"Portal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the coach, the six sheep flew, and in less than four hours they reached the King's palace situated at the extremity of the capital. The portal was two hundred and twenty feet high, and one hundred wide; but words are wanting to express the materials of which it was built. It is plain such materials must have prodigious superiority over those pebbles and sand which we call gold ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... conflicting experiences, we should be mere machines. We must grow in every direction, using every faculty for our guidance, yet ever remembering there are mightier realms than reason, and that the human soul must often go beyond that portal, to catch glimpses ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... discontented and peevish because they are old,—because they feel that they must soon pass away from the earth. Could this be, if they believed that life on earth was only a preparation for an eternal life in heaven? Could they shrink with aversion at the thought of death if they believed it to be the portal of heaven? The follies and the vices, the weariness and the sadness, the discontent and the moroseness of life, all spring from the want of a just conception of its relations and its value, such as can be attained only by calm, deliberate reflection, out of which wise opinions ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... Mickiewicz, the great poet of Poland, long exiled from his country, looked on; while Polish women brought little pieces that had been scattered in the street, and threw into the flames. When the double-headed eagle was pulled down from the lofty portal of the Palazzo di Venezia, the people placed there, in its stead, one of white and gold, inscribed with the name, ALTA ITALIA; and instantly the news followed, that Milan, Venice, Modena, and Parma, were driving out ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... itself, as well as that of Grust, which lies within easy distance above it, is a quaint, old-fashioned place. The church is the chief attraction; in fact, immediately Miss Blunt found herself within the ancient exterior portal, she demanded paper and pencil, and although all the paper forthcoming was the back of an envelope and a telegraph form, managed to turn out an efficient representation of the old Roman fane. In exploring it afterwards at our leisure, we were struck by several peculiarities which ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... steps: far distant he descries Ascending by degrees magnificent Up to the wall of Heaven a structure high; At top whereof, but far more rich, appeared The work as of a kingly palace-gate, With frontispiece of diamond and gold Embellished; thick with sparkling orient gems The portal shone, inimitable on earth By model, or by shading pencil, drawn. These stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw Angels ascending and descending, bands Of guardians bright, when he from Esau fled To Padan-Aram, in the field of Luz Dreaming by night under ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... sad finale. From the portal of a house, as cheerless and dreary as can be imagined, in the month of January, with a black silk petticoat stretched on a white curtain thrown over her coffin for a pall, and an half-day Irish dragoon to act as chaplain over the grave, which was in a timber-yard, were the remains ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... upon the grass. From here I followed a narrow path through a wheat-field, the grain up to my shoulders, toward the log dwelling. A mangy little cur disputed my right to knock at the door; but, flourishing my two tin pails at him, he flew yelping to take refuge in the hen-coop. To my summons at the portal, there came no response, save the mewing of the cat within. It was clear that the people of Point Sandy ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... streets was entered, not through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet between two rocks of coral in the Indian sea; when first upon the traveller's sight opened the long ranges of columned palaces—each with its black boat moored at the portal—each with its image cast down, beneath its feet, upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the palace ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... below the road, on the side of a hill sweeping down to the Tweed; and was as yet but a snug gentleman's cottage, with something rural and picturesque in its appearance. The whole front was overrun with evergreens, and immediately above the portal was a great pair of elk horns, branching out from beneath the foliage, and giving the cottage the look of a hunting lodge. The huge baronial pile, to which this modest mansion in a manner gave birth was just emerging into existence; part of the walls, surrounded by scaffolding, ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... sad complain, to whom the fearful flee, Thou that art evermore prepared for all that is to be, Lord, there is left me no resource but at Thy door to knock; Yea, at whose portal shall I knock, if Thou be deaf to me? O Thou, the treasures of whose grace are in the one word "Be," Be favourable, I beseech, for all good is ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... been misinformed. The fine entrance, with its fifteenth century Spanish coat of arms over the Moorish portal, was kept by two civil guards. I walked up, and with the air of a tourist, inquired how soon the palace would be open to visitors. The men could not tell me. Was the Duke ill? They believed so. And as I could get nothing further from ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... stranger seemed to calculate the chances of passing them without being discovered. It was an exceedingly delicate manoeuvre, requiring great care and dexterity. Watching for the favorable moment the purpose was, however, accomplished; the tall man in the cloak at a bound passed within the portal and quickly secreted himself in the shadows of the inner court. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... On a prairie there is such an insistent stare of space, so great a lack of stopping-place for the mind, that this little piece of outdoors, with the sun shining in at its eastern end, was a veritable snug-harbor in an ocean of land. As she turned and looked out of its sunny portal, she told herself that if she had to live in the shack this place would ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... before the prophet the walls alone repelled. The terrace was a garden in which were lilies and sentries. For entrance there was a portal of red porphyry, above which was a balcony hemmed by a ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... where his third visit should close. In the hall are deposited four colossal specimens of sculpture from Nimroud. The first of these, to which the visitor should direct his attention, is a colossal figure of a winged human-headed bull, found by Mr. Layard at the portal of a door at Nimroud. Of the discovery of this marvellous specimen of ancient Assyrian art, Mr. Layard gives a graphic account:—"I was returning to the mound, when I saw two Arabs urging their mares to the top of their speed. On approaching me, they stopped. 'Hasten, O Bey!' exclaimed one ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... of that New Earth divine, Conceived of seed immortal: She sings, "Not mine the holier shrine, But mine the cloudy portal!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... inner side of the moat a strong palisade of timber completed the defence. One portal, opening upon a drawbridge, formed the sole apparent means ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... part of the market-place and the door of the Rathaus, where she had received her brother's letter that morning. She knocked again and tried to lift the latch, but it was secured within. She listened, but could hear no approaching footsteps in the corridor. She leaned against the portal, and wondered if it was her fate to remain in the snow for the rest ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... beef alone, in an emergency, can make an ordinary pine door look like a wrought-iron gambling-house portal to the wolf. With salt and pepper and a tablespoonful of flour (first well stirred in a little cold water) 'twill serve—'tis not so deep as a lobster a la Newburg nor so wide as a church ...
— Options • O. Henry
... from point to point by enormous beams. The great nave and its two small lateral galleries are lighted solely by the rose-window of stained glass, which pierces with miraculous art the wall above the great portal, whose fortunate exposure permits a wealth of tracery and dentellated stone-work belonging to that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... a light and quite unsatisfactory flatiron; he re-re-retied his best spotted blue bow—it persisted in having the top flaps too short, but the retying gave him spiritual strength—and he modestly clumped into the aloof brick portal of the ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... the Angel at the portal was turned toward him in softening pity. "Mercy is for them who implore it, not claim it; there is Mercy also for thee. Turn thee, child of man, turn thee back the way thou camest to thy clayey tabernacle; in pity is it given thee to dwell in dust yet a little while. Be no longer ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... the soul. Her sorrow, too, is never childish—her lamentation has a dignity which belongs, I think, to no other woman: it claims your respect along with your tears. Her eye is brilliant and varying like the diamond; it is singularly well placed; "it pries," in Shakspeare's language, "through the portal of the head," and has every aid from brows flexible beyond all female parallel, contracting to disdain, or dilating with the emotions of sympathy, or pity, or anguish. Her memory is tenacious and exact—her articulation clear and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... maltreated Tom obeyed promptly; and as the prince burst through the portal, half-smothered with royal wrath, the soldier fetched him a sounding box on the ear that sent him whirling ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... gray stone was still exposed, its smoothly chiseled face pitted with the scars of battle. The massive portal yawned, somber and sorrowful, before us, giving a glimpse of ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... well," said the other, and in half an hour he returned to Brendon, found him chatting with Jenny in the dark portal of the silkworm house, and ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... and a few fragments of rubbish, and then the midnight wanderers stole back to the prison, but only to stop short in the shadow with Lawrence chilled by horror. For, as they were about to step up to the portal, one of the guards yawned loudly, rose, and walked to the rug, drew it aside, and ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... and desirable day for excursions, which in the neighborhood of Aix are especially charming, particularly the drive to Chambery, one of the most quaintly interesting of towns, through the magnificent break in the Alps at whose southern portal stands La Grande Chartreuse. All this truly healthy disposition of time and of eating is one reason why a person comes home from a foreign watering-place in so much better trim, morally, mentally, and ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... passed through Portici, on the road to the base of Vesuvius, it appeared to me that I saw a stone which had an ancient Roman inscription upon it, and which occupied the place of a portal in the modern ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... and has certainly repainted her dormitories. In truth, when I last revisited that familiar scene and looked upon the flammantia mania of the old halls, "Massachusetts" with the dummy clock-dial, "Harvard" with the garrulous belfry, little "Holden" with the sculptured unpunishable cherub over its portal, and the rest of my early brick-and-mortar acquaintances, I could not help saying to myself that I had lived to see the peaceable establishment of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Immortal, Put on mortality, And down from Eden's portal Brought this sweet life to be, At the sublime archangel He laughed with veiled eyes, For he bore within his bosom ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... enough to determine which part of the wall was the door, and when she did discover the seam that indicated it, Myra could find no lock, lever or spring to open the portal. ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... St. Mark and the Ox of St. Luke similarly placed below. A straight band of masonry crosses beneath the lunette, and has carved on it twelve figures, now much mutilated, but supposed to have represented the twelve Apostles. All the sculptured work of the portal has suffered greatly from age and exposure and from the hand of man. In the recent restoration the coping has been renewed, the shafts have been given separate bases once more, and many of the most worn ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide—abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... unto the heights of the castle, and he stood with her before its gates. And Gustahem, when he saw them, opened the portal, and Gurdafrid stepped within the threshold, but when Sohrab would have followed after her she shut the door upon him. Then Sohrab saw that she had befooled him, and his fury knew no bounds. But ere he was recovered from his surprise ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Latin, while the organ pealed forth softly. The King gave away the bride, as he had said, and afterwards claimed first kiss for his pains. Then the happy party dispersed, and Robin and Marian passed out again through the portal, man and wife. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... sighed near me a voice soft as a zephyr-breath. I turned, and beheld a constellation of the radiant inhabitants of this ethereal country clustered about a portal, whose frame-work was of shining stones, and whose firm, but slender bars, were of purest gold.—"Favoured mortal!" (the speaker was beside me)—"favoured beyond even thine own conception, know ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... expressed; and candour of spirit shone through the transparency she was, if that mild taper could be said to shine in proof of a vitality rarely notified to the outer world by the opening of her mouth; chiefly then, though not malevolently to command: as the portal of some snow-bound monastery opens to the outcast, bidding it be known that the light across the wolds was not deceptive and a glimmer of light subsists among the silent within. The life sufficed to her. She was like a marble effigy seated upright, requiring but to be laid at ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Lapithae. Oh! all too happy tillers of the soil, Could they but know their blessedness, for whom Far from the clash of arms all-equal earth Pours from the ground herself their easy fare! What though no lofty palace portal-proud From all its chambers vomits forth a tide Of morning courtiers, nor agape they gaze On pillars with fair tortoise-shell inwrought, Gold-purfled robes, and bronze from Ephyre; Nor is the whiteness of their wool distained ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... being done to the porch, and the jasmine had been cleared away altogether. Mr. Brumley could not quite understand what was in progress; Sir Isaac he learnt afterwards had found a wonderful bargain in a real genuine Georgian portal of great dignity and simplicity in Aleham, and he was going to improve Black Strand by transferring it thither—with the utmost precaution and every piece numbered—from its original situation. Mr. Brumley stood among the preparatory debris ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... strange the sculptures that adorn these towers! This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers, And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers! But fiends and dragons from the gargoyled eaves Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves, And underneath the traitor Judas lowers! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... narrow and minute,[29] It cannot be perceived by foolish men, Blinded by vain illusions of the world. E'en the clear-sighted, who discern the way And seek to enter, find the portal barred And hard to be unlocked. Its massive bolts Are pride and passion, avarice ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... forward on its amicable castors as a carriage was heard to stop outside. Mr. Ferdinand flung open the portal, and the Prophet glided out excitedly ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... other. Prince ARTHUR, you know, asked me to resume Debate at to-night's Sitting. Great opportunity; meant to make most of it; then, when I'm in my place conning my manuscript, Prince ARTHUR gives me up. Mr. G. reads text of PORTAL'S instructions, and shows we've nothing to complain about or to criticise. Rather hard on a young fellow not unduly given to speech-making. Tell you what, TOBY, if you've got three-quarters of an hour ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... pathway and portal, To the life that shall die nevermore; And the cross leadeth up to the crown everlasting, The Jordan to Canaan's ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... Cousin This or That's home as a country place. This reached fever heat after visits to Great Aunt Laura who lived in a roomy old house painted white with green blinds in a town bordering on Lake Champlain. A pair of horse-chestnut trees flanked the walk to the front door,—a portal unopened save for weddings, funerals, ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... then stretched the pale warrior senseless upon the marble floor. In that deep trance he remained till the dawn of morning; and when he awoke, all the pageantry of the previous evening was gone, and he lay beneath the ruined portal—himself arrayed in wretched weeds, and his gallant courser, which had borne him unharmed amid the din of battle, gone. Centuries have passed by, yet still the wandering knight lingers amid the desolate towers of Dunstanborough, vainly attempting to gain an ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... nave, and the chapter-house; Under the Edwards the nave unfolded itself farther west, and the Abbot's House and Jerusalem Chamber were built. Richard II. was very fond of the Abbey, and rebuilt, at great expense, the famous north portal, often spoken of as "The Beautiful Gate," or "Solomon's Porch." By Henry V. the nave was prolonged nearly to its present length. It was just completed in time for the grand procession to sweep along ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... moment of how sweet and familiar the conception of heaven as the Father's house makes it to us. There is something awful, even to the best and holiest souls, in the thought of even the glories beyond. The circumstances of death, which is its portal, our utter unacquaintance with all that lies behind the veil, the terrible silence and distance which falls upon our dearest ones as they are sucked into the cloud, all tend to make us feel that there is much that is solemn and awful even in the thought of eternal future blessedness. But how ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... of this explanation, and stooping to pass through the low aperture, found herself close to a pretentiously carved portal. The electric bell revealed itself to groping fingers, and to her surprise a few seconds after she had touched it, without hearing a sound, ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... both soon did ready stand; Each did take unto him / a mighty shield in hand, And passed without the portal / there to keep the way. Thus were the strangers guarded, / and trusty watchers ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... under the twelve apostles, that decorate the grand portal, and entered the cathedral. The interior is as fine as the exterior. The columns are massive, the ceiling groined; the style is the decorated or geometric architecture, that prevailed in Europe in the thirteenth century. The cardinal's gothic throne is on the right. The four altars are of carved ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... alighted at her door, which was too narrow for the magnificent green silk frock, so that it vanished in the hall with rustlings of revolt and with all its folds muttering. A few minutes later, a tall, massive portal on the Rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes, bearing on the escutcheon that betrayed the former family mansion, beneath half-effaced armorial bearings, a sign in blue letters, Wall Papers, was thrown wide open to allow the wedding-carriage ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... picturesque simplicity of the place, and next morning he suggested that they stay a few days and enjoy the advantage of having some one other than themselves cook their meals and make their beds. The hotel, a relic of old times, with its patio and long portal, its rooms whose lower floors were on the ground level, its unpretentious spaciousness, appealed strongly to Bartley as something unusual in the way of a hostelry. It seemed restful, romantic, inviting. It was a place where a man might write, dream, loaf, ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... down in the guidebooks as the Biarritz or the Brighton of Spain. It has of course a new quarter in the provincial-elegant style (fresh stucco cafes, barber shops, and apartments to let), looking out upon a planted promenade and a charming bay, locked in fortified heights, with a narrow portal to the ocean. I walked about for two or three hours, and devoted most of my attention to the old quarter, the town proper, which has a great frowning gate upon the harbor, through which you look along a vista of gaudy house fronts, balconies, and awnings, surmounted by a narrow strip of sky. Here ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... in Christendom than the great cathedral of Rheims. The thirteenth century, so prolific of splendid churches, had expended all its wealth of lavish decoration on the gorgeous portal, with its array of saints and sovereigns, under which passed Charles VII. of France, with the Maid of Orleans on his right hand. Hurried as had been the preparations for the ceremonial, the even then ancient ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... silently by the river and the lake to Cloondadauv. They reached the promontory by daybreak, and as soon as the hour of legal action had arrived they were landed, and surrounded the "castle." The ancient portal was found to be blocked with heavy stones and trunks of trees, nor did any adit appear to be available, till a young gentleman who had accompanied the party as a volunteer, discovered in one wall ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... skeleton was particularly complete and accurate. He describes very fully the bones of the head, including the perforated plate of the ethmoid bone, the sutures, the teeth, and the skeletal bones generally. Portal states that Celsus knew of the semicircular canals. He understood the structure of the joints, and points out that cartilage is ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... later Broffin had followed the huge hoof-prints of the great English trap-horse to the driveway portal of the De Soto grounds where they were lost on the pebbled carriage approach. Strolling on through the grounds into the lake-fronting lobby of the Inn, he was soon able to account for Raymer. The young iron-founder ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Not so; these walls Are high and strong, and guarded. Treason has To penetrate through many a winding way, And massy portal; but in the pavilion ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... all,—serene and self-contained old residents, who held themselves above the newly-rich who were beginning to crowd "the avenues" and force their way with a golden wedge,—and many who lived in splendid houses on the avenue had never been admitted within that dignified portal. They now began to drop in, elegantly dressed women and handsomely appointed girls. Mrs. Wentworth received them all with that graciousness that was her native manner. Miss Brooke, having secured her "new cap," was seated at her side, her faded face ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... may well be cited. After some race riots in 1894 in which crimes had been committed on both sides, MacBride, "a respectable Negro of Portal, Georgia, was beaten, kicked, and shot to death for trying to defend from a whipping at the hands of a crowd of white men, his wife who was confined with a baby three days old." No offence on the part of the wife or the three days old baby is recorded, but the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... stop examining me and wander away after some other toy. The dinner and my conversational beginnings ended, I noted for the first time that almost all those who had surrounded me at first were gone. It is odd, too, how speedily I came to disregard these little people. I went out through the portal into the sunlit world again as soon as my hunger was satisfied. I was continually meeting more of these men of the future, who would follow me a little distance, chatter and laugh about me, and, having smiled ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... bade me search the tomb." Until now Atma had not observed that they were in the shadow of Sangita's tomb. The vines were torn from its ancient portal, which hung open ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... what had happened before his eyes suggested to him that the disease was due to a poison which could be conveyed from one person to another. Moreover, his interest and his power of insight led to further comparison. Clearly, the open wound on the physician's finger had been the portal through which the poison entered; but where was there a similar portal in obstetrical patients? The answer was plain. The birth-canal at the time of delivery is always an open wound. There the poison entered, and child-bed fever ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... serenity of a natural law. Regarding the operation of that law there are perhaps but three valid conjectures. Rome entertained all of them. There, there was a tomb on which was written Umbra. Before it was another on which was engraved Nihil. Between the two was a portal behind which the Nec plus ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... forgotten,—when even the features and architectural characteristics of the mansion in which it was merely a piece of furniture had been forgotten. And, as he gazed at it, he half thought himself an actor in a fairy portal [tale?]; and would not have been surprised—at least, he would have taken it with the composure of a dream—if the mimic portal had unclosed, and a form of pigmy majesty had appeared within, beckoning him to enter and find the revelation of what had so long perplexed him. The key of ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had come to be the portal through which I stepped from safety into meddling. Yet I opened it now with laughter peeping from my sleeve. To bait the Englishman in Huron seemed a good-natured enough jest, and full ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... the metropolis at last from the summit of Notting Hill. They drove down the Oxford road, bounded on either side by green hedges, with here and there a house—the busy Oxford Street of our day—turned down the Hay Market to Charing Cross, and passed by Essex Gate and its companion portal, the Court Gate, through "the Court," now known as Whitehall, emerging upon "the King's Street." There was no ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... gnashing Through its coral-reef lips flashing,— "Shall I let this scheming mortal Shut with stone my shining portal, Curb my tide, and check my play, Fence with wharves my shining bay? Rather let me be drawn out ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... curving, Bow of promise, upper lip! Set them free, with gracious swerving; Let the wing-words float and dip. DUMB ART THOU? O Love immortal, More than words thy speech must be; Childless yet the tender portal Of the ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... nothing. Not even the breathings of her sleeping infant reached her ear; nor was she conscious of the pressure of its body against her own. Fixed in a dreamy, inward gaze were her eyes; and her soul withdrew itself from the portal at which, a little while before, it hearkened into the world of nature. At last there came a motion of the eyelids—a quivering motion—then they closed, slowly, over the blue orbs beneath; and soon after ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... pang of sweet emotion Thrilled the Master of the Ring, When he first beheld the lady Through the stable portal spring! Midway in his wild grimacing Stopped the piebald-visaged Clown; And the thunders of the audience ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... the prisoner, when taken out to die, was conducted across the gallery to the other side, and being then led back into the other compartment, or cell, upon the bridge, was there strangled. The low portal through which the criminal was taken into this cell is now walled up; but the passage is still open, and is still known by the name of the "Bridge of Sighs." The pozzi are under the flooring of the chamber at the foot of the bridge. They were formerly twelve; but on the first arrival of the French, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... White House, President Harrison took his station in the reception-room, and the multitude entered the front portal, passed through the vestibule into the reception-room, where they had an opportunity to shake hands with the President, then passed down the rear steps and out through the garden. At night there were three inauguration balls, the prices of admission ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... his superior crossed the street and quickly entered the ornate portal of Shultberger's cabaret, which was in reality the ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... soul passes Eternity's portal, In that Hereafter of Being Elsewhere, When this poor earthworm becomes an Immortal, Risen to Life Incorruptible There; If in some semblance of spirit and feature, Still to be recognised one and the same, Not in its entity quite a new creature, But as a growth ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the cathedrals, after all: Santa Maria del Fiore, with Brunelleschi's dome, which Michel Angelo wouldn't copy and couldn't beat; Milan, aflame with statues, like a thousand-tapered candelabrum; Tours, with its embroidered portal, so like the lace of an archbishop's robe; even Notre Dame of Paris, with its new spire; Rouen, Amiens, Chartres,—we must give them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... beat. Thronged erelong was the church with men. Without, in the churchyard, Waited the women. They stood by the graves, and hung on the headstones Garlands of autumn-leaves and evergreens fresh from the forest. Then came the guard from the ships, and marching proudly among them Entered the sacred portal. With loud and dissonant clangor Echoed the sound of their brazen drums from ceiling and casement,— Echoed a moment only, and slowly the ponderous portal Closed, and in silence the crowd awaited the will of the soldiers. Then uprose their commander, and spake from ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... delighted. The roof was of copper externally, and was painted black, while the walls, in common with those of the church, were staringly white. To this mausoleum there was no access from the church. It had a portal and steps of its ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... such a belief is held, it seems reasonable enough that a dead grandfather should reclaim his own soul for his personal use before he sets out for the spirit land; else how could he expect to be admitted to that blissful abode if on arriving at the portal he were obliged to explain to the porter that he had no soul about him, having left that indispensable article behind in the person of his grandchild? "Then you had better go back and fetch it. There is no admission ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... she would one day take me over the prison. I claimed it, and begged that I might be allowed to have a few words with that particular inmate. It was not according to the regulations, but my friend was a privileged person. That afternoon I passed with her under that dreary portal, and after walking along interminable white-washed passages, and past how many locked and numbered doors, my friend whispered to a warder, who ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... are, Mary," he announced to the woman standing in the portal. "I just brought you a little girl—who—is lost. Take care of her while I go after the—other. She didn't take so kindly to Jim as this one did," and with a friendly little push, he ushered Dagmar into the narrow hall, and turned ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... disease, constipation, the so-called scientific physicians, from the early history of medication to the present time, have had one immutable theory as to the leading cause, and one grand motto as to the "safe and sure" cure. They have always prescribed remedies for this malady on the theory of portal congestion and hepatic derangement, and hence their supreme ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... World-eternal, Onward, onward, is my face; Resting spot in vain I wish for, Till in thee I find my place: Death's dark portal, Though so dark ...
— Favourite Welsh Hymns - Translated into English • Joseph Morris
... after him the children pressed; Great was the joy in every breast. "He never can cross that mighty top! He's forced to let the piping drop, And we shall see our children stop!" When, lo, as they reached the mountain-side, A wondrous portal opened wide, As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed; And the Piper advanced and the children followed, And when all were in to the very last, The door in the mountain-side shut fast. Did I say, all? No! One was lame, And could ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... E'en Doomsday, a poor insignificant reptile; Half lawyer, half actor, pert, dull, and inglorious, Obscure, and unheard of—but now I'm notorious: Fame has but two gates, a white and a black one; The worst they can say is, I got in at the back one: If the end be obtained 'tis equal what portal I enter, since I'm to be render'd immortal: So clysters applied to the anus, 'tis said, By skilful physicians, give ease to the head— Though my title be spurious, why should I be dastard, A man is a man though he should be a bastard. Why sure 'tis some comfort ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... end of its almanack! To form plans and projects in such a precarious life as this, resembles the enchanted castles"of fairy legends, in which every gate Was guarded by giants, dragons, etc. Death or diseases bar every portal through which we mean to pass; and, though we may escape them and reach the last chamber, what a wild adventurer is he that centres his hopes at the end of such an avenue! I am contented with the beggars of the threshold, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... has bound Your lips the truth to screen, The nameless something gathers fast As mist the hills between; You wrap you in your cloak of pride, The words are never spoken That might have thrown the portal wide, ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... the level light of the setting sun, which fell across her from the wide portal, and once more our eyes met on her face, but they would ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... his exploits in astrology, chemistry, and metallurgy, inter alia his brazen head, of which alone the nose remains, a precious relic, and (to use the words of the excellent author of the Oxford Guide) still conspicuous over the portal, where it erects itself as a symbolical illustration of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... opening it saw by the light of a lamp which he had seized upon the way, a female figure crouching in the portal. It hurried swiftly past him and glided up the stairs. He looked for pursuers. There were none ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... muggy January evening when I journeyed to this suburban retreat. It rained dismally, and the wind nearly blew the porter out of his lodge as he obeyed our summons at the Dantesque portal of the institution, in passing behind which so many had literally abandoned hope. I tried to fancy how it would feel if one were really being consigned to that receptacle by interested relatives, as we read in three-volume novels; but it was no use. I was one of a merry company on that ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... portal plain was writ, Confronting each at length alone to pass Out of its beauty into night star-lit, ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... clang of the portal was heard, a sound at which the stranger started, stepped hastily to the window, and looked with an air of alarm at Ravenswood, when he saw that the gate of the court was shut, and ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... introduction of Communism more than to the advent of Socialism. They see in Socialism merely an intermediate stage towards their final goal. "If the millennial haven of Communism is to be reached by mankind generally, it must be through the disciplinary portal of Socialism."[1043] "Communism, the final goal of Socialism, is a form of Social Economy very closely akin to the principles set forth in the Sermon on the Mount."[1044] "Socialism and freedom 'gang thegither.' ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... lights are streaming In brightness like the morn, And pealing far amid the vastness I hear the gyallarhorn *** The heart of starry space is throbbing With songs of minstrels old; And now on high Walhalla's portal ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... by the narrow gate known as the Town Gate, through which, as through that greater portal of Moscow, every ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... were both surprised when they entered together the rue Massilon, which is opposite to the small north portal of the cathedral, and turned together into the rue Chanoinesse, at the point where, towards the rue de la Colombe, it becomes the rue des Marmousets. When Godefroid stopped before the arched portal of Madame de la Chanterie's house, the priest turned towards him ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... bridal feast of Sir Agloval and the queen, and thus were they wedded to each other. There was bliss and great rejoicing fourteen days, even till nightfall did they hold high feast with open doors; never a portal was shut. There was feasting and great merriment; there were all well served with everything on earth that they might desire. Many rich gifts were given, good steeds, raiment of fair colours, many shillings, many pounds, great plenty of all things by which men may the more blithely live. The minstrels ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... and anger, not because the higher life calls upon you to renounce them. The higher life begins for us, my daughter, when we renounce our own will to bow before a Divine law. That seems hard to you. It is the portal of wisdom, and freedom, and blessedness. And the symbol of it hangs before you. That wisdom is the religion of the cross. And you stand aloof from it; you are a pagan; you have been taught to say, 'I am as the wise men who lived before the time when the Jew of Nazareth ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... openings, into which ran arms of the sea, forming gloomy channels of communication with the interior country; whilst on each side of their entrances the huge cliffs rose, like the pillars of some gigantic portal. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... induced to accept the hospitalities of the place, and mount my triumphal car, declared your intention to light a fire beneath and have the finest stew in all England? The castle is a stern place, perhaps; but how can I ever think it grim, with such a jolly old flatterer as you stationed at its portal? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... old and Gretel was only twelve. He was a solid, hearty-looking boy, with honest eyes and a brow that seemed to bear a sign GOODNESS WITHIN just as the little Dutch zomerhuis *{Summer house} wears a motto over its portal. Gretel was lithe and quick; her eyes had a dancing light in them, and while you looked at her cheek the color paled and deepened just as it does upon a bed of pink and white blossoms when the ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... lily, green-embower'd, beside a mossy wood, With golden cross uplifted, the small white chapel stood, But in that solemn hour, the light of moon and star Upon its portal shining, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... up while willingness" (docility) "unlocks the portal to the divine mysteries of God. I would not attempt to solve a mystery by intellect, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... all one way. So when a tall, light-haired young man and a little talkative lady came by, he rose half hesitatingly and followed them. Up the street they went, past stores and gay shops, across a broad square, until with a hundred others they entered the high portal of a great building. ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... you. To me home had never been a very pleasant place on account of sister's temper, but Joe had sanctified it, and I believed in it. I had believed in the Best Parlour, as a most elegant place, I had believed in the Front Door as a mysterious portal of the Temple of State, I had believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I had believed in the forge, as the glowing road to manhood and independence. Within a single year all this was changed. Now it was all coarse and common to me, and I would not have had Miss Havisham ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of their uneven steps. The music modulated and died away to the silence of the evening. The little church remained grey and ancient, and the six cypresses stood unmoved, unmoving, like guards before some sacred portal.... ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... side street toward the Export Club. Rusty—fresh from Kentucky psychology—doffed his cap and disappeared as Warren entered the Grecian portal. ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... olive-trees, which grew among a turmoil of mighty boulders, he had terraced out the slope and set his country home. At the edge of the rough path which led to the cottage from the ravine below was a ruined Norman arch. This served as a portal of entrance. Between it and the cottage was a well surrounded by crumbling walls, with stone seats built into them. Passing that, one came at once to the terrace of earth, fronted by a low wall with narrow seats ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... series of elaborate precautions. Among other things, I had the family vault so remodelled as to admit of being readily opened from within. The slightest pressure upon a long lever that extended far into the tomb would cause the iron portal to fly back. There were arrangements also for the free admission of air and light, and convenient receptacles for food and water, within immediate reach of the coffin intended for my reception. This coffin was warmly and softly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... portal to a long avenue excavated in a deeper-seated bed of coal. In some of the dark and dusty chambers which open here the miner's pick is heard, and now and then the muffled report of the miner's blast comes echoing through ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 31, June 10, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... enamoured of practice without knowledge are like the mariner who puts to sea in a vessel without rudder or compass, and who navigates without a course. Practice should always be based on sound theory; perspective is the guide and the portal of theory, and without it nothing can be well done in the ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... deep overhanging eaves, square-topped chimneys, and altogether with a Swiss air about it. There are idlers hanging about the door, for this is "Unkraut's," and the brisk air of musical instruments streams out of the open portal. Within all is motion and uproar. A large salle de danse occupies the greater part of the ground floor, the central portion of which is appropriated to the waltzers, while a broad slip on each side, beneath an overhanging gallery, running round the whole of the apartment, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... bed, finding that his ankle was much better and looked from the window. There was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen. He turned toward his door, just as a loud knock came on the portal. ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... of her; and as it nears the doorway he marks her eager, tremulous pose, and can almost see the beating of her heart. She has not turned fully towards the hall—just partially, as though a sidelong glance were all she dared give even in her joyous eagerness. Then a form suddenly darkens the portal, and just as suddenly a shadow of keen disappointment clouds her face. She turns abruptly, and once more gazes wistfully ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... eleven o'clock and thirty minutes on Saturday night, February 8th, 1690, when the enemy entered, divided their party, waylaid every portal and began the attack with a terrible war-whoop. Maulet attacked a garrison, where the only resistance was made. He soon forced the gate, slew the soldiers and burned the garrison. One of the French officers was wounded in forcing a house; but St. Helene came to his aid, the house was ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... her father, now filled by Shagpat. Before the palace grouped a great concourse and a multitude of all ages and either sex in that city, despite the blaze and the heat. Like roaring of a sea beyond the mountains was the noise that issued from them, and their eyes were a fire of beams against the portal of the palace. Now, she saw in the crowd one Shafrac, a shoemaker, and addressed him, saying, 'O Shafrac, the shoemaker, what's this assembly and how got together? for the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... only in all the town did not swing wide to receive him. The closed portal of the mansion of which he had been the proud young master, still said to him "Nevermore"—and he always had a creepy sensation when he passed it, which even the sight of the flower-garden he had loved, in fullest bloom, did ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... we train our youth? Not in the arts that are immortal, But in the greed for gains that speed From him who stands at Death's dark portal. ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... the ruby-colour'd portal open'd, Which to his speech did honey passage yield, 452 Like a red morn, that ever yet betoken'd Wrack to the seaman, tempest to the field, Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds, Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... noon camp in a grove of cottonwoods opposite the mouth of Vermilion River, we could plainly see the great portal a mile or two away, the Gate of Lodore, where all this tranquillity would end, for the river cuts straight into the heart of the mountains forming one of the finest canyons of the series where the water comes down ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh |
