"Niche" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yourself disinclined to get beyond dooryards, those outer courts of domesticity. Homely joys spill over into them, and, when children are afoot, surge and riot there. In them do the common occupations of life find niche and channel. While bright weather holds, we wash out of doors on a Monday morning, the wash-bench in the solid block of shadow thrown by the house. We churn there, also, at the hour when Sweet-Breath, the cow, goes afield, modestly unconscious of her own sovereignty ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... quadrivittatus-like chipmunks that were less well adapted to live there. The Colorado River probably served as a barrier that kept the E. umbrinus-like chipmunks and E. quadrivittatus-like chipmunks separated up to this time. Invasion of the new forest-niche by E. umbrinus-like chipmunks may have taken place through the Uinta Mountains of northeastern Utah, after the glaciers disappeared from these mountains, since the Colorado River probably prevented ...
— Taxonomy of the Chipmunks, Eutamias quadrivittatus and Eutamias umbrinus • John A. White
... in a grating voice, "and what now? Oh! Mr. Summers, is it you? You're welcome, sir! I wishes I could offer you a glass of summut, but the bottle's dry—he! he!" pointing, with a revolting grin, to an empty bottle that stood on a niche within the hearth. "I don't know how it is, sir, but I never wants to eat; but ah! 't is the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... abruptly terminated by the Revolution. (Residence in South America, vol. I. p. 228.) It is a singular coincidence that the same thing should have occurred at Venice, where, if my memory serves me, the last niche reserved for the effigies of its doges was just filled, when the ancient aristocracy was overturned.] He was temperate in eating, drank sparingly, and usually rose an hour before dawn. He was punctual in attendance to business, and shrunk from no toil. He had, indeed, great powers of patient endurance. ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... nightfall she went up to her room and threw herself wearily on the bed. She was tired, body and spirit, and lonely. Nor was this lightened by the surety that she would be lonelier still before she found a niche to fit herself in and gather the threads of her life once more ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of warrior-lords, the prison of a queen, the Royalist refuge—fallen now into such placid dreaminess of age. Into the dark chamber above, desolate, legend-haunted, perchance in some moment of the night there fell through the narrow window-niche a pale moonbeam, touching the floor, the walls of stone; such light in gloom as may have touched the face of Mary herself, wakeful with her recollections and her fears. Musing it in her fancy, Irene thought of ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... is ornamented with four pillars of red oriental granite of the finest quality: those which decorate the niche of the Apollo were taken from the church that contained the tomb of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle. The floor is paved with different species of scarce and valuable marble, in large compartments, and, in its centre, is placed a large octagonal ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... effort that fate had defied, That wrought out from fortune what favor denied, Standing aloof from the world in his pride; The niche he has carved on fame's slippery wall Friends are proclaiming with heraldry-call. His Croesus-bright scepter has magical sway, Yester's indifference solicits to-day. His daring his triumph, how daily he fares, Every one ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... which was the obvious purpose of the raging, tearing Nationalist propaganda, he would be displaced from his proud position as the first and greatest of French-Canadians. Far more than a temporary term of power was at stake. It was a struggle for a niche in the temple of fame. It was a battle not only for the affection of the living generation, but for place in the historic memories of the race. Laurier, putting aside the weight of 75 years and donning his armor ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... the intrepid Morgan, honor the other two. But where is he whose valor turned back the advancing Saint-Leger? whose prompt decision saved the Continental position at Bemis Heights? whose military genius truly gained the day? A vacant niche—empty as England's rewards, void as his own life—speaks more eloquently than words, more strongly than condemnation, more pitifully than tears, of a mighty career blighted by treason and hurled into the bottomless ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... only the time to go to his hotel and change his dress. He had not even gone to bow to his old friend the bronze San Marco, so imposing in his niche on the San Michele wall. He praised the poetess and saluted the Countess Martin with joy ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... a torch and hurried back to the foot of the stone-steps; in the immediate vicinity of which he searched narrowly for some object. At last he discovered the object of his investigation—namely a large bell hanging in a niche, and from which a strong wire ran up through the ground to the surface. This bell Francisco set ringing, and then hurried back to rejoin his deliverers. Scarcely was he again by the side of Demetrius, when he saw that his stratagem ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... chances, must be ruthlessly set aside by literary history as a vulgar journalist of no account. Well, suppose Oscar and Willie had both died the day before Queensberry left that card at the Club! Oscar would still have been remembered as a wit and a dandy, and would have had a niche beside Congreve in the drama. A volume of his aphorisms would have stood creditably on the library shelf with La Rochefoucauld's Maxims. We should have missed the 'Ballad of Reading Gaol' and 'De Profundis'; but he would still have cut a considerable ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... the future, which every member of the 'Sherman Brigade' and the children who have succeeded them must, in contemplating the condition of our country at this very moment of time. Peace universal, not only at home but abroad, and America standing high up in the niche of nations, envied of all mankind and envied because we possess all the powers of a great nation vindicated by a war of your own making and your own termination. Yes, my fellow-soldiers, you have a right to ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... In your brilliant window niche, How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand! Ah, Psyche from the regions ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... busied in reflection, my eyes fell upon a narrow ledge in the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit upon which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen inches, and was not more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it gave it a rude resemblance to one of the hollow-backed chairs used by our ancestors. I made no doubt that here was the 'devil's seat' alluded to in the MS., and now I seemed to grasp the full ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... over it, and its effigy of Shakspeare upon the niche in the wall, as Gabriel might have looked upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... the swiftest and the most strenuous in all Lucy Bostil's experience in the open. At sunset, when Creech halted in a niche in a gorge between lowering cliffs, Lucy fell off her horse and lay still and spent ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... part of the book, where the hero discovers his courage, is a kind of saga. We leave him in the end at peace with his own soul, wondering dimly about the hereafter, having proved his manhood, and found his niche in life. ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... some appointed work to perform, some little niche in the spiritual temple to occupy. Yours may be no splendid services, no flaming or brilliant actions to blaze and dazzle in the eye of man. It may be the quiet, unobtrusive inner work, the secret prayer, the mortified sin, the forgiven injury, the trifling act of self-sacrifice for ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... of these collections is probably the same. So long as the binding remains in good condition they are ensured a niche on some neglected shelf; but once the marks of age or wear and tear manifest themselves their fate is sealed. They come speedily into the hands of those booksellers who deal also in prints, and beneath such ruthless hands ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... Tom, we should do justice to Queen Bess: His present majesty, whom Heaven long bless With wisdom, wit, and art of choicest quality, Will never get, I fear, so fine a niche As that old queen, though often called old b—ch, In fame's ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... be recognized by the attentive visitor—among them, a picture of his martyrdom (by Abel de Pujol) near the entrance to the choir. The Protomartyr also stands, with his deacon's robe and palm, in a niche near the door of the sacristy, where left and right are frescoes of his Disputation with the Doctors, and his Martyrdom. The chapel immediately behind the high altar is, as usual, the Lady Chapel. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... side of the cottage, with his chamber window at one end, a few old and twisted, but blossom-laden, crape-myrtles on either hand, now and then a rose of some unpretending variety and some bunches of rue, and at the other end a shrine, in whose blue niche stood a small figure of Mary, with folded hands and uplifted eyes. No other window looked down upon the spot, and its seclusion was often a ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... month had glided away, and they had been pretty busy, during their many visits to the place, carrying all kinds of little things which they considered they wanted, with the result that the lanthorn and a supply of candles always stood in a niche a short distance down the passage; short ropes were fastened wherever there was one of the sharp or sloping descents, so that they could run down quickly; and in several places a hammer and cold chisel had been utilised so as to chip out ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... which he held in his hand. Three damsels, resembling the Graces in the beautiful proportions of their limbs, and the slender clothing which they wore, lurked in different attitudes, each in her own niche, and seemed but to await the first sound of the music, to bound forth from thence and join in the frolic dance. The subject was beautiful, yet somewhat light, to ornament the study of such a sage as Agelastes represented himself ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... its principal use being for the show of ornamental plants; and to this end it has several accessories which add much to its beauty. One of these which may be noticed is a neat fountain in the centre; always a pretty feature wherever it can be introduced. Another is a rustic niche or alcove in the north wall, built of rough stones, over and through which the water constantly trickles into a basin. Its full beauty will not be seen till it has acquired age, and become covered with mosses and ferns. Fortunately for the plants and for good taste, ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... in the prime and vigor of life, and it is not unlikely that the public will yet have much to admire from his pen, and which will, without doubt, place him still higher in the niche of fame. His residence is chiefly at Undercliff, his country seat, on the banks of the Hudson, near Cold Spring, surrounded by the most lovely and beautiful scenery in nature, which can not fail to keep the muse alive within him, and tune the ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... tea-service and a gilt Cupid on the top of his looking-glass." The famous survivor of himself has had his features preserved in a medallion, and the slice of his countenance seems clouded with the thought that it does not belong to a bust; the bust ought to look happy in its niche, but the statue opposite makes it feel as if it had been cheated out of half its personality, and the statue looks uneasy because another stands on a loftier pedestal. But "Ignotus" and "Miserrimus" ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... today circumstances are making it more and more difficult for a woman to lead what two generations ago was considered the normal and natural life for any woman. In those days even a woman who did not marry tried to find a niche that she could fill in somebody's home. A maiden aunt or cousin often took the place of a nurse or governess or even a hired servant and was looked upon with pity, and expected to work early and late for her room and board, and to be ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... succeeded in catching the great auk, for which, it is said, the directors of the British Museum have offered a reward of a hundred pounds. This was a chance, to be sure. I might possibly be able to get hold of the auk, and thereby secure money enough to pay expenses, and make certain a niche in the temple of fame. It would be something to rank with the great men who had devoted their lives to the pursuit of the dodo and the roc. But there was a deplorable lack of information about the haunts and habits of the auk. I was not even satisfied of its existence, by the ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... know the homes of England of the present day, they show a grievous tendency to fall, in these important respects, into the two great classes of over-furnished and unfurnished:—of those in which the Greek marble in its niche, and the precious shelf-loads of the luxurious library, leave the inmates nevertheless dependent for all their true pastime on horse, gun, and croquet-ground;—and those in which Art, honored only by ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... not mean that we must never criticize the church. It is not set off in a niche protected from the acid of secular tongues and minds. Ministers of the gospel are unduly resentful of criticism, perhaps because, after they leave the seminary, no one has a fair opportunity to controvert their publicly stated opinions. But the church ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... to the fireplace, in which the advance of spring no longer made a fire necessary, and, taking from its niche the tinder box, she struck flint on steel, and in a moment had a blaze started. Not waiting to let it gain headway, she laid the letter upon the flame, and held it there with the tongs till it ignited. "I knew without your telling me," ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... things to make people laugh. "Well," she said, "I don't honestly think he's very funny at home." It was naught to her that humorists are not paid to be funny at home, and that in truth they never under any circumstances are very funny at home. She just hurled her father from his niche—and then went forth and boasted of him as a unique peculiarity in fathers, as an unrivaled ornament of her career on earth; for no other child in the vicinity had a professional humorist for parent. Her gestures and accent ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... among paradoxers. Nevertheless, there is no retraction in the third edition of the Principia, published when Newton was eighty-four years old! The moral of the above is, that a gentleman who prefers instructing William Herschel to learning how to spell, may find a proper niche in a proper place, for warning to others. It seems that gravitation is not truth, but only the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... a large amount was promptly executed in various quarters. The fate which awaited the Mussulman negociator was a lamentable one: he was accused of imbecility or treachery; and his head was taken off his shoulders to decorate the niche over the Seraglio gate: he paid dear for his friendly feelings towards the English. So ended the famed expedition to the Hellespont and the Bosphorus. It broke the spell by which the passage of the Dardanelles ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... there for a moment before attempting to reach the vines high up on the left hand, which he must grasp in order to draw himself up into the shadowy niche in the rock, and begin his zigzag course back again across the face of the cliff to the projecting bough of ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... him an assistant that he would undertake the management of the ranch at all. I expected, as I say, that Cook would go; evidently, however, Thornton is not going to be able to fill his place. What shall I do with Thornton, Don? We must find a niche for ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... rise and lie down with death, but on no other front had I found them living so close to the graves of their former comrades. Where a man had fallen, there had he been buried, and on every hand you saw between the chalk huts, at the mouths of the pits or raised high in a niche, a pile of stones, a cross, and a soldier's cap. Where one officer had fallen his men had built to his memory a mausoleum. It is also a shelter into which, when the shells come, they dive for safety. So that even in ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... theater really come off, especially with loss of life. Thus violence may be "militant," but it is not "tactics." And violence against society at large is peculiarly tactless. George Fox would hardly occupy so exalted a niche in history if he had used his hammer to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... sheer smooth wall rose insurmountable above him. He did the one thing left for him to do. Leaving her unconscious body in a sort of trough formed by the juncture of two strata, he lowered himself into the rushing stream, searched with his foot for a grip, and swung to the left into the niche formed by a mesquit bush growing from the rock. From here, after stiff climbing, ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... transitory. I am an artist with a way to make for my art: you are a working woman with a career, odd as it is," he smiled whimsically, "that you have chosen, and that you will pursue faithfully until some stalwart young man dissuades you from it, when you will take your place in your niche as wife and mother, and leave me one ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... to anyone. It is an odd feeling, the staying at this old hostelry, and, as it draws on towards midnight, seeking your room, through endless windings, turns, and short flights. There is even now to be seen the niche where Mr. Pickwick sat down for the night; so minute are the directions we can trace the various rooms. Mr. Pickwick asked for a private room and was taken down a "long dark passage." It turned out later that Miss Witherfield's sitting-room was actually next door, so Mr. ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... to all these things. He professed a real interest in them. He even remembered the names of the puppets and the parts they had played, and so gained for himself an enduring niche in the heart that had bitterly resented the mockery of the others. It is quite possible that a nature so gentle and so appreciative as his really felt the sympathy. The juniors are rarely mistaken as to the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... an open door leading into three large halls. Tuck up your gown and go through them without touching anything, or you will die instantly. These halls lead into a garden of fine fruit trees. Walk on till you come to a niche in a terrace where stands a lighted lamp. Pour out the oil it contains and bring it ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... Some wretched lines of his on the Restoration are still extant. Had he devoted himself to the making of verses, he would have been nearly as far below Tate and Blackmore as Tate and Blackmore are below Dryden. His only chance for renown would have been that he might have occupied a niche in a satire, between Flecknoe and Settle. There was, however, another kind of composition in which his talents and acquirements qualified him to succeed; and to that he ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to her word and was impersonating Eleanor as well as she could at The Cedars. And as the days went by her task grew easier. She seemed to have slipped into her place as a member of the household, and though it was a very insignificant niche indeed that she filled, she did not mind that at all, for she was aware that the more she kept in the background the less chance there was of her secret being discovered. Perhaps on the whole, too, she was ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... to Gustav Freytag his exact niche in the hall of fame, because of his many-sidedness. He wrote one novel of which the statement has been made by an eminent French critic that no book in the German language, with the exception of the Bible, has enjoyed in ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the west front there were many great statues with crowns and sceptres, but a niche over the central portal was empty and this the Prince Bishop intended to fill with a statue of himself. It was to be a very small simple statue, as became one who prized lowliness of heart, but as he looked up at the ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... be a noticeable thing as the minutes went on, and nobody else appeared, and not a soul moved. The rattle of the quarter-jack again from its niche, its blows for three-quarters, its fussy retreat, were almost painfully abrupt, and caused many of the congregation to ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... rusty side rose high above the smooth green water. Damp weed hung from the beams in her poop cabin and a dull light came down through the broken glass. A sailor, kneeling on the slimy planks, tried to force a corroded ring-bolt from its niche; another trimmed a smoky lantern. Lister, Brown and Montgomery waited. In the half-light, their faces looked gray and worn. The sun had given them a dull pallor, and on the West African ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... too, had had some lessons here from the old lady; but even this mild vanity troubled her puritan conscience a little sometimes. Then the room, too, had curious and attractive things in it. A high niche in the oak over the fireplace held a slender image of Mary and her Holy Child, and from the Child's fingers hung a pair of beads. Isabel had a strange sense sometimes as if this holy couple had taken ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... my friend, as he stept unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... character of the great Lord Bacon, as he is generally but improperly called; and this verdict, in the main, has been confirmed by Lords Macaulay and Campbell, who seem to delight in keeping him in that niche of the temple of fame where the poet has placed him,—contemptible as a man, but venerable as the philosopher, radiant with all the wisdom of his age and of all preceding ages, the miner and sapper of ancient ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... conclusion arrived at by the impartial historian, who, without disparaging the deeds of Columbus, without detracting in any manner from his great discoveries, has restored Amerigo Vespucci to the niche in which he was placed by the German geographers four hundred years ago, and from which he was torn by injudicious iconoclasts, fearful for the fame of ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... which, under his conscientious management, gradually assumed the order of a model collection. A librarian is born, not made, and Jeffreys seemed unexpectedly and by accident to have dropped into the one niche in life for which he was best suited. Mr Rimbolt was delighted to see his treasures gradually emerging from the chaos of an overcrowded lumber-room into the serene and dignified atmosphere of a library of well-arranged and well-tended volumes. He ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... eye roving to the loftier shelves, he spied remotely above him a stuffed blue jay mounted on a varnished branch of oak. This was not properly a part of the Gumble stock; it was a fixture, technically, giving an air to the place from its niche between two mounting ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... and was translated instantly to heaven on his horse El-Burak. Here, deep in the Rock, is the print of the hand of the angel, who restrained the Rock from following the Prophet on his way to Paradise. Here, in this niche, is where Abraham used to pray; here, Elijah. On the last day the Kaaba of Mecca must come to this place. For it is here, in this cave, that the blast of the trumpet will sound, announcing the day of judgment. Then God's throne will be planted on the Rock ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... journey ended. They came to a niche in the slimy wall. Up into this the men climbed, dragging him after them. The man above was cautiously tapping on what appeared to be solid masonry. To King's surprise a section of the wall suddenly opened before them. He was seized from above ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... foul, being heavy with the odor of musty, decaying drugs. In every possible niche and cranny the omnipresent dust had settled in a uniform sheen of gray which showed but few signs ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... who saved his country by the simple expedient of pushing his finger into a hole in the dyke through which the dammed-up waters had begun to escape? There is that other lad, too, who has come down in history by reason of his insane resolve to climb "one niche the higher"—how often have we been told his thrilling story? These two boys are no longer young and have surely earned an honourable superannuation. That little incident of Michael Angelo and the block of marble from which he "let the angel ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... lie on a narrow rug in the very middle of the floor, which is as smooth as a mirror. In the corners, barely visible, two tall incense-burners, representing monstrous animals, are smoking; there are no windows anywhere; the door, screened by a velvet drapery, looms silently black in a niche of the wall. And suddenly this curtain softly slips aside, moves away ... and Muzio enters. He bows, opens his arms, smiles.... His harsh arms encircle Valeria's waist; his dry lips have set her to burning all over.... She falls prone on ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... in my own life was quickly approaching. In the July of this year my occupation on the —— railway and its branches came to an end. The lines were completed, and I was to leave ——shire, to return to Birmingham, where there was a niche already provided for me in my father's prosperous business. But before I left the north it was an understood thing amongst us all that I was to go and pay a visit of some weeks at the Hope Farm. My father was as much pleased at this plan as I was; and the dear family of cousins often spoke of ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sighing with regret at enjoying it alone. Absorbed in my sweet reverie, I prolonged my walk far into the night, without perceiving that I was wearied out. At length I discovered it. I lay voluptuously down on the tablet of a sort of niche or false door sunk in the terrace wall. The canopy of my couch was formed by the over-arching boughs of the trees; a nightingale sat exactly above me; its song lulled me to sleep; my slumber was sweet, and my awaking still more so. It was broad ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... other day, among other things, that you as well as he wished for my own noble works in your Library. I quite understand that this is on the ground of my being a Trinity man. But then one should have done something worthy of ever so little a niche in Trinity Library; and that I do know is not my case. I have several times told the Master what I think, and know, of my small Escapades in print; nice little things, some of them, which may interest a few people (mostly friends, or through friends) for a few ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... would have been taken for a part of their essence—would in itself have encumbered phenomena without rendering them in any way more docile to the will. But the encumbrance in this instance proved to be a wonderful preservative and means of comparison. It actually gave each moving thing its niche and cenotaph in the eternal. For the universe of vocal sounds was a field, like that of colour or number, in which the elements showed relations and transitions easy to dominate. It was a key-board over which attention could run back and forth, eliciting many implicit ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... yet the moment you speak of it, it is all wrong? I oughtn't have said a word, and yet it doesn't really make anything different. See, I haven't so much as touched your hand; you are different from other women, you are like a pure little angel shut in a niche. And I mean to do whatever will make you happiest. If you would like me ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... this niche, put your mouth to this opening"—and Knops pointed to one of many silver tubes which projected near them—"now breathe. Is ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... music, however, Mr. Buck has made a niche of its own for his music, which it occupies with grace ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... window of stained glass at one end, of such a color that it makes every thing look as if the light of the setting sun was falling upon it. There was a curious sort of tower opposite this window, with a kind of niche in it for a large Bible, which the minister took out with the greatest reverence, and he read from it all the prayers and psalms which were used. I liked the service very well, but, of ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... said Mr. Clifford, benignantly, "you seem to have stepped in among us as if there had always been a niche waiting for you, and I think that, after you have broken bread with us, and have had a quiet sleep under the old roof, you will feel at home. Come, I'm going to take you out to supper to-night, and, Burt, do you be as gallant to ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... counterbalance, if possible, the vulgarity of his person. His apartments, though small, were elegant and vanity had filled them with representations of the occupant. Robespierre's picture at length hung in one place, his miniature in another, his bust occupied a niche, and on the table were disposed a few medallions exhibiting his head in profile. The vanity which all this indicated was of the coldest and most selfish character, being such as considers neglect as insult, and receives homage merely as a tribute; so that, while praise ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... was all soft dusk when she came to the kinsman's house which had opened to her. Crowded though it was with refugee kindred, with soldier sons coming and going, it had managed to give her a small quiet niche, a little room, white-walled, white-curtained, in the very arms of a great old tulip tree. The window opened to the east, and the view was obstructed only by the boughs of the tree. Beyond them, through leafy openings, night by night she watched a red ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... of profit-seeking. They risk their lives daily in the hazards of the ocean, the victims of cold-blooded insurance gamblers and of niggardly owners, and rewarded with only a seat in the poorhouse or a niche in Davy Jones's Locker. I was once of their trade, and I longed to know the happenings of ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... music-room?" said Vaura, "opening as it does into the conservatory; and see Euterpe, standing in her niche, with flute and cornet at her feet, violin and guitar on either side, and the perfection of pianos, with this sweet-stringed harp;" and, sinking into the low chair beside it, she drew her fingers ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... made wives of, that could not have struck the particular fancy of any man that had any fancy at all. These I call furniture wives; as men buy furniture pictures, because they suit this or that niche in their dining-parlors. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... the expiring embers, and the remains were sympathetically gathered up and placed in an urn of marble or less costly material. A priest then sprinkled the ashes with pure water, using a branch of olive or laurel, the urn was placed in a niche of the family tomb, and the mourning relatives and friends withdrew, saying as they went Vale, vale! When they reached their homes they underwent a process of purification, the houses themselves were swept with a broom of prescribed ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... porch and seated on a stone bench set in the niche of a painted arch, a child was sleeping—a child in a white woollen garment, but with his little feet bare, in spite of the cold. He was not a beggar, for his garment was white and new, and near him on the floor was ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... a very happy girl in those days. Her position in that household was slightly anomalous, and at first it had been a little difficult to find the right niche for her. As the niece of Dyson, who had summoned her thither to act in the capacity of lady's maid, her place would by rights have been the servants' hall and kitchen; but then, as Kate had seen at once, it would scarce be right for Cuthbert Trevlyn's future wife to take so lowly a station as that ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... towards the rising and the midday sun there stretches a great niched wall girdling the temple on two sides, each niche a shrine, and in each shrine a cold white form that waits the sun—Apollo the Far-Darter, and the spear-bearing Pallas, and among them that golden Caesar, of whom the country talks, who has given great gifts to the temple—he and his grandson, the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... very close together, all three of them, in a niche in a narrow, dark passage, and men went by them carrying heavy chests, and great sacks of leather, and bundles tied up in straw and in handkerchiefs. The men had long hair and the kind of clothes you know were worn when Charles the First ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... adjoining are the master's apartments. On the west is a range of offices; and, on the south, with portions of other buildings, is the lofty and handsome tower gateway, erected by Cardinal Beaufort, whose statue, in his Cardinal's habit, is represented kneeling in an elegant niche in the upper part: two other niches, of the same form, but deprived of their statues, appear also on the same level. Milner describes the embellishments of this tower: "in a cornice over the gates we behold the Cardinal's hat displayed, together ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... necessary to find any one hidden there. She dropped her valuables in a dark corner and covered them with loose hay. That done, she felt her way down a narrow aisle between the piled-up bales and presently crouched in a niche. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... growth of public sentiment has been occasioned by the needs of the children and the working women of that great State. I come here to ask you to make a niche in the statesmanship and legislation of the nation for the domestic interests of the people. You recognize that the masculine thought is more often turned to material and political interests. I claim that the mother-thought, the woman-element needed, is to supplement the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... a retired niche in a side aisle of the old cathedral. No one quite remembered who he had been, but that in a way was a guarantee of respectability. At least so the Goblin said. The Goblin was a very fine specimen of quaint stone carving, and lived up in the corbel on the wall opposite the niche of the ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... little space of time, Their proper niche and bust, then fade away Into the darkness, poets of a day; But thou, O builder of enduring rhyme, Thou shalt not pass! Thy fame in every clime On earth shall live ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... real, military airplane in his possession, cached away in some niche in the lava wall to the west of Sinkhole—a wall that featured queer niches and caverns and clefts. He was seeing—what wonderful ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... del Sarto (Berlin Gallery), where we are puzzled to know if the Madonna is enthroned or enskied. A flight of steps in the centre leads up as if to a throne, but above these the Virgin sits in a niche, on a bank ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... his comrade's suffering, the Yankee lad at once set to work to make him as comfortable as circumstances would permit, and soon had him lying on a sleeping bag, in a niche formed by two uptilted slabs of ice. Profiting by past experience, they had procured and brought with them an Eskimo lamp with its moss wick, a small quantity of seal oil, and a supply of matches, so that, after a while, Cabot procured enough ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... strikes, any one going up the stairs at Herst would have stopped with a mingled feeling of terror and admiration at one particular spot, where, in a niche, upon a pedestal, a ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... knelt together before the figure of a saint in a little niche in the wall. The boys glanced at each other, and each, following the example of the Italians, knelt down by a chair and prayed for a minute or two. As they rose to their feet there was a sudden din below. Pistol in hand, the brothers ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... of the path he was out of sight and hearing, and a few minutes later close upon the niche devoted to his boat, with the big sandwiches complete, and quite three parts of ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... yesterday morning, thinking there might be no impropriety in placing it, so as to be visible only to a person sitting within the niche which we hollowed out of the sandstone in the winter-garden. I am told that this is, in the present form of the niche, impossible; but I shall be most ready, when I come to Coleorton, to scoop out a place for it, if Lady ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... clean and neat, and everybody used to wonder how Mrs. Carroway kept it so. But in spite of all her troubles and many complaints, she was very proud of this little house, with its healthful position and beautiful outlook over the bay of Bridlington. It stood in a niche of the low soft cliff, where now the sea-parade extends from the northern pier of Bridlington Quay; and when the roadstead between that and the point was filled with a fleet of every kind of craft, or, better still, when they all made sail at once—as happened when a trusty ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... women, sat in the hidden corner behind the stove, and poked in the great bales of straw and gossiped. Their voices and the answers of the serving amah filled the kitchen with noise. In their decorous niche at the upper right hand of the stove sat the two kitchen gods, small ancient idols, with hidden hands and crossed feet, gazing out upon a continually hungry world. Since time was they had sat there, ensconced at the very root of life, seemingly ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... life Priscilla came, fresh from the Devonshire farm and from all the pursuits and interests which had hitherto formed her world. She had made a very firm niche for herself in Aunt Raby's old cottage, and the dislodgment therefrom caused her for the time such mental disquiet and so many nervous and queer sensations that her pain was often acute and her sense of ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... had been made in Madame de Pompadour's rooms, and I had no longer, as heretofore, the niche in which I had been permitted to sit, to hear Caffarelli, and, in later times, Mademoiselle Fel and Jeliotte. I, therefore, went more frequently to my lodgings in town, where I usually received my friends: ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... wide, and one at its west end, leading into the adjoining room, two feet wide, and at present, on account of rubbish, only two and a half feet high. The stone walls still have their plaster upon them in a tolerable state of preservation. In the south wall is a recess or niche, three feet two inches high by four feet five inches wide by four deep. Its position and size naturally suggested the idea that it might have been a fire-place, but if so, the smoke must have returned to ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... entered the shack and closed the sagging door, his glance was arrested by an object half concealed in the cobwebbed niche between the lintel and the sloping roof-logs—an object that gleamed shiny and black in the dull play of the firelight. He reached up and withdrew from its hiding-place a round quart bottle, across whose top was pasted a familiar green stamp which proclaimed that the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... there are plenty of medicine men, up; up the ears in grace and business, belonging it. At Lune-street Chapel, as at all similar places, there are class-leaders, circuit stewards, chapel stewards, and smaller divinities, who find a niche in the general pantheon of duty. The cynosure of the inner circle is personal piety, combined with a "penny a week and a shilling a quarter." All members who can pay this have to ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... placed. An impress of this seal is preserved in the Stowe collection at the British Museum, attached to a deed of 1348, which, although in a somewhat broken condition, clearly shows St. Paul seated in a niche, holding the sword and a book, and beneath, in the base, the bishop kneeling, having on the dexter side the arms of the See, and on the sinister side the bishop's personal arms (fig. 2). The arms of the See show two swords placed in saltire, ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... beneath, who were done to death for what they firmly believed was their Redeemer's cause, by Claverhouse or Dalyell. There is the churchyard by the bleak sea-shore, where coffins have been laid bare by the encroaching waves; and the niche in cathedral crypt, or the vault under the church's floor. I cannot conceive anything more irreverent than the American fashion of burying in unconsecrated earth, each family having its own place of interment in the ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... hundred years before Columbus sailed in quest of the New World—a Phocean colony from Marseilles founded this celebrated city, calling it Niche (Nice or Victory), in honor of a signal triumph obtained by their arms over their enemies, the Ligurians, or inhabitants of the northern coast of Italy. For ages it flourished, being almost as famous with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... represent the stars in the night sky over the city. The walls, of enormous thickness, with deep niches or recesses alternating with the windows, were covered with thick gold plates heavily chased into a variety of curious patterns; and each niche contained either a life-size image of an animal—the llama figuring most frequently—in solid gold, wrought with the most marvellous patience and skill, or was a miniature garden in which various native trees and ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... with their laces, cameos, and lovely coral ornaments. Beyond the walls there were the gardens full of orange-trees, bright with their fruit, and the burying-place of the old monks, each body standing in a niche, dressed in his gown and cowl ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... subjects. Mr. Castleton had spent some years at Porthkeverne, and having, from a professional point of view, exhausted that neighbourhood, he had transferred himself and his family to a new horizon. He had a genius for discovering his right niche, and he had been fortunate enough to light upon exactly the place that appealed to him. It would not have suited everybody. It was a long low house, made of three fishermen's cottages thrown into one, built so close ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... Ponte, in the Via dei Coronari, the prototype of modern shrines, contains an image of the Virgin in a graceful niche built, or re-built, in 1523, by Alberto Serra of Monferrato, from designs by Antonio da Sangallo. Its name is derived from that of the lane leading to the Ponte S. Angelo (Canale di Ponte). The house to ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... and of the marriage service and the churching of women were there performed; hence the porch was an important building, and it was necessary to make it rather large. Above the door there is frequently a niche for the image of the patron saint of the church, which has not usually escaped the destructive hand of the Puritan. The room over the porch was frequently inhabited by a recluse, as I have already recorded in the previous chapter. Near the door always ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... fete, and the people weep also. One day the preacher, seeing a carpenter with dry eyes, asked him how it was that he did not dissolve in tears when the Holy Virgin wept. 'Ah, my reverend father,' replied he, 'it is I who refastened her in her niche yesterday. I drove three great nails through her behind; it is then she would have wept if she had been ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... is a fountain similar to that at Santa Barbara, and the quiet splash of its water adds a touch of charm and romance. The bell tower of the building throws an afternoon shadow over the garden, and within a niche in the tower stands the statue of Padre Serra overlooking ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... history of his country there had been no figure that had so imposed itself upon the mind of the trading world. He had a niche apart in its temples. Financial giants, strong to direct and augment the forces of capital, and taking an approved toll in millions for so doing, had existed before; but in the case of Manderson there had been ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... in astonishment—even, at first, with amusement. But as the fellow backed across the tiny brook he tripped and he fell sprawling and his out-thrown hand carried down and extinguished one of the lanterns from its precarious niche on a ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... furniture and antiquities. She stood there for a few seconds, gazing at it absently. A sign-board bore the words "The Mercury," together with the name of the owner of the shop, "Pancaldi." Higher up, on a projecting cornice which ran on a level with the first floor, a small niche sheltered a terra-cotta Mercury poised on one foot, with wings to his sandals and the caduceus in his hand, who, as Hortense noted, was leaning a little too far forward in the ardour of his flight and ought logically to have lost his balance ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... her eyes as she led her son away. By and by they came to another edifice. In a niche in the stone wall near the entrance was the figure of Jesus on a cross. He paused and looked at it for several ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... light was not installed yet, and only the big, old lamps lit the shadowy oak panelling. There in a niche beside the fireplace was the suit of armor which another Tristram Guiscard had worn at Agincourt. What little chaps they had been in those days in comparison with himself and his six feet two inches! But they had been great lords, his ancestors, and he, too, would be worthy ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... hos'tler soot asth'ma chest'nut de'tail [noun] noose le'gend wres'tle fa cade' twice de sign' [noun] or'chis strych'nine niche isth'mus list'en per'fume [noun] salve this'tle bay'ou mus tache' height rai'sn gib'bous bas'ket milch a dult' gla'cier Gae'lic browse [noun] psalm'ist griev'ous Le vant' ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... behind the choir, is a group which excited my utmost interest; it seems to represent the Virgin and St. Anne, but might have another meaning. A figure in a nun's habit stands close against a pillar in a niche, and by her side is a little girl of about eleven years of age, in the full costume of the thirteenth century, one of whose hands touches her robe, and who appears under her protection. This charming ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... was bound to be there: else he could not have escaped. Conceive my fury when I recognized my own hired bravo, Antonio, who must have betrayed me, and remained instead of the prince. I opened a niche in the wall, kicked his rotten carcass into the lagoon, and, more wretched than ever, returned to this hell wherein I languish, while ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... run right away into the interior of the rock; the other on my left might possibly lead towards the arch by which I had entered the labyrinth. I took, therefore, the one to the left, and once more placing my torch in a niche I walked on, waving my stick in front of me. I had gone twenty paces or so, though it seemed five times that distance, when to my great delight I observed a bright glare reflected on the wall on the right, which, as I supposed, was opposite the arch I was in search of. So eager was I to ascertain ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... a decree that every duellist was to have his head cut off, and that head was to be set up on the scene of the fight. The veintiquatro got out of the difficulty like a clever man. He had the head sawed off a statue of the king, and set that up in a niche in the middle of the street in which the murder had taken place. The king and all the Sevillians thought this a very good joke. The street took its name from the lamp held by the old woman, the only witness of the ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... the room, at the most impassive aspect of the place, as at a place she never expected to leave; the darkening windows, the fast-shut door, the child leaning on the desk, watching them with sharp, incurious eyes—this would be her niche for ever. She would be left for ever with the crusts and the dregs. And Kerr's figure in the twilight seemed each time it moved to be on the point of vanishing into the grayness. He moved continually up and down the narrow spaces between the tables. He ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... found her niche in a congenial set at the Villa Camellia, was capable of feeling the pangs of homesickness, that unpleasant malady exhibited itself with far more serious symptoms in the case of another new girl who ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... soon explored. It contained a Cafe Maure, into which I peered. In the coffee niche the embers glowed. One or two ragged Arabs sat hunched upon the earthen divans playing a game of cards. At least I should have my coffee after my tinned dinner. I was turning to go back to the Bordj when the extreme desolation of the desert ...
— The Desert Drum - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... pebble, and pearl. Headlong I darted; at one eager swirl Gain'd its bright portal, enter'd, and behold! 'Twas vast, and desolate, and icy-cold; And all around—But wherefore this to thee Who in few minutes more thyself shalt see?— I left poor Scylla in a niche and fled. My fever'd parchings up, my scathing dread Met palsy half way: soon these limbs became 640 Gaunt, wither'd, sapless, ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... is just one which to-day stands forth as representing sensibility. In her own time she was thought to be something of a philosopher, and something more of a novelist. She consorted with all the clever men and women of her age. But now she holds a minute niche in history because of the fact that Napoleon stooped to hate her, and because she ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr |
