"Chequer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through the open doors of the reception-rooms, the blossoms, white and red and pale lilac, came out vivid with the brilliance of flowers in a stream of sunshine; and Mrs. Gould, passing on, had the vividness of a figure seen in the clear patches of sun that chequer the gloom of open glades in the woods. The stones in the rings upon her hand pressed to her forehead glittered in the lamplight abreast of the door of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... any general comparison; they are quite infinite, from mere inlaid geometrical figures up to incrustations of elaborate bas-relief. The architect has perhaps more license in them, and more power of producing good effect with rude design than in any other features of the building; the chequer and hatchet work of the Normans and the rude bas-reliefs of the Lombards being almost as satisfactory as the delicate panelling and mosaic of the Duomo of Florence. But this is to be noted of all good wall ornament, that it retains the expression of firm and massive substance, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... carved western front a flood of light Streams from the setting sun, and colours bright Prophets, transfigured Saints, and Martyrs brave, In the vast western window of the nave; And on the pavement round the Tomb there glints A chequer-work of glowing sapphire-tints, And amethyst, and ruby—then unclose Your eyelids on the stone where ye repose, And from your broider'd pillows lift your heads, And rise upon your cold white marble beds; And, looking down ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... hedge with wild briar overtwined, And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind Upon their summer thrones; there too should be The frequent chequer of a youngling tree, That with a score of light green brethren shoots From the quaint mossiness of aged roots: Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters, The spreading bluebells; it may haply mourn That such fair clusters ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... ruin in the wood, Who as it seemed was gathering herbs and wild flowers. I had followed him at distance, seen him scale Its western wall, and by an easier entrance Stole after him unnoticed. There I marked, That mid the chequer work of light and shade, With curious choice he plucked no other flowers, But those on which the moonlight fell: and once I heard him muttering o'er the plant. A wizard— Some gaunt slave prowling here for ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... steps, built by the Colonial aristocracy—such as the Bird mansion in Chestnut Street by Ninth Street—had a marked and pleasing character, as had many of the quaint black and red-brick houses, whose fronts reminded one of the chequer-board map of our city. All of this quiet charm departed from them after they were surrounded by a newer and noisier life. I well remember one of these fine old Colonial houses. It had been the old ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... had gone round to Portsmouth with a load of timber for the dockyard. It was not my first trip there, for, you see, the transport was employed wholly on that service; and during my cruising on shore I had taken up my quarters at the Chequer Board, a house a little way from the common Hard, in the street facing the dockyard wall; for, you see, Tom, it was handy to us, as our ship laid at the wharf, off the mast pond, it being just outside the ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... the following manner:—The court having met, the names of twelve aldermen being separately written on small pieces of paper, are closely rolled up by the town clerk, and thrown into a purse, which is shaken by the two chamberlains standing upon the chequer, (a large table in the middle of the court,) and held open to the bailiffs, when each, according to seniority, takes out a roll. By this means the callers are decided, who, mounting the chequer, alternately call ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... thee speak. The master of thy galley still unlades Gift after gift; they block my court at last And pile themselves along its portico Royal with sunset, like a thought of thee: 10 And one white she-slave from the group dispersed Of black and white slaves (like the chequer-work Pavement, at once my nation's work and gift, Now covered with this settle-down of doves), One lyric woman, in her crocus vest Woven of sea-wools, with her two white hands Commends to me the strainer and the cup Thy lip hath bettered ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... all other countries, and the benefit of their own;—to the six thousand five hundred heroes of the half-pay, longing for tardy war;—to the hundred thousand promissory excisemen lying on the soul of the chancellor of the ex-chequer, and pining for the mortality of every gauger from the Lizard to the Orkneys;—and, to club the whole discomfort into one, to the entire race of the fine and superfine, who breathe the vital air, from five thousand a year to twenty times the rental, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... she passed up the flight of shallow steps on to the edge of the wide black-and-white chequer-board platform. It was sun-bathed, suspended, as it seemed, between that glorious prospect of city, mountain, sea, and the unsullied purity of the southern heavens. It was vacant, save for the solitary figure and the sharp-edged, yet amorphous, shadow cast by that same figure. For the young man ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... flowers that we behold each year In chequer'd meads their heads to rear, New rising from the tomb; The eglantines and honey daisies, And all those pretty smiling faces That still in age grow young— Even those do cry That though men die, Yet life from ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... above the river, we come to one of the many interesting houses that help to keep alive the old-world flavour of the town. Only a few years ago the old manor-house had a most picturesque and rather remarkable exterior, for its plaster walls were covered with a large black and white chequer-work and its overhanging eaves and tailing creepers gave it a charm that has since then been quite lost. The restoration which recently took place has entirely altered the character of the exterior, but inside everything has been preserved with just the care that should have been expended ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... I was drawn—[13] A realm of pleasance, many a mound, And many a shadow-chequer'd lawn Full of the city's stilly sound, [14] And deep myrrh-thickets blowing round The stately cedar, tamarisks, Thick rosaries [15] of scented thorn, Tall orient shrubs, and obelisks Graven with emblems of the time, In honour of the golden ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... "'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays: Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays, And one by one back in ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... angles, and dotted with pock-marks. For a lord, his purse was very bare of guineas, and nature had made up for it by giving him a belly full of pride. For him, the Highland line had been the boundary of the known world, so that his mind was a chequer-work ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... April morning; or send him aboard at Liberty Street in an October dusk. Poor soul, his mind will buzz (for years to come) after adequate speech to tell those cliffs and scarps, amethyst and lilac in the mingled light; the clear topaz chequer of window panes; the dull bluish olive of the river, streaked and crinkled with the churn of the screw! Many a poet has come to her in the wooing passion. Give him six months, he is merely her Platonist. He lives content with placid companionship. Where are his adjectives, his verbs? ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... as the servant announced 'Miss Levering.' It is seldom that in this particular stratum of London life anything so uncontrolled and uncontrollable as a 'sensation' is permitted to chequer the even distribution of subdued good humour that reigns so modestly in the drawing-rooms of the Tunbridge world. If any one is so ill-advised as to bring to these gatherings anything resembling a sensation, ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... impressive ceremony of the day was celebrated—and reflect the light back upon the people. The two side walls were also decorated with great gold plates, about two feet square, richly engraved, and arranged in a chequer pattern, a square of gold alternating with a square of the white marble wall of the building from top to bottom and from end to end, each of the white marble squares having in its centre a gold ornament about the size of one's ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... her, have not deceived her more than I have done. I thank God I have a clear conscience for deceiving her, and for money matters. I think I may justly say I have been the only cause of more gain to her coffers than all her chequer-men have been. But so is the hap of some, that all they do is nothing, and others that do nothing, do all, and have all the thanks. But I would this were all the grief I carry with me; but God is my comfort, and on Him I cast all, for there is no surety in this world beside. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to spend a few weeks with an old family friend in London, where there were daughters who had always been her holiday friends, and with whom she exchanged letters, on big square pages of paper, filled to the very utmost with small delicate handwriting, crossed over so that they looked like chequer-work, and going into all the flaps and round the seal. They did not come above once in a month or six weeks, and contained descriptions of what the damsels had seen, thought, heard, read, or felt; so that they were often really ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dwellings. The length of this room within was one hundred and ten feet, breadth forty-two, and height twenty feet: the ceiling painted with circles, squares, and polygons, whimsically disposed, and loaded with a great variety of colours. The floor was paved with grey marble flag stones laid chequer-wise. The throne, placed in a recess, was supported by rows of pillars painted red like those without. It consisted entirely of wood, not unlike mahogany, the carving of which was exquisitely fine. The only furniture was ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... cap. His shoulder-blades, like a mortar. His hips, like a wimble. His breast, like a game at nine- His belly as big as a tun, buttoned pins. after the old fashion, with a His paps, like a hornpipe. girdle riding over the middle His armpits, like a chequer. of his bosom. His shoulders, like a hand-barrow. His navel, like a cymbal. His arms, like a riding-hood. His groin, like a minced pie. His fingers, like a brotherhood's His member, like a slipper. andirons. His purse, like ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... perplex, Whom maids and metaphors conspire to vex! In studious deshabille behold her sit, A letter'd gossip and a housewife wit: At once invoking, though for different views, Her gods, her cook, her milliner, and muse. Round her strew'd room a frippery chaos lies, A chequer'd wreck of notable and wise. Bills, books, caps, couplets, combs, a varied mass, Oppress the toilet and obscure the glass; Unfinished here an epigram is laid, And there a mantua-maker's bill unpaid. There new-born plays foretaste the town's applause, There dormant patterns ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... He had some aim, she had forgotten what. Their progress was confused and very slow, But at the last they reached a lonely spot, A garden far above the highest shot Of soaring steeple. At their feet, the town Spread open like a chequer-board laid down. ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... instinctive boldness—like a fire Pent up in earth, whose forces ne'er expire, By grossest fuel nourished, but immured In dingy night, shine heavy and obscured; Sustain'd by this thro' all the scenes of strife, Whose dark succession form'd his chequer'd life, He ne'er the soul's sublimer courage felt, That warms the heart, and teaches it to melt; That nurses liberty's expanding seeds, And teems prolific with the noblest deeds. To guide the storm of battle o'er the plain, Condense its force, expand it, or restrain; ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker |
