"Steely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cried, raising his voice as he endeavored to return Prentiss's steely gaze with one of defiance. "But I'll serve notice now that I'll have the commission to which I'm entitled, or I'll sue for it and tie ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... most of the gentry have country-houses, the climate being 12 degrees (Fahr.) cooler than by the sea. La Brigida commands a fine view of the Isleta, with its black sand and white foam, leek-green waters upon the reefs, and deep offing of steely blue. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... sides by shrubbery and on the fourth by the wall of the little square within which had been laid to rest the mortal remains of some half dozen generations of the Burwells. Though the grass was green and the sky above was of the deep steely hue which the late afternoon brings; yet the thick shrubbery which secluded the place gave it an air of wildness, and the tops of the tall monuments gleaming white over the old wall against the ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... agreeable to contemplate from beneath the shelter of a snug and comfortable dwelling. The wind moaned through the bending tree-tops; the face of the heavens was black as night, and the waters of the lagoon, and of the ocean, had darkened to a steely blue beneath their frown. Before we had fairly shaken off our drowsiness, another abrupt peal of thunder burst overhead, with a suddenness that seemed to jar the very clouds and shake the water out of them, for the rain began all at once to come ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... quick life crops out In watchful mutual mockery. Gibe and flout In low asides flow freely. Oh, bland elysium for the brave and fair, Whose pleasures are the snigger and the stare, Chill snub, and eye-glance steely! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... specialists. They go over the ground with the sliding speed of active snails. Behind them trail two wheels, supporting a flimsy tail, wheels that strike one as incongruous as if a monster began kangaroo and ended doll's perambulator. (These wheels annoy me.) They are not steely monsters; they are painted with drab and unassuming colours that are fashionable in modern warfare, so that the armour seems rather like the integument of a rhinoceros. At the sides of the head project ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... first was his eyes. For it is not the part of youth to be stern-eyed; and while this man could not be more than midway between twenty and thirty, his eyes had already acquired the trick of being hard, steely, suggesting relentlessness, stern and quick. Tall, lean-bodied, with big calloused hands, as brown as an Indian, hair and eyes were uncompromisingly black. He ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... observed that there was no widow's cap on Mrs. Arles's hair, that it had refined away through various shades of lace till at last even the delicate cobweb on the back of the head was gone and the glossy locks lay bare, that the sables had become simply black gauze over a steely shine of silk, that the little Andalusian foot lay relieved on a white embroidered cushion, that its owner was glancing up and smiling at a gentleman who bent above her, and that that gentleman was Mr. St. George. When this change had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Gordon's glass would sweep the steely river and the yellow sand for the first sight of the men who were coming to ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... virgin's hands are too too weak, To penetrate the bulwark of my breast; My fingers, used to tune the amorous lute, Are not of force to hold this steely glaive. So I am left to wail my parents' death, Not able for to work my proper death. Ah, Locrine, honored for thy nobleness! Ah, Estrild, famous for thy constancy! Ill may they fare ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... I loue him for his sake, And yet I know him a notorious Liar, Thinke him a great way foole, solie a coward, Yet these fixt euils sit so fit in him, That they take place, when Vertues steely bones Lookes bleake i'th cold wind: withall, full ofte we see Cold ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... of noises?' said your aunt. 'Funny noises,' said your uncle. Whereupon Angela—with a nasty, steely tinkle in her voice, the little buzzard—observed, 'I expect it was Mr. Glossop eating.' And then she did give me a look. It was the sort of wondering, revolted look a very spiritual woman would give a fat man ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... occasion for the services of a lady in this mood; a lady at once attractive, and steely-hearted; resolute to revenge, on the whole of the opposite sex, the baseness of a Fellow of his College. Such is the frenzy of an injured love—illogical indeed (for we are not responsible for the errors of isolated members of our sex), but primitive, natural to women, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... had begun to tighten, a thunderstorm came up behind, rolling across the low hills and drowning any noise less than that of cannon. The first flash of the lightning showed the bare ribs of the ascent, thc hill-crest standing steely-blue against the black sky, the little falling lines of the rain, and, a few yards to their left flank, an Afghan watch-tower, two-storied, built of stone, and entered by a ladder from the upper story. The ladder was up, and a man with a rifle was leaning from the window. The darkness and the thunder ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... small wit; Had that calm look which seem'd to all assent, And that complacent speech which nothing meant: He'd but one care, and that he strove to hide - How best for Richard Monday to provide. Steel, through opposing plates, the magnet draws, And steely atoms culls from dust and straws; And thus our hero, to his interest true, Gold through all bars and from each trifle drew; But still more surely round the world to go, This fortune's child had neither friend nor foe. Long lost ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... one continued circle, forehead to forehead and ear to ear, whilst in the midst of them an oil lamp flickered low and lit up at fitful intervals the sober, callous faces with the hard mouths and cruel, steely eyes. ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... into the puffy face of the speaker. His steely gray eyes fairly snapped with anger, although his voice was unruffled as he replied, "You'd better tell me all you heard, and ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... would have smiled indulgently or ironically if they had been told at this period the story of Lloyd George's diary entry after his first visit to the House of Commons at seventeen. Probably no person on earth but his wife knew the steely determination behind ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... steely weeds steel armour. 'Steely' in Elizabethan times was used both literally and figuratively. Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI. ii. 3. 16, has 'The steely point of Clifford's lance,' and Fisher in his 'Seuen Psalmes' has 'tough and stely ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... For full an hour he has not budged beyond the circle of yon lamp-post's rays! The gaslight falls upon his crimson hose, and makes a steely glitter at his thigh, while from the shadow peers a hatchet-face and fixes sinister malignant eyes—on whom? (Shuddering.) I dare not trust myself to guess! And yet—ah, no—it cannot be myself! I am so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... saying to each other the little things that mean nothing to others, but which lovers love, and Grafton yet lay hidden in its place between the swells. The skies, changing now from a bright to a steely gray, were unmarred by a single ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... of the man's face in the half light. The cheekbones were somewhat high, but narrowed down sharply at the chin. He wore eyeglasses on the eyes, which seemed to Paul, in that swift glance he caught of them, of a steely blue. He had a thick, military moustache, drawn out to fierce points; but his chin was clean-shaven. Directly he stopped the horse, a second man sprang to the other side of it. Paul immediately ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... the jav'lin with her dying hands, But wedg'd within her breast the weapon stands; The wood she draws, the steely point remains; She staggers in her seat with agonizing pains: (A gath'ring mist o'erclouds her cheerful eyes, And from her cheeks the rosy color flies:) Then turns to her, whom of her female train She trusted most, and thus she speaks with pain: "Acca, 't is past! he swims before ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... a faint spot of steely blue, out on the sea, not far from the horizon. It was hard to account for, with such a sky overheard, wherein was no lighter part to be seen that might be reflected in the water below; but neither ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... a torn sea, and the drift was swept so that the moon was obscured with every fresh gust. High overhead a clear, steely sky was flecked here and there with fleecy white, and, ever and again, the moon slipped her mantle of cloud from her rounded shoulder, and looked around her with large, calm glances. But there was an evil-looking sky away to the eastward, and the black wreaths 'of cloud crept steadily upward, ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... promontories beetling out from the sharp ascent. Above all, Chilhowee Mountain, aflare with the scarlet glow of its autumnal woods, touched the blue sky. The river, of a kindred blue, with a transient steely change under the shadow of a cloud, showed flashes of white foam, for the winds were rushing down from the Great Smoky Mountains, which were revealed for an instant in a clear hard azure against the pearl-tinted horizon—then again only a mirage, an illusion, a dream of stupendous ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... back in his chair. His eyes were fixed upon the face of the woman whose antagonism to himself was so apparent. She stood in the path of a long gleam of morning sunlight. The wrinkles in her face, her hard mouth, her cold, steely ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gloom was not at all lightened by the discovery of the flapper in the waiting car. She gave him the little double-nod and regarded him with that peculiar steely kindness he so well remembered. It was undoubtedly kind, that look, yet there was an implacable something in its quality that dismayed him. He wondered what ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... and the early morning, with the dusk, is the favorite hunting-time of the submarine, for the reason that then a periscope, while seeing clearly, is not itself easily to be discerned. The lookouts, straining their eyes out over the steely surge, pick up what appears to be a spar. But no. The water is rushing on either side of it like a mill race. ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... be of suggestion more tragic than the wasted and helpless power of this poor wandering vessel, around whose stolid mass myriads of wavelets, busy as aspen-leaves, bickered with a continual weltering splash that was quite loud to hear. I sat a good time that afternoon in one of her steely port main-deck casemates on a gun-carriage, my head sunken on my breast, furtively eyeing the bluish turned-up feet, all shrunk, exsanguined, of a sailor who lay on his back before me; his soles were ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... done, and it hasn't been all fun, As you found in that huge awful tract of forest, And you must have felt some doubt of your chance of winning out Of all perils when your need was at the sorest. Mortal sickness now and then, and the pranks of lesser men, Must have tried your iron health and steely temper. But, like SCIPIO of old, you 're as patient as you're bold, And you turn up tough and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... coming first, his hat under his arm, the Duke sprang to meet him, a tall young figure, lithe and slender as a blade of steel, and of a steely strength for all his slimness. He was dressed in a suit of purple that became him marvellously well, and on his breast a star of diamonds flashed and smouldered like a thing of fire. He was of an exceeding beauty of face, wherein he mainly favoured ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... hatches were at last taken off, and they were permitted once more to go on deck. Grey was the prevailing colour. The great seas, which seemed unable to recover from the wild turmoil into which they had been lashed, were of a cold greenish grey, flecked and tipped with white. The sky was steely grey with clouds that verged on black; and both were so mingled together that it seemed as if the little vessel were imbedded in the very heart of a ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... audible, but he heard it. And if his steely philosophy had stood him in good stead before, assuredly at this moment his guard was down; as he recognized that he had last beheld this serene vision of loveliness, arrayed as now in cool white, strained to him in farewell embrace ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... are infrequently seen in commerce. They never equal the fine sapphire in their color, being more steely. They, of course, lack dichroism and are softer than ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... collecting his powers of self-control, he went slowly down to the Safe Deposit, and entered those steely and dreadful portals. ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... if he had not got an ounce of flesh on his bones in any part of him. He was dressed all in decent black, with a white cravat round his neck. His face was as sharp as a hatchet, and the skin of it was as yellow and dry and withered as an autumn leaf. His eyes, of a steely light grey, had a very disconcerting trick, when they encountered your eyes, of looking as if they expected something more from you than you were aware of yourself. His walk was soft; his voice ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... everything is made of the same horrible white metal. Nothing seems familiar; not only are the wonted forms and outlines vanished, and all their varied textures and materials and beautiful diversity of color gone also, but there is a steely immobility restraining everything which is so complete that it seems as if it were a shell that ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... had the reputation of being a just and able judge, a man of fine intellect, great vigour, and immense determination of character. On the bench he looked the part which popular imagination had given him to play. His eyes were described as "steely" by a lady journalist, who had occasion to watch him during the sensational trial of Mrs. Lorimer. His chin she described later on in her article as "characteristic of a strong fighter." His manner in court was exceedingly severe. In private ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... again. Barney Ryan said nothing. He never spoke while eating, and rarely talked when women were present. Genevieve too was quiet, responding with a gently absent smile, when her cavalier, turning upon her his cold and expressionless steely-blue eyes, addressed to her some short regulation remark on the weather, or the boredom of his journey across the plains. The phlegmatic calm of his demeanor remained intact even under the coquettish onslaughts of Mrs. Peck and Mrs. Wheatley, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... horse, fully caparisoned in the Spanish fashion. His garb was of buckskin, but plain and devoid of ornamentation. A wide hat swept over his well-tanned face, and from beneath its brim there shone the steely ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... and flying hoofs he swooped with long, smooth undulations that sent him, looking like a splotched streak, splitting the night. He ran at his own will, his rider tall and loose in the saddle, speaking no further word, but thinking thoughts that narrowed his eyes, made them glint with steely hardness whenever the moonlight struck them, and caused his lips to part, showing the clenched teeth between them, and shoved his chin forward with the queer set that marks the ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... to Father Le Bel and asked him for a packet which she had given him for safe-keeping some little time before. He gave it to her, and she opened it. In it were letters and other documents, which, with a steely glance, she displayed to Monaldeschi. He was confused by the sight of them and by the incisive words in which Christina showed how he had both insulted her and had tried to ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... withal invigorating, as he watched the steely blue of the daylit sky slowly give place to the rosy tint of sunrise. Slowly at first—then faster—great waves of golden light seemed to leap from the top of one green rising ground to another; the gray white of the snowy western mountains passed from one dead shade to another, until, at ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... principal member of the firm, Fillow and the boy being merely helpers. He was a tall, thin-faced and clean-shaven man, with hard, steely-blue eyes. ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... had been classmates but not equals. In the bitterness of his heart he had lain awake on countless nights praying—but not to his God—that the time would come when he could stand ascendant over this steely master. Only his unswerving loyalty to a duty once assumed kept him from crushing Bansemer with exposure years before. But Droom was not a traitor. He remained standing, lifting his eyes after a brief, shifting study of his ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... human being had the eyes of a hawk Snap Naab had them. The little brown flecks danced in clear pale yellow. Evidently Snap had not located the perplexing dust-clouds, for his glance drifted. Suddenly the remarkable vibration of his pupils ceased, and his glance grew fixed, steely, certain. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... conceived that by their splendour they threw all the rest into the shade. In less than five minutes they had thus revealed to me their characters, and in less than five minutes I had buckled on a breast-plate of steely indifference, and let down a visor of ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... of with the least ostentation possible and with no fluffiness. Her eyebrows were too well furnished for femininity and nearly met when she frowned—a too frequent practice, as was the belligerent look from her steely grey eyes with their beautiful Irish setting of long dark lashes. She had a straight nose and firm rounded chin, a rather determined look about the mouth—lower lip too much drawn in as if from perpetual self-repression. But all this severity disappeared when she smiled and ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... it was already winter. The fell-sides were red with withered fern; their round or craggy tops showed white against a steely sky; down the withered copses by the stream, the north wind swept; a golden oak showered its dead leaf upon her. Gray walls, purple fells, the brown and silver of the stream, all the mountain detail that she loved—she drew it passionately into her soul. Nature ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... feet in height, rather stout, and with a chest like a working bullock. His face and neck were deeply bronzed to a dark tan, and presented a striking and startling yet pleasing contrast to his snowy-white hair, moustache, and eyebrows; his clear, steely blue eyes were in consonance with the broad, square jaw, and the man's character revealed itself in his ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... with a countenance sadly dejected that Crispin returned to his chamber and sate himself wearily upon the bed. With elbows on his knees and chin in his palms he stared straight before him, the usual steely brightness of his grey eyes dulled by the despondency that sat upon his face and drew deep furrows down his ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... Bickley with his clever, well-cut face that always reminded me of a cameo, and thoughtful brow; his strong, capable hands and his rather steely mouth, the mere set of which suggested controversy of an uncompromising kind. Naturally as the Church had claimed Bastin, ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... would have blustered about the terrible things he would do to the objects of his wrath when once he had them in his power; but now he was strangely quiet—only the firm set of his strong chin, and the steely glitter of his gray eyes gave token of the ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... up my hands," directed he. I did so; his palms flew into the air; and with a steely snap the mechanism ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... was a steely glint in Mitchell's eyes which betokened trouble, "I shall send for a locksmith and have ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... see why her companion appeared to be so much annoyed. She stole a glance at him, and saw that his mouth had taken on a grim line that made him more than ever like his father, while his eyes were bleak and steely. An Englishman might have said that this was the Lancashire coming ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... old corridor, and with the attempt directly ahead his repugnance achieved a new power. The black entrance with its scarcely dared memories reminded him that what he was about to do was directed against more than human law, was an outrage against the dead man. He had to remind himself of the steely purpose with which Howells had marked him as the murderer; and the man's power persisted after death. In such ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... or you wouldn't catch that, where most anybody would see only steely white and dead black. It is the only color in this black and white woodsy place," Leigh insisted, looking up at Thaine's face in the shadow and down at her ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... thoughtfully down the street toward Doctor Bronson's office. As long as he walked slowly he managed not to give any hint of his weakness. The sun was shining with steely brightness and the March wind was living up to its fame. He longed for summer and hot days in quiet woods or fields where daisies bloomed. Would he live to see the Indian summer days, the smoky haze, the ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... behind him and blow the film away just as he had got it flat on his cushion, or laid on the spot where his tool was about to fix a portion of it. Her mischief was not even irradiated by childish laughter; there was never any sign of frolic on her monkey face, except the steely glitter of her sharp, black bead-eyes, might be supposed to contain some sprinkle of fun in its malice. Expostulation was not of the slightest use, and sometimes it was all Richard could do to keep his hands off her. ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... Elysium and Tartarus, we pass shifting, panoramic scenes of wondrous beauty, stage upon stage of pastoral charm, picture after picture of idyllic sweetness and grace. Long we can glance behind us and see the little gray town, its spires outlined in steely gray against the embracing hills, its gardens and orchards bright as emerald—towering above all, the bare, purple, wide- ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... turned toward the office he was conscious for the first time of a thick-set man with kindly eyes, now steely-hard, who followed his every motion. It was the ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... Gorgons! They lay fast asleep, soothed by the thunder of the sea; for it required a tumult that would have deafened everybody else to lull such fierce creatures into slumber. The moonlight glistened on their steely scales, and on their golden wings, which drooped idly over the sand. Their brazen claws, horrible to look at, were thrust out, and clutched the wave-beaten fragments of rock, while the sleeping Gorgons dreamed ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... eyes were less kindly than usual. They had a steely look. "I should keep out of his way, if ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... boughs in the riot, of gusts, the sere leaves were flying in clouds, and presently rain began to fall. The steady downpour increased in volume to torrents; then the broad, pervasive flashes of lightning showed, in lieu of myriad lines, an unbroken veil of steely gray swinging from the zenith, the white foam rebounding as the masses of water struck the earth. The camp equipage, tents and wagons succumbed beneath the fury of the tempest, and, indeed, the hunters had much ado to saddle ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... towards Meaux, passing Vareddes to our left. The weather clears a little, and from the high ground we are able to see Meaux to the west, lying beside its great river, than which our children's children will greet no more famous name. The Marne winds, steely grey, through the white landscape, and we run down to it quickly. Soon we are making our way on foot through the dripping streets of Meaux to the old bridge, which the British broke down—one of three—on their retreat—so soon to end! Then, ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to admit that it apparently was. A blue lake gleaming steely blue in the sunlight stretched away before them between the towering firs, and beyond it lay an entrancing ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... Doctor Churchill possessed a frank and boyish face, wearing ordinarily an exceedingly genial expression; but the friendly gray eyes were capable of turning steely upon provocation, and they turned that way now. He returned his cousin's look with one which concealed with some difficulty both ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... instant a smile curled the firm lips and half closed the steely eyes of the speaker, and, noting the smile and the steely gleam in the grey-brown eyes, Cameron hastily decided that he ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... hands on her knees. Her gray eyes, warmed almost to blue by joy and tenderness, were steely as she faced him. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... strike at Steadbolt with his riding whip, but the lash had caught round the pole-bar of the buggy, and he could not extricate it. Bridget tried to help him. He turned to her for an instant, a soft gleam of tenderness shining through the steely anger on ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... were drawn involuntarily to his face; I could not keep their lids under control: they would rise, and the irids would fix on him. I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking,—a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... Presently our stern, steely-eyed host returned. He seemed to be going somewhere, to be nowise interested in us. Yet into our presence, probably into the consciousness of this new "guest," he carried that air of savage strength and indifference, eyeing the stranger ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... after I had said good-bye to the hot immediate life of passion, to Nettie and desire, to physical and personal rivalry, to all that was most intensely myself, it was wrong to leave me alone and sore hearted, to go on at once with these steely cold duties of the wider life. I felt new born, and naked, ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... glorious that she had resolved to stroll alone, to think and devise some plan for the future. Before her, silhouetted high against the steely sky, rose the two great, black, ivy-clad towers of the ancient castle. The grim, crumbling walls stood dark and frowning amid the fairy-like scene, while from far below came up the faint rippling of the Ruthven ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... plunging toward the Southland is somehow conscious of the fact that it is playing a part in events of tremendous import, for observe how it pierces the darkness with its one wild eye, cleaves the air with its steely front and causes wars and thunders to creep into the dreams of the people by whose homes it makes its ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... a smile, but such a smile! Kindly it broke over the stern face, giving a glimpse of a heart still warm beneath that steely cold. Behind it, too, there was something ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... A steely sound like a dropped hammer came from behind the glass partition; then the sliding of a latch. John opened the door a little way and ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... who knew him well, said that John Brabant was the only clean-living, single man in Fiji, and that if he ever did marry his wife would be "some bony Scotch person of about forty, with her hair screwed up into a Turk's knot at the back of her long head, and with a cold, steely eye like a gimlet. Nine out of ten of good fellows like Jack Brabant do get mated with ...
— The Trader's Wife - 1901 • Louis Becke
... who shall blame him?—basked in his good luck. But every now and then he looked up and met the glower of Claud Dalzell with a steely eye. These two men, each so fine of his kind, met with the sentiments of rival stags in the mating season; the impulse to fight 'on sight' and assure the non-survival of the unfittest came just as naturally to them as to the less civilised animals. Each recognised in the other not merely a personal ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... in furs bringing up a ragged rear. The bright uniforms of the soldiers were patches of red among the snowy everglades. Bivouac was made on beds of pine boughs,—feet to the camp-fire, the night frost snapping like a whiplash, the stars flashing with a steely clearness known only in northern climes. The march was at a swift pace, for three weeks by canoe is short enough time to traverse the Minnesota and Manitoba Borderlands northwest to Lake Winnipeg; and in seventeen days M. de la Verendrye ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... her, and closed the door. He placed her in the patients' chair, opposite the windows. Even in London the sun, on that summer afternoon, was dazzlingly bright. The radiant light flowed in on her. Her eyes met it unflinchingly, with the steely steadiness of the eyes of an eagle. The smooth pallor of her unwrinkled skin looked more fearfully white than ever. For the first time, for many a long year past, the Doctor felt his pulse quicken its beat in the presence of ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... down beside the desk at the foot of her bed, and spreading out the cheque, read over and over the TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS written across it in a steely business hand. Ten months earlier the amount it stood for had represented the depths of penury; but her standard of values had changed in the interval, and now visions of wealth lurked in every flourish of the pen. As she continued to gaze at it, she felt the glitter of the visions mounting ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... does crime fail to leave its mark on a man. The mouth, the chin, the forehead; some feature usually shows traces of it. And when Mart Cooley turned and Whitey saw his eyes, he got his thrill. They were a hard, light, steely gray, and they looked out from lowered lids, oh, so steadily. Months of brooding in the prison had helped to harden Mart's eyes, that had needed no help in that way; brooding over imaginary wrongs, for he thought his arrest an injustice. Other men had stolen a few cows, and got ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... crowded around Wilson, the fullback, and clapped him on the shoulder. But their momentary exultation was replaced by chagrin, as they filed past the coach on the way to the shower baths, and their eyes fell before the steely gleam in his. ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... may not in themselves be musical, according to our standard of music, yet many insect performers give us great pleasure, perhaps because of the pleasant memories which they call up. Who among us does not love the hum of the bee? How delightful is the lazy drone of the great steely-blue dor-beetle, as he rambles along in the twilight of a summer night! The lively chirping of the cricket, too, has inspired more than one poet, and the great novelist, Charles Dickens, used it in a ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... like a flattened spindle, carries on the forward half of the lower face a double row of steely spines. The innermost row contains a dozen, alternately long and black and short and green. This alternation of unequal lengths makes the weapon more effectual for holding. The outer row is simpler, having only four teeth. Finally, three needle-like spikes, the longest of all, rise ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... a magnificent specimen of man, No, rather, he is a man whose like I have never yet seen among the living. He is in the Belvedere, graven in marble, with the same slender, yet steely musculature, with the same face and the same waving curls. What makes him particularly beautiful is that he is beardless. If his hips were less narrow, one might take him for a woman in disguise. The curious expression about the mouth, the lion's ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... Miss Winchelsea on six separate occasions made Fanny promise to write to her the longest of long letters. Fanny, it seemed, would be quite near Mr. Snooks. Her new school—she was always going to new schools—would be only five miles from Steely Bank, and it was in the Steely Bank Polytechnic, and one or two first-class schools, that Mr. Snooks did his teaching. He might even see her at times. They could not talk much of him—she and Fanny always spoke of "him," never of Mr. Snooks—because Helen was apt to say unsympathetic ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Pleiades, The seventh fallen, that lean along the brink Where the steep upland dips into the marsh, Their roots, like molten metal cooled in flowing, Stiffened in coils and runnels down the bank. The friend of all the winds, wide-armed he towers And glints his steely aglets in the sun, Or whitens fitfully with sudden bloom Of leaves breeze-lifted, much as when a shoal 120 Of devious minnows wheel from where a pike Lurks balanced 'neath the lily-pads, and whirl A rood of silver bellies ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... moment in the life of Fifth Avenue is at dusk, when dusk falls at tea-time. The street lamps flicker into a steady, steely blue, and the windows of the hotels and restaurants throw a yellow radiance; all the shops—especially the jewelers' shops—become enchanted treasure-houses, whose interiors recede away behind their facades into infinity; and ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... better than when dignified with arts and industry; its oceans, when beating the symbols of countless ages, than when covered with cargoes of war and oppression. How grand its preparation for souls, souls who were to feel the Divinity, before Science had dissected the emotions and applied its steely analysis to that state of being which recognizes neither psychology nor element."—"Usefulness, if it requires action, seems less like existence than the desire of being absorbed in God, retaining consciousness.... ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that morning. Great had been the speculation as to whether he would or not. When he stood up in his pulpit and faced the crowded pews and the steely glances of curious eyes through the shifting flutter of fans, he was as austerely composed as ever; but a buzzing whisper went through the audience like a veritable bee of gossip. "He looks dreadful," they hissed in each other's ears, with nudges ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... silence in the room now. Through the narrow barred window the steely rays of the moon fought with the dim yellow light of the oil lamp, and lit up the pale face of the Committee's agent with its lines of cruelty in sharp conflict with ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... summer was of a blazing heat. Every morning saw a sky of steely blue, the corn stood like a golden band about the hills, and little clouds like the softest feathers were blown by the Gods about the world. A mist clung about the distant hills and clothed them in purple grey. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... makes me feel quite Dizzy. A CODLINGSBY to the rescue!" and to fling open the window, amidst a shower of malodorous missiles, to vault over the balcony, and slide down one of the pillars to the ground, baring his steely biceps in the process, and shying the "castor" from his curly looks with all the virile grace of the Great Earl, was the work of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... the curious, there is a species of diluted Indian-hater, one whose heart proves not so steely as his brain. Soft enticements of domestic life too, often draw him from the ascetic trail; a monk who apostatizes to the world at times. Like a mariner, too, though much abroad, he may have a wife and family in some green ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... in his steely voice: "If you do not throw out these women, Puma, we fix them and your hall and you—all at one time, my friend. Also! Iss it then for February the first, our understanding? Or iss it, a little later, the end of ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... Althaia felt Like lead upon her heartstrings, when she knelt And blew to flame the brand that held the life Of her own son; or Procne with the knife, Who slew and dressed her child to be a meal To his own father. But this man's thews were steel, And steely were the nerves about his heart, As they had need. Mark him, and mark the part He plays hereafter. Odysseus is his name, The wily Ithacan, deathless in his fame And in his substance deathless, since he goes Immortal forth and back ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... touched the lower face of the crag, and in their track the dark rock glittered with a steely luster, but trails of mist rolled among the crannies above. Below, a precipitous slope of small stones that the dalesmen call a scree ran down to a hollow strewn with broken rocks, and across this he could distinguish the blurred flat top of another height. The mountain ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... thousand steely points on every scale Form the bright terrors of his bristly male.— 165 So arm'd, immortal Moore uncharm'd the spell, And slew the wily dragon of the well.— Sudden with rage their injur'd bosoms burn, Retort the insult, or the wound return; Unwrong'd, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... Hugh Ritson entered, followed by the lawyer, Mr. Bonnithorne. There was a steely glimmer in his eyes as he stood just inside ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... its surface shot with flecks of blue and a vapoury enamel-green. It was like a gigantic silver shield. Its glint was inexplicably sinister and dead, like the glint on glasses worn by a blind man. In front the steely mist hid the horizon, so that the occasional rock or little island and the one ship in sight seemed hung in air. They were reflected to a preternatural length in the glassy floor. Our boat appeared to leave no wake; those strange waters closed up foamlessly behind her. But our black ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... to stare at him, his expression changed; the gray eyes grew less steely, and presently, clapping his hand upon my ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... and glimmers with diamond, jacinth, ruby, topaz, sapphire and gold. Every jewel-shape in leaf, spore, coral or plume, lying on a greenish crystalline ground, is fringed with a soft radiance of silver fire, and every point is tipped in minute ciliate flames of faint steely purple. It is spotted with soft velvety black wherever a shadow falls, that mingles and varies the wonderful display of color. It is brilliant, vivid, changeable with the interferences of light from the fluctuating surface above, which transmogrifies ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... lifetime at the Treasury, recognised her type immediately. She was of the type that wheedles, but never permits itself to be wheedled. And she was so pretty, and so simpering, and her blue eyes were so steely. And Mr. Prohack, in his original sinfulness, was pleased that she was thus. He felt that "it would serve Softly Bishop out." Not that Mr. Softly Bishop had done him any harm! Indeed the contrary. But he had an antipathy to Mr. Softly Bishop, ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... The steely sound of the command moved something in the souls of the soldiers, and took the enjoyment ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... were he, seemed afflicted with a sudden shortsightedness. He met the incredulous gaze both of Lessingham and his wife without recognition or any sign of flinching. At that distance it was impossible to see the tightening of his lips and the steely ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... then," cried Dick. "Look sharp;" and he went and leaned his elbows on the window, to gaze out at the lovely opalescent mist through which, looking huge in proportion, a brown-sailed lugger came creeping over the steely sea, which shone and glanced wherever the sun passed through the heavy mist. The men on the lugger looked huge, and it was evident from the shouts from the pier and the responses that there was some little excitement ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... could make no reply. Singularly enough, she had discovered early in their acquaintance that her wonted weapons were likely to dull their edges upon the steely coldness of Mr. Francis Barold's impassibility. In the presence of this fortunate young man, before whom his world had bowed the knee from his tenderest infancy, she lost the majesty of her demeanor. He refused to be affected by it: ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... star to star, all the way down the dark whirling earth of his heart; and how even while he felt a solemn agony at his unworthiness he was busily contriving their immediate marriage. For there was a steely quality about his love that would have been more ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... dark brownish or deep chestnut streak down the back; sides deeper fulvous; the haunches a steely grey, mixed with yellowish hairs; tail grey and very bushy, largely tipped with white; ears deep black on outside; cheeks and jowl greyish-white; moustaches black; legs chestnut in front, paling ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... parlour, past the entrance of an extra cabin, and took his stand under the bridge, breasting the steely, salt sea wind. On the deck below, the steerage passengers had settled themselves as far as the bow. Though the Roland was running under full steam, it was not making its maximum speed, prevented by the long, heavy swells ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... had nearly rolled by, and the sky was opening out its eyelids wider and wider, and letting in light to man and all his wondrous train of servitors. It was a cold, steely light indeed, particularly on those March evenings; and the sunsetting was a dreary, lonesome thing, as the copper-colored rays rested on hamlet or mountain, or tinged the cold face of the sea. But it was light, and light is something man craves for, be it never so pale. Will not one ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... impenetrable as the Sphinx. He did not like such faces in this genial and gracious time, so hurried over his examination. The eye was cool, the pulse steady, the man's body, battered though it was, strong in its steely composure. "Ja wohl!—ja wohl!" he went on chuffily, summing up: latent fever,—the very lips were blue, dry as husks; "he would go,—oui?—then go!"—with a chuckle. "All right, gluck Zu!" And so shuffled out. ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... breath of spring stole into the air,—ah, then Lovell's Harbor became a different place altogether. The stems of the willows fringing the small fresh-water ponds mellowed to bronze before one's very eyes; the dull reaches of salt grass turned emerald; the steely tint of the sea softened to azure and glinted golden in the sun. How shrill sounded the cries of the redwings in the marsh! How jolly the frogs' ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... against the rent foundations; but even yet, could I but place the reader at the early morning on the quay below the Rialto, when the market boats, full laden, float into groups of golden color, and let him watch the dashing of the water about their glittering steely heads, and under the shadows of the vine leaves, and show him the purple of the grapes and the figs, and the glowing of the scarlet gourds carried away in long streams upon the waves, and among them, the crimson fish baskets, plashing and sparkling, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... met him and Mrs. Wetmore at dinner," said Beaton, attempting the recovery of something that he had lost through the girl's shining ease and steely sprightliness. She seemed to him so smooth and hard, with a repellent elasticity from which he was flung off. "I hope you're not working ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... wind played with the tattered flags of the palms, leaving openings here and there that exposed the steely-white glare of the sky, and showed, far away to the northward, the denuded red dome of ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... a lonely hut he found, No tenant ventured on the unwholesome ground: Here smokes his forge, he bares his sinewy arm, And early strokes the sounding anvil warm; Around his shop the steely sparkles flew, As for the steed he shaped the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... for chocolates; hasn't it, Grace?" asked Mollie Billette, whose dark and flashing eyes, and black hair, with just a shade of steely-blue in it, betrayed the French ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... needed rest and quiet thought. How the red flame leapt in the grate, and what a rich, warm, wine-dark colour it threw all round my red room! I rose and drew the heavy crimson curtains across the windows to shut out their steely patches of grey that spoiled the harmony of colour. I returned to my chair and glanced round with satisfaction. Fitted and furnished and hung with every beautiful shade of red, my studio always delighted and ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... into the night, with the moon silvering the sky, and the steely frost eating into the sentient life of this northern world. Inside the house, with the bearskin blind dropped at the window again, and the fire blazing high, Loisette sat with the Governor's reprieve in ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... my boy can have a wife from his own class—and still have it right up there—with Him, you know!" she concluded with an upward glance, as Nancy watched her with eyes grown strangely quiet, almost steely—watched her as one might watch an ant. She had the look of one whose will had been made suddenly to stand aside by some great ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... tempt him. No sooner had he put his nose outside the door than the summer air, sweet and fresh, began to play upon his face and reminded him of a certain wood. As he went through the streets of the town, a glimpse of the river, steely blue that morning in the sunshine, brought up a pool where a fat trout was sure to be lying. As he crossed the North Meadow, the wind was blowing free from the Highlands, and was laden with the scent of hay and flowers, and sent his blood a-tingling. ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... Angelfyr, His steely helmet shone: "O King, give up thy daughter to me, And straight from the ...
— The Fountain of Maribo - and other ballads • Anonymous
... the two rivermen stood for a moment staring at the old man. Then a steely glint crept into Orde's frank blue eye and the ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... at last thrown open, and I was led into his presence, my confidence underwent a shock. His cold glance, that, roving over me, regarded me not as a man but an item, the steely glitter of his southern eyes, chilled me to the bone. The room was bare, the floor without carpet or covering. Some of the woodwork lay about, unfinished and in pieces. But the man—this man, needed no surroundings. His keen pale face, his ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... who entered a moment later, was depressingly typical. He was as tall as his youngest son, with whom he shook hands absently and whom he resembled in no other way. He had the conventionally aristocratic features, thin lips and steely blue eyes. He was apparently a ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... observed for the hundredth time he had taken this journey. A rotisserie, before whose upright fender of scarlet coals whole ducks were happily roasting to a shiny brown. In a furrier's window were Siberian foxes' skins (Siberia! huts of "awful brave convicks"; the steely Northern Sea; guards in blouses, just as he'd seen them at an Academy of Music play) and a polar bear (meaning, to him, the Northern Lights, the long hike, and the igloo at night). And the florists! There were orchids that (though he only half knew it, and that all inarticulately) whispered ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... a wave of crimson surged to her face in spite of herself. To hide her confusion she turned her head, and her eyes met those of Amalia, brilliant and steely, as they rested upon her. They looked at each other for an instant. The feline mouth of the Valencian was wreathed in a smile. Fernanda tried to respond by a similar one, but it was a failure. She turned again to the count, and talked ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... instant the whole dump was alight. It was like some terrible and giant display of pyrotechnics. Gas shells, Verey lights, and stink bombs filled the air with their nauseous odors. Shells of all sizes blew up and fell in steely splinters. The noise was deafening. Cursing our luck, we waited until it died down into a red, smouldering mass, and then edged up cautiously to continue our work. By this time, Borwick's tank came up, and he emerged, with a broad smile on ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... "Hush!" and the lawyer, whose eye had grown steely under these comments, took advantage of the sudden silence which had followed this last objurgation, and ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... broad awake—instead of fast asleep, as he was—he would certainly not have noticed this object until it was within a mile of the ship—unless his gaze had happened to have been attracted by an occasional momentary flashing gleam of silvery light—because its colour so artfully matched the delicate steely blue grey of the gently-rippled sea that it was absolutely invisible beyond that distance. Even at the distance of half a mile a cursory careless glance ahead might have easily missed it. But when a quarter of a mile only intervened between ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood |
