"Silver-gray" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was very ready-witted. His biographer[2] records the following anecdote of him as very likely to be authentic. The great artist occasionally made sketches from an honest old tailor, of the name of Fowler, who had a picturesque countenance and silver-gray locks. On the chimney-piece of his painting-room, among other curiosities, was a beautiful preparation of an infant cranium, presented to the painter by his old friend, Surgeon Cruickshanks. Fowler, without moving his position, continually peered at it askance ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... race the snow were useless. Yet he flew on, and on, and on, like a stampeded horse, blindly, one-sidedly, while the ordnance survey map beneath turned from brown, and chocolate, and silver-gray, and dull green, first to pepper and salt, then to freckled white, then all over to the spotless white eider-down quilt of the winter returned, as far as the eye—even his binocular orbs—could reach, muffling tree and house, and garden and copse, and farm and field, and fallow ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... and Miss Pussy knew it, but what cared she, dressed in her furs; she knew that her silver-gray dress was very much admired, and while she was modest she was not above ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... A silver-gray haze, a pure French gray, hung over the river, softening the sky-line of the near-by hills, and making ghosts of a row of gendarme poplars ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sphere of her gentle influence; and yet she did not possess the wondrous charm of lingering loveliness, that, like the fainting perfume of a withered flower, awakens mingled emotions of tenderness and regret. No, Aunt Mabel could never have been beautiful; and yet, as she sat in her quiet, silver-gray silk gown, and kerchief of the sheerest muslin pinned neatly over the bosom, there was an air of graceful, lady-like ease about her, far removed from the primness of old-maidism. Her features were high, and finely cut, you would have called her proud and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... thoughts, and would have been severe except for the smile that flitted about her clear well-cut mouth whenever anything humorous happened, or a pleasant thought was passing through her mind. She always looked well-dressed, though she wore silver-gray alpaca or dark brown merino in school, and rather plain black or gray silk when she went visiting. But there was mostly a rose or some other flower in her silver brooch, and the lace that she sometimes wore at her ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... the contour and bashed-in profile of a huge Persian cat, silver-gray of hue, dense of ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... worthy to carry an Infanta, and an exquisite white palfrey, whose skin shone like satin, was brought out for the baronne. In a few moments Isabelle came down, attired in a superb riding habit, which consisted of a dark blue velvet basque, richly braided with silver, over a long, ample skirt of silver-gray satin, and her broad hat of white felt, like a cavalier's, was trimmed with a floating, dark blue feather. Her beautiful hair was confined in the most coquettish little blue and silver net, and as she came forward, radiant with smiles, she was a vision of loveliness, that drew forth ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... live in the seas of the cold countries: here they are, huddled together on the sloping rocky shores, or swimming about under the ice, thousands and thousands of silver-gray coated creatures, gentle seal-mothers and brave fathers with all their pretty seal-babies. And here the Esquimaux (for that is the name by which we call these people of the cold countries) hunt them, eat them for dinner, and make warm clothes of their skins. So, as ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... slender, elegant figure, the proud set of the head, the calm, intellectual brows, and the large, tender, dark eyes, as soft and pathetic as those of a doe—only this woman's face was worn and sad, and her hair was silver-gray. ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... was pleasant, especially in summer, when the wind was south-west. The malthouses and their cowls, the wharves and the gaily painted sailing barges alongside, the fringe of slanting willows turning the silver-gray sides of their foliage towards the breeze, the island in the middle of the river with bigger willows, the large expanse of sky, the soft clouds distinct in form almost to the far distant horizon, and, looking eastwards, the illimitable distance towards the fens and the sea—all ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... forest road, covered with short grass, led her through a young fir-nursery, and when the road took a turn, a bit of heath lay before Billy, in the midst of which stood some cottages, standing there with their golden-brown timbers and silver-gray roofs like tiny, gleaming caskets on the red-blooming heath. Over there a cow was lowing in long-drawn, sleepy tones; a cock crowed; smoke rose straight from the chimney into the sky. Billy stopped short; all this moved her so powerfully, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... feet and a half long, and a double row of very sharp and dangerous teeth. Its body is, in shape, much like that of a pike; but it is armed with scales so strong that a poniard could not pierce them. Its color is silver-gray. The extremity of its snout is like that of a swine. This fish makes war upon all others in the lakes and rivers. It also possesses remarkable dexterity, as these people informed me, which is exhibited in the following manner. When it wants to capture birds, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... saw a tall, bored-looking man in a silver-gray uniform with gleaming luminescent bands across the sleeves, standing on a raised platform ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... was certainly waiting for her husband. She was sitting back among the cushions of her Sixty horse-power Daimler, wrapped in a motoring coat of the latest fashion, her somewhat brilliant coloring only partially obscured by the silver-gray veil which drooped from her motor bonnet. Burton took his place beside her almost in silence, and they glided off. She looked ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... house and season to have an old-fashioned dance. Aunt has quantities of ancient finery stowed away, for great-grandfather Basset was a fine old gentleman and his family lived in state. Take your choice of the crimson, blue or silver-gray damask. Ruth is to wear the worked muslin and quilted white satin skirt, with ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... which was lighted on the outside by lamps placed four feet apart, and the windows were placed laterally. The pavilion next to the sea consisted of three rooms and a hall, the principal room, used as a council-chamber, being decorated with silver-gray paper. On the ceiling were painted golden clouds, in the midst of which appeared, upon the blue vault of the sky, an eagle holding the lightning, and guided towards England by a star, the guardian star of the Emperor. ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... silver-gray gown and bonnet, by the side of her husband, with Phronsie clinging to one hand, heard nothing but heart- felt wishes for her happiness and that of ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... keeps back the Egyptian host, you see the waving of a long rod. A silver-gray fly with a barbed tail darts out across the pool, swings around with the current, well under water, and slowly works past the big rock in the centre, just at the head of the rapid. Almost past it, but ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... upon that step, facing the half-moon that looked down from above the grove. Her glance was not directed toward him, but up and away. In the pupils of her eyes was a shine which seemed a refraction of the silver-gray beams of the moon. There was about her gaze a something heavy, mournful, and boding which old Dave could not understand, but which made him think of the expression she had lifted in the old homesteading ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... well-advanced. The sun rode high, a sphere of tarnished flame in a void of silver-gray, its thin cold radiance striking pallid sparks from the leaping crests of wind-whipped waves. In the east a wall of vapor, dull and lusterless, had taken body since the dawn, masking the skies and shutting down upon the sea like some vast curtain; and out of the heart of this a ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... aloft with expectant face, stretching up her arms, as if to implore or receive some precious gift from the sky. Above, against the slaty-gray cloud-wrack, four exquisite slender girl-forms appeared, with loose hair, silver-gray drapery and gauzy wings as of ephemerae, flying in pursuit of the cloud. Each carried a quantity of flowers, shaped like lilies, in her dress, held up with the left hand; one carried red lilies, another yellow, the third violet, ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... Californian Achom[a]wi cosmogony. In the beginning, according to this scheme, were only the sea and the sky, and from the sky came down the Creator; or a cloud, at first tiny, grew large, condensed, and became the Silver-Gray Fox, the Creator, and out of a fog, which in like manner was condensed, came the Coyote, and these two ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... soft, brownish wood-gray, with a bit of heavy brown silk embroidery decorating the front, and the jacket. The dress was of silky changeable tricolette, the skirt plain. Where a fold lifted and was strongly lighted, it was an exquisite silver-gray; where a shadow fell deeply it was gray-brown. The coat reached half way to the knees. It had a rippling skirt with a row of brown embroidery around it, a deep belt with double buttoning at the waistline, ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... that Mr. Casaubon was altogether right, she recovered her equanimity, and was an agreeable image of serene dignity when she came into the drawing-room in her silver-gray dress—the simple lines of her dark-brown hair parted over her brow and coiled massively behind, in keeping with the entire absence from her manner and expression of all search after mere effect. Sometimes when Dorothea was in company, there seemed to be as complete an air ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... his head in luxurious fulness, gave to his pale countenance a peculiar expression that made one feel uncomfortable. The brawny neck was almost bare; a simple, carelessly-knotted black kerchief alone encircled it; thick, silver-gray whiskers met together at his chin; a blue frock-coat, pantaloons of the same colour, silk stockings, shoes with thick soles, and a dazzlingly-white waistcoat and linen, completed his equipment. A thick stick leant in one ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... Governor Seymour; the acute Dean Richmond; Samuel J. Tilden, who had not yet achieved his national distinction; Sanford E. Church, who afterwards became chief judge of the Court of Appeals; and Ex- Governor Washington Hunt, whose Silver-Gray conservatism had carried him into the Democratic party. Ohio counted on the roll of her delegates William Allen, who had been the contemporary of Webster and Clay in the Senate; George H. Pendleton ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... king weed of them all. Everywhere his yellow robes were hanging to poles and drying in the warm sun. Everywhere led the conquering war trail of the unkingly usurper, everywhere in his wake was devastation. The iron-weed had given up his purple crown, and yellow wheat, silver-gray oats, and rippling barley had fled at the sight of his banner to the open sunny spaces as though to make their last stand an indignant appeal that all might see. Even the proud woodlands looked ragged and drooping, for here and there the ruthless marauder had flanked one and driven a battalion ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... then closed the door leading back to the dining-room and returned to him as he stood there, warming his hands at the great parlor stove then indispensable in our frontier homes. His fine, intellectual face, in its silver-gray fringe of crisp curling hair, was full of sympathy and interest. It was a face to confide in, and all Fort Cushing swore by its senior surgeon. "Doctor," said she, calling him by the title he best loved, "Miriam ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... night, but the darkness was silver-gray, not black. The sky above was brilliant with the gleam of a thousand stars, the moon was shining behind some silvery clouds, the great masses of foliage in the park were just stirred with the whisper of the night, and sweetest ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... the reader wishes to lengthen out this story he may button the next silver-gray friend he meets, and ask him to tell of the broken English and broken French of the Marquis, of Levasseur, and the rest of them; of the enthusiasm of the people and the readiness of the visitors, and he will please bear in mind that of ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... on a level stretch—position seemed to make no difference. Nor were any of them still for a minute, for even those which were asleep twitched violently and wakened every few minutes. And over the thousands of silver-gray cow seals, the sea-catches, the lords of the harem, three or four times the size of their mates, stood watch and ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... with flowers; and when Lady Adela had dispossessed herself of her long plush coat, it was evident she had dressed for the reception before going to the theatre, for now she appeared in a costume of silver-gray satin with a very considerable train, while there were diamond stars in her light brown hair, and at her bosom a bunch of deep crimson roses. At the head of the stairs they encountered Mrs. Mellord, who received the famous young baritone with the most marked kindness. Indeed, he seemed to be ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... especially those, like the aspens, that have a trembling foliage. Their leaves are bright and the tree-tops are thin. The common aspen or "popple," Populus tremuloides, of our woods, is a meritorious little tree for certain effects. Its dangling catkins (Fig. 33), light, dancing foliage, and silver-gray limbs, are always cheering, and its autumn color is one of the purest golden-yellows of our landscape. It is good to see a tree of it standing out in front of a group of maples ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... Everything appeared new. He reviewed the hangings, the expensive furniture, the paintings and rare objects. He was charmed. It was really of wonderful beauty, and the cage seemed worthy of the bird. For several evenings he remained quietly at home with Micheline, in the little silver-gray drawing-room that was his favorite room. He looked through albums, too, while his wife played at her ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... not Mrs. General Wilcox once been obliged to call in her aid on a dress sent to her from Paris? and did not Miss Prissy work three days and nights on that dress, and make every stitch of that trimming over with her own hands, before it was fit to be seen? And when Mrs. Governor Dexter's best silver-gray brocade was spoiled by Miss Pimlico, and there wasn't another scrap to pattern it with, didn't she make a new waist out of the cape and piece one of the sleeves twenty-nine times, and yet nobody would ever have known that there was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... all sitting down on the gnarled roots of the spruces, and the big gray cat came over and made friends with us. He was a lordly animal, with a silver-gray coat beautifully marked with darker stripes. With such colouring most cats would have had white or silver feet; but he had four black paws and a black nose. Such points gave him an air of distinction, and marked him out as quite different from the common or garden variety ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Mr. Gay said, looking at the plump, silver-gray creature Furry-Purry carefully deposited on the piazza-floor. 'Bless me! I believe it is that rascal of a mole that's gnawed my hyacinth and tulip bulbs. I offered the gardener's boy two dollars if he would catch the villain. To whom ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... the wash of some unseen ship, and a silver-gray wave broke over the bow, leaving on the deck a sheet of sediment—the gray broth that has its place in the fathomless deeps of the sea. A sprinkling of the wave fell on my face, and it was so cold that it stung as boiling water stings. The dead and most untouched deep water of the sea ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... furs, various in kind and often of great value—beaver, otter, marten, mink, silver-gray and red fox, wolf, bear, and wild-cat, musk-rat, and smoked deer-skins—the Indians brought for trade maple-sugar in abundance, considerable quantities of both Indian corn and petit-ble,[1] beans and the folles avoines,[2] or wild rice; while the squaws added to their quota of merchandise ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... hue mistaken; what of that? or else, Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that? Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-gray, Placid and perfect with my art: the worse! I know both what I want and what might gain; {100} And yet how profitless to know, to sigh "Had I been two, another and myself, Our head would have o'erlooked the world!" No ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... divide and swung down over more open slopes, covered only with chaparral and second growths. Here it was lighter, and Lockwood uttered a fervent "Thank God!" when, a few moments later, the moon shouldered over the mountain crests ahead of him and melted the black shadows to silver-gray. Beyond the gravel-pits the trail turned and followed the flank of the slope, level here for nearly a mile. Lockwood set his teeth against the agony of his foot and gave the bronco the quirt with all ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... walls massive as the rock itself being raised to a height of thirty feet, to gain a shelf of soil two or three yards in breadth. Where the olive and the carob ceased, box and ilex took possession of the inaccessible points, carrying up the long waves of vegetation until their foam-sprinkles of silver-gray faded out among the highest clefts. The natural channels of the rock were straightened and made to converge at the base, so that not a wandering cloud could bathe the wild growths of the summit without being caught and hurried into some tank below. The wilderness was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... away, turning her countenance towards the water, where moonlight was burnishing the waves; and, when Salome and Stanley had reached the bend in their path that would shut out the view of the beach, the former looked back and saw the silver-gray figure standing alone on the silent shore, communing with the silver sea, as desolate and as hopeless as ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... truths, half truths, and quarter truths, if not still smaller fractions. The careful observer finds this out sooner or later. Old fox-hunters will tell you, on the evidence of their own eyes, that there is a black fox and a silver-gray fox, two species, but there are not; the black fox is black when coming toward you or running from you, and silver gray at point-blank view, when the eye penetrates the fur; each separate hair is gray ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... falls over in a similar curve, completing the likeness of the whole to a fountain of water, or a gush of rockets. I stood and looked up, watching the innumerable curled leaflets, pale green above and silver-gray below, shiver and rattle amid the denser foliage of the broad-leaved trees; and then went on to another and to another, to stare up again, and enjoy the mere shape of the most beautiful plant I had ever beheld, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... of Bologna, a richness which we might flippantly compare to sausage, or a Flemish smoothness, indicating Calvaert's influence. More than this, Guercino possessed a harmony of tones peculiar to himself, and strongly contrasted with Guido's silver-gray gradations. Guido's coloring, at its best, often reminds one of olive branches set against a blue sea and pale horizon in faintly amber morning light. The empurpled indigoes, relieved by smouldering Venetian red, which Guercino loved, suggest thunder-clouds, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... everything at such a rate, that the plain gray hair above them looked unnaturally venerable, and the wrinkles below an artful piece of masquerade to represent old age. As for her dress, I remember few harder pieces of work than the painting of it. She wore a silver-gray silk gown that seemed always flashing out into some new light whenever she moved. It was as stiff as a board, and rustled like the wind. Her head, neck, and bosom were enveloped in clouds of the airiest-looking lace I ever saw, disposed about each part of her with ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... paint touched its outer walls, overlapped with silver-gray shingles like scales of a fossil fish. The door and the great pillared portico over it were painted white, as they had been from the first, and that was all. A brick walk, sunken in mossy hollows, led up to the front door, which was only a ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... uttered wearisome cries. Or she rowed about in her canoe, often with Pani, for the river current was rather treacherous. Then she scudded through the woods like a deer, winding in and out of the stately columns that were here silver-gray, there white; beech and birch, dark hemlocks, that not having space to branch out, grew up tall with a head almost like a palm. Insects hummed and shrilled, or whirred like a tiny orchestra. Now and then a bird flung out a strain of melody, squirrels ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... to where they stood, and looking where they looked, uttered a sharp, involuntary exclamation, ... the river, the clear, rippling river was RED AS BLOOD. Beneath the slowly breaking light of dawn, that streaked the heavens with delicate lines of silver-gray and daffodil, the whole visible length and breadth of the heaving waters shone with a darkly flickering crimson hue, deeper than the lustre of the deepest ruby, flowing sluggishly the while as though clogged with ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli |
