Entrance

“ That which we who look towards the mountains hunger to know is the mode of entrance and the way to the Gate. The Gate is that Gate of Gold barred by a heavy bar of iron. The way to the threshold of it turns a man giddy and sick. ”

“ Before the entrance were at least a hundred men of every age, from mere boys to wrinkled greybeards, chattering in groups, leaning against the building, seated on the sidewalk with their feet in the gutter, or strolling anxiously up and down. ”

“ GATE, an opening into any enclosure for entrance or exit, capable of being closed by a barrier at will. The word is of wide application, embracing not only the defensive entrance ways into a fortified place, with which this article mainly deals, or the imposing architectural features which form the main entrances to palaces, colleges, monastic buildings, &c., but also the common five-barred barrier which closes an opening into a field. ”

“ We wander on through the huge and massive gates of entrance, between the ranks of sacred animals. The worshipper is received into an ample court, but by degrees the walls on either side approach one another, the halls become less lofty, all is gradually tending towards one point. ”

“ A fair entrance, with an easy ascent, gives a great grace to a building, where the hall is a preferment out of the court, the parlor out of the hall; not (as in some old buildings) where the doors are so low, pigmies must stoop, and the rooms so high that giants may stand upright. ”

“ A door of utterance - Θυραν του λογου· The word θυρα, which commonly signifies a door, or such like entrance into a house or passage through a wall, is often used metaphorically for an entrance to any business, occasion or opportunity to commence or perform any particular work. ”

“ Their houses, or at least most of them, are circular, something like a bee-hive, and full as close and warm. The entrance is by a small door, or long square hole, just big enough to admit a man bent double. ”

“ The window is the desire of heavenly glory, through which the light of the Gospel finds an entrance. The door is obedience to the Commandments. The doorkeeper is holy fear. The watchmen are holy angels. ”

“ Such a door, wide enough for two persons to pass each other easily, and with such fillings or valves as we may hereafter find expedient, may be fit enough for any building into which entrance is required neither often, nor by many persons at a time. ”

“ Having seen that both in Nature and Art the entrances to dwellings are guarded by tunnel-like approaches, we come naturally to another mode of guarding the entrance, namely, by a door moving on hinges. As to the multitudinous examples of doors and hinges in modern civilisation, we need hardly discuss them, except to show the exact analogies which occur in Art and Nature. ”

“ Our front door opens right into the garden, but there is another entrance—a little gate hung between two firs. The hinges are on one trunk and the catch on the other. Their boughs form an arch overhead. ”

“ An entrance, generally square, unless subsequently widened, and either perfectly plain or decorated with a simple cornice, opens into a spacious chamber, which frequently leads into others on the same level, or by narrow flights of steps into upper rooms. ”

“ The main entrance to the home is on the housetop. In the center of large buildings there is a shaft running up and down, through which the people go with greater ease than we can climb or descend our stairways. ”

“ We went down to the common room close beside the main entrance, and pushed the door open a little way; the men who sat within with their backs against it would only yield enough to pass one person in gingerly at a time. ”

“ Our only entrance will be a hole, about the size of a man’s body, low down, on the river side; and to use it, everybody will have to crawl in or out on his stomach, and cross the big ditch by means of a plank. ”

“ Nearly every house has two doors, one in front and one behind, the last for everyday entrance and exit, the former opened only on great occasions, such as births, deaths, and marriages. The gardens are as peculiar as the houses. ”

“ When he chose to take a walk it was with a regular step in the entrance hall with its mosaic flooring, or in the circular gallery with its dome supported by twenty red porphyry Ionic columns, and illumined by blue painted windows. ”

“ You will rarely pass one of these entrances without seeing a group of three or four men conversing on the pavement, with an indescribable public-house-parlour swagger, and a kind of conscious air, peculiar to people of this description. ”

“ Nothing is commoner in modern house-planning than rooms which have at least two doors and a French window. We constantly see rooms or halls which, if transported to the stage, would provide three or four entrances and exits ”

“ In the rear were large grounds, fields, and even woods. The place had two entrances, one immediately in front of the house for people on foot, and the other, a quarter of a mile distant, for people driving. ”

“ History is largely concerned with arranging good entrances for people; and later exits not always quite so good. ”

“ Having entered the porch-door, and crossed the lower end [Pg 177] of the hall, entrance would be gained to the gallery, a sort of an in-door promenade, between the hall and the staircase; having one door leading to the saloon, another to the billiard-room, and another to the domestic offices. “The staircase is an important convenience in every house; and it should always be a striking feature in a mansion of any elegance. The tower, which I suppose to contain the staircase, would be square, as high as the ceiling of the upper floor, where it would take a sort of octagon form ”

“ Rows and rows of smug, well-built houses, each with a front garden, each with a front gate, and each front gate remains shut against the casual caller until you have rung a bell—and the occupants have had time to make up their minds about you from behind the window curtains—when some mechanism in the vestibule is set in motion, the gate opens, and you walk in. ”

“ He reached the landing, and, turning, went along the hall to the door of his own particular den, opened the door, closed it behind him—and in an instant the keen, agile brain, trained to the little things that never escaped it, that daily held his life in the balance, was alert. ”

“ Thus, in the centre of a hall-door we usually place an umbrella-stand——in the midst of a wicket-gate, a milestone——what place so suited for a watch-box as the centre of a narrow bridge?——Yea, and in the most crowded thoroughfare, where the living tide flows thickest, there, in the midst of all, the true ideal architect doth ever plant an obelisk! ”

“ Open, open, hell's gates!
Shut, shut, heaven's gates!
All the devils in the air
The stronger be, that hear the Black Prayer!
(Looking round the church.)
What a darksome and dismal place!
I wonder that any man has the face
To call such a hole the House of the Lord,
And the Gate of Heaven,--yet such is the word.
Ceiling, and walls, and windows old,
Covered with cobwebs, blackened with mould;
Dust on the pulpit, dust on the stairs,
Dust on the benches, and stalls, and chairs! ”

“ A little rush through a wide gate in a high wall, a sudden blindness in a road banked and roofed by foliage, a quick lowering to the ground at the foot of wide steps that led to an open door through which a welcoming light shed its soft, warm rays upon us and we had reached our journey's end. ”

“ My poems have now come to the doors of men. Here informal goings and comings are not allowed. There is door after door, chamber within chamber. How many times have we to return with only a glimpse of the light in the window, only the sound of the pipes from within the palace gates lingering in our ears. Mind has to treat with mind, will to come to terms with will, through many tortuous obstructions, before giving and taking can come about. ”

“ I was so crippled, bruised and sore, men took me home upon a door. It shows how useful doors can be; I always carry two or three.
We’re always viewing doors, you know; they face us everywhere we go; on doors we knock, at doors we wait, and if they’re handsome, smooth and straight, they strike us as a work of art, they’re soothing to the mind and heart. ”

“ Twice or thrice, a door or niche broke the monotonous surface; and then it seemed a gap as wide as the whole church; and he felt on the brink of an abyss, and going to tumble headlong down, until he found the wall again.
Still up, up, up; and round and round; and up, up, up; higher, higher, higher up! ”

“ There faces you besides a double door; when it is opened another door is seen. When that is opened you discover a writing table, and beyond can discern a book-case filled with heavy volumes—law reports perhaps. The little room beyond is, so to speak, an under-study. ”

“ A foot is heard without, and is lost again! A face is suddenly placed against a pane in the window! the latch of the door is slowly raised in their sight, or the click of one is heard where it is not seen. ”

“ So the porter went in, and Gwrnach said to him, “Hast thou any news from the gate?” “I have. There is a party at the door of the gate who desire to come in.” “Didst thou enquire of them if they possessed any art?” ”

“ Whether on foot or in a carriage, and at whatever hour of the night I may come by, I have for some time past observed at a window on the third floor of your house the shadow of a person who seems to work with heroic constancy. ”

“ To fasten the door on the inside, is to denounce myself as plainly as if I had written above, ‘No admittance,—the king is within!’ Even now, sire, at this very moment, there is nothing to prevent the door opening, and your majesty being seen here. ”

“ A window should, according to its name, be a wind-door, through which a breath of air may visit the audience; even so, an original figure, a noble image, a quaint comparison, a rich allegory, should open upon our hearers a breeze of happy thought, which will pass over them like life-giving breath, arousing them from their apathy, and quickening their faculties to receive the truth. ”

“ The gate of the inner court that looketh toward the east, shall be shut the six days, on which work is done; but on the sabbath day it shall be opened, yea and on the day of the new moon it shall be opened.
2 And the prince shall enter by the way of the porch of the gate from without, and he shall stand at the threshold of the gate: and the priests shall offer his holocaust, and his peace offerings: and he shall adore upon the threshold of the gate, and shall go out: but the gate shall not be shut till the evening. ”

“ Was at the gate just now.'
'Lie still, lie still, my only son,
And sound sleep mayst thou get,
For it's but an hour or little mair
Since she was at the gate.'
Awa, awa, ye wicket woman,
And an ill dead may ye die! ”

“ In the country as I drive up to the house I notice curtains stirring, I hear voices, and before I have had time to get out and find the hitch-rope every person in the house is either at the gate or standing in the doorway. ”

“ And yonder door, made of solid oak, thick as a hand's palm, and covered with sheets of iron and enormous nails—that door is the door of the chamber in which the treasures of the noble seigneur are kept. Only he keeps the key. ”

“ It is somewhat disconcerting to the nervous incomer to be met, the door still in his hand, by a sound as of people springing suddenly into the air, followed by a weird scuttling of feet, and then to discover the occupants sitting stiffly in opposite corners, deeply engaged in book or needlework. ”

“ I go through at a low door, find myself under benches filled with an eager, stamping, shouting multitude, make my way through a passage, and come out on the shady side, for it is a late afternoon sun, and take my place at a good point of view. ”

“ I alighted and, passing through glass doors, gazed down on the vast concourse. Far up in the lofty spaces of the room there seemed to hang a haze, through which—from that amazing and audacious ceiling, painted like [ 8] the heavens—there twinkled, feebly, morning stars of gold. Through three arched windows, towering to the height of six-story buildings, the eastern light streamed softly in, combining with the spaciousness around me, and the blue above, to fill me with a curious sense of paradox: a feeling that I was indoors yet out of doors. ”

“ If you can put your five fingers throught it, it is a gate, if not a door. ”