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Closet   /klˈɑzət/   Listen
Closet

verb
(past & past part. closeted; pres. part. closeting)
1.
Confine to a small space, as for intensive work.



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"Closet" Quotes from Famous Books



... extraordinary constipation given in the Dictionary of Medical Sciences. Would that they had known the famous Canadian, De Beaumont, the polyphagi, Tarare and Bijou, the dropsical woman from the department of Eure, the Piedmontese who went every twenty days to the water-closet, Simon de Mirepoix, who was ossified at the time of his death, and that ancient mayor of Angouleme whose nose ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... reached from the south aisle by a stair. It is barrel-vaulted and is lighted by an eastern window. There are ambries in the walls and an eastern altar with a piscina. There are also a fireplace and a small closet on the north side. On the south a door leads to what has been an open court, where there are indications of other buildings having existed or being intended. In all probability there was a residence here, and the chapel may have served both as sacristy and private ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story

... the single room inquiringly. He placed his finger upon the crevices in the weather-boarding; he opened the little closet below the stairs, and a weasel dashed out and shot through the door; he ascended the steep, short stairs, and with a torch examined the black shingles, but nothing was there except a litter of young owls, whose parents had gone poaching. Then, returning, he searched on every open beam and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... could not perform. Of all these things they are perfect sovereign judges, without appeal; but as to the detail of particular measures, or to any general schemes of policy, they have neither enough of speculation in the closet, nor of experience in business, to decide upon it. They can well see whether we are tools of a court, or their honest servants. Of that they can well judge; and I wish, that they always exercised their judgment; but of the particular merits of a measure I have other standards.**** ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... match. The blaze lit up the room. There was no one in the room! Raoul, first turning the key in the door, lit the gas-jets. He went into the dressing-closet, opened the cupboards, hunted about, felt the walls with ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... Twaddles crowded into the open window to watch him as he picked his way along. There was a linen closet between the two rooms, so Bobby had some space to cover before he came to the windows of the room where ...
— Four Little Blossoms and Their Winter Fun • Mabel C. Hawley

... were to visit two famous botanists. One was Herr Steudel; a sombre face, with long overhanging black hair, almost hiding the eyes,—a very Jewish face. He knows every book on botany that appears, has read them all, but cares little to see the plants themselves; in short, he is a true closet student. He has a large herbarium, composed in great part of plants purchased or received as gifts. The other, Professor Hochstetter, is an odd little man, stepping briskly about in his high boots, and having always a half suppressed ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... and the responsibilities of householding would be burdensome. But then Miss Todd's lodgings were in the Paragon, and all the world knows how much it costs to secure eligible rooms in the Paragon: two spacious sitting-rooms, for instance, a bedroom, and a closet for one's own maid. And Miss Todd had done this in the very best corner of the Paragon; in that brazen-faced house which looks out of the Paragon right down Montpellier Avenue as regards the front ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... course of the various conversations our family of Grassdale enjoyed with their singular neighbour, it appeared that his knowledge had not been confined to the closet; at times, he dropped remarks which shewed that he had been much among cities, and travelled with the design, or at least with the vigilance, of the observer; but he did not love to be drawn into any detailed accounts of what he had seen, or whither he had been; an habitual though a gentle ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... said Rose laughingly to her companions, "now, I shall make him open his mother's closet and show us her choicest family skeleton." "Oh, no, Miss Rose," I protested, "my mother has indeed a great closet, but it is full of good things to eat and contains no skeletons." "You little goosie-gander; you don't understand," replied ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... double-barreled gun and pulled both triggers. I felt worse after I had crawled out of the cistern, where the perfidious gun had kicked me, and learned that I had missed the whole drove and sent a hatful of slugs and nails into a neighbor's china closet. I broke the gun over Old Brindle's vertebrae and followed up the attack with the garden-fork. After I had chased the entire drove back and forth over the garden a dozen times, and seen what was left of my summer's work inextricably mixed with the sub-soil, fallen over the wheelbarrow and ruined ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... went to work. The mothers and daughters went to knitting stockings, and making under garments for the soldiers. Every chest of drawers, and wardrobe, and closet in the house was ransacked, to find bed-quilts and blankets for the army. And the fathers and sons, they went to work, with a right good will, to get shoes, and hats, and coats, and other articles of wearing apparel, so as to have them ready at the time the agent from the commander-in-chief ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank

... which a castle was constructed, with nothing in it but large halls, led to an utter sacrifice of the inner life. It was long enough before they took to building in one of the turrets a closet or recess for meditation and the saying of prayers. The lady was easily watched. On certain days set or waited for, the bold youth would attempt the stroke, recommended him by the Witch, of mingling ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... minute he had found out. He felt his door pulled open and a heavy tread come clump, clump, clump down the whole length of him to the little closet room at the end. There he felt levers pulled and switches turned. Suddenly the little wire brush underneath him dropped until it touched the third rail. Z-z-zr-zr-zr-zz-zz—What in the name of all blazes was happening ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell

... to him, was out of their province. He admitted that the House was a most loyal assembly, that it had done good service to the crown, and that its intentions were excellent. But, both in public and in the closet, he, on every occasion, expressed his concern that gentlemen so sincerely attached to monarchy should unadvisedly encroach on the prerogative of the monarch. Widely as they differed in spirit from the members of the Long Parliament, they yet, he said, imitated that Parliament in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... quadrangle, where groups of women stood together closely covered in their blankets—the mothers and sisters of the children, permitted to see their little ones pass into the Kasbah, but allowed to go no farther—then down the crooked passage, past the tiny mosque, like a closet, and the bath, like a dungeon, and finally into the pillared patio, paved and walled ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... remain forever unknown. The man himself is seen only here and there, and now and then, and lies hidden from view, except in those points in which his conduct is connected with those actions. But biography follows him from his public exhibition into his private retreat, haunts him in his closet concealments, accompanies him through his house, where his desires, passions, irregularities, vices, virtues, foibles, and follies take their full swing—sits by his fireside—watches for his unsuspecting, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... his closet pent, He toils to give the crude conception vent Abortive thoughts, that right and wrong confound, Truth sacrific'd to letters, sense to sound; False glare, incongruous images combine, And noise and nonsense chatter through ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... that cannot be the thing; for, in spite of my rheumatism, which really was bad enough last Sunday, I went on purpose to the Royal Chapel, to show myself in the closet, and knelt close to her ladyship.—And, my dear, we curtsied, and she congratulated me, after church, upon my being abroad again, and was so happy to see me look so well, and all that—Oh! it is ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... closet and took out her husband's Sunday clothes a woolen undershirt, and a pair of thick socks. Harvey thought of Paradise when he saw them, for he was so chilled that to be warm again seemed to him the climax of earthly joy. The woman laid them on the bed in an ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic

... brickbats, and other missiles,—which not improbably were the cause of their being there. In the corner stood a cupboard,—but a momentary examination showed that that was as bare as the other. The door at the side, which Sydney had left wide open, opened on to a closet, and that was empty. I glanced up,—there was no trap door which led to the roof. No practicable nook or cranny, in which a living being could lie concealed, was anywhere ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... housewife takes these precautions, her canned tomatoes should keep indefinitely. Aunt Sarah allowed her jars of tomatoes to stand until the day following that on which the tomatoes were canned, to be positively sure they were cold, before giving the tops a final turn. Stand away in a dark closet. ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... subject to disseminate the benefits of his experience in this way. Our frontier-men, although brave in council and action, and possessing an intelligence that quickens in the face of danger, are apt to feel shy of the pen. They shun the atmosphere of the student's closet; their sphere is in the free and open wilderness. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that to our veteran borderer the field of literature should remain a "terra incognita." It is our army that unites the chasm between the culture of civilization in the aspect of science, ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... the ladies gave me a gale with their fans; and when they were weary, some of the pages would blow my sail forward with their breath, while I showed my art by steering starboard or larboard as I pleased. When I had done, Glumdalclitch always carried back my boat into her closet, and hung it on a nail ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... laughing, the one with the laughter of an old sot, the other with the laughter of a giddy child, over the adventures of that heroic Prince Charlie whose memory was safe in her heart as the sheets he had slept in were safe in her closet, waiting to ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... it was her fancy that the hero of the legend still remained imprisoned in that dreadful secret chamber, which had made a most dread impression on her mind; and that there he was, forgotten all this time, waiting, like a naughty child shut up in a closet, until some one should come to unlock the door. In the pitifulness of her disposition, she once proposed to little Ned that, as soon as they grew big enough, they should set out in quest of the old ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... is available, a goods box may be turned on its side, the top covered with oilcloth, and a frame, made from the cover of the box, fitted around the edge. The inside of the box may be used as a closet in which to store tools and materials, and a neat appearance given to the whole by a curtain of denim or other plain, ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs

... and said, 'Hennery, someone has opened a jack pot, call for the police!' I rushed for the indicator where you ring for bell boys, and cocktails, and things, and touched all the buttons, and then got in bed and pulled a quilt over my head, and dad went into a closet where my snakes and things were, and the vaccinated skunk kept on doing the same as he did to dad, and I though I should die. Dad heard my snake rattle his self in the box, and he stepped on my prairie dog and yelled ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck

... closet was set in the wall at the foot of the bed. Now which was the foot of the bed? I'll try both ends." He did so, tapping on the woodwork with his knuckles. Presently he found a hole where there had once been a ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield

... contending violently with PAULET, who is about to break open a closet; DRURY with ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... tell a good jest, And please all the rest; Comes Dingley, and asks you, what was it? And, curious to know, Away she will go To seek an old rag in the closet. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... once attached itself in the intestine, it may live for from five to fifteen years. All this time it is constantly laying eggs; and these eggs, which are so tiny that they have to be put under a microscope to be seen, pass out in the feces; and if they are not deposited in a proper water closet, or deep vault, but scattered about upon the surface of the soil, the eggs quickly hatch into tiny, little wriggling worms called larvae, which are still scarcely large enough to be ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... private, might be entered at any time; any closet or any cellar might be opened. Neither the bridal chamber nor the room of the dead was sacred on the approach of any petty customs constable or deputy in whose hands a Writ of Assistance had been placed. The antecedent proceedings required no affidavit or any other legal formality. The ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... costume. No precious metal, not even a thread of gold or silver must be seen about one. In the first moments of fervor, a beautiful green velvet cap, beautifully embroidered in gold—the loving gift of some pupil or admirer,—was interdicted, that is to say, was shut up in a closet or reduced to the condition of a mere piece of bric-a-brac. Luckily, the association did not require eternal vows, and I think I saw the pretty article restored to ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... went over to the Cutters' to pack her trunk. They found the place locked up, and they had to break the window to get into Antonia's bedroom. There everything was in shocking disorder. Her clothes had been taken out of her closet, thrown into the middle of the room, and trampled and torn. My own garments had been treated so badly that I never saw them again; grandmother burned them in ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... Captain Wilson's were solely on business; that he scarcely saw his daughter Jane at any one of them; and a thousand other things. What a stupid, asinine creature is a lover, before the ice is broken, and what an eloquent, inspired animal, after the explosion! A lover may retire to his closet, and spoil a whole ream of paper with "raven locks," and "eyes' liquid azure," and "sweet girls," &c. Such an epicure creature as Natty Willis will befoul you a quire of foolscap before breakfast in that way—but let a stranger see the same lover in ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... light in the vault and looked around him. Yes, it was just as Jasu Waern had said it would be. He walked over to the closet at the side of the room and pulled out a towel. As he dried himself, he continued his examination ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole

... be raised over Jerrie's room; there was to be a pretty bay-window at the south, commanding a view of the Collingwood grounds and the river. There was to be another window on a side, but whether to the east or the west he could not quite decide. There was to be a dressing-room and large closet, while the main room was to be carried up in the centre, after the fashion of a church, and to be ceiled with narrow strips of wood painted alternately with a pale blue and gray. He showed the sketch to his grandmother, who approved it, just as she approved everything he did, but suggested ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... be sure to pack up in the trunk male that stands in my closet; to be sent me in the Bristol waggon without loss of time, the following articles, viz. my rose collard neglejay with green robins, my yellow damask, and my black velvets with the short hoop; my bloo quilted petticot, my green mantel, my laced apron, my French commode, Macklin head and ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... assume the mien of one who was about to do some service for her, and had come to receive instructions. So my entrance seemed to pass as nothing remarkable. At last we entered a cabinet, where I was alone with her. She opened the door of a small closet. ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens

... lobby, lighted and furnished with luxurious and elegant plenty, as many people send for suppers to their box, and entertain a knot of friends there with infinite convenience and splendour. A silk curtain, the colour of your hangings, defends the closet from intrusive eyes, if you think proper to drop it; and when drawn up, gives gaiety and show to the general appearance of the whole: while across the corridor leading to these boxes, another small chamber, numbered like that it belongs to, is appropriated to the use of your servants, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... left to ponder over what he had heard. There was evidently a mystery connected with this lonely house a mystery which he very much desired to solve. But there was one chance. Through the aperture in the closet he might both see and hear something, provided any should meet there ...
— The Cash Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.

... sprang from her seat, and bouncing into a closet, soon returned with a large portfolio, which she placed on the table before Flora. "There are my treasures; you can examine ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... person. But it certainly is not the sort of poem that is expected from a Poet Laureate, either on the highest or the lowest theory of his office. He is either a great minstrel singing the victories of a great king, or he is a common Court official like the Groom of the Powder Closet. In the first case his praises should be true; in the second case they will nearly always be false; but in either case he must praise. And what there is for him to praise just now it would be precious ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton

... be able to go on? I was a poor woman, sir, as I am now, and hoped to be paid. I would have given the poor sick lady shelter all the same, though—and I told him he could come in, and sleep in this room, and I would go into that closet-like place behind you, sir. Well, he thanked me, and went back to the carriage, where a lady sat. He took her in his arms and brought her along to the house, when I saw that she was a very beautiful young lady, but quite pale. Well, sir, she came in and sat down in that ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... of the Queen herself. If she had no convictions, she had tastes; and her taste revolted from the bareness of Protestant ritual and above all from the marriage of priests. "Leave that alone," she shouted to Dean Nowell from the royal closet as he denounced the use of images—"stick to your text, Master Dean, leave that alone!" When Parker was firm in resisting the introduction of the crucifix or of celibacy, Elizabeth showed her resentment ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... a rope, which she puts down. She takes off her outdoor things and goes into closet). You might at ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... should want to inquire into your habits of life. Was there opportunity for fresh air to enter your room? Was there in it no uncovered vessel, no old shoes in the closet, no soiled underclothing, nothing that could contaminate the atmosphere? Did you eat a hearty supper late in the evening? Is your system oppressed with a superabundance of sweets? Are you living on simple, ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... remark, that the law of the whole process is the old one which was exemplified on the day of Pentecost. 'Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly; gather the people, assemble the elders; let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet; let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar. Yea, the Lord will be zealous for His land, and will pity His people; and I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh.' Brethren, to our knees and to confessions! ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... a bed-place was considerately resigned to me. It consisted of a crib in a small room, no larger than a closet; however, as the horizontal position still continued most distressing to me, a bed of down could not have procured me repose, for I do not think I ceased coughing for three consecutive minutes the whole night. And it was no small aggravation to my misery, to know that I was the means of disturbing ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... stopped suddenly. His eyes were fixed on the closet or locker, whence the safe had been wheeled, and where the little boxes were. From the locker ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young

... Bassett had done with that piece of plate he went to the paneled wall, and opened a door so nicely adapted to the panels, that a stranger would hardly have discovered it. Yet it was an enormous door, and, being opened, revealed a still larger closet, lined with green velvet and fitted with shelves from ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... making plans. He's promised to build an annex to the shack, a wing on the north side, so I can have a store-room and a clothes-closet at one end and a guest-chamber at the other. And I'm to have a sewing-machine and a bread-mixer, and the smelly steer-hide divan is going to be banished to the bunk-house. And Dinky-Dunk says I ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer

... Hippocrates, with which, according to some authorities, Dr. Heidegger was accustomed to hold consultations, in all difficult cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of the room stood a tall and narrow oaken closet, with its door ajar, within which doubtfully appeared a skeleton. Between two of the bookcases hung a looking-glass, presenting its high and dusty plate within a tarnished gilt frame. Among many wonderful stories related of this mirror, it was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor's deceased ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... that house was only big enough for a "hall," a good-sized parlor opening into it on the right, a bedroom and large closet back of that, and two rooms overhead; but the kitchen and milk-room back, which must have been stuck on at a later day, had only one wide, low garret of a room in the space under the roof. It was lighted by a dormer ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard

... of girls beheld her, while their eyes were swimming with tears. "I have long, long kept a bridal veil in my closet," she went on, "and knew not it was to be mine!" Opening a wardrobe, she took out a long black veil. It had belonged to her grandaunt, the nun, Madelaine de Repentigny, and was kept as ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... clothes-closet in the wall near the fireplace, and Corliss ran in there; but Vilas began to ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... women; in those only the eyes are visible, while the Hindoo dress gives no concealment. I have also ordered her to get me two dresses: one, such as a young Mussulman zemindar wears; the other, as his retainer. They are for you boys. Keep the bundles, when you get them, in that closet in the dining-room, so as to be close at hand; and in case of alarm, be sure and take them with you. Remember my instructions are absolute. If by day, escape in the trap at the first alarm; if the trap is not available, escape at once on foot. If you hear the enemy are ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... Many centuries later it was found by a Rabbi near the gates of Jerusalem. He tried in vain to give it burial; the earth refused to retain it, and the Rabbi concluded therefrom that it belonged to the corpse of Jehoiakim. He wrapped the skull in a cloth, and laid it in a closet. One day the wife of the Rabbi discovered it there, and she burnt it, thinking the skull belonged to a former wife of her husband, so dear to him even after her death that he could not separate himself from ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... pride and luxury of the Court Enjoy some degree of pleasure now that we have health, money God forgive me! what a mind I had to her Hard matter to settle to business after so much leisure Holes for me to see from my closet into the great office I know not yet what that is, and am ashamed to ask King dined at my Lady Castlemaine's, and supped, every day Lady Castlemaine do speak of going to lie in at Hampton Court Let me blood, about sixteen ounces, I being exceedingly full Lust and ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger

... that loss,) yet thus, even thus, I would rake up the fire under all the ashes that oppress it. I am no longer patient of the public eye; nor am I of force to win my way and to justle and elbow in a crowd. But, even in solitude, something may be done for society. The meditations of the closet have infected senates with a subtle frenzy, and inflamed armies with the brands of the Furies. The cure might come from the same source with the distemper. I would add my part to those who would animate the people (whose hearts are yet right) to new ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... full of fresh cookies, crisp, brown, and sweet; their spicy odor pervaded the room, and the china-closet door stood suggestively open. Miss Hetty's spectacles turned that way, then went back to the busy scene in the street, as if trying to get courage for the deed. Something happened just then which decided her, and sealed the doom of the bilious tarts ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... these matters will possibly disclose the fact that a smaller expenditure may accomplish the desired purpose. Or, if this is not true, it may be found that the end accomplished is worth the expenditure of what seemed a prohibitive sum. A water closet, for instance, has not only a sanitary but a moral value. We must somehow educate people to understand and to believe that the basis of family health and usefulness is proper living conditions, and that some system of sewage and garbage ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... In the closet she found meal and milk, which she boiled over the fire, and ate with a great relish. Then she went all over the house, exploring the nooks and corners of every room, and wondering what had become of ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... business at that time was a cramped entresol in the Rue Chabannais—five rooms at a rent of seven hundred francs at most. Each partner slept in a little closet, so carefully closed from prudence, that my head-clerk could never get inside. The furniture of the other three rooms—an ante-chamber, a waiting-room, and a private office—would not have fetched three hundred francs altogether at a distress-warrant ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac

... hero of our tale, at length, we find Was well rewarded: LOVE again proved kind; For, musing as he walk'd alone one day, And pass'd a gall'ry, (held a secret way,) A voice in plaintive accents caught his ear, And from the neighb'ring closet came, 'twas clear: My dear Curtade, my only hope below, In vain I love;—you colder, colder grow; While round no fair can boast so fine a face, And numbers wish they might supply thy place, Whilst thou with some gay ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... of her chaplains, had spoken less reverently, in a sermon preached before her, of the sign of the cross, she called aloud to him from her closet window, commanding him to retire from the ungodly digression, and to return unto his text. And on the other side, when one of her divines had preached a sermon in defence of the real presence, she openly gave him thanks for his pains and piety." Heylin, p. 124. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... morning found him in no more easy a situation.—He put on his cloaths hastily, and resolved to go to all the acquaintance he had in the world, and try the friendship of each, by borrowing what sums he thought they might be able to spare: but first, going into his father's closet, as was his custom every morning to pay his duty to him, he found a person with him who was paying him a large sum of money: the sight of what he so much wanted filled him with inexpressible agitations:—he would have given almost a limb to have had in his possession so ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... he once procured, for dissection, the bodies of two criminals who had been hanged. The key of the dissecting room not being immediately at hand, when they were carried home to him, he ordered them to be laid down in a closet which opened into his own apartment. The evening came; and Junker, according to custom, proceeded to resume his literary labour before he retired to rest. It was now near midnight, and all his family were fast asleep, when he heard a rumbling noise in his closet. Thinking that, by some mistake, the ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... right in its general views? A man so burthened with scruples as to be unable to act in this way should keep himself aloof from public life. Such a one cannot serve the country in Parliament, though he may possibly do so with pen and ink in his closet." ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... Costigan. She began by coaxing the Captain and smiling upon him in her most winning way, as she helped to arrange his dinner and set his humble apartment in order. She was sure his linen wanted mending (and indeed the Captain's linen-closet contained some curious specimens of manufactured flax and cotton). She would mend his shirts—all his shirts. What horrid holes—what funny holes! She put her little face through one of them, and laughed at the old warrior in the most winning manner. She would have ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... weighed over two hundred pounds, his big head was covered with a shock of grizzled red hair; his pleasures consisted in polishing his old sextant and playing on a small mouth-harmonicon. As to his vices, it was no secret that he kept a fat black bottle in the chimney-closet in his own room, and occasionally he swore strange oaths about his grandmother's nightcap. "He used to blaspheme," his daughter-in-law said; "but I said, 'Not in my presence, if you please!' So now he ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland

... which attends all abstruse reasoning that it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and it is difficult for us to retain even that conviction, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... avenge Miss Harlowe on me, and by the cudgel of Mr. Jones, his Sophia having sent him up to town for no other purpose. De la Tour, my man, came to me yesterday morning with the tidings that the New Giant, as he supposes, waits on me to solicit the favour of my patronage. I am in the powdering closet, being bound for a rout, and cry, "Let the Giant in!" Then a heavy tread: and, looking up, what do I see but a shoulder-of-mutton fist at my nose, and lo! a Somerset tongue cries, "Lovelace, thou villain, thou shalt taste of this!" A man in a powdering closet cannot fight, even if he be ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang

... for avoiding the rooms below. Her interests had insensibly adjusted themselves to the perspective of her neighbors' lives, and she wondered—as the bell re-echoed—if it could mean that Mrs. Heminway's baby had come. Conjecture had time to ripen into certainty, and she was limping toward the closet where her cloak and bonnet hung, when her little maid fluttered in with the announcement: "A ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... part of your advice shall be complied with," assented our hostess,—"that is, if I can find anything to put on to them. As to the last suggestion,—I have, to be sure, a decanter of fine old Cognac in the closet, but it would be almost an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... prayer," wrote he to Miss Hatton, "arises from the want of familiar friendship with Jesus. To obviate it, go to your closet as if you were going to meet your dearest friend; cast yourself at His feet, bemoan your coldness, extol His love to you, and let your heart break with a desire to love Him. Get recollection —a dwelling within ourselves—a being abstracted ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen

... was afforded a sympathetic listener from the depths of the kitchen closet. Mrs. Todd was getting out her old iron lobster pot, and began to speak of prosaic affairs. I hoped that I should hear something more about her brother and their island life, and sat idly by the kitchen window ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett

... a fine ending for the term," was Tom's comment, as he began to get his belongings out of the closet. "And after ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield

... Young Jerry in his closet was awakened after daybreak and before sunrise, by the presence of his father in the family room. Something had gone wrong with him; at least, so Young Jerry inferred, from the circumstance of his holding Mrs. Cruncher by the ears, and knocking the back of her head against the head-board ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... As no persuasion could prevail on him to extend his conviviality to a second cup, my patron accompanied him home, and accommodated him in the Prophet's Chamber, as it is his pleasure to call the closet which holds a spare bed, and which is frequently a place of retreat for the poor traveller. [Note: He might have added, and for the rich also; since, I laud my stars, the great of the earth have also taken harbourage in my poor domicile. And, during the service of my ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... in the large closet attached to the sitting-room. To explore it, I must conceal myself in the closet. After the family departed, leaving me sole occupant of the house, a friend called. When her visit ended, I was interrupted again by the servant, so that it was late ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott

... funeral, St. Aubert shut himself in his chamber. When he came forth, it was with a serene countenance, though pale in sorrow. He gave orders that his family should attend him. Emily only was absent; who, overcome with the scene she had just witnessed, had retired to her closet to weep alone. St. Aubert followed her thither: he took her hand in silence, while she continued to weep; and it was some moments before he could so far command his voice as to speak. It trembled while he said, 'My Emily, I am going to prayers with my family; you will join us. We must ask ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... you call gently is very rough treatment for my head. You have almost put my neck out of joint. Now, take also this muff; go and put it with the rest into the closet; don't leave anything about. Well! where is she going to now? What is the stupid ...
— The Countess of Escarbagnas • Moliere

... "strinkled," Barbara said, in two rooms, would be charmingly "crowsy" in one. And up stairs there would be such nice space for cushioning and flouncing, and making upholstery out of nothing, that you couldn't do here, because in these spyglass houses the sleeping-rooms were all bedstead, and fireplace, and closet doors. ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... by he heard in the distance the roll of carriages returning from the Fieldings' reception. He replenished the fire generously, found a long cloak in the closet at the end of the hall, and waited the sound of wheels before his own door. "The rain has grown heavier," he said, drawing the cloak around his wife as she descended from the carriage. Something in his manner seemed to ...
— Different Girls • Various

... one too much for them to think of soothing or shielding him. At any rate, fear was the misery of his life. Darkness was his horror. He would scream till he brought in some one, though he knew it would be only to scold or slap him. The housemaid's closet on the stairs was to him an abode of wolves. Mrs. Gatty's tale of The Tiger in the Coal-box is a transcript of his feelings, except that no one took the trouble to reassure him; something undefined and horrible was thought to wag in the case of the eight-day clock; and ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... him, nor any of the emotions which they are capable of conveying to the spirit which has been given him, shall either be left unrecorded, or fade from the book of record. It is not his business either to think, to judge, to argue, or to know. His place is neither in the closet, nor on the bench, nor at the bar, nor in the library. They are for other men and other work. He may think, in a by-way; reason, now and then, when he has nothing better to do; know, such fragments of knowledge as he can gather without stooping, or reach without pains; but none of these ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... good," said she, using the pleasant tu, "but all the same, I am not so thin-skinned, as I have a closet which the duke has had painted over with couples in various amorous attitudes. We go there sometimes, and I assure you that I do ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... and boxes come in nests, or, they can be bought separately. A good supply of them goes a great way toward keeping a store-room or closet in order. ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... however, be read with considerable interest in the closet, and fully to appreciate its beauties, every one who has witnessed it, ought to read it; for many of its "delicate touches" must be lost in the immense area of Drury Lane Theatre.[2] The plot is simple, and is effectively told; but as the newspapers, daily and weekly, have already detailed it, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various

... obtain from man toleration. The example of the whitest, purest soul that ever breathed on earth, in this respect, is ignored in the church He founded. The tenderest of human hearts, "when lovely woman stooped to folly," found no way of escape for her but to "die;" and those closet moralists, with filthy fancies and soiled souls, who abound in every community, regard her with that sort of scorn which a Turk expresses when he says "Dog of a Christian." Poor Lettice! She had procured this doom—first by sacrificing herself to a blind and cruel love, and then to the importunate ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... dignity or appeal, and I never formed the warm friendships with them that I did with women of other tribes. They begged for everything in sight. One fat old squaw coveted a yellow evening gown she saw in my closet; I gave it to her, also a discarded garden hat with big yellow roses on it. She draped the gown around her bent shoulders and perched the hat on top of her gray tangled hair and went away happier than Punch. In a few minutes a whole delegation of squaws arrived to see ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... three sides. All the pots and cups he broke, except those that held a couple of gallons [2]; of the cook he made enquiry whether the salting pans could be set on the fire to be made hot. All the cellars in the house he has broken into, and has laid the store-closet [3] open. (At the door.) Watch him, servants, if you please; I'll go to meet the old gentleman. I'll tell him to get ready some provisions for his own self, if, indeed, he wishes himself to make use of any. For in ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus

... dear, I didn't know you were so keen about it. Of course I'll go," said Molly remorsefully, fumbling in the closet for her over-shoes, while Nance calmly appropriated Judy's rain coat from the back of a chair where that young woman had flung it and held it up for Molly ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed

... ribbon, the very paupers of shoestrings; on the lower portion of his spindle legs were dingy worsted stockings of the same colour. He looked as if he had been put away and forgotten half a century before, and somebody had just found him in a lumber-closet. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... and with no good grace, at last consented to advance L300 in this dread emergency, and the vicar blessed his benefactor, and in his closet on his knees, shed tears of thankfulness over his deliverance, and the sky opened and the flowers locked bright, and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... been compatible with the dignity of the several societies to be named, I could not compress my intended list within the limits of a single page, and thinking, moreover, that the act would carry with it an air of decorous modesty, I have chosen to take the reader aside, as it were, into my private closet, and there not only exhibit to him the diplomas which I already possess, but also to furnish him with a prophetic vision of those which I may, without undue presumption, hope for, as not beyond the reach of human ambition and attainment. And I am the rather induced to this from the fact ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... I'll put on my pretty morning dress; Aunt 'Ria hung it up in the closet. I'm going to be a little lady all the time I'm out West, and not jump off of things and ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May

... just as Sylvia was preparing to go to bed in her little closet of a room, she heard some shot rattling at her window. She opened the little casement, and saw Kester standing below. He recommenced where he left ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... what feelings I have just made the discovery that my berth is in the same closet with those engaged by Professor Woodensconce, Mr. Slug, and Professor Grime. Professor Woodensconce has taken the shelf above me, and Mr. Slug and Professor Grime the two shelves opposite. Their luggage has already arrived. On Mr. Slug's bed is a long tin tube of about three inches ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... a pervert who, with a glib tongue, protests that his conscience drove him from the Church, that his enslaved intelligence needed deliverance, search him and you will find a skeleton in his closet; and if you do not find it, it is there just the same. A renegade priest some years ago, held forth before a gaping audience, at great length, on the reasons of his leaving the Church. A farmer sitting on the last bench listened patiently to his ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... he went to his room, for the foreman lived in the big house of the rancher. There he took a quantity of equipment from a closet and flung it on the bed. Over three ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... prefects of the palace: M. de Lucay, M. de Bausset, and M. de Saint Didier. They had charge of the provisions, lighting, heating, the silver, and the liveries. They inspected the kitchens, pantries, cellars, and linen-closet to see that everything was in order. There was always one prefect of the palace on duty for a week at a time. He also carried word to the Emperor and the Empress when a meal was ready, conducted them to the table, and back ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... well—here is the fire, but perhaps it shall go out before I have finish." She was pretty laughing young woman, and say, "Oh no, sir, if you pull the bell, the porter, who sit up all night, will come, unless you like to attend to it yourself, and then you will find the coal-box in the closet."—Well—I say nothing but "Yes—oh yes." But, when she is gone, I look direct into the closet, and see a box not no more like none of the other boxes what I see all day ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various

... and in its proper place and the object-lesson is invaluable to these poor children. If you go into their homes you will find that the bed is a bundle of rags in some dark closet, while the front room is kept for company. Here I show them how easily this sunny room is made into a sitting-room by putting that screen in front of the bed and then there is a healthful place to sleep. You may think that I am over-enthusiastic, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... among women as a form of masturbation is due to the fact that it is usually acquired innocently and it involves no indecorum. Thus Soutzo reports the case of a girl of 12 who at school, when having to wait her turn at the water-closet, for fear of wetting herself would put her clothes between her legs and press her thighs together, moving them backwards and forwards in the effort to control the bladder; she discovered that a pleasurable sensation was thus produced and acquired the habit of practicing the manoeuvre ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis



Words linked to "Closet" :   kiosk, toilet, privy, lav, bathroom, article of furniture, clothespress, safe, cubicle, stall, piece of furniture, shelf, confine, booth, room, lavatory, furniture, can, armoire, storage space, airing cupboard, john



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