A pressure of the finger upon the blinds caused them to spring open, and the broad daylight streamed through the high windows. The walls, which were hung with brown velvet, formed an octagon, and opposite the broad windows were two pictures in gold frames. The vicomte's look rested on these pictures. They were the features of his parents which had been placed upon the canvas by the hand of an artist. In all her goodness, ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... roadway, far ahead, a brilliant octagon flared red. That meant "STOP!" in any language. Cloud eased up his accelerator, eased down his mighty brakes. He pulled up at the control station and a ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... Octagon is perhaps the most beautiful and original design to be found in the whole range of Gothic architecture. Remember also the retrochoir. The lower tier of windows consists of three long lancets, with groups of ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Trinity. Under Mr. Flower's guidance we got into one of his boats, and were rowed up the stream to the Memorial edifice. There is a theatre, in a round tower which has borrowed some traits from the octagon "Globe" theatre of Shakespeare's day; a Shakespeare library and portrait gallery are forming; and in due time these buildings, of stately dimensions and built solidly of brick, will constitute a Shakespearean centre which will attract to itself ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... The circle, or octagon, or other polygonal forms do not appear in the plans of Egyptian buildings; but though all the lines are straight, there is a good deal of irregularity in spacing, walls which face one another are not always parallel, and ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... pressed as much as they can, laying upon it a flat piece of wood loaded with a heavy weight, to get out as much of the mercury as they can. The paste is then put into a mould of wooden planks bound together, generally in the form of an octagon pyramid cut short, its bottoms being a plate of copper, full of small holes, into which the paste is stirred and pressed down, in order to fasten it. When they design to make many pinnas, or spongy lumps of various weights, these are divided from each other by thin beds or layers of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... evening of the same day, Lady Trevlyn and her daughter sat together in the octagon room at the Hall. Twilight was falling and candles were not yet brought, but a cheery fire blazed in the wide chimney, filling the apartment with a ruddy glow, turning Lillian's bright hair to gold and lending a tinge of color to my lady's pallid cheeks. The ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... of graceful proportions and of exquisite beauty. Beyond the platform stretch the two wings, one of which is itself a mosque of great architectural merit. In the center of the whole design the mausoleum occupies a square of 186 feet, with the angles deeply truncated so also form an unequal octagon. The main feature in this central pile is the great dome, which swells upward to nearly two-thirds of a sphere and tapers at its extremity into a pointed spire crowned by a crescent. Beneath it an enclosure ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Tom was confined was not what people in the country call an "upright chamber." The sides of the room were about four feet in height; and a section of the apartment would have formed one half of an irregular octagon. In each side of the chamber there was a small door, opening into the space near the eaves of the house, which was used to store old trunks, old boxes, the disused spinning-wheel, and other lumber of this description. Tom had been in the attic before, and he remembered these doors, through one ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... IV., who completed it and gathered in the poor relics of royal mortality from many graves. The key of the vault is the stone where the priest stands when he elevates the Host in the temple above. The vault is a graceful octagon about forty feet high, with nearly the same diameter; the flickering light of your torches shows twenty-six sarcophagi, some occupied and some empty, filling the niches of the polished marble. On the right sleep the sovereigns, on ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... tinted satin shut out a perfect view of the ocean, and Elizabeth could not help remarking that the principal windows faced northward, away from the bloom and glory of the grounds. Even her dressing-room, which was in one of the octagon towers, looked out on the only barren spot in view—a storm-beaten grove of cedars that stood, ragged and bristling with ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... artistic one, but large, simple windows are sometimes rather to be chosen than too much bay. In many, perhaps the majority, of cases, it is wiser to extend the whole wall of the room in the form of a half-hexagon or three sides of an octagon, costing no more, and repaying ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... a new and charming French artiste was to sing a few peculiarly ravishing songs, unheard in England before. Close to the main ballroom was the octagon music-room which was brilliantly illuminated, and in which a large number of chairs had been obviously disposed for the comfort of an audience. Into this room many of the guests had already assembled. It was quite clear that a chamber-concert—select and attractive as were ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... he obtained the lucrative post of organist to the Octagon Chapel at Bath. Increased emoluments, however, brought with them increased obligations. He was required to play almost incessantly, either at the oratorios or in the rooms at the Baths, at the theatre, and in the public ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... care and thought bestowed upon it. It glows with new stained-glass windows, splendid marbles, exquisite sculptures, and bronze work. Its western tower, 266 feet in height, turreted spires, central octagon tower, flying buttresses, unequaled length of 517 feet, and its vast, irregular bulk soaring above the insignificant little town at its foot, make it a most commanding object seen from the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... in height, which overlooks the whole works, and has been styled "the Observatory". To the east is a true circle 2,880 feet in circumference, the wall being 6 feet in height. To the north of this is an avenue leading from the circle to an octagon of fifty acres, in the wall of which are eight gateways, which, however, are covered by mounds five feet in height. From this strange eight-sided figure run three parallel walls. Those to the south are about two miles in length, and those running ...
— Mound-Builders • William J. Smyth
... and shrines, in the centre of the inclosure, on a raised platform approached through delicate arcades, stands the great Dome of the Rock, built by Abd-el-Melik in 688 A.D., on the site of the Jewish Temple. The exterior of the vast octagon, with its lower half cased in marble and its upper half incrusted with Persian tiles of blue and green, its broad, round lantern and swelling black dome surmounted by a glittering crescent, is bathed in full sunlight; serene, proud, eloquent of a certain splendid simplicity. Within, ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... Restormel Castle, whose ivied ruins up the valley are fine and Raglandish: while the rest were bolting a coach dinner, I betook me to ye church, and was charmed with a curious antique font, and the tower, an octagon gothic lantern with extinguisher atop, like this: as far as memory serves me. Onward again, through St. Blazey, and a mining district, not ill-wooded, nor unpicturesque, to the fair town of St. Austle, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... play good or bad—except on Moliere's nights, whose pieces they are quite weary of. Gray and I have been at the Avare to-night: I cannot at all commend their performance of it. Last night I was in the Place de Louis le Grand (a regular octagon, uniform, and the houses handsome, though not so large as Golden Square), to see what they reckoned one of the finest burials that ever was in France. It was the Duke de Tresmes, governor of Paris and marshal of France. It began on foot from his palace to his parish-church, and from thence in ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... within a square building, windowed on three sides and on one seemingly attached to another building, an auditorium occupying five sides of an octagon, on the floor of which are shown the benches of a pit, or the steps, five in number, on which they could be set. These are curiously arranged at an angle of forty-five degrees on either side of a central aisle, ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... there's nothing imitation or stagey about this place. There's real lacquer, and real silver and gold on the strange partitions; real Chinese mural paintings; real Chinese lamps swinging from the ceilings; real ebony stools to sit on at the inlaid octagon tables, and real ebony chopsticks to eat with if you choose, instead ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... born he astonished all by, With their "Law, dear me!" "Did ever you see?" He'd a pipe in his mouth and a glass in his eye, A hat all awry— An octagon tie— And a ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... in the elysium of their devotions; and, arrayed in the gorgeous costume of the East, add much to the interest, the beauty, and solemn stillness of the scene, from which they seem loath to retire. The Sakhara itself is a regular octagon of about sixty feet a side, and is entered by four spacious doors, each of which is adorned with a porch projecting from the line of the building and rising considerably on the wall. All the sides of it are paneled. ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... him. "You're to go to the office of Ross Metaxa in the Octagon, Commissariat of Interplanetary Affairs, Department of Justice, Bureau of ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... octagon, with a diameter of 8-1/2 in. on the 8-1/2 x 8-1/2 x 7/8 in. piece, sawing off the corner pieces so as to just fit the leg. Glue and screw this to the under sides of the top piece, placing the grain across that of the ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... finally neared it, proved to be a huddle of low, octagon-shaped huts (called hogans) made of short cedar logs and plastered over with adobe, with a hole in the center of the lid-like roof to let the smoke out and a little light in; and dogs, that ran out and barked and yelped and trailed into mourning rumbles and then barked again; and half-naked ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... Empire the architect Famin was commissioned to furnish a series of architectural embellishments to the gardens of Rambouillet. Various stone statues were added and an octagon pavilion on the Ile des Roches was restored and redecorated. Two great avenues were cut through the parterre, and, as if fearing indiscretions on the part of his entourage, the emperor caused to be planted long rows of lindens and tulip trees, which were again masked by two ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... Of yellow lupin, added host on host To those bright armies which his father knew, Surely the crowning hour of all his life Was when, his task accomplished, he returned A lonely pilgrim to the twilit shrine Of first beginnings and his father's youth. There, in the Octagon Chapel, with bared head Grey, honoured for his father and himself, He touched the glimmering keyboard, touched the books Those dear lost hands ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... inches wide, for the protection of the windows of the lantern, which could not of course be defended by shutters, and another cornice of similar width at the base, which filled up the angle between the upright timbers of the building and the sloping surface of the rock. The lantern was an octagon of ten feet six inches in diameter, externally, and above it, was a ball of two feet three inches diameter. The whole height of the lighthouse, from the lowest side to the top of ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton |
