"Grimness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stand once more before the home of the long-suffering, much-laboring, loud-complaining Heraclitus of his time, whose very smile had a grimness in it more ominous than his scowl. Poor man! Dyspeptic on a diet of oatmeal porridge; kept wide awake by crowing cocks; drummed out of his wits by long-continued piano-pounding; sharp of speech, I fear, to his high-strung wife, who gave him back as good as she got! I hope I am mistaken ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... library the old man laid aside his newspaper, looked at him with a kindly grimness on his big, smooth, ruddy countenance, rumpled his mop of white hair with one hand and rattled the keys in ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... chant accompanies the rhythmic plash of the short oars, as the brown rowers toss them high in air, and bring them down with a sharp splash. A splendid avenue of kanari-trees extends along the shore, the usual Dutch church symbolises the uncompromising grimness of Calvinistic creed, and the crumbling fort of Orange-Nassau, the scene of many stirring incidents in the island past, adjoins the beautiful thatched bungalow of the Resident, the broad eaves emerging from depths of richest foliage. A subterranean ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... a strike," Mrs. Cudahy agreed, with quiet grimness, and under her breath she added heavily, "Sure ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... said. And, despite herself, she flinched before the grimness of his tone. "You have yet to learn one thing, however: that I do not change. That, north or south, I am the same to those who are the same to me. That what I have won on the one bank I will hold on the other, in the teeth of all, and though God's Church be thundering on my heels! I ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... P. M. the gaunt, chalk cliffs of Dover hove into sight, rising up in their grimness and seeming yet to shadow the awful tragedy of the previous day, when an auxiliary cruiser had struck a mine a quarter of a mile from shore and sunk in ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... occurring. She thought of John standing over Meshach with the cold towel, and of Meshach passing the flame across John's dying eyes, and these juxtapositions appeared to her intolerably mournful in their ridiculous grimness. ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... wild, and although it had nothing of the savage grandeur Agatha expected, she thought it forbidding. Its influence was insidious; one was not daunted by a glance, but realized by degrees its grimness and desolation. The North was not dramatic, except perhaps when the ice broke up; the forces that molded the rugged land worked with a stern quietness. It looked as if they also molded the character of the men who braved the rigors of the frozen waste. The Metis were not vivacious ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... very deserving young man—and I'm glad I can use him," said Fogg, not able to keep all the grimness out of his tones. "Now, son," he went on, after a moment of pondering, "you stay on board this tug till I have been gone five minutes. There are a lot of sharp eyes around in these times, and some of Vose's friends would be ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... toys are here—mysterious to the uninitiated European, but to the Japanese child full of delightful religious meaning. In these faiths of the Far East there is little of sternness or grimness—the Kami are but the spirits of the fathers of the people; the Buddhas and the Bosatsu were men. Happily the missionaries have not succeeded as yet in teaching the Japanese to make religion a dismal thing. These gods smile for ever: if you find one who frowns, like Fudo, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... the saloon. He had paid dearly for his stubbornness and would continue to pay to the end of his days. Billy Evans had swung around and was fighting the saloon now with a grimness that was terrible in one so ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... was startled by the set grimness of his face and the thunderous lowering of the black smudge ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... tango with a skeleton partner. Her face is livid with terror and fatigue, her limbs are drooping, but she is held by inexorable bony claws. On the feet of the skeleton are dancing pumps, a touch which adds to the grimness. This ghoulish dance does not lack its element ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... with assumed grimness, "if I hadn't happened to ha' seen a light from th' bottom o' th' attic stairs I should never have known aught about all this here?" He indicated the cleansed attic, the table, the lamp, and the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... crescent moustache there is no lower lip visible: it is tucked and folded in by the rising thrust of the jaw. It is this which gives him the "grim" aspect which every reader of the papers hears about. He is grim, there's no doubt about it, with the grimness of a man going through a tough ordeal. "I can see him all right," squeaked little John Fisher, "but he doesn't see me." The first two rows of seats at the right of the aisle were crammed with generals, two-star ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... recognised Wilfred in the train of their visitor; we can hardly paint fitly the scornful looks of Etienne, or the grimness of the stepfather. ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... Sandy at once," Lans explained. The plain common-sense atmosphere of the cabin and the little doctor's evident suffering were calming Treadwell's hot Southern blood and giving a touch of stern prosaic grimness to the business. ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... he had not intimated it. As he looked at the squire, he knew how dangerous it would be. His face was settled into a grimness which showed how perilous it would be for the man who had deceived Phrony, if, as Keith feared, his ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... turned round, the air of grimness was perceptible again. He held out the glass to Nick. "I think ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Resident Engineer. He smiled ironically as he noted the green and white paint and the trimmings of the verandahs with which Ashton had endeavored to give a bungalow effect to the shack-like structure. But as he swung up the steps into the front verandah, the grimness of his look increased and the humor vanished. His heavy tread through the weather vestibule announced his entrance into the office. He took no pains ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... shades of green. Everywhere are avenues and clumps of great trees, hedges of roses, of limes, and deronta encircle every garden, the green of the polo grounds is as that of the Emerald Isle. Even the old fort has lost its grimness, and the mud walls have given place to beautiful terraces bright with every flower; while the once formidable moat is spanned by peaceful rustic bridges, clustered thick with climbing roses, and giving access to the gardens and orchards ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... tied, neither side having scored, the time keeper warned the rival teams that only three minutes remained for play. His warning served to cause a tightening of muscles and a grimness of countenance in a last final effort to put over a score and avert a tied score. The huge crowd prayed fervently for a score—a touchdown—a safety—a goal from ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... strength of some solid rock on which the waves of rebellion or invasion would have dashed and broken. It is easy to believe the saying of Lambarde, in his Perambulation of Kent, that "from time to time it had a part in almost every tragedie". But the grimness of its grey walls is relieved by a green mantle of clinging ivy, and though it can no longer be said of the Castle that it is "bathed, though in ruins, with a flush of flowers", the beautiful single pink grows ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... of whipcord fiber in his make-up. He stood the test and grubbed at his books every night until the clock tolled twelve. He was born at a peculiar time, being a child of the Reformation married to the Renaissance. The toughness and grimness of Calvin were united in him with the tenderness of Erasmus. From out of the Universal Energy, of which we are particles, he had called into his being qualities so diverse that they seemed never to have been before or since united ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... pleasing to me; for Elzevir spoke as if he meant them, and I had got to like him a little in spite of all his grimness; and beside that, was sorry for his grief over his son. I was so moved by what he said, that for a moment I was for jumping up and calling out to him that I lay here and liked him well, but then thought better of it, ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... have seen it," the girl retorted, with a note of grimness in her tone, "when it was a great deal more like the other place—stillness that seems almost to stifle you, grey mists that choke your breath and blot out everything; nothing but the gurgling of a little water, and the sighing—the most melancholy sighing you ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... call for a final climax. The ex-valet cleared his throat. And it was to his ex-valet that Tabs listened; he had forgotten the General. It was as though the grimness of reality had interrupted a piece of play-acting. There was less heat in Braithwaite's voice now and more reproach. "You said nothing about caste in those days, when you hurried us to the shambles. You promised us—— What was it that ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... Viscount Mirabeau, called Barrel Mirabeau, on account of his rotundity, and the quantity of strong liquor he contains. Among the clergy is the Abbe Maury, who does not want for audacity, and the Cure Gregoire who shall be a bishop, and Talleyrand-Pericord, his reverence of Autun, with sardonic grimness, a man living in falsehood, and on falsehood, yet ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... laugh freely now; yet there was some grimness in a colloquy that she had with her daughter after Bertram Jay had departed. Before this happened Mrs. Vesey's card, scrawled over in pencil and referring to the morrow's luncheon, was brought up ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... occasion to open his campaign. They had driven over and stopped the car at a point from which they could look out to sea, and though the summer vividness had died out of wave and sky and the waters had taken on a touch of a leaden grimness, there was still beauty in ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... have a downward turn at its corners that hinted at a vein of humour lying hid somewhere. The hint was well-sustained, for underneath all his sternness and severity the doctor concealed a playful humour, that at times came to the surface, and gratefully relieved his ordinary grimness. ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... no hesitation in the makeup of Major Bliss. He intended to suppress this outbreak in a manner that would tend to discourage any such ebullitions in the future. Consequently, he made his dispositions with grimness and determination. His plan was simple, his orders being to "rush 'em and give 'em hell." His greatest regret was that the interests of discipline should make such a step necessary, since he was sure that a majority of the mutineers had acted upon impulse, and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... the militant spirit in religion, we summon a dangerous power. It has bred grimness and cruelty. Crusaders and inquisitors did their work in the name of Jesus, but not in his spirit. We must saturate ourselves with the spirit of our Master if our fighting is to further his Kingdom. Hate breeds hate; force challenges force. Only love ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... Baden-Powell in some measure obscured from the popular view the grimness of his task. Like the true Briton that he is, he considered it part of his duty to make light of his difficulties. But the holding of Mafeking was stern work. The Boers themselves never dreamed the defence would be seriously ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... saw was barely two hundred yards from the one patch of woodland visible from the ship. Cochrane said with some grimness. ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... so also was the coward gone. The gaunt little old Mexican seemed oblivious of peril, as fever blinds one to every nearest emotion. There was even a grimness in the shifting gaze. And a certain merciless capacity, born of unyielding resolve—born of an obsession, one might say—was there also. He could have been some great military leader, cruel and of iron, if those eyes were ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... possible. Perhaps he saw such cities as Dore saw London: sullen majesty of arched glooms, and granite deeps opening into granite deeps beyond range of vision, and mountains of masonry with seas of labor in turmoil at their base, and monumental spaces displaying the grimness of ordered power slow-gathering through centuries. Of beauty there was nothing to make appeal to him between those endless cliffs of stone which walled out the sunrise and the sunset, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... achievement of poetry that any woman has given to English literature. Her novel Wuthering Heights stands alone as a monument of intensity owing nothing to tradition, nothing to the achievement of earlier writers. It was a thing apart, passionate, unforgettable, haunting in its grimness, its grey melancholy. Among women writers Emily Bronte has a sure and certain place for all time. As a poet or maker of verse Charlotte Bronte is undistinguished, but there are passages of pure poetry of great magnificence in her four novels, and particularly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... he is rather alarming,' said Dick. 'He's difficult to know, and he's obviously impatient with other people's affectations. There's a certain grimness about him which disturbs you ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... a pause. Hardin's heart flutters madly. He sees a stony look gather on Joe Woods' face. There is a peculiar grimness also in the visage of the watchful Peyton. Everyone in the room is on the alert. Crowding to the front, Hardin is elbowed by a man who seats himself in a chair ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... shall tell thee that scarce had a band like thine come safe through the mountains, save by great good luck, without the leave of us; for the fool with the crown that lieth there dead had of late days so stirred up the Folks of the Fells through his grimness and cruelty that we have been minded to stop everything bigger than a cur-dog that might seek to pass by us, for at least so long as yonder rascal should live. But ye be welcome; so now let us to the road, for the ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... afore I'm wanted!" exclaimed Miss Lavender, with assumed grimness, as she obeyed the call. "I s'pose you thought there was no watch needed, and both ends o' the path open to all the world. Well—what am I to do?—move mountains like a grain o' mustard seed (or however it runs), dip out th' ocean ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... the rain and the grimness of everything, I think Jacinth felt happier that day than since they had come ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... their leisure hours. But there was too much leisure here now. Their mirth had a hollow sound. In older times, explorers of the frozen polar zones had to cope with inactivity, loneliness and despair. But at least they were on their native world. The grimness of the Moon was eating into the courage of Grantline's men. An unreality here. A weirdness. These fantastic crags. The deadly silence. The nights, almost two weeks of Earth-time in length, congealed by the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... happened, I had," Foster replied with a touch of grimness. "For all that, I delivered the packet and got ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... to prefigure this face, but never had his visioning approached the actual in its majestic, still beauty. The brow was nobly broad, the nose straight and purposeful, the chin bold yet delicate. The grimness of the mouth was relieved by a faint lift of the upper lip, perhaps an echo of the smile with which he greeted death. There was a gleam of teeth from under the lip. The eyes had closed peacefully; the lids lay light ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... with weightier matters. To quote again from the tribute of a fellow-student: "On everything he said or wrote there was stamped the impress of a forcible individuality, a mind that thought for itself, and whose thoughts had the rugged strength of an original character wherein grimness was mingled with humor, and practical shrewdness with a love for abstract speculation." In the end, his solid qualities of mind and character made so strong an impression upon the University authorities that in 1860 he was elected fellow of Balliol. At the same time he became ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... had at this moment two unexpected results. The first was her wondering in dumb remonstrance how Mrs. Wix, with a devotion not after all inferior to her own, could put into such an allusion such a grimness of derision; the second was that she found herself suddenly drop into a deeper view of it. She too had been afraid, as we have seen, of the people of whom Sir Claude was afraid, and by that law she had had her due measure of latest apprehension of Mrs. ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... face had hardened into grimness, and in his eyes there was the light of a fierce purpose. The sight of him comforted me, in spite of ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... that the man has been found in Petain. As to the truth of all this I do not pretend to know. I did not see Joffre, but all that I have read of Joffre suggests that Petain is of his sort, the same quiet, silent man, with a certain coldness of the North, a grimness of manner that ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... clean-shaven young man, with the Irish accent, standing before him in an attitude of quite respectful, but not in the least subservient attention, was at such complete variance with either of his two imaginary types, that he found his attitude of grimness insensibly relaxing. ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... fairy-land of shelter and fountains within. I have seen such palaces stand in quiet and stately parks, as old, as majestic, as finely proportioned as the buildings of Oxford; but the very blackness of the city air, and the drifting smoke of the town, gives that added touch of grimness and mystery that the country airs cannot communicate. And even fairer sights are contained within; those panelled, dark-roofed halls, with their array of portraits gravely and intently regarding the stranger; the chapels, with their splendid classical screens and stalls, rich ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... lifted his dark face, its grimness not lessened by flecks and bars of court-plaster; across the apathy of physical exhaustion his black eyes ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... bitter cold, the unopened door of an empty house, their future home, left a vivid impression upon the minds of her listeners; not because of its forlornness, but because of the splendid energy and patience which she brought to the occasion and the light she was able to cast over the grimness of circumstance. Of course, at the date in which this is written, it is difficult to conceive anything like grimness as associated with the comfortable and social town of Brunswick, but we must not fail to remember how rapid the growth of winter comfort ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... the piece of an old cord. "I was made in a place of doom, and doomed men made my fibres, working without hope. Therefore there came a grimness into my heart, so that I never let anything go free when once I was set to bind it. Many a thing have I bound relentlessly for months and years; for I used to come coiling into warehouses where the great boxes lay all open to the air, and one of them would be suddenly ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... darkly. There was a grimness as well as fear in his tone. "I've heard of Sears, but not Cordts. Where does this band ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... mediaeval idyll, and so give himself away, is true to life. But my final impression of Mr. HERBERT'S book—he will perhaps think I am taking him too seriously—is that his many gifts and notably his humour, whose gaiety I prefer to its grimness, are here exercised on a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... meal that morning, quite oppressively silent; Erica felt like a child in disgrace. Every now and then the grimness of it appealed to her sense of the ludicrous, and she felt inclined to scream or do something desperate just to see what would happen. At length the dreary repast came to an end, and she had just taken up a newspaper, with a sort of gasp of relief at ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... refreshing book, a book whose piquant savour and quaint originality of style are good for jaded brains, buy and read In a Canadian Canoe.... There is in these stories a curious mixture of humour, insight, and pathos, with here and there a dash of grimness and a sprinkling of that charming irrelevancy which is of the essence of true humour. As for 'The Celestial Grocery,' I can only say that it is in its way ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... face with his hand, and leant his elbow on the head of the couch. Looking up quickly with a smile—still tinged with grimness, for evil habits and their results are not to be got rid of ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... her, and as the distance shortened, he recognized her. Edith Bailey, a second-year psychology major who had been attending his classes two semesters. Very intelligent, reclusive, not a local-grown product. Her work had a grimness about it, as though psychology was a dire obsession, especially abnormal psychology. One of her theme papers had been an exhaustive, mature but somehow overly determined, treatise on self-induced hallucination and auto-suggestion. He had not been too impressed because of an unjustified ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton
... but for one of 'em," replied Mrs. Pember with some grimness, but with her eyes averted from ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... heard this woman termed "plain," and I expected bony harshness and grimness—something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the shadow of a royal Vashti: a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale now like twilight, and wasted ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... a loss what to say, decided to say nothing. The sight of John, discreetly gazing at the roof of the chicken house, the grimness of Grandfather's face, the discomfort of the choking smoke, urged a dignified retreat. She turned abruptly and left them, overwhelmed at the exhibition furnished by Mr. McBride, confounded at his sudden leap into activity after years of serene floating and absolutely ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... the ice two men, apparently several days in the water, and with the usual look of drowned people of good condition—glassy and of fixed expression, as if in the moment of death a consenting grimness had stolen into their countenances, neither composed ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... said Lord Amersteth, with the slightest suspicion of grimness. "It's to be a little week, you know, when my son comes of age. We play the Free Foresters, the Dorsetshire Gentlemen, and probably some local lot as well. But Mr. Raffles will tell you all about it, and Crowley shall write. Another wicket! By Jove, they're all ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... grimness? Perhaps death unseals the vision. Often indeed did Iemon present himself at the family temple; he the substitute for the Master of Tamiya. But as often did his feet return by the diametrically opposite direction, running the gauntlet ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... Thirlwell, with some grimness. "I hoped you'd both let the thing go when she saw ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... the corner of the cabin, then halted to see if he was following. He was, indeed. She ran round behind the cabin, out on the slope, halting at the first trees. Cleve came striding after her. She ran on, beginning to pant and stumble. The way he strode, the white grimness of him, frightened her. What would he, do? Again she went on, but not running now. There were straggling pines and spruces that soon hid the cabins. Beyond, a few rods, was a dense clump of pines, and she made for that. As she reached it she turned fearfully. Only Cleve ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... accepted this explanation of the tears with a murmured sound of somewhat enigmatic intonation. Her thin dark face settled into a repose that had a little grimness in it. She began putting the flowers into a vase that stood between the reproduction of a Giotto Madonna and a Japanese devil-hunt, both results of the study of art taken up during the past winter by her mother's favorite woman's club. Mrs. Emery watched the process in the ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... dragging at his moustache with a lean weak hand. "I don't think you would have cared for its DENOUEMENT," he said with sudden grimness. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Bud's voice had a grimness in it that spelled trouble for the lady laid out in a faint "She can be his mother ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... in the land we have made. I show you no choice, for no choice there is. Here are we bare of everything in the wild-wood: for the most part our children are crying for us at home, our wives are longing for us in our houses, and if we come not to them in kindness, the Romans shall come to them in grimness. Down yonder in the plain, moreover, is our wain-burg slowly drawing near to us, and with it is much livelihood of ours, which is a little thing, for we may get more; but also there are our banners of battle and the tokens of the kindred, ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... the Tower of London in all its grimness and centuries of age, holding within its walls the scene of ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... and it seemed like embarking on the ocean without a compass. The rolling brown waves on which you see a horse a mile and a half off impress one strangely, and at noon the sky darkened up for another storm, the mountains swept down in blackness to the Plains, and the higher peaks took on a ghastly grimness horrid to behold. It was first very cold, then very hot, and finally settled down to a fierce east-windy cold, difficult to endure. It was free and breezy, however, and my horse was companionable. Sometimes herds of cattle were browsing on the sun-cured grass, then herds ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... which the town was originally built (thanks to rich quarries in the neighborhood), and to which it owed its appellation of the Black. There are no windows, no apertures, and to-day no battlements nor roofs. These accessories were removed by Henry III., so that, in spite of its grimness and blackness, the place has not even the interest of look- ing like a prison; it being, as I supposed, the essence of a prison not to be open to the sky. The only features of the enormous structure are the black, sombre stretches and protrusions ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... front of the old fireplace in the principal room of the little cottage; for he has bought back the rocky farm of his father, and has retained and restored the little old home. "I was born in this room. It was bedroom and kitchen. It was poverty." And his voice sank with a kind of grimness ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... which he answered, and the words and the grimness of his face, impressed Hamilton somehow with a new and keener sense of ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... finest of all mounted figures, unless that of Marcus Aurelius, who rides benignant before the Roman Capitol, be finer: but I was not thinking of that; I only found myself staring at the triumphant captain as if he had an oracle on his lips. The western light shines into all his grimness at that hour and makes it wonderfully personal. But he continued to look far over my head, at the red immersion of another day—he had seen so many go down into the lagoon through the centuries—and if he were thinking of battles ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... complexion must they come at last. This Charon ferries them all over in his boat; kings, counselors, cavaliers, doctors, Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Hans Sloane, King George II., Mahomet, or whosoever, and all gather one grimness of hue and style. Only when Cicero comes by, our gentle seer sticks a little at saying he talked with Cicero, and, with a touch of human relenting, remarks, "one whom it was given me to believe was Cicero;" and when the soi disant Roman opens his mouth, Rome and eloquence ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Grove, mistress?" Hanglip and Spotted Dog, too, cringed back in fright. Stumpy concealed his uneasiness, yet his eyes searched Dolores's face questingly. None truly believed in the queen's magic powers; yet none was bold enough to openly avow his unbelief; and the added grimness of the storm, assisted by the unearthliness of that howl of anguish, brought the four godless pirates to the ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... gone since Imogen's reporter-haunted nuptials had been celebrated in the bland little country church that raised its white steeple from the woodlands. Jack had been present at them; decency had made that necessary, and a certain grimness in his aspect was easily to be interpreted in a dismal, defeated rival. It was as such, he knew, that he ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... press his foot hard down upon the old serpent, as if his very soul depended upon it, feeling him squirm mightily, and doubting whether the fight were half over yet, and how the victory might turn! And, with all this fierceness, this grimness, this unutterable horror, there should still be something high, tender, and holy in Michael's eyes, and around his mouth. But the battle never was such a child's play as Guido's dapper Archangel seems to ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... actual apprehension, Mrs. Pember went back to her work. Mellony had certain mild whims of her own, but it was surprising that she should have left her room in disorder, the bed unmade; that was not like her studious neatness. With a certain grimness Mrs. Pember ate her breakfast alone. Of course no harm had come to Mellony, but where was she? Unacknowledged, the shadow of Ira Baldwin fell across her wonder. Had Mellony cared so much for him that her disappointment had driven her to something ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... made in his demeanour; he seemed another man. It was true that a hundred of it must go in paying debts, but a hundred would be left, which meant at least a year's respite for him. Elizabeth, too, relaxed her habitual grimness; the two hundred pounds had its influence on her also, and there were other genial influences at work in her dark secret heart. Beatrice knew nothing of the money and sat somewhat silent, but she too was happy with the wild unreal happiness that ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... de S. Smythe went to look over "—— House," in the neighbourhood of Blythswood Square, Glasgow, the only thing about the house he did not like was the bathroom—it struck him as excessively grim. The secret of the grimness did not lie, he thought, in any one particular feature—in the tall, gaunt geyser, for example (though there was always something in the look of a geyser when it was old and dilapidated, as was the case with this one, that repelled him), or in the dark drying-cupboard, or in the narrow, slit-like ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... task. But no such sign of weakening did they see. Once only did he pause to look away—was it into the past or into futurity?—with a steady, self-forgetful gaze which seemed to make a man of him again. Then he went on with his task with the grimness of one who takes his last step ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... without grimness, 'step in, if you feel so sure of her,' and he helped Maimie into ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... as a prince, and greater as a scholar, seen in the evening twilight of an age in which the clergy could not read;—if justice were done to all such, we might find something, even in these dark and rugged times, if not to soften the grimness of the portrait, at least to give ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Clearly enough, he has nothing of the relentless logic which made Hobbes' mind the clearest instrument in the history of English philosophy. Nor has he Hobbes' sense of style or pungent grasp of the grimness of facts about him. Yet he need not fear the comparison with the earlier thinker. If Hobbes' theory of sovereignty is today one of the commonplaces of jurisprudence, ethically and politically we occupy ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... at all events made his way up the telegraph-post," said Mr Wright, his smile expanding and the grimness of it departing; "see! the rascal is actually stretching out his hand to grasp one of the wires. ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... survives, in remote parts of our country, even now. It aided, perhaps, to train the race of pioneers and frontiersmen who later became one of the most remarkable features of our early population. Contact with the savage races inoculated us, perhaps, with a touch of their stoicism and grimness. But in our conflicts with them there was nothing noble or inspiring; and there could be no object in view on either side but extermination. Our Indian fighters became as savage and merciless as the creatures they pursued. The Indian ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... place. The slopes on either side, thickly covered with mats of heather and bristling mountain herbage, and yet lean and rocky, were like the furry sides of emaciated animals, and up above bare black summits confronted the sky. It was the extremity of bleak beauty. And, unafraid of the grimness, Ellen ran on ahead, her arms crooked back funnily because she had her hands in her pocket to keep the coconut-ice tin from rattling against the protractor, her red hair streaming a yard behind. He absorbed the sight of her so greedily that it immediately seemed as if it were a recollected ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... at least have something.' He spoke with a grimness which was a little startling. He held the silken tresses at arm's length. 'This points to murder,—foul, cruel, causeless murder. As I live, I will devote my all,—money, time, reputation!—to gaining vengeance on the wretch who did ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... higher, above the mountain peaks, above the clouds, and almost out of sight of the solid earth. But still the earth-born monster kept its hold, and was borne upward, along with the creature of light and air. Bellerophon, meanwhile turning about, found himself face to face with the ugly grimness of the Chimaera's visage, and could only avoid being scorched to death, or bitten right in twain, by holding up his shield. Over the upper edge of the shield, he looked sternly into the savage eyes ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... forest is beyond all my expectations of tropical luxuriance and beauty, and it is a thing of another world to the forest of the Upper Calabar, which, beautiful as it is, is a sad dowdy to this. There you certainly get a great sense of grimness and vastness; here you have an equal grimness and vastness with the addition of superb colour. This forest is a Cleopatra to which Calabar is but a Quaker. Not only does this forest depend on flowers for its illumination, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... girl, I know you are brave but I'd just like to hold your hand or look steadily into your eyes, to tell you that you have the best thing that this world gives—friends who are one with you. I can see old Adolph with his grimness and his great love, which makes him more grim and far more mandatory, what a sturdy old Dutch Calvinist he is! He really is more Dutch than German—Dutch modified by the California sun—and Calvinist sweetened ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... ought to talk to Bill Belllounds," declared Mrs. Andrews with a grimness that boded ill for ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... dolt—quadruple fool—prize-winner among idiots! He had nothing to say—he could say nothing. Nor was it the presence of a third person which prevented him. Perhaps, rather, something in Patsy's eye, and, though that he would not acknowledge, a lurking grimness in the smile about the ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Their vistas were of the future and empire-wide. The fire that had wakened in them with the pronunciamento, "Above me there shall be no one," lingered and the smile which hovered on the lips held a certain grimness in its curve. It was not a reassuring smile for such interests as ran counter to his own. A passing reporter who fancied himself wise in the lore of the Street, halted to observe, and muttered to himself, "Ursus Major wearing his fighting face! ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... trouble? A very fantastic one, you will say—the illusion of a self-tormentor. It was the face of Uncle Silas which haunted me. Notwithstanding the old pale smile, there was a shrinking grimness, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... do him justice, did not interrupt. He listened with an expression that varied between grimness and weariness. When Joe ended he picked up a telephone. He talked briefly. Joe felt a reluctant sort of approval. Major Holt was not a man one could ever feel very close to, and the work he was in charge of was not likely ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... lord, who had been moving to Bishop's assistance, stood instantly arrested. Chap-fallen, with much of his high colour suddenly departed, the Deputy-Governor was swaying on unsteady legs. Peter Blood considered him with a grimness ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... that grimness that appears in the face of persecutors, Satan can tell how to lessen, and make to dwindle in our apprehensions, those truths unto which our hearts have joined themselves afore, and to which Christ our Lord has commanded ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... we can follow!" sang out a voice from the throng in our waist. "A d—d easy prize! And we'll give no quarter this time!" There was a grimness in the applause of his fellows that boded little good to ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... of Athens. And here is testimony to the fact: all manner of comic masks, of grotesque visages; mouths distorted into impossible grins, eyes leering and goggling, noses extravagant. I sketched a caricature of Medusa, the anguished features and snaky locks travestied with satiric grimness. You remember a story which illustrates this scoffing habit: how the Roman Ambassador, whose Greek left something to be desired, excited the uproarious derision of the assembled Tarentines—with results ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... And the grimness of his fate lay here—that it was by his best qualities that he was betrayed. If he had been hard and mercenary, like some of those who preyed upon him, there might have been hope. But he was generous and free-hearted, a slave to ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... journeyman bookbinder; but the situation did not suit him. His master appears to have been an austere and passionate man, and Faraday was to the last degree sensitive. All his life he continued so. He suffered at times from dejection; and a certain grimness, too, pervaded his moods. 'At present,' he writes to Abbott, 'I am as serious as you can be, and would not scruple to speak a truth to any human being, whatever repugnance it might give rise to. Being in this state of mind, I should have ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... from the relaxation in the savage grimness of his captors, which seemed implied by this rough pleasantry, and with him such recuperation of spirits naturally took the ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... old man now held long before him, was partly printed and partly written with a lead-pencil, whose mark was now faint and now heavy, as having gone at intervals to the writer's lips. As the old man read, his face lost not a little of its grimness. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson |
