"Sundial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brother verily believed he had saved him from being drowned. He was much more afraid of the water than of the horse, which was, perhaps, the reason why he had never learned to swim, but he never attempted to ride on horseback again. On the wall in front of the farmhouse an old-fashioned sundial was extended, on the face of which ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... served to determine a number of simple facts which were indispensable in astronomical calculations, such as the four cardinal points, the meridian of the place, the solstitial and equinoctial epochs, and the elevation of the pole at the position of observation. The construction of the sundial and clepsydra, if not of the polos also, is doubtless to be referred back to a very ancient date, but none of the texts already brought to light makes mention of the employment of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... a sundial. Thus his grandmother was never at a loss to know the hour; for the water-clock would tell it in the shade, and the dial in the sunshine. The sundial is said to be still in existence at Woolsthorpe, on the corner of the house ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... inn my dear! Right under the two towers, with their shadows a changing upon it all day like a kind of a sundial, and country people driving in and out of the courtyard in carts and hooded cabriolets and such like, and a market outside in front of the cathedral, and all so quaint and like a picter. The Major and me agreed that whatever ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy • Charles Dickens
... he sunk back down into his chair, all pretense gone. Slowly he swung around to face the window and the gray ship, standing like a Gargantuan sundial counting the last days of Earth. He almost whispered. "We are choosing the children. They will ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik
... be more obliging than your attention to the old stones. You have been as true as the sundial itself." [The sundial had just been erected.] "Of the two I would prefer the larger one, as it is to be in front of a parapet quite in the old taste. But in case of accidents it will be safest in your custody till I come to town again on the 12th of May. Your ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... alacrity, and was conducted to the study. No Randolf was there, only pen, ink, paper, and algebra. But as she was greeting Owen, who looked much better and less oppressed, Honor made an exclamation, and from the window they saw the young man leaning over the sundial, partly studying its mysteries, partly playing with little Owen, who hung on him ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... much to be regretted, rebuilt by Essex in the latter part of the eighteenth century; but for this the view of the river front from the curiously constructed footbridge would have been far finer than it is. Like the sundial in the first court, this bridge, leading to soft meadows beneath the shade of great trees, is attributed ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... Herbert about the distribution of some of his favourite books, with some trinkets. His Bible, with annotations in his own hand, and some special accompanying instructions, was to be kept for the Prince of Wales; a large silver ring-sundial of curious device was to go to the Duke of York; a copy of King James's Works, with another book, was left for the Duke of Gloucester; for the Princess Elizabeth Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, Bishop Andrewes's Sermons, and some other things. These arrangements made, the King ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... standing near the Market Place. At one time a sundial and ball crowned the structure, but these have been replaced by a cross. Close by it and scattered frequently throughout the streets of the city are overhanging houses that betray their ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... Past the sundial ran the girl, and around to the rear of the house. Then she burrowed under a dense rosebush and pushed her way through a basement window, almost hidden by the undergrowth, the sash of which swung inward ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... and geography, and as one of the pioneers of exact science among the Greeks. He taught, if he did not discover, the obliquity of the ecliptic, is said to have introduced into Greece the gnomon (for determining the solstices) and the sundial, and to have invented some kind of geographical map. But his reputation is due mainly to his work on nature, few words of which remain. From these fragments we learn that the beginning or first principle (arche, a word which, it is said, he ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... longer than wide, ran between two mud walls with espaliered apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that separated it from the field. In the middle was a slate sundial on a brick pedestal; four flower beds with eglantines surrounded symmetrically the more useful kitchen garden bed. Right at the bottom, under the spruce bushes, was a cure ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... knee, and her stocking was much more than grazed, and her dress was cut by the same stone which had attended to the knee and the stocking. Of course the others were not such sneaks as to abandon a comrade in misfortune, so they all sat on the grass-plot round the sundial, and Jane darned away for dear life. The Lamb was still in the hands of Martha having its clothes ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... porch is a canopy, protecting the head and shoulders of a small effigy (apparently an ecclesiastic). There is a (late) Norm. font, with an unusual moulding. Note, too, an old carved stone built into the exterior of the N. transept. The gable of the porch carries a curious sundial (as ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... and panelled walls, very much to all appearance as when tenanted by Harry Fielding. The windows of the sitting-room and bedroom look out on to the beautiful old buildings of Brick Court, and from the head of the staircase one looks across to the stately gilded sundial of Pump Court, old even in Fielding's day, with its ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... nook and corner. He took her through the grand old park where the herd of fallow deer were grazing; he showed her the Dutch and Italian gardens; he knew even the history of the sundial on the terrace. And yet they had not been within the house, though the great hall door stood hospitably open. They moved at length out of the glare of the sunshine into the grateful shadows. Glint of armor and gleam of canvas were all there. Ethel walked along in an ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... and took a breath. Then at her best gymnasium pace, arms close to sides, head up, feet well planted, she started to run. At the sundial she left the drive and took to the lawn gleaming with the frost of late October. She stopped running then and began to pick her way more cautiously. Even at that she collided heavily with a wire fence marking the boundary, and sat on the ground for some time after, whimpering ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... surely must we for every idle day. And remember that any time spent entirely on selfish pleasure, or amusement, is wasted. Unless we are doing some good, we are certainly doing some harm. There is a motto very commonly engraved upon a sundial, which means that the moments of time are perishing, and are being recorded in God's Book. Yes, they are being put down to our account on one side or the other, just as we have used, or misused, them. Look on two death-beds. A Queen of England is dying, surrounded by ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... falling in decay, Where statues gray Peer, broken, out of tangled weed And thorny seed; Satyr and Nymph, that once made love By walk and grove: And, near a fountain, shattered, green with mould, A sundial, lichen-old. ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... tell me has happened before now in this rather rickety old manor house. Opening a door on the other side of the house, I passed out into the garden. How characteristic of the place!—a broad terrace running along the whole length of the house, and beyond that a few flower beds with the old sundial in their midst Beyond these a lawn, and then grass sweeping down to the edge of the river, some hundred yards away. Beyond the river again more grass, but of a wilder description, where the rabbits are scudding about or listening with pricked ears; and in the background a magnificent ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... forward to showing you the garden," he said hurriedly in his kind eagerness to put her at her ease. "There are still a few late chrysanthemums, and you will find blue and white violets in the grass by the sundial." ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... first came from Holborn and settled by the river-side." It covers an expanse of three acres, and its gay flower-beds, umbrageous trees, and emerald turf make it a veritable oasis to the inhabitants, and especially to the children, of that corner of the great metropolis. A pillar sundial in the centre of the grass bears the date 1770, and the iron gate, surmounted by a winged horse, which guards the entrance from the terrace, was erected in 1730. East of the sundial is a hoary old sycamore, sole survivor of three sisters, carefully protected by railings, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... Along its course are a number of yew-trees. In the centre of the open space is a quaintly disposed grass-plot, dotted about with stunted box, and in the centre of that stands a weather-beaten stone sundial. ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... playing it as a twosome. Now it became a threesome, with other players added at frequent intervals. At luncheon next day our invalid, a real invalid no longer, joined us at table in the pleasant dining-room, the broad window of which opened upon the formal garden with the sundial in the center. She was in good spirits, and, as Hephzy confided to me afterward, was "gettin' a real nice appetite." In gaining this appetite she appeared to have lost some of her dignity and chilling ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... has been thought by some to be the sundial. Actually these devices represent two different approaches to the problem of time-keeping. True ancestor of the clock is to be found among the highly complex astronomical machines which man has been ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price |
