"Sombrely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Howat Penny thought sombrely of love, of the emotion that had brought—or betrayed?—Isabel Howat so far away from her birthright. It had gripped his sister no less tyrannically; stripping them, he considered, of their essential liberty. The thing was clear enough in his mind—nothing more than an animal ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... quoted sombrely and left him in the midst of the question he was asking. She strolled back to the house and joined Lydia who was looking radiantly beautiful in a new dress of silver ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... squire said sombrely. "You're fond of telling me I have no claim on you, but I have—for all that. There is a bond between us that you can't get away from, however hard you try. You think I can't understand your feelings in this matter, ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... a day on which the sun looked forth with augmented splendor from his sombrely curtained pavilion; when the naked branches of the deciduous trees, the serried lances of the evergreens, and the broad leaves of the tent-like magnolias—the pride of the Tazewell place—shone as from ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... themselves was a biting, aching madness. She hated the conceited, happy self that hadn't cared. The piano, gleaming sombrely in the hushed light, reminded ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... the maimed Blair, awkward with his crutch and bag, insisted on helping Lane get Red aboard the train. Red could just about walk. Sombrely they clambered up the steps into ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... he replied sombrely. "Why should he go to Hades? You have it confused with another place that ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... but heed all the rich, warm beauty of her—these eyes so sombrely sweet, her delicate nose, the temptation of her vivid lips—and so spake hot ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... he replied sombrely. "It belongs to the psychology of madness. To me, who knew him, there are gleams of sense in it, and passages where the delirium of the language is only a transparent veil on the meaning. All the remainder is ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... sight, and listens for the boom of the first gun. Not very different, except for the absence of a like confidence in the completeness of their dispositions, were the emotions of the masters who manned the platform of Borth Station, when the gray afternoon of Tuesday, April 4th, drew sombrely towards its close. The station was crowded with spectators from Aberystwith and Borth itself, curious to watch the entry of the boys. Expectation was stimulated by the arrival of a train, which set ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... of the call, the skies were clear of rain, though not of cloud. The great gashed mountain to the north which Dixon called Saddleback, while a little Cumbria "guide," produced by Tyson, called it Blencathra, showed sombrely in a gray light; and a November wind was busy stripping what leaves still remained from the woods by the stream and in the hollows of the mountain. Landscape and heavens were of an iron bracingness and bareness; and the beauty in them ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... himself, to shake off a mantle of deliberate harshness. He took the hand she proffered. Retaining it, he spoke, his eyes sombrely, wistfully considering her. ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... sombrely clad figure of a tall, gaunt woman would stand at the open casement of a window in the larger room, and keep a mystic vigil that sometimes lasted for hours. She kept her gaze fixed on that strange little figure whenever it roved up and down the suite of rooms or clambered ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... Judith looked sombrely down at the Marshall homestead. She had always loved the quaint, picturesque old place, so different from all the commonplace spick and span new houses of the prosperous valley. Judith had never been able to decide whether she really ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... glass, took a long steady look, and said sombrely, "It's the girl. Keep an eye on her. If they start to do anything with her, let me ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... struck nine wheezy notes. Yorke and Redmond, seated at a table busily engaged in cleaning their service revolvers, glanced up at each other sombrely. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... the national resources, the burden on the national future. So that the Farrell motor-cars and men servants, the costly simplicity of the 'cottage,' Cicely's extravagance in dress, her absurd and expensive uniform, her make-up and her jewels, were so many daily provocations to a man thus sombrely possessed. ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not what you have said all through," she replied, looking sombrely away from him, her chin on her hand, "it is what you ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... figure looked huge, body and legs outlined by light, head and shoulders towering into shadow. "He shall have a run for his money!" he said. His eyes stared down sombrely at his niece. "It's more than he deserves!—it's more than you deserve, Chris. Sit down there and write to him; tell him to put himself entirely in my hands." He turned his back on her, and went ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Lady Blakeney felt repelled and chilled by this sombrely-dressed young person: an instinct, which she could not have explained and which she felt had no justification, warned her that somehow or other, the sadness was not quite genuine, the appeal for the ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... vaguely foreseen, sombrely eluded. A questioner was before him who, poor, unheeded, an ancient victim of vice, could yet wield a weapon whose sweep of wounds would be wide. Stern and masterful as he looked in his arid isolation, beneath all was a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... her horse, wheeled into the fields, and dashed onward. Fitz Hugh was lounging in his saddle, and sombrely surveying the passing column, when she galloped ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... a long journey and the afternoon was wearing on. The passenger in the last third class compartment but one, looking out of the window sombrely and intently, saw nothing now but desolate brown hills and a winding lonely river, very northern ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... interpretation of her grief. She was quite willing that Mr. Kane should know why she had been crying, but she did not care to talk about that side to him. It had been always, and it would always be, she feared, all life to her. She looked sombrely before ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... arms in front of her, her little chin fell forward on her white wrappings, and she stared rather sombrely into vacancy. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... restlessly. "It was not," he said sombrely; "it was not meant to wound you, sir. Let me, once for all, sitting in this room amid the shades of so many past kindnesses, utterly disavow any personal feeling toward you other than respect and ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... voice refused its office. She attempted to throw open the door of her own carriage; but her fingers fumbled clumsily and ineffectively with the handle. And meanwhile the caleche was slowly passing, La Tour d'Azyr's fine eyes sombrely yet intently meeting her own anguished gaze. And then she saw something else. M. d'Ormesson, leaning back again from the forward inclination of his body to join his own to his companion's salutation of the Countess, disclosed the empty right sleeve ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... farther and farther away from the happy years and just being taken along, taken along, to God knows where, God knows to what." She put out the palms of her hands towards where misty evening banked sombrely across the park. "That's ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... Dr. France left behind in the bow-window observed their entry with a mingling of curiosity and repulsion. It seemed to him that their entry was that of persons into a hostile camp,—the senses all alert against attack. Delia was of course in black, her face sombrely brilliant in its dark setting of a plain felt hat, like the hat of a Cavalier without its feathers. "She knows perfectly well we have been talking about her!" thought Dr. France,—"that we have seen the newspapers. She comes in ready for battle—perhaps ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... paper. The reception room into which he was shown, by a maid, was jungle-like in its hangings and deep-tufted upholstery of maroon and royal blue velvets, its lace and twisted cords with heavy tassels, and hassocks crowded on the sombrely brilliant rugs sacred in mosques. There was a mantle in colored marbles, cabinets of fretted ebony, tables of onyx and floriated ormolu, ivories and ornaments of ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... bungalows. Men wandered about, looking at the women who sat at their windows, reading or sewing, for the most part taking no notice of the passers-by; and like the women they were of all nationalities. There were Americans, sailors from the ships in port, enlisted men off the gunboats, sombrely drunk, and soldiers from the regiments, white and black, quartered on the island; there were Japanese, walking in twos and threes; Hawaiians, Chinese in long robes, and Filipinos in preposterous hats. They were silent and as it ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... Otto sombrely, 'but now I do not. I am growing old. And then, Gotthold, there is Seraphina. She is loathed in this country that I brought her to and suffered her to spoil. Yes, I gave it her as a plaything, and she has broken it: a fine Prince, an admirable Princess! Even her ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... full and Rocket was busy. His face glowed with funereal happiness. He was sombrely delighted at the rapidity with which the tide of dollars was flowing across his dingy counter. He was more than ordinarily interested, too, which was ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... imposing by far than Powyss Place, and over twice as old. She looked at the polished suits of armor, at battle-axes, antlers, pikes, halberds, until her eyes ached. She paced in awe and wonder down the vast portrait-gallery, where half a hundred dead and gone Catherons looked at her sombrely out of their heavy frames. And one day her picture—hers—would hang in solemn state here. The women who looked at her from these walls lay stark and stiff in the vaults beneath Chesholm Church, and sooner or later they would lay her stark and stiff ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... the British Museum. Motor-'buses will snatch you from St. James's Palace, dash you through the City, and land you, within twenty minutes, breathless and bewildered, in the very spot where Sir John climbed from his steed. There is little now that is naughty and light-hearted. There is much that is sombrely wicked, and there are numbers of unsweetened ladies attached to the churches; and if it should chance to be one of your bad days, you may hear, as you stand musing upon the fringe of the Downs, in place of Sir John's insouciant numbers, "Mein liebe Schwann ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Those few words, sombrely spoken, checked her wild outburst as surely as a hand upon her mouth. She stood gazing at him for a space in utter amazement, but gradually under his unchanging regard her look began to fail. She turned at length with a little gasp, and sat down on the old horsehair sofa, huddling ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... afternoon it wore a cheerless face; most of the blinds were still down, and the dwelling might have been unoccupied, for any sign of human activity that the eye could catch. There was no porch at the main entrance, and the heavy nail-studded door greeted a visitor somewhat sombrely. On the front of a gable ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... "Gunga Din" and, wilfully misinterpreting the gratitude of the audience that it was over for a desire for more, had followed it with "Fuzzy-Wuzzy." His sister—these things run in families—had sung "My Little Gray Home in the West"—rather sombrely, for she had wanted to sing "The Rosary," and, with the same obtuseness which characterised her brother, had come back and rendered plantation songs. The audience was now examining its programmes in the interval of ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... it does," broke in de Marmont sombrely, "your Castlereagh will rave and your Wellington will gather up his armies to try and crush the hero whom France ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... boosted one over the bars, another and another. Round somewhere in the thirties the bars dissolved. The next thing she knew she was blinking in the light, Cutty, his arms folded, staring down at her sombrely. There was blood on his face and blood on ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... in the hall. Rawlins had returned. From the rug in front of the fireplace he surveyed the group with a bland curiosity. Robinson sat near by, glowering at Paredes. The Panamanian had changed his clothing. He, too, was sombrely dressed, and, instead of the vivid necktie he had worn from the courthouse, a jet-black scarf was perfectly arranged beneath his collar. He lounged opposite the district attorney, his eyes studying the fire. His fingers on the ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... key and studied it sombrely. The act was mechanical, a bit of sparring for time: his anger was searching about for a new vent. He was a just man, and he did not care to start any thunder which was not based upon fairness. ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... the river mist and come to sit between them. That the woman was paying a price for her chance, a heavy price, he could see. They walked back to the city between the deserted vineyards. As they crossed the river, Mrs. Conry stopped, and remarked sombrely, "A bargain is a bargain the world ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... strange sense of inexplicable disaster rushed upon him. He sombrely watched them pass ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Jill's ear, as he pulled her along. "This way. Stick to me. Strange how the drama anticipates life! At the end of act two there was a scene where Sir Chester had to creep sombrely out into the night, and now he's gone and ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... unanswered, and thus she had little wherewith to fill the long summer days. Madame de Ruth was a delightful companion, but Wilhelmine was unresponsive and seemed absorbed in some intricate calculation. She would sit for hours, brooding sombrely. Her eyes, narrowed and serpent-like, gazed at the rushing waters, but when Madame de Ruth remarked on the beauty of the scene she would answer irritably that she was occupied, and only begged for quiet in which to think. Towards the middle of August Schuetz ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... be," interposed Winter, speaking quite calmly, but his lips white, and his eyes glowing sombrely like smouldering fires. "No need to work thyself into a passion, Will Bascomb, until thou hast heard what their lordships have to say. Maybe they have not seen the Captain and know ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... doings of his bloodier associates with "sombre acquiescence." Argal, it was promptly pointed out—and I espy the dark phrase constantly adorning leading articles to this day—the man who said that Danton sombrely acquiesced in the doings of Billaud, Collet, and the rest, must of necessity, being of a firm and logical mind, himself sombrely acquiesce in moonlighting and cattle-houghing in Ireland. Apart from the curious compulsion of the reasoning, what is the ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... Norman's ear. "We will look on, comrade." Passepoil nodded approval, but spoke no word. For the rest of that red adventure into the placid blackness of the night those two stood apart in the shadow, with their arms folded and their swords in their sheaths, sombrely watching the seven men that were their friends assailing the one man they loved. Such honor as they had forbade them to change sides and fight for the Little Parisian. They had been paid to range with the assailants of Nevers. ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a half-human, half-personal shape, and must brood, obscurely and sombrely, over the incidents and ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... my mother very sombrely. And as she spoke, Luisina, as if her fears were reawakened, turned suddenly and went quickly along the terrace, past Rinolfo, who in that moment smiled viciously, and round the angle ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... not seem interested either by the news of Mr. Faucitt's illness or by the fact that Sally, after delay, had at last arrived. He dug a spoon sombrely into his grape-fruit. ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... thick with pin-point stars. In that myriad of little stars, filling in between the big ones, the milky way was lost and reduced to obscurity—the whole sky was a milky way. Wiley sank down in the sand and gazed up sombrely as he wetted his parching lips from his canteen, and the evening star gleamed like a torch, looking down on the world he had fled. Across the Funeral Range, not a day's journey to the east, that same star ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... last night; the lights in the chapel of the abbey were still flickering, and the monks were chanting the complines. The mellow music of a drizzle seemed to respond sombrely to the melancholy echo of the choir. About midnight the rain beat heavily on the pine roof of the forest, and the thunder must have struck very near, between me and the monks. But rising very early this morning to commune for ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... "Thoughts" had been published; or she may have been listening to one of those sifting, heart-searching discourses of Bourdaloue,—the date of her letter is March 16, 1672, and during the Lent of that year Bourdaloue preached at Versailles,—when she wrote sombrely as follows:— ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... therein, my dear," said his lordship, and I imagine his questing eyes speeding from one to the other of them, and marking the evidences of Sir John's temper, wondering what could have passed. "It happens," he added sombrely, "that we may require your testimony in this grave matter that is toward." He turned to Sir John. "I have bidden them bring up the prisoner for sentence. Is the ordeal ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... in his mother's face, but when she put out a feeble hand to him, and tried to kiss him, he began to whimper. Her expression changed at once; with what strength she had she pushed him away. "Il est afreux!" she said sombrely, closing her eyes. ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... into the wet air. In Faber Street the once brilliant signs above the "ten-foot" buildings seemed dulled, the telegraph poles starker, nakeder than ever, their wires scarcely discernible against the smeared sky. The pedestrians were sombrely garbed, and went about in "rubbers"—the most depressing of all articles worn by man. Sodden piles of snow still hid the curb and gutters, but the pavements were trailed with mud that gleamed in the light from the shop windows. And Janet, lingering unconsciously in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sombrely magnificent this evening in black bombazine, with a mauve front cut in a shy triangle, and crowned with a black velvet ribbon round the base of her thin throat; black and mauve for evening wear was esteemed very ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... said Otto sombrely, "but now I do not. I am growing old. And then, Gotthold, there is Seraphina. She is loathed in this country that I brought her to and suffered her to spoil. Yes, I gave it her as a plaything, and she has broken it: a fine ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it bore no resemblance to what she had anticipated; nor did it seem to her to possess any of the attributes of influence; for one of her basic ideas about the world was that influential people must be dull and formal, moving about with deliberation in sombrely magnificent interiors. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... inquired Michael, rather sombrely; his long, swarthy head was dark against the sunset, and, either by accident or mood, he had the look of something isolated and even hostile amid the social extravagance of ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... trust would have been in his mind a thing undreamed. He was phlegmatic, stolid to such a degree that one could not but wonder how the Revolution had any meaning to him at all. And yet love of freedom glowed sombrely and steadily in his dim soul. In ways it was indeed good that he was not flighty and imaginative. He never lost his head. He could obey orders, and he was neither curious nor garrulous. Once I asked how it was that he was ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... The hours marched sombrely towards midnight, while we stayed every man by his post. I asked Shalah if the enemy had gone, and he shook his head. He had the sense of a wild animal to detect danger in the forest when the eye and ear gave no proof. He stood like ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... for the young viscount with the curls and shoulders, and the two men stood about the inner lobby together, Fontenoy sombrely watching everybody who came ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... without price because inimitable and too delicate to pass from hand to hand among merchants. I looked at the wonderful complexity of its infinite threads, my finger sank into it for more than an inch without feeling the touch; so black it was and so carefully wrought, sombrely covering the whole of the wall, that it might have been worked to commemorate the deaths of all that ever lived there, as indeed it was. I looked through a hole in the wall into an inner chamber where a worn-out driving band went among many wheels, and there ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... rage was shaking Varick. Curse the woman! What a brute she must be, to take his money, and go on annoying him in this way. "I wish you'd written and told me about it when it happened," he said sombrely. ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... and ceiling painted by Verrio, has on the whole a somewhat sombre and certainly unpleasing effect. It is true that we have in it one of the most notable examples of Verrio's decorative achievements, but it is an example which I frankly find unattractive. It is sombrely gorgeous but in an unrestful fashion, with its sprawling gods, goddesses, and heroes in all manner of impossible positions, its pillars overhung with clouds or clouds swooping down, as though weighted with the figures, about the pillars. Beneath in a brownish tone are painted ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold
... found another pebble and was kicking it sombrely. He was beginning to perceive something of the intricate and unfathomable workings of the feminine mind. He had always looked on Elizabeth as an ordinary good fellow, a girl whose mind worked in a more or less understandable way. She was not ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... than Margaret," muttered her son. Then, sombrely, "I never told you what happened at Helmsley Court the other day. Margaret ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Jack sombrely, for he was very disappointed. He had been hoping to hear that something had been found out, or ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... sun flattened against the low hills and sank out of sight. Dusk came and thickened and the stars began to flare out. Against the darkening skyline before him the Last Ridge country reared itself sombrely. A little breeze went dancing and shivering through the dry mesquite and greasewood. His horse stumbled and slowed down. They had come to the first of the rocky ground. He should be at the mouth of Dry Gulch in half an hour. And there he would find the men he had followed; they had beat him to it, ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... measured tread; the clattering of horses' hoofs, the beat of drums, the clanking of scabbards and the jangling of royal banners, rising even above the hum of eager voices. The great coach of gold, with its half score of horses, rolled sombrely beneath nature's canopy of green, surrounded on all sides by proud members of the Royal Guard. Word came down the line that the Prince sat alone in the rear seat of the great coach, facing the Prime Minister and Countess Halfont. Two carriages from the royal stables preceded the Prince's coach. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... stood sombrely surveying the garden, his attention was attracted by a small, bearded man with bushy eyebrows and a face like a walnut, who stood not far away on a gravelled path flanked by rose bushes. For some minutes he eyed this man in silence, ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... July 8, 1572, when about a dozen of us, all splendidly, though sombrely attired, rode out from the courtyard of the Hotel Coligny, and, passing quickly through the empty streets, proceeded to ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... not seem to have heard. Still with his arm about the boy's shoulder, he had dropped back into the seat before the easel. His eyes now were somberly ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... Mr. Patterson, so somberly that Miss Rosetta instantly felt that he was the bearer of bad news. Usually Mr. Patterson's face was as broad and beaming as a harvest moon. Now his expression was very melancholy and ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in dispersed order to meet and protect the runner in case he should be followed, or possibly headed off, by hostile tribesmen. Only six Indian allies had gone with Stout and he had eyed them with marked suspicion and disfavor. They, too, were Apache Yumas. The day wore on slowly, somberly. All sound of life, melody, or merriment had died out at Camp Sandy. Even the hounds seemed to feel that a cloud of disaster hung over the garrison. Only at rare intervals some feminine shape flitted along the line of deserted ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... of disgust continued the next morning. When, at eleven o'clock, Louis Akers sauntered in for the first time in days, she looked at him somberly but without disdain. Lou or somebody else, what did it matter? So long as something took her for a little while away from the sordidness of home, its stale odors, its ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... seize him. The fellow said that it came like a flash. He was gentle as a lamb for weeks on end—and then it came. He'd pounce on the keeper's pet rabbit—his dog—the man himself if he were within reach. He was an utterly changed creature; he was just—an appetite." He stood staring somberly at the decanter. "That's the way it ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... mention of the Old Juan Rimrock turned his head, and Mary could see his jaw set; but he listened somberly for some little time as Jepson went on ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... dollars. Clo's don't cost that much." Allie regarded her brother keenly, understandingly, then she said, somberly, "It ain't ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach |
