"Coign" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some coign of vantage in the system of low hills that permeates the forest, you will see many different tracts of country, each of its own cold and melancholy neutral tint, and all mixed together and mingled the one into the other at the seams. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... death and martyr sufferance have formed the pride of princes and the peril of poachers. But I never once saw him shot, though almost as many gunners pursue him as there are pheasants in the land. This alone shows how shy the gunners are; and when once I saw the trail of a fox-hunt from the same coign of vantage without seeing the fox, I felt that I had almost indecently come upon the horse and hounds, and that the pink coats and the flowery spread of the dappled dogs over the field were mine by a kind of sneak as base as killing a ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... signs of the instability of her affairs. And of all those the foremost, the most glaring, was her personal success, at once actual and impossible. She saw herself (from that remote and weather-beaten coign of scepticism) moving freely to and fro in the great world of the socially elect, unhindered, unquestioned, tacitly accepted, meeting, chatting, treating and parting with its denizens with a gesture of confidence that was never the gesture of S. Manvers of the Hardware Notions; a Nobody ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... this day sadly impaired my appetite for research and exploration. On the way to the castle I had occasion to admire the fine tower and to regret that there seemed to exist no coign of vantage from which it could fairly be viewed; I was struck, also, by the number of small figures of Saint Michael of an ultra-youthful, almost infantile, type; and lastly, by certain clean-shaven old men of the place. These venerable and decorative brigands—for ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the wall stood a watch-tower, and from this coign of vantage the guards saw the fleeing fugitives, outlined by ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... a part of a long plan that he and Eunice should have seen Italy together, but for the moment he did not wish her there. He was sure she would have been in the way of his getting something that glimmered at him from the coign of castellated walls all awash about their base with purpled shadow, that strove to say itself in intricate fine tracery of tower and shrine, and failed and fell away before the ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... of horses beat steadily on the road leading from the valley up to Zillenstein. John from a coign of vantage saw approaching a young man in a gray German uniform, followed by four hussars, also in German gray. Anyone who came to Zillenstein was of interest, and as John looked the leading figure became familiar. Doubt soon changed to certainty. He knew the swing of the broad shoulders ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... target of innumerable and hidden guns, secluded among the rocks, in gullies and ruins and behind the shoulders of the hills, in every fold of the landscape. To 'spot' these shy, retiring batteries was of course imperative, but when spotted they vanished to some other coign of vantage, equally inconspicuous, and continued to rain fire upon the minesweepers. The warships poured cataracts of shell along the shores and among the slopes, the sea trembled, and the earth quaked. Amid the devastating ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... guidon can lead on to victory only when the facts themselves support it. Once planted victoriously on the conquered ramparts the hypothesis becomes a theory—a generalization of science—marking a fresh coign of vantage, which can never be successfully assailed unless by a new host of antagonistic facts. Such generalizations, with the events leading directly up to them, have chiefly ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... novels. Still, his principal work, The Mountain Cot (Heiarbli)—one of the longest cycles in Icelandic fiction—is his greatest. The little outlying mountain cot becomes a separate world in its own right, a coign of vantage affording a clear view of the surrounding countryside where we get profound insight into human nature. Like the bulk of his best work, this novel has a foundation in his own experiences. In reading the story by him included in this volume, the reader may find ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... go. Sometimes in dizzy steps descending, Sometimes in narrow circuit bending, Sometimes in platform broad extending, Its varying circle did combine Bulwark, and bartizan, and line, And bastion, tower, and vantage-coign. Above the booming ocean leant The far-projecting battlement; The billows burst, in ceaseless flow, ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... the comprehensive visual education in the business of life which she could hardly have failed to assimilate from a coign of vantage overlooking every table of a Soho restaurant—there were precious few things she didn't understand. But her insight into Papa Dupont's mind in respect of herself was wholly devoid of sympathy. She ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... watched with the most absorbing interest from the top of the Thetis's deck-house, it must not be supposed that the watching was conducted in an obtrusive or ostentatious manner; very far from it. The occupants of that "coign of vantage", to whom Milsom was now added, were, so far as the ordinary observer was concerned, lounging indolently in their several basket chairs, reading, smoking, and chatting together, and apparently giving not a thought to anything that was happening outside the bulwarks of their own ship, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... at every vulnerable point, and reporting Morgan's course to Judah in the neck-and-neck race. Aided by the local militia, O'Neil now dashed ahead and fearlessly skirmished with the enemy's flankers from every coign of vantage. He reached the last descent to the river-bottom near Buffington Bar, and near the historical Blennerhasset's Island, early on ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... luck, for I got three men within very few minutes of one another; and then when I was fondly imagining that I might pick off dozens more from my coign of vantage, I was swept back into our lines under such a storm of fire as I have never experienced before. I should tell you that there are practically only two shooting-grounds where this curious sport may be had; there are only two areas ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... hidden coign was enchanting, and she had flown down to snatch Ned from his papers and give him the freedom of her discovery. She remembered still how, standing on the narrow ledge, he had passed his arm about her while their gaze flew to the long, tossed horizon-line ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... these problems, and many more, our puzzled trio went to the Stock Exchange on the last day of September. We were conducted into the safe seclusion of the Visitors' Gallery, from which coign of vantage we could look down unharmed upon the frantic multitude below. The room is large and very lofty, its prevailing tint a warm brown, relieved by bright decorations of the Byzantine order. Across one end runs a small gallery for visitors, without seats, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... often wonder at it, how little mark he made. The present and coming generations know nothing about him. I may add here that, at Dickens' very last Reading at this place, I and Charles Kent were the two—the only two—favoured with a place on the platform, behind the screens. From that coign, I heard him say his last farewell words: "Vanish from ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... that they were to proceed to the redoubts of their respective Sections to prepare a greeting. Over at the Sanatorium, facing the suburb of Beaconsfield, the movements of the enemy were being closely watched. A conning tower soared high above the De Beers mine, from which coign of vantage a keen eye swept the horizon for signs of their advance. At the Reservoir, a look-out was on the qui vive. The Infantry were encamped in a central position, ready for instant despatch to wherever their services might be needed most. The Kimberley Regiment of Volunteers ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Unto our gentle senses. This guest of Summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle; Where they most breed and haunt, I have ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... tile Here lond, and live under the lawe, And that thei scholde also forthdrawe 330 Bestaile, and seche non encress Of gold, which is the breche of pes. For this a man mai finde write, Tofor the time, er gold was smite In Coign, that men the florin knewe, Ther was welnyh noman untrewe; Tho was ther nouther schield ne spere Ne dedly wepne forto bere; Tho was the toun withoute wal, Which nou is closed overal; 340 Tho was ther no brocage in londe, Which nou takth every cause on honde: So mai men knowe, ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... point of common agreement from which to survey and distinguish more exactly these two diverging tendencies. Such a coign of vantage is offered by the nature of the aesthetic attitude,—for since Kant there has been among aestheticians no essential difference of opinion on this point. The aesthetic attitude, all agree, is disinterested. We care for the image or appearance of the object, for ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... From this coign of vantage he had studied her sweet, serious, oval face as she sat placidly reading a little volume in her lap, only once in a while raising a pair of very dark, very beautiful, very heavily browed and lashed brown eyes for brief survey of the forbidding landscape; then, ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... corner of land, a furze-fringed rag of a by-way, Coign of your foam-white cliffs or swirl of your grass-green waves, Leaf of your peaceful copse, or dust of your strenuous highway, But in our hearts is sacred, dear as our cradles, our graves? Is not each bough in your orchards, ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... narrow lawn, upon which stood a house irregularly built of the rough stone of the country, and covered with luxuriant myrtles and magnolias. Immediately behind, the ground again rose so precipitously, that scarcely could coign of vantage be won for the garden, on a succession of narrow shelves or ledges, which had a peculiarly beautiful effect, adorned, as they were, with gay flowers, and looking, as Edmund was wont to say, as gorgeous and as deficient ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... emerged from the prison door and was greeted by a roar that curdled the blood in at least one woman's heart there, an old Irish hag, who sat in a coign of vantage, hugging her knees and crooning, a little black pipe held in her toothless jaws, ceased her dismal hum to concentrate all her attention upon the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... it mean, who was the man? A detective, or a friend of Mrs. Hallam's in a coign from which the plunderers of her pantry could be noted? Beady repentance stood out on ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... would better keep away from me now," I laughed. But my mirth was short-lived. Whether or not the obnoxious little chap had overheard, or from some hidden coign had watched my test of the fire-extinguisher I don't know, but when he came to my den that night he was amply protected against the annihilating effects of the liquid by a flaring plaid mackintosh, with a toque for his head, and the minute I started the thing squirting he turned his back ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... direction indicated, and saw what appeared to be the stumps of three spars just showing above the horizon. I took the glass, and went aloft as far as the cross-trees, and from that "coign of 'vantage" made out that they were the lower-masts of a full-rigged ship of considerable size; for I could see the three lower yards with long streamers of canvas ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... to the gates that their officers actually shut out their own Boeotian cavalry on the point of entering, in terror lest the Lacedaemonians might pour into the town in company, and these Boeotian troopers were forced to cling, like bats to a wall, under each coign of vantage beneath the battlements. Had it not been for the accidental absence of the Cretans, (9) who had gone off on a raid to Nauplia, without a doubt numbers of men and horses would have been shot down. At a later date, while encamping in the neighbourhood of the Enclosures, (10) a thunder-bolt ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... removed, and Burnside, taking command, led his army to the riverside before Fredericksburg. Carleton was witness of the bombardment of the city by the Federal artillery. From his coign of vantage at General Sumner's headquarters, on the piazza of an elegant mansion, one hundred feet above the Rappahannock, and about three-quarters of a mile from it, he could see, as though it were a great cartoon and he a weaver of the Gobelins tapestry of history, the ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... A few steps more and he would be in a little by-street which would take him out of the uproar. The thought of his little protege crossed his mind. He turned to look for him. He saw him at the very moment when Emmanuel had slipped down from his coign of vantage and was rolling on the ground being trampled underfoot by the rabble: the fugitives were running over his body: the police were just reaching the spot. Olivier did not stop to think: he rushed down the steps and ran to his aid. A navvy saw the danger, the soldiers with drawn sabers. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... it is to endeavour to ascertain an enemy's position by means of spies and so forth, as in ancient story; yet best of all, in my opinion, is it for the commander to try to seize some coign of vantage, from which with his own eyes he may descry the movements of the enemy and watch for any error on his ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... From his coign of strategic advantage, the comfortable elevation of his box, Kirkwood's cabby, whose huge enjoyment of the adventurers' discomfiture had throughout been noisily demonstrative, entreated Calendar with lifted forefinger, bland affability, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance |
