"Gloomy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be in a narrow alley between a house of boards and a house of canvas. Excited voices sounded inside this canvas structure and evidently alarmed Hough, for with a motion he enjoined silence and led Allie through the dark passage out into a gloomy square surrounded by low, dark structures. Ancliffe followed ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... as a small turf-stack, which gleamed exceedingly white from amongst the deep muffling greenery of the potato-plants. Mrs. Joyce had been praising their thriving aspect to old Paddy, who, however, was disposed to express a gloomy view ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... consuming flame which now it is. The Emperor loved him, trusted him: and all He undertook could not but be successful. But since that ill-starr'd day at Regensburg, Which plunged him headlong from his dignity, A gloomy uncompanionable spirit, Unsteady and suspicious, has possess'd him. His quiet mind forsook him, and no longer Did he yield up himself in joy and faith To his old luck and individual power; But thenceforth turn'd ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... great, low-ceiled, gloomy room; on two long tables smoked basins of something hot, which, however, to my dismay, sent forth an odour far from inviting. I saw a universal manifestation of discontent when the fumes of the repast met the nostrils of those destined to swallow ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... that long?" Duncan looked up from a gloomy inspection of the interior of his demitasse, displaying his first gleam of interest in this analysis of his character. "You are a long-suffering old duffer. Any man who'd stand for me ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... Street presented a gloomy and deserted prospect to Chief Inspector Kerry as he turned out of Piccadilly and swung along toward the premises of Kazmah. He glanced at the names on some of the shop windows as he passed, and wondered ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... sunset—but a fierce angry crimson which turned the wet sands and dark expanse of ocean into the colour of blood. Far away westward, where the sun—a molten ball of fire—was sinking behind the snow-clad peaks, frowned long lines of gloomy clouds—like prison bars through which the sinking orb glowed fiercely. Rising from the east to the zenith of the sky was a huge black cloud bearing a curious resemblance to a gigantic hand, the long lean fingers of which were stretched threateningly ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... which has never been adequately explained. It was a steamboat on iron wheels provided with flanges, as though it was intended to be run on submerged tracks. What may have been the idea of its inventor, living out his last gloomy days in Kentucky, may never be known; but it is possible to see in this anomalous machine an anticipation of the locomotive not approached by any other American of the time. Thus, prior to 1800 almost every type of mechanism ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... gloomy without, it was bright within, In the house where our little Ruth had been: By the nursery fireside's cheerful blaze Merry had been her thoughts and plays; She had dressed her dolls for a fancy ball, And read her story-books ...
— The Nursery, No. 109, January, 1876, Vol. XIX. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Unknown
... distress, presented himself one morning at the residence of a singular old man, who was known as a surgeon of remarkable skill. The house was a queer and primitive brick affair, entirely out of date, and tolerable only in the decayed part of the city in which it stood. It was large, gloomy, and dark, and had long corridors and dismal rooms; and it was absurdly large for the small family—man and wife—that occupied it. The house described, the man is portrayed—but not the woman. He could be agreeable on occasion, but, for all that, ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... subsided completely. The overstrain, the constant worry with luggage and so on, and perhaps the farewell drinking parties in Moscow, had brought on spitting of blood in the mornings, which induced something like depression, arousing gloomy thoughts, but towards the end of the journey it has left off; now I haven't even a cough. It is a long time since I have coughed so little as now, after being for a fortnight in the open air. After the first three days of travelling my body grew used to the jolting, and in ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... all, as our teachers now do at school; but they sometimes told how Hades had stolen Persephone (the summer) from her mother Demetre (the earth), and had carried her, in a chariot drawn by four coal black steeds, to the gloomy land of shadows; and how, in sorrow for her absence, the Earth clothed herself in mourning, and no leaves grew upon the trees, nor flowers in the gardens, and the very birds ceased singing, because Persephone was no more. But they added, that in a few months the fair maiden would return ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... has captured and is coercing the wrongdoer. That teaching does not destroy responsibility, but it kindles hope. A foreign foe, who has invaded the land, may be driven out of the land, and all his prisoners set free, if a stronger than he comes against him. Christianity is called gloomy and stern, because it preaches the corruption of man's heart. Is it not a gospel to draw a distinction between the evil that a man does, and the self that a man may be? Is it not better, more hopeful, more of a true evangel, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Girault, if draper Jean Luillier, if Messire Jean de Macon, instead of fostering these gloomy ideas, had counted the numbers of the besieged and the besieging, they would have found that the former were more numerous than the latter; and that the army of Scales, of Suffolk, of Talbot appeared mean ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... who could have hovered over Paris that night with the wing of the bat or the owl would have had beneath his eyes a gloomy spectacle. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... not taken a mortgage on sentiment, but he had made capital out of it in the end, trading upon her affection for the old home and its years-long associations. As the gloomy evening deepened and she stood in the door watching for her son's return, she saw through the scheme of Isom Chase. She never would have been thrown on the county with Joe to depend on; the question of his ability to support both of them admitted ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... the window, and stared out into the gloomy, lamplit street. And it crossed her mind to remember the bitter price so many women had paid for that dalliance and compromise, so many now probably gazing out with dull eyes into gloomy streets, ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... in your wife, and in your affection for her. Surely you don't need a festival to remind you of that faith, you so superior to human weaknesses? But you do! You insist on having it. And, if the festival did not happen, you would feel gloomy and discouraged. A birthday is a device for recalling to you in a formal and impressive manner that a certain person still lives and is in need of goodwill. It is a device which experience has proved to ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... all unawares, and seemed to develop itself all in a moment, he felt, and so spoke to Rose, so pleaded his suit, as if his whole earthly happiness depended on her consent to be his bride. It seemed to him that her love would be the sunshine in the gloomy dungeon of his life. But when her bashful, downcast, tremulous consent was given, then immediately came a strange misgiving into his mind. He felt as if he had taken to himself something good and beautiful doubtless in itself, but which ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... more about the matter; but now they do nothing of the kind, but take the ugly, round, yellow surface for granted, or else improve it, and, instead of giving that refined, complex, delicate, but saddened and gloomy reflection in the polluted water, they clear it up with coarse flashes of yellow, and green, and blue, and spoil their own eyes, and hurt ours; failing, of course, still more hopelessly in touching the pure, inimitable light of waves thrown loose; and so Canaletto is still thought to have painted ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... took the net and the fish to the cave, a dark, gloomy, smoky place. In the middle of it, a pan full of oil sizzled over a smoky fire, sending out a repelling odor of tallow ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... does me any good," was the young man's gloomy remark. "I am wretched when with her, and doubly wretched when I try to forget myself for a moment out of her sight. I think we had better go back. I had rather sit where she can see me than have her ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... during the retreat; but no such victim fell in his way. In the course of a day or two the roar of waters, and the ascending mist of the cataract, warned them of their approach to the mighty falls of Niagara; and soon the Oneida party had encamped among the gloomy pines and hemlocks opposite ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... and get married. It would be a great pity, for with your mistaken ideas of comforts, with your love of coal-fire and raw beef-steak, together with your severe notions of what is proper or improper, you would soon spoil the place, and render it as stiff and gloomy as any sectarian village of the United States, with its nine banks, eighteen chapels, its one "a-b-c" school, and its immense stone jail, very considerately made large enough to ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... disappear? my thoughts carry me to you, I take your hand and weep...When shall we see each other again?...Perhaps never, because, seriously, my health is very bad. I appear indeed merry, especially when I am among my fellow-countrymen; but inwardly something torments me—a gloomy presentiment, unrest, bad dreams, sleeplessness, yearning, indifference to everything, to the desire to live and the desire to die. It seems to me often as if my mind were benumbed, I feel a heavenly repose in my heart, in my thoughts I see images from which ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... now became insupportably gloomy and harsh. He grew angry at the slightest word; he would push aside the astonished Martine, who would look up at him with the submissive eyes of a beaten animal. From morning till night he went about the gloomy house, carrying his misery about with him, with so forbidding ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... daze he came at last to realize this much: that the master-player's house was very tall and very dark, standing in a dismal, dirty street, and that it had a gloomy hallway full of shadows that crept and wavered along the wall in the dim ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... Judgement bridge, 37 rods (rasan) long, straight and 37 fathoms broad for the good, and crooked and narrow as sword-edge for the bad, a nymph-like form will appear to the virtuous and say, "I am the personification of thy good deeds!" In Hell there will issue from a fetid gale a gloomy figure with head like a minaret, red eyeballs, hooked nose, teeth like pillars, spear-like fangs, snaky locks etc. and when asked who he is he will reply, "I am the personification of thine evil acts!" (Dabistan i. 285.) The Hindus ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... strings, also tuned in fifths, thus . The viola looks exactly like the violin at a little distance, and is really only a larger sized violin, having a range a fifth lower. Its tone is not so incisive as that of the violin, being rather heavier—"more gloomy," as it is often described. The viola is not so useful as the violin as a solo instrument because it is not capable of producing so many varieties of color, nevertheless it is invaluable for certain effects. In orchestral music it is of course one of the most valuable ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... committed, but always to accomplish some stern purpose of duty. They are cruel in order to be just. This sluggish, ravenous, drinking brute, with no gleam of poetry, no light-hearted rhythm in his soul, has yet chaotic glimpses of the sublime in his earnest, gloomy nature. He gives little promise of culture, but much of heroism. There is, too, a reaching after something grand and invisible, which is a deep religious instinct. All these qualities had the future English nation slumbering within ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... that phase of Nature in which she appears not the immutable fate we are so wont to regard her, but on the contrary something quite human and changeable, not to say womanish,—a creature of moods, of caprices, of cross purposes; gloomy and downcast to-day, and all light and joy to-morrow; caressing and tender one moment, and severe and frigid the next; one day iron, the next day vapor; inconsistent, inconstant, incalculable; full of genius, full of folly, full of extremes; to be read and understood, not by rule, but by ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... at the door interrupted his gloomy reflections and in his eager haste to admit his visitors he knocked over several pieces of furniture that impeded ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz
... harpoon in the whale. The larboard boat was steered by Mr Millons, the first mate; the waist-boat by Mr Markham, the second mate—the latter an active man of about five-and-twenty, whose size and physical strength were herculean, and whose disposition was somewhat morose and gloomy. ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... and Anna counted the rubles in the earthenware pot. The giant looked down at his wife with a gloomy face, but she smiled and ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... to believe it. When gloomy evidence is thrust upon me, I often say to myself: Think of the frequency of the reasonable man; think of him everywhere labouring to spread the light; how is it possible that such efforts should be overborne by forces of blind ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... substantial buildup of foreign debt. The government has begun the second stage of an economic reform program in consultation with the World Bank, the IMF, and major donor countries. Short-term growth prospects are gloomy because of the heavy debt service burden, rapid population growth, and vulnerability to ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... than between that lovely sheet of limpid water, as it lay now—cold, dun, and dismal, like a huge plate of pewter, without one glittering ripple, without one clear reflection, surrounded by the wooded hills which, swathed in a dim mist, hung grim and gloomy over its silent bosom—and its bright sunny aspect on the ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... the south there was a forest of the same stunted pines, where a few charcoal-burners and resin-tappers eked out a forlorn and obscure existence. There are a score of such settlements, such gloomy forests, dotted over this plain of Tver, which covers an area of nearly two hundred square miles. The remainder of it is pasture, where miserable cattle and a few horses, many sheep and countless pigs, seek ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... August 9, 1914, two British transports were observed making for the harbor of Boulogne. The weather was all that could be wished, the crossing resembled a bank-holiday excursion. For some days previously the French had taken a gloomy view of British support. But French fishermen returning from Scotland and English ports maintained confidence, for had not British fishermen told them the French would never be abandoned to fall ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... same populace, like one man, now bows its head to the ground before the old Inquisitor, who blesses it and slowly moves onward. The guards conduct their prisoner to the ancient building of the Holy Tribunal; pushing Him into a narrow, gloomy, vaulted prison-cell, they lock ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky
... explosions we made, whirled over us continually, like an immense cloud, during the time we troubled their gloomy abode, and seemed to "disturb their solitary reign;" but they did not wish to go far from their nests, in which their young broods were ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... again to the lowest depths, waved him away, and then, getting on a corner of the locker, fell into a gloomy reverie. ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... tall water-grasses at one end of the lake is a group of pelicans, motionless, their long bills resting on their breasts. They look very gloomy, as if refusing to be comforted for the loss of their native fishing grounds in the wild ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... brotherly love having ceased to prevail amongst us; for how can Missionaries speak, with effect, of the love of Jesus, and its fruits in the heart, when they themselves do not live in the enjoyment of it? It is true, our trials were great, and the prospect, in many respects, most gloomy; but we have seen in other instances, what the Lord can do, by removing obstacles, and giving strength to His servants, if they are one in spirit, pray and live together in unity, and prefer each other in love. This ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... know that I was to be taken back again to my dungeon, and not lodged in the common jail, as I had hoped and Alixe had hinted! When I saw whither my footsteps were directed I said nothing, nor did Gabord speak at all. We marched back through a railing crowd as we had come, all silent and gloomy. I felt a chill at my heart when the citadel loomed up again out of the November shadow, and I half paused as I entered the gates. "Forward!" said Gabord mechanically, and I moved on into the yard, into the prison, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it is desolate, lonely, Out in this gloomy old forest of Life!— Here are not pansies and buttercups only— Brambles and briers as keen as a knife; And a Heart, ravenous, trails in the wood For the ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... of the commoner, made himself one of the passengers at once; but Byron held himself aloof, and sat on the rail, leaning on the mizzen shrouds, inhaling, as it were, poetical sympathy, from the gloomy Rock, then dark and stern in the twilight. There was in all about him that evening much waywardness; he spoke petulantly to Fletcher, his valet; and was evidently ill at ease with himself, and fretful towards others. I thought he would turn out an unsatisfactory shipmate; yet there ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... manner, supported the gloomy period of confusion, he was, at his Majesty's restoration, by virtue of his letters, sent to the university, created doctor of the civil law, and in 1661 he was elected a Burgess for Wilton, to serve in ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... date refer to the play as well as to the Queen's death, the remedy proved fatal, for she died on March 7, but it is possible that it was acted earlier, towards the end of 1516. The subject was a gloomy one but its treatment was intended to raise many a laugh and it ends with the famous brief invocation of the Angel to the knights who had died fighting in Africa. On August 6, 1517, Vicente resigned the ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... most part, Englishmen are blind. He greatly fears that "the liberties of the people are not safe when the Tory Party continues in power for a long period." Neither is the prospect of Liberal ascendancy much less gloomy. Liberals are becoming "Easternised." They are getting "more and more leavened by reaction imported from India." It really looks as if "English Liberalism might soon sink to a pious tradition." In the meanwhile, Mr. Mallik, with true Eastern ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... forgot that!" Norah smiled with recovered cheerfulness, for Rex's words had lifted a load from her mind, and the future seemed several shades less gloomy than it had done ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... beautiful afternoon, and his heart was lighter than it had been for many a day. He walked along with the swing of a man who has a definite purpose in life, and from whose heart all gloomy thoughts have been banished. He did not try to account for this mood. It was sufficient for him that in some way a load had been for a time lifted from his mind. He would let the future look out for ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... turned upon Razumov seemed to be starting out of his head. This grotesqueness of aspect no longer shocked Razumov. He said with gloomy conviction— ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... all, my gloomy prophecies of other years were substantiated in 1918, especially in regard to the devastated kelp-beds; but there have been a few silver rifts in the black cloud, and it seems well to end this book with mention of ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... come to the Light: for each one individually, in full consciousness of desire, that lighting must be obtained from the Saviour. I had not obtained this light. I did not comprehend that it was necessary. I understood nothing; I was a spiritual savage. Vague, miserable thoughts, gloomy self-introspections, merely fatigue the vitality without assisting the soul. What is required is a persistent endeavour to establish an inwardly felt relationship first to the Man Jesus. His Personality, His Characteristics are to be drawn into the secret places of ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... attendance on the horses down below; so that I might just as well have been in a very stuffy stable on shore, for all I saw of the run down Channel. My duty was to draw forage from the forward hold (a gloomy, giddy operation), be responsible with my mate for the watering of all the horses in my sub-division—thirty in number, for preparing their feeds and "haying up" three times a day, and for keeping our section ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... shops, and empty streets, and great long lines of big brick buildin's look melancholy. It seems as if life had ceased tickin', but there hadn't been time for decay to take hold on there; as if day had broke, but man slept. I can't describe exactly what I mean, but I always feel kinder gloomy and wamblecropt there. ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... indisputable proof of some person's guilt, we made our way through the familiar corridor by the dressing rooms, out under the roof of the so-called large studio. There a scene of gayety confronted us, in sharp contrast with the gloomy atmosphere of ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... vista to the north-west of the vast Zillerthal snow-fields, suggests at a distance the idea of a stern, joyless district. When in the broader Pusterthal the sunshine floods upland plain and slope, this important but narrow tributary valley lies steeped in its gloomy shade, the dark sides of the Sambock frowning grimly on the opposite shadowy Tesselberg. Great, therefore, was the surprise of some of the party to find, as we drove along, instead of melancholy solitude, prosperous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... away, the wolf became gloomy and desponding, and refused its food, so that fears were entertained for its life. It recovered its health, however, and though it suffered its keepers to approach, exhibited the savage disposition of its tribe ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... from that description—does his duty also, with that heroic manfulness that has marked his whole career; and somewhere in the ship young Ferdinand is sheltering from the sprays and breaking seas, finding his world of adventure grown somewhat gloomy and sordid of late, and feeling that he has now had his fill of the sea . . . . Shut your eyes and let the illusions of time and place fade from you; be with them for a moment on this last voyage; hear that eternal foaming and crashing of great waves, the shrieking of wind in cordage, the cracking ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... was left of the noblesse in Picardy had flocked that day to the Chateau de Bellecour, and the company there assembled numbered perhaps some thirty gallants and some twenty ladies. A banquet there had been, which in the main was a gloomy function, for the King's death was too recent a matter to be utterly lost sight of. Later, however, as the generous supply of wine did its work and so far thawed the ice of apprehension that bound their souls as to dispose them to enjoy, at least, the present hour in forgetfulness, there was ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... temper, a motherless home, the loss of her only congenial companion, and the long-enduring effect of her illness upon her health, had all conspired to weigh down the poor girl, and bring on an almost morbid state of gloomy discontent. Her father's second marriage, by enlivening the house, had rendered her peculiarities even more painful to herself and others, and the cultivation of mind that was forced upon her, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... never fully gains her trust, and the estrangement so tragically sealed in the last chapter of the novel comes almost as a relief to the sympathetic reader of her sad history. Sylvia Vickers, despite the gloomy environment of her youth, is throughout an intensely womanly woman, the delicate conception of whose character surely places her creator far above the rank of the cynics ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... corner of the house, which could be entered only by passing through his bedroom. In this apartment he spent most of his time, though he went out to walk every day, while I was at school; but, if he saw me coming, he always retreated to the house. He was gloomy and misanthropic; he never went to church himself, though he always compelled me to go, and also to attend the Sunday school. He did not go into society, and had little or nothing to do with, or to say to, the people of Parkville. He never troubled them, and they were content ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... that it has found a destination; another, and another follows—some come in sideways, and one striking the window bar glances off and reaches the hearth, whence it drives before it a lighted stick which sends out sparks on every side and causes a faint gleam of light in the hitherto gloomy room. Shouts of laughter accompany each stone; but the sun has set, the sonorous bell of the distant church gives notice, too, that evening has arrived. The children's ears catch the sound. "Away, away! Home, home!" they shout, as they run off from the solitary ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... of gloomy despair I was aroused by a gleam of hope. My eyes had fallen upon the signal-staff, the sight of which had so lately caused me a feeling of the opposite kind; and then the thought rushed into my mind that by means of this I ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... relate to King Khufu (Cheops) a story of a magician called Tchatchamankh, who flourished in the reign of Seneferu, the king's father. The offer having been accepted, Baiufra proceeded to relate the following: On one occasion it happened that Seneferu was in a perplexed and gloomy state of mind, and he wandered distractedly about the rooms and courts of his palace seeking to find something wherewith to amuse himself, but he failed to do so. Then he bethought himself of the court magician Tchatchamankh, and he ordered his servants to summon him to the presence. When the ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... and tribulation over Europe, and given birth to that dismal skeleton of death, which still terrifies the imagination of many, a reaction of feeling was experienced by the populace, who at length came to laugh at the gloomy spectre which had so long ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... During his life in Salem, of which the introduction to The Scarlet Letter describes the official aspect, he wrote that romance. It is inspired by the spirit of the place. It presents more vividly than any history the gloomy picturesqueness of early New England life. There is no strain in our literature so characteristic or more real than that which Hawthorne had successfully attempted in several of his earlier sketches, and of which The Scarlet Letter is the great triumph. ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... time yet; I think I'm too early," he said glancing round the empty drawing room. When he saw that his expectations were realized, that there was nothing to prevent him from speaking, his face became gloomy. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... not like the artificial conventional society one meets at ordinary dinner-parties, it must not be supposed that he was in any way gloomy. His friend, Prebendary Barnes, says about him: "The seriousness of Gordon's temper did not prevent him from being a bright and agreeable companion, especially when those with whom he talked could join him in smoking a cigarette. He had a keen sense of humour, and on every ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... However, gloomy as the prospect has been, it may clear up, and I could, if it was right, encourage hopes and anticipate a perspective that is not ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... Bohemian, and this time the laugh which accompanied her words came from the heart. "Try him, in the name of all the saints! But look at Sir Heinz Schorlin! A gloomy face for a happy man! He does not seem quite ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... verses, and he kept none for his personal use. He was mean, selfish, above all very niggardly, a fault love seldom forgives. Then he had cut off his moustaches, and was disfigured by the loss. How different from that fine gloomy fellow with his carefully curled locks, as he appeared one evening declaiming his Credo, in the blaze of two chandeliers! Now, in the enforced retreat he was undergoing on her account, he gave way to all his crotchets, the greatest of which ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... tragic experiences of Lincoln in these dark days, the outlook was less gloomy than it had seemed to his tortured soul. He was even then, as Mr. John Bigelow puts it, "making for himself a larger place in history than he had any idea of." He "builded better than he knew"; and the "hours of light" were soon to come when he would know what he had built and ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... letters will now be intelligible. He writes, it will be observed, in a gloomy mood, on the very day on which Whitlocke, for different reasons, was in a gloomy mood too and "wishing himself out of ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... made their way into the camp to join the defenders, and the Germans, who had come without any fixed purpose, merely for plunder, gave way and galloped off again. They left the Romans, however, still in the utmost consternation. The scene and the associations of it suggested the most gloomy anticipations. They thought that German cavalry could never be so far from the Rhine, unless their countrymen were invading in force behind them. Caesar, it was supposed, must have been surprised and destroyed, and they and every Roman in Gaul would soon ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... a great heap of dry logs in the fireplace, with pointed flames shooting out of its crevices and leaping into the gloomy, cave-like throat of the flue. Outside a wind passed heavily across the roof ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Highland tradition that originated in a feud between the clans of Chattan and Grant. The Castle of Moy, the early residence of Mackintosh, the chief of the clan Chattan, is situated among the mountains of Inverness-shire, and stands on the edge of a small gloomy lake called Loch Moy, in which is still shown a rocky island as the spot where the dungeon stood in which prisoners were confined by the former chiefs of Moy. On a certain evening, in the annals of Moy, the scene is represented as having been one of ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... a lonely blue lamp twinkled, a symbol of law and order placed high above the door of the police station. The street itself was appallingly quiet and gloomy. Yet a few hundred yards away the radiantly lighted main thoroughfares seethed with thousands of London's pleasure seekers, and an incessant stream of cabs and motor cars flowed to and from restaurants ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... Eve returning, Saw Bertha stand beside The altar, greeting Dora, Again a smiling bride; And now the gloomy evening Sees Bertha pale and worn, Leaving the house for ever, To ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... if I chose, emphasize that fact, and attribute my subsequent rout to it, adding, by way of solidifying the excuse, that I was playing in a strange court with a borrowed racket, and that my mind was preoccupied—firstly, with l'affaire Hawk; secondly, and chiefly, with the gloomy thought that Phyllis and my opponent seemed to be on fiendishly good terms with each other. Their manner at tea had been almost that of an engaged couple. There was a thorough understanding between them. I will not, however, take refuge behind excuses. I admit, without qualifying the statement, ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... of strange despair Never shall disturb the air. Never, never shall it rise But for Nature's broken ties!— Bright crescent! that with lucid smiles Gild'st the Morai's lofty pile, Whose broad lines of shadow throw A gloomy horror far below; Witness, O recording Moon! All the rites are duly done; Be the faithful tribute o'er, The hovering spirit asks no more! Mortals, cease the pile to tread, Leave, to silence, leave ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... the chill breath of night, but the stars were fading and the first gleams of dawn were breaking through the eastern mists. At such a time the appearance of the vast desert was especially gloomy and depressing. ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... alternative but to allow matters to stand as they did. The gloomy weather, however, oppressed their spirits. They had now been gone from civilization for a considerable time, and if truth be told they were becoming not a little uneasy about their situation. They had no means of telling how far the settlement might ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... went out of the room and Mr. Havisham was left alone for a while. He went to the window and stood looking out into the street reflectively. He was thinking of the old Earl of Dorincourt, sitting in his great, splendid, gloomy library at the castle, gouty and lonely, surrounded by grandeur and luxury, but not really loved by any one, because in all his long life he had never really loved any one but himself; he had been selfish and self-indulgent and arrogant and passionate; he had cared so ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of themselves; and after luncheon we had nothing for it but to go away from Burgos, and take with us such scraps of impression as we could. We decided that there was no street of gayer shops than those gloomy ones we had chanced into here and there; I do not remember now anything like a bookseller's or a milliner's or a draper's window. There was no sign of fashion among the ladies of Burgos, so far as we could distinguish them; there was not a glowering or perking hat, and I do not believe there was ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... soldiers did not know. Home to many, when they reached it, was graves and ashes. At any rate, there must be, somewhere on earth, a better place than a muddy, smoky camp in a piece of scrubby pines; better company than gloomy, hungry comrades and inquisitive enemies, and something in the future more exciting, if not more hopeful, than nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep, nothing to do, and nowhere to go. The disposition to start was apparent, and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... but that hungry poverty that does not know where to look for its dinner. Against all these things had this "old struggler" to contend; over all these things did this "old struggler" prevail. Over even the fear of death, the giving up of "this intellectual being," which had haunted his gloomy fancy for a lifetime, he seems finally to have prevailed, and to have met his end as ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... room at the back of the Stopping Place where little Patsy lay. At the door they were met by the mother, vociferous with lamentations, prayers, blessings, and entreaties. Within the room, seated beside the bed, was Carroll, gloomy and taciturn. ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... heavily on the spirits of the king, and their effect was increased by certain gloomy prognostics of a great calamity, which was shortly to overwhelm the country. His health rapidly gave way. He had died but two years before, and had been succeeded by his son Cacama, the present king, a young prince who was two-and-twenty years old when he ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... she met the itinerant Vilbert. She, like all the cottagers thereabout, knew the quack well, and she began telling him of her experiences. Arabella had been gloomy, but before he left her she had grown brighter. That evening she kept an appointment with Jude, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... great success, never to be forgotten by those poor fellows, whose only recreation previously had been to stroll listlessly up and down the gloomy, stone-flagged hall of the great barracks until sheer weariness drove them out into the turbid current of the "Highway," there to seek speedily some of the dirty haunts where the "runner" and ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... a very long way down to the deck, but I reached the remaining few rattlins at last, and I was nearly down to the bulwarks, meaning to go below and bathe my head, if I could leave the deck, when I was stopped short, just in my most gloomy and despondent moments, by the captain's voice, his words sounding so strange that I ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... doffed, how soft is purple On which to lay the head, lulled by the praise Of thousand fluttering fans of flatterers! Wearied of war-horse, gratefully one glides In gilded barge, or in crowned, velvet car, From gay Whitehall to gloomy Temple Bar—" (Where—had you slipt, that head were bleaching now! And that same rabble, splitting for a hedge, Had joined their rows to cheer the active headsman; Perchance, in mockery, they'd gird the skull With a hop-leaf crown! Bitter the brewing, Noll!) Are crowns the end-all ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... his sad story of fire and famine. He explained that it would be two or three days before supplies could be got from Norfolk, and darkly hinted at a new chapter of suffering that might be added to the woeful history of the island unless something were done at once. The gloomy picture did not seem to impress the young woman very painfully, for her reply was a laughing one; but a sack of flour went into the basket and a big loaf of bread besides. Upon its coming out in the conversation that we wished to remain ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... science. We find here a man who seeks only for censure, and knows not what he would have: he fights with his own shadow, and for the most part does not understand the thoughts of the author he attacks; and when he does understand them draws the most groundless consequences that ever were heard of. His gloomy and unhappily subtle mind cannot bear the light which Grotius presents to him. The embroiled ideas and distinctions of his Peripatetic philosophy form round him a thick cloud impenetrable by the strongest rays of truth. This is Barbeyrac's ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... disorder, disease, and death. See what a record of blood and cruelty the pages of history reveal! Through what slavery, slaughter, and sacrifice, through what inquisitions and imprisonments, pains and persecutions, black codes and gloomy creeds, the soul of humanity has struggled for the centuries, while mercy has veiled her face and all hearts have been dead alike to love and hope! The male element has held high carnival thus far, it has fairly run riot from the beginning, overpowering the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... dilettanteism of Bulwer: the philosophical speculations of Georges Sand are the least permanently interesting feature of her writings; and the same might in some measure be affirmed of George Eliot, whose gloomy wisdom finally confesses its inability to do more than advise us rather to bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of. As to Nathaniel Hawthorne, he cannot properly be instanced in this connection; for he analyzed ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... a henpecked father was in a gloomy mood, rebellious against the conditions of his life. He announced a ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... sunk lower and lower; on his brow a gloomy scowl deepened, and his eyes refused to meet those of his sister ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... but well-known animal (Phascolomys wombat), during the day conceals himself in his gloomy lair in the loneliest recesses of the mountains, and usually on the banks of a creek, and at night roams about in search of food, which it finds by grubbing about the roots of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... minute, however, wondering at the stillness, half frightened at the utter solitude, and awed by the vast gloomy grandeur of the naked but venerable building, she pushed the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... intelligently and effectively. And yet he has failed to make a good living. Why? Simply because of his standard of what constitutes a good living. Measured by my standard, he is doing excellently well. Measured by his own standard, he is a miserable failure. He is depressed and gloomy and out of harmony with the world, simply because he has no other standard for a good living than a financial one. He is by profession a civil engineer. His work is much more remunerative than is that of many other callings. He has it in him to attain to professional distinction in that work. ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... more retired from young women, I might in some measure alleviate my sorrow by burying that chaste and troublesome passion in oblivion; I am very well assured that this will be the only antidote or remedy." Our gloomy young gentleman, however, did not take to solitude to cure the pangs of despised love, but preceded to calm his spirits by the society of this same sister-in-law of George Fairfax, Miss Mary Cary. One "Lowland Beauty," Lucy Grymes, married Henry Lee, and became the ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... golden city. Perfect love there, no more quarreling or strife, no angry tones or discordant murmurs, no rude, rough voices to disturb the peace. And all this for ever and ever, no dread of it coming to an end, no gloomy fears for the future, no partings there, no good-byes. Once there, safe for ever. At home, ...
— Christie's Old Organ - Or, "Home, Sweet Home" • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... form which it finally took. Hawthorne had conceived it as a rather longer tale of the same sort that he had previously written, and designed to make it one story in a new collection such as his former volumes had been. He thought it was too gloomy to stand alone, and in fact did not suspect that here was a new kind of work, such that it would put an end forever to his old manner of writing. He intended to call the new volume "Old-Time Legends: together with Sketches, Experimental and Ideal,"—a title that is fairly ghostly with ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... plunged in a gloomy silence. But, at length, he signified his assent to the plan proposed, and Donna Inez hastened to give the directions of ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... There was something so gloomy, so uncanny, and depressing—I must even say malignant—in the building at this twilight hour, that I could stand the influence no longer, and as Miss Greenlow seemed inclined to linger, I hurried down the stone steps, saying: "I can't stay in that place! I will wait for ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... proudly conscious of a voluptuous existence; troops of monkeys leap from tree to tree; panthers start forward, and alarmed, not alarming, instantly vanish; a herd of milk-white elephants tramples over the back-ground of the scene; and instead of gloomy owls and noxious beetles, to hail the long-enduring twilight, from the bell of every opening flower beautiful birds, radiant with every rainbow tint, rush with a long and living melody into the ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... found no thoroughfare. But the play is a remarkable one, and deserves the handsome and exact reproduction which Mr. Bullen has given it. The Second Maiden's Tragedy, licensed 1611, but earlier in type, is one of the gloomy pity-and-terror pieces which were so much affected in the earlier part of the period, but which seem to have given way later in the public taste to comedy. It is black enough to have been attributed to Tourneur. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Government airships had deposited them there and flown away, but now an intense silence had descended upon the doomed. Resigned to their fate, they sat or lay in little silent groups, all eyes turned toward the gloomy jungle. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... no time for deliberation. Both the present and the future looked as gloomy as could be imagined; but I had always expected extraordinary difficulties, and they were, if possible, to be surmounted. It was useless to speculate upon chances; there was no hope of success in inaction; and the only resource was to drive through ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... considered how often I had been on the brink of eternity; and had I been cut off in my sins, what would have been my destiny? I started with horror at the dangers I had escaped, and looked forward with gloomy apprehension at those that still awaited me. I sought in vain, among all my actions since I left my mother's care, one single deed of virtue—one that sprang from a good motive. There was, it is true, an outward gloss and polish for the world to look ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... swimming, is eighteen Yards by thirty-six, situated in the centre of a garden, in which are twenty four private undressing-houses, the whole surrounded by a wall 10 feet high. Pleasure and health are the guardians of the place. The gloomy horrors of a bath, sometimes deter us from its use, particularly, if aided by complaint; but the appearance of these is rather inviting. We read of painted sepulchres, whose outsides are richly ornamented, but within are full of corruption and death. The reverse is before us. No ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... times obliged to stop in the midst of his part. Bonaparte alone (and it struck me as being very extraordinary) was silent, and coldly insensible to the humour which was so irresistibly diverting to everyone else. I remarked at this period that his character was reserved, and frequently gloomy. His smile was hypocritical, and often misplaced; and I recollect that a few days after our return he gave us one of these specimens of savage hilarity which I greatly disliked, and which prepossessed me against him. He was telling us that, being before Toulon, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... cold, unfeeling, and phlegmatic, utterly destitute of imagination. He had just lost his queen, Ulrica Eleonora, and he appeared to feel her death more than could have been expected from a man of his character. He became even more gloomy and silent than before, and his incessant application to business proved his anxiety ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... that he would accomplish the object or die in the attempt, being quite sure that if the expedition failed by being cut to pieces, a terrible retribution would be in store for the perpetrators of the act. Kit Carson, his guide, openly avowed that the future looked dark and gloomy; but, he was delighted to hear this expression from his commander. He now felt that he had a man after his own heart to depend on, and should danger or inevitable death be in store for them he was ready and willing to face either with him. In order to be ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... admitted that woman possesses a soul like our own, but even superior in tenderness and devotion. She has been allowed to educate herself, which she has done at least as zealously as her coadjutor. But the law, that gloomy cavern which is still the lurking-place of so many barbarities, continues to regard her as an incapable and a minor. The law in turn will ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... effect is chargeable less on an Epicurean levity of feeling or on party-trammels, than on real sanguineness of disposition, and a certain fineness of professional tact. Our sprightly Scotchman is not of a desponding and gloomy turn of mind. He argues well for the future hopes of mankind from the smallest beginnings, watches the slow, gradual, reluctant growth of liberal views, and smiling sees the aloe of Reform blossom at the end of a hundred ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Secord (putting his arm 'round her tenderly). How can I let thee go? Thy tender feet Would bleed ere half the way was done. Thy strength Would fail 'twixt the rough road and summer heat, And in some, gloomy depth, faint and alone, Thou would'st lie down to die. Or, chased and hurt By wolf or catamount, thy task undone, Thy precious life would then be thrown away. I cannot ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... than Nala doth! To him, whoever set my guileless Prince On these ill deeds, I pray some direr might May bring far darker days, and life to live More miserable still!" Thus, woe-begone, Mourned that great-hearted wife her vanished lord, Seeking him ever in the gloomy shades, By wild beasts haunted. Roaming everywhere, Like one possessed, frantic, disconsolate, Went Bhima's daughter. "Ha, ha! Maharaja!" So crying runs she, so in every place Is heard her ceaseless wail, as when is heard The ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... controls the making of men. Some rise above it, the majority do not. We might have followed in the well-worn rut. But let us not spoil this delightful evening by speaking of anything sad or gloomy. This is your daily life; to me it is like a scene from a play, over which one sighs to see the curtain fall—all ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... reflected How he could continue living In a resting-place so gloomy, In a dwelling far too narrow, Where he could not see the moonlight, Neither could behold the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... spirit soared on the bouyancy of hope. Now the fair superstructure of an important enterprise, whose ideal magnitude had employed my mind, to the exclusion of many hardships endured, suddenly vanished from my sight, and left before me a hideous and gloomy void with no other encouragement than total disappointment, conscious poverty and remediless despair! What should I then have done? My health was restored, but my detention and consequent expenses had been so great that ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... gloomy thoughts and thronging dreams oppressed, I sank upon the 'violet velvet chair, Which she shall press, ah, never, nevermore!' And gazed, I know not why, upon the cross, On which the Dove was resting its soft wings, Glowing and rosy in the morn's warm light. I cannot tell how long I dreaming lay, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... noted how exactly the same Ruth looked. When he had dropped her hands—way back there in time, she appeared precisely the same to him as she did now, with those same little jewelled hands lying white and soft in her lap. She had worn a bright gown then, Dale recalled, but even the gloomy raiment that now enfolded her had no power to change the ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock |
