"Trefoil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... South, the leaf of the oxalis, and strawberry, and clover, fostering the same in their simple manner. I suppose it to be the most savage and natural of notions about Deity; a prismatic idol-shape of Him, rude as a triangular log, as a trefoil grass. I do not find how long Triglaph held his state on St. Mary's Hill. "For a time," says Carlyle, "the priests all slain or fled—shadowy Markgraves the like—church and state lay in ashes, and Triglaph, like a triple ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the two did not fit. Look at the west window of our choir, and you will see what I mean. The upright mullions break off into bough curves graceful enough: but these are cut short—as I hold, spoiled—by circular and triangular forms of rose and trefoil resting on them as such forms never rest in nature; and the whole, though beautiful, is only half beautiful. It is fragmentary, unmeaning—barbaric, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... removed from their places, and had been ranged along the walls of the church, leaning against the string-course. The remaining space had been levelled, except a broad walk which led up to the church, and past it to the opposite gate; and it had been all sown with various kinds of trefoil, which had shot up and flowered ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... He confesses his part heresies, which are mere opinions, while his orthodoxy is full of heretical errors. His Trinity is a mere trefoil, a 31, which is no mystery at all, but a common object of the senses. The mystery is, that one is three, that is, each being the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... been preserved by the Count's descendants with jealous care, even until this day. I have said that no man could read the inscriptions on the rings: they were all the same—the three as like as the leaves of a trefoil. They were all large enough for the largest man's thumb, and made of the purest crown gold: the shield was of a circular form, bearing in the centre the figure of a Knight Templar in full armour, with spur and ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... Henry III.'s Chapel in Westminster Abbey is another chair, similar, but lacking the trefoil Gothic arches, which are carved on the sides of the original chair; this was made for and used by Mary, daughter of James II. and wife of William III., on the occasion of their double coronation. Mr. Hungerford Pollen has given ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... three towns, quite distinct one from the other, yet joined, like a trefoil. As you stand on the broad boulevard leading above the first town, the other two spread out beneath on either hand. The churches of Notre Dame, of St. Eutrope, and the cathedral of St. ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... perfido. Treasure trezoro. Treasurer kasisto. Treat (to feast) regali. Treat (medicinally) kuraci. Treat (to discuss) trakti. Treatise traktato. Treatment (medical) kuracado. Treaty kontrakto, traktajxo. Tree arbo. Trefoil trifolio. Trellis palisplektajxo. Tremble tremi. Trembling tremo—ado. Tremendous grandega. Tremor tremeto, skueto. Tremulous trema, skueta. Trench fosajxo. Trenchant akra. Trencher lignotelero. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... a lofty knoll of trees. It was a stout little place of early English architecture, lifted high above the surrounding country and having a free horizon of sea and land. It consisted of a chancel, nave and south porch. Its bell cote held one bell; and within was a Norman font, a trefoil headed piscina, and ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... are of beautiful sculpture, and, as such, have lately been engraved upon a larger scale, in an Account of a Tour in Normandy, in 1818, (II. p. 27) which work also contains a general view of the ruins of Jumieges, and a representation of some ancient trefoil arches ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... the prejudiced, and the selfish. All sorts of herbs were put upon the market to offset its popularity; such as onions, sage, marjoram, the Arctic bramble, the sloe, goat-weed, Mexican goosefoot, speedwell, wild geranium, veronica, wormwood, juniper, saffron, carduus benedictus, trefoil, wood-sorrel, pepper, mace, scurry grass, ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... back to preach the Gospel to them, and deliver them from a worse bondage than they had made him suffer. So many did he convert, and such zealous Christians were they, that Ireland used to be called the Isle of Saints; and it has never forgotten the trefoil, or shamrock leaf, by which St. Patrick taught his converts to enter into the great mystery, how Three could yet ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and beyond Lake Itasca, and its waters have an elevation of probably seven feet above that lake, being connected therewith by a small, swift stream. Lake Itasca is composed of three arms, extending in the form of a trefoil, having a length of five miles and an average width of about one mile. The upper, or southern end of its middle arm apparently terminates in a swamp, which might easily have deceived any one not familiar with the country. But Chenowagesic, Captain Glazier's Indian guide, who had for years ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... In juice of rue, And trefoil too; In marrow of bear And blood of Trold, Be cool'd the spear, Three times cool'd, When not from blazes Which ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... groining and fret-work, and alights finally and fatally on a red chimney-top. He might as well have built a Gothic aisle at an entrance to a coal wharf. We have no scruple in saying that the man who could desecrate the Gothic trefoil into an ornament for a chimney has not the slightest feeling, and never will have any, of its beauty or its use; he was never born to be an architect, and never ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... us, for I think he was ashamed of our cowardly behaviour. The land here is of an excellent soil, and the climate is quite healthy; the soil being full of good herbs, as mints, calamint, plantain, ribwort, trefoil, scabious, and such like. We set sail from Saldanha bay on the 27th of December, and doubled the Cape of Good Hope on the last ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... both counties are in great measure flat and sandy, and are the home of many rare plants. A number of species of light soils and of gravelly shores have here their Irish headquarters, such as the Round-headed Trefoil (Trifolium glomeratum) the Sea-Stock (Matthiola sinuata), the rare Sea-Cudweed (Diotis candidissima), and the Wild Asparagus (A. officinalis). The Murrough, a great gravel beach backed by salt marshes which extends from ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... figure, it is true, bears some resemblance to a spade, but no giant of fiction is depicted with a club with a triple head. The explanation is that we have adopted the French pattern, carreau (see p. 161), diamond, c[oe]ur, heart, pique, pike, spear-head, trefle, trefoil, clover-leaf, but have given to the two latter the names used in the Italian and Spanish pattern, which, instead of the pike and trefoil, has the sword (Ital. spada) and mace (Ital. bastone). Etymologically both spades are identical, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... seven years since, I was sketching a picturesque trefoil-headed door leading into this part of the vault; and the place being at that time in great confusion with coffins, remains of bodies, some of which were dried like mummies, &c., I could find no better ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... out in search of more food. Thus I should explain a case which I heard of lately of Anthocera trifolii, abundant for years in one corner of a certain field, and only there; while there was just as much trefoil all round for its larvae as there was in the selected spot. I can, I say, only give hints: but they will suffice, I hope, to show the path of thought into which I want young naturalists to turn ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... on fresh trefoil, was killed and opened immediately,—that is, before the process of rumination had commenced. He (M. Flourens) found the greatest part of this herb (easily recognised by its leaves, which were still almost entire,) in the paunch; but he also found a certain portion ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... immediate sanction of the Divine Trinity was represented by three fishes placed together in the form of a triangle. So numerous, indeed were such Christian symbols after the 9th century that a mere enumeration of them would occupy considerable space. Every trefoil symbolized the Holy Trinity; every quatrefoil the four Evangelists; every cross the Crucifixion, or the martyrdom of some saint; and in Gothic ornament and decoration, we find the Chalice, the Crown of Thorns, the Dice, the ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... upon it. We walked up a brave old avenue to the church, with ships sailing on our left hand the whole way. Before the altar lies a lank brass knight, hight William Fienis, chevalier, who obiit c.c.c.c.v. that is in 1405. By the altar is a beautiful tomb, all in our trefoil taste, varied into a thousand little canopies and patterns, and two knights reposing on their backs. These were Thomas, Lord Dacre, and his only son Gregory, who died sans issue. An old grayheaded beadsman of the family talked to us of a blot in the scutcheon; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... that from it druggists obtain salt of lemons. Twenty pounds of leaves yield between two and three ounces of oxalic acid by crystallization. Names locally given the plant in the Old World are wood sour or sower, cuckoo's meat, sour trefoil, and shamrock—for this is St. Patrick's own flower, the true shamrock of the ancient Irish, some claim. Alleluia, another folk-name, refers to the joyousness of the Easter season, when the plant comes ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... vagrants of the Court of Miracles who played at cards with packs of their own, some of which have come down to us. The eight of clubs, for instance, represented a huge tree bearing eight enormous trefoil leaves, a sort of fantastic personification of the forest. At the foot of this tree a fire was burning, over which three hares were roasting a huntsman on a spit, and behind him, on another fire, hung a steaming pot, whence emerged the head of a dog. Nothing can be more melancholy than these ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... porch, almost facing the entrance to St. Mary Hall. The date of this is not later than 1300. Each jamb of the outside arch has four external and two internal attached shafts; the pointed arch is deeply moulded, while the arch rising from the fourth shaft is of round-headed trefoil form. The ceiling is vaulted with diagonal and intermediate ribs, and has the appearance of having ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... hand; the other two are S. John and S. Andrew. Below plain, straight stringcourses, at the foot of these statues, are three rose windows of exceptional grace and beauty. The central one has eight spokes radiating from a flat medallion enriched with conventional foliage; these support trefoil-headed arches which have their outer mouldings thickly covered with dog-tooth; the whole is bounded by two circular bands, the inner one ornamented. The two other rose windows have six spokes instead of eight, the trefoiled arches have foliage, and the inner moulding of the bounding ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... Lenore—and the two Misses Mayne, Honor and Kathleen, and Mr. and Mrs. Small, the Vicar and his wife, and the curate, were all there talking and teaching. Beth remembered nothing about the teaching except that, on one occasion, Mr. Macbean, the rector, tried to explain the meaning of the trefoil on the ends of the pews to Mildred and herself; but she could think of nothing but the way his beard wagged as he spoke, and was disconcerted when he questioned her. He had promised to be a friend to Beth; but he was a ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... up with some compound similar to the deposit with which a restaurant-keeper gives an air of cellar-bound antiquity to a merely middle-aged bottle, only served to heighten the general resemblance to a prison door; a resemblance further heightened by the trefoil-shaped iron-work, the formidable hinges, the clumsy nail-heads. A miser, or a pamphleteer at strife with the world at large, must surely have invented these fortifications. A leaden sink, which received the waste water of the household, contributed its quota to the fetid atmosphere of ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... been superseded in later times; but the marks of the old roofs may often be seen on the eastern wall of the tower. The windows are larger than those of the earlier style, and are filled with geometrical and flowing tracery of great variety and beauty. Small windows have heads shaped in the ogee or trefoil forms. Square-headed windows are not uncommon, especially in the clerestory, and in monastic churches circular windows are frequently met with. It is characteristic of this style that the carving is not so deep as in the previous work. ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... David ap Gwillym beautifully alludes in one of his odes. "O whilst thy season of flowers, and thy tender sprays thick of leaves remain, I will pluck the roses from the brakes, the flowerets of the meads, and gems of the wood; the vivid trefoil, beauties of the ground, and the gaily-smiling bloom of the verdant herbs, to be offered to the memory of a chief of fairest fame. Humbly will I lay them on the grave of Iver." On a grave in the church-yard at Hay, or the Hay, as it is commonly spoken, flowers had evidently ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... a mode of preparing old clover and trefoil seeds by a process called doctoring, became so prevalent as to excite the attention of the House of Commons. It appeared in evidence before a committee, that the old seed of the white clover was doctored by first wetting it slightly, and ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... will also send a drawing of the Badge, with the wreath of trefoil drawn in single leaves, instead of the full wreath, which looks, as he says truly, like a civic crown or oak garland. But this you will see in the drawing, ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... offices and reception-rooms of the house. These doors are always panelled in elaborate geometrical designs, and the principal one, which is reached by a short flight of stone steps, is set in a lofty recess, the trefoil head of which is richly carved. This gives access to the reception-room on the first floor. One side is entirely open to the air, and through three archways connected by a low balustrade of perforated ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... Lourdes), at which place—being the railway station for St. Bertrand—carriages can be hired for the drive, a distance of six miles there and back. Traversing the village and crossing the bridge, we issued again on a vista of fields bright with trefoil and waving flowers, and backed up by finely-wooded hills. Away to the right, nestling among the trees, stands a pretty little village and castle, and as we passed on, St. Bertrand came in view over the crest of a wooded hill; and, arriving at the junction where the roads from Auch, Toulouse, ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... the remains of a smaller recessed arch, and the only portion of the north wall which is still standing contains one bay of a trefoil-headed arcading which formerly was carried round the walls ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse |
