"Grayness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blackness of the cold winter night; inside the grayness of stained walls lighted by the glow from the blazing fires. A few pieces of statuary, copies of the work of the idealistic Greek period, stood in the hall and the living room. All that meant merely comfort, homelikeness—all in a word that was characteristically ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... and spare of figure, lean and colorless of face, while about him hung an atmosphere of grayness. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... up her excitement—or perhaps the champagne did this for her—until our cab was half-way across Chelsea Bridge. Then she lay back in her corner, and, I suppose, began to feel the grayness of the as yet unseen dawn of a new day. But as I helped her out of the cab in Battersea, she said she had thoroughly enjoyed her "fluffy" evening, and thanked me very prettily. I returned in the cab as far as Westminster, and there dismissed the man with the last of my seven guineas, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... valley. An odor of fresh grass floated about them, and the dry, cold smell of the English spring was in the air. Across the valley dim ghosts of hills lighted by evanescent gleams rose out of the east wind grayness with ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... that the house was hers, and the street itself. She was literally its only inhabitant. As she stood looking up and down its misty grayness she felt more peaceful than she had felt for many days. There were certain fierce terrible emotions that she never wanted to feel again, and one of them was ruthlessness. She had done much good in the past four years; she had been, for the most part, high-minded, self-sacrificing, indifferent ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... stirred, sharply closing his book. He had changed—except for a palpable settling down of grayness—as little as Linda. For a while she had tried to bring about an improvement in his appearance, and he had met her expressed wish whenever he remembered it; but this was not often. In the morning a servant polished his shoes, brushed and ironed ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the reply, as quiet and caressing as the words which provoked it. The strange Mexican was standing proudly and looking into the squinting eyes with only a grayness of face and a tigerish litheness to tell ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... them; I think they are beautiful. A lovely splash of color in the grayness of the city, a sincere expression of American life, so sincere that the critics who take their opinions from Europe never have been able to ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... the hair, may occur in localized areas or it may be more or less general; the blanching may be slight, scarcely amounting to slight grayness, or it may be complete. It is common to advancing years (canities senilis); it is seen also exceptionally in early life (canities praematura). The condition is usually permanent. The loss of pigment takes place, as a rule, slowly, but several apparently authentic cases have been reported ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... gray oblivion. Deep down in him somewhere his resolution was weakening and strengthening, ebbing and flowing. The thing that perturbed him went on as steadily as his pulse, but he was almost unconscious of it. He was submerged in the vast impersonal grayness about him, and at intervals the sidelong roll of the boat measured off time like the ticking of a clock. He felt released from everything that troubled and perplexed him. It was as if he had tricked and outwitted torturing memories, had actually managed to get on board without ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... if to speak, and then caught himself. Again for a passing flash there came that mysterious change in him, a sudden dying out of the enthusiasm in his eyes, and a grayness in his face that came and went like a shadow of pain. In another ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... from old Hanscher meant a royal little dinner at Engel's with mugs of cream ale, and an hour's difference in our arrival at the office next day. Oh, happy, vanished times! Magic moments that peeped through the grayness of hard work, and made the whole ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... entrance to the plantation, you watch the tall palms, planted in a line, that shield, its borders. An avenue of like growth leads you to the house, where barking dogs announce you, and Don Juan, an elderly gentleman in slippers and a Panama hat, his hair, face, and eyes all faded to one hue of grayness, comes out to accost us. Here, again, Hulia Protestante becomes the subject of a series of attacks, in a new kind. Don Juan first exhausts his flower-garden upon her, and explains all that is new to her. Then she must see his blind Chino, a sightless Samson of a Cooly, who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... unperturbed, peered out into the grayness. The boy felt an overwhelming admiration of a man who could dare to take a ship over the worst piece of coast in all the broad Atlantic, in a driving hurricane, with never a landmark or a light to guide him, and hold his nerve cool and self-assured. The captain was on ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... hours before Tim turned round, and now his face was quiet, if set and determined. He walked slowly over, and stood looking at his victim for some time without speaking. The other's eyes dropped, and a grayness stole over his features. This steely calm was even more frightening than the ferocity which had previously been in his captor's face. At length the tense ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the park about half a mile beyond the town, and then between two rolling banks of vapour I saw the high walls and higher towers of the castle looming through the grayness. A little later I distinguished the dull water of the very wide moat, and the three connected bridges, which were formerly blank spaces between low towers, unless the drawbridges happened to be ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... grayness of twilight had come, like mist, over the distant hills; but the peaks were still bathed in the sunset's glow. She began to have a real and overwhelming longing for camp and rest. And in the midst of her dejection the dark man in ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... each other without change, without adventure. But the brilliant throng of kings and queens, of knights and ladies, of pilgrims and lovers, and all the make- believe people of storyland stood out all the brighter for the grayness of the background. And perhaps to the Prince in his quiet tower the storied people were more real than the living, who only now and again came to visit him. For the storied people were with him always, while the living came and went again and were ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... minute, Mortimer," I broke in, becoming suddenly aware there was a grayness in the eastern sky. "I want to creep in toward the house while it remains dark. You can tell the rest as we go along. Tom, take these ropes and tie your man up. Make him safe, and then come ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... their gutters, drunkards dream of Hell. I say my prayers by my white bed to-night, With the arms of God about me, with the angels singing, singing Until the grayness of ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... recovery only to the swift transition of seasons in those northern latitudes. Without any lingering spring, the cold grayness of long, tense winter gives place to a radiant sun-burst of warm, yellow light. The uplands have long since been blown bare of snow by the March winds, and through the tangle of matted turf shoot myriad purple cups of the prairie anemone, while the russet grass takes on emerald tints. One day ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... she said. "You shall go, now, Stephen Holmes,—quick! before your sovereign lady fades, like Cinderella, into grayness and frozen eyes!" ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... may appear to be of a different tint to different eyes; and it seems certain that climate and surroundings affect the colour sense: light and colour will stimulate the delight in colour; while, where grayness and dullness characterize the surroundings of life, the colour sense will grow weak, or, if it is manifested at all, it will show a tendency to grayness and ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... "The grayness of the dawn was illuminated by sheets of green and red flame and black oily clouds rolled along the valley toward the river like ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... though to convince himself he had not seen aright, then stared again; and as he looked a sudden grayness ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... train, creaking its rough way down Emigration Canon, with straining oxen and tired but eager people, there had leaped one late afternoon the girl whose eyes were to call to him so potently,—incomparable eyes, large and deep, of a velvety grayness, under black brows splendidly bent. Nor had the eyes alone voiced that call to his starved senses. He had caught the free, fearless confidence of her leap over the wheel, and her graceful abandon as she stood ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... the train was wandering through the dullness of Central New York, when at last a faint suspicion of dim light appeared in the landscape, and Esther returned to her window. If any thing could be drearier than the blackness of night, it was the grayness of dawn, which had all the cold terror of death and all the grim repulsiveness of life joined in an hour of despair. Esther could now see the outlines of farm-houses as the train glided on; snow-laden roofs and sheds; long stretches of field with fences buried to their top rails in sweeping snow-drifts; ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... I made out the pond gleaming; and by this and by the dim grayness of the earth immediately about me knew that dawn was at last under way. The night had not yet begun to withdraw, but its first strength was going. Objects in the world about became, not visible, but existent. By the time I had carried my last load the rather liberal hundred yards to the ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... Edina's famous palaces and towers because of the haar, that damp, chilling, drizzling, dripping fog or mist which the east wind summons from the sea; but we knew that they were there, shrouded in the heart of that opaque mysterious grayness, and that before many hours our eyes would feast ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... weighing upon him, slept lightly and awakened early, his first thought of Peaches. He slipped into his clothing and advancing peered at her through the grayness. His heart beat wildly. ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... at the desk there was a gray man. Not only was he dressed entirely in gray, but his heavy hair was gray, his eyes were gray, and even his tanned skin seemed to give the impression of grayness in disguise. His overwhelming personality radiated an aura of grayness—not the gentle gray of the dove, but the resistless, driving gray of the super-dreadnaught; the hard, inflexible, brittle gray of the ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... place, it seemed that she gained a touch of courage for the instant. Priscilla was not looking at her now; her statuesque face was turned toward the wide expanse of landscape, fast dying out, as it were, in the twilight grayness. Theo's eyes rested on her for a few minutes in a remorseful pity for, and a mute yearning toward this woman whom she had so bitterly, yet so unconsciously wronged. She would not wrong her more deeply still; the wrong should end just ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the castle from the river, as a foreground, one has a lovely breastwork of trees, the castle resting on the crown of the hill like some splendid jewel. Its grayness makes its strong, bold outlines appear the more distinct against the melting background of the faint blue and white English sky and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... side by side, and saying nothing after that. The Drybone road was a broad trail, a worn strip of bareness going onward over the endless shelvings of the plain, visible even in this light; and presently, moving upon its grayness on a hill in front of them, they made out the wagon. They hastened ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... dawn. The pink sky was showing against the earlier grayness when Tania slipped into her coarse clothes and, like a small elf, crept out of her window into the friendly branches of the old tree. She was silent and swift as a squirrel as she clambered down. But she ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... the whining snarl of a tiger, not the call of hate or killing, but the call for protection, swiftly following our lead. Being civilized, we instinctively knew the way out of the jungle to human habitation. We approached the village which was still sleeping in the morning grayness, and behind us saw horny deer, leopards, and wild cats rushing after us. Then the boars came after us, dashing out of the jungle in terror. Vast clouds of blackness were rising from the horizon, and when the morning light grew more intense, ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... ever taken her to the theater and if he failed her, she was sure that she would never go again, and she sobbed out incoherently that she "couldn't live at all without it." Apparently the blankness and grayness of life itself had been broken for her only by the portrayal of a ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... beside Bo, and for a long time they climbed steadily in silence. Helen knew when that dark hour before dawn had passed, and she welcomed an almost imperceptible lightening in the east. Then the stars paled. Gradually a grayness absorbed all but the larger stars. The great white morning star, wonderful as Helen had never seen it, lost its brilliance and life and seemed to retreat ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey |
