"Grimness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at him, and was startled by the set grimness of his face and the thunderous lowering of the black smudge ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... hardened into grimness, and in his eyes there was the light of a fierce purpose. The sight of him comforted me, in ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... for she made no answer, merely clutching Betty's shoulder more tightly and holding on with a grimness born of terror. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... Stumpy concealed his uneasiness, yet his eyes searched Dolores's face questingly. None truly believed in the queen's magic powers; yet none was bold enough to openly avow his unbelief; and the added grimness of the storm, assisted by the unearthliness of that howl of anguish, brought the four godless pirates to the ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... former failure in kidnapping strangers, he now pursues a quite different plan. When seamen come ashore, he makes up to them like a free-and-easy comrade, invites them to his hut, and with whatever affability his red-haired grimness may assume, entreats them to drink his liquor and be merry. But his guests need little pressing; and so, soon as rendered insensible, are tied hand and foot, and pitched among the clinkers, are there concealed till the ship departs, when, finding themselves entirely ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... their faces were not brown, but grey. He admired their coats, there was a martial air in the long sweep of them. And he confessed that one looked far more of a soldier in a helmet. There is a ferocity about the things, a grimness well suited to a soldier.... Not that clothes make ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... pulled strongly up the heavy grades the man on the high seat of the wagon repaid the indifference of his surroundings with a like indifference. Unmoved by the forbidding grimness of the mountains, unthoughtful of their solemn warning, he took his place as much a part of the lonely scene as the hills themselves. Slouching easily in his seat he gave heed only to his team and ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... both with fate and with himself. He felt that he'd made Jill face reality when—if this S.O.S. signal brought help—it wasn't necessary. And there was enough of grimness in the present situation ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... with an assumption of grimness, which was evidently meant for sarcasm, "not well. Every one knows the Pollards, but I never heard any one say they ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... take all in; nothing escapes you; you have cast off care for the day. How pleasant and cheerful everything and everyone looks! Even the cocks and hens, scratching by the road-side, have a friendly air. The turnpike-man relaxes, in favour of your 'pink,' his usual grimness. A tramping woman, with one child at her back and two running beside her, asks charity; you suspect she is an impostor, but she looks cold and pitiful; you give her a shilling, and the next day you don't regret your foolish benevolence. To your mind the ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... absence always produces, but with no actual apprehension, Mrs. Pember went back to her work. Mellony had certain mild whims of her own, but it was surprising that she should have left her room in disorder, the bed unmade; that was not like her studious neatness. With a certain grimness Mrs. Pember ate her breakfast alone. Of course no harm had come to Mellony, but where was she? Unacknowledged, the shadow of Ira Baldwin fell across her wonder. Had Mellony cared so much for him that her disappointment had driven her to something wild and fatal? ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... which is to be associated in the present instance with nothing vulgar or vain. This lean, pale, sallow, shabby, striking young man, with his superior head, his sedentary shoulders, his expression of bright grimness and hard enthusiasm, his provincial, distinguished appearance, is, as a representative of his sex, the most important personage in my narrative; he played a very active part in the events I have undertaken in some degree to set forth. And yet the reader who likes a complete image, who desires ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... they toiled silently; in the cafes, where they were sufficiently noisy over their new wine, they talked without laughter, and without the shrugs and gestures that enliven conversation among other Latin peoples. They had a hard-favored grimness and taciturnity that with their mountain scenery reminded me of New England now and again, and gave me the bewildered sense of having dropped down in some little anterior America. But there was one thing that marked ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... that grimness that appears in the face of persecutors, Satan can tell how to lessen, and make to dwindle in our apprehensions, those truths unto which our hearts have joined themselves afore, and to which Christ our Lord has commanded us to stand. So that they ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... any other locality, realized in the most satisfactory degree his theories of what winter must be in such a place as South Bradfield. The burning smell of the sheet-iron stove in the parlor, with its battlemented top of filigree iron work; the grimness of the horsehair- covered best furniture; the care with which the old-fashioned fire- places had been walled up, and all accessible character of the period to which the house belonged had been effaced, gave him an equal pleasure. He went about with his arm ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... Sandy at once," Lans explained. The plain common-sense atmosphere of the cabin and the little doctor's evident suffering were calming Treadwell's hot Southern blood and giving a touch of stern prosaic grimness to ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... Incipient grimness vanished out of Renouard's aspect and his voice, while he hesitated as if reflecting seriously before he changed his mind. "No. ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... empty pistol at it. But it was hidden the next instant behind others, and then they were at the embankment. He saw the glowing faces of his comrades at his side, the singular figure of Heemskerk revolving swiftly, and behind them the line of bayonets closing in with the grimness of fate. ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... least have something.' He spoke with a grimness which was a little startling. He held the silken tresses at arm's length. 'This points to murder,—foul, cruel, causeless murder. As I live, I will devote my all,—money, time, reputation!—to gaining vengeance on the wretch who did ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... or affection—triple dolt—quadruple fool—prize-winner among idiots! He had nothing to say—he could say nothing. Nor was it the presence of a third person which prevented him. Perhaps, rather, something in Patsy's eye, and, though that he would not acknowledge, a lurking grimness in the smile about the wicks ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... it is tucked and folded in by the rising thrust of the jaw. It is this which gives him the "grim" aspect which every reader of the papers hears about. He is grim, there's no doubt about it, with the grimness of a man going through a tough ordeal. "I can see him all right," squeaked little John Fisher, "but he doesn't see me." The first two rows of seats at the right of the aisle were crammed with generals, two-star and three-star. From our lowly station we could see a grand ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... grimness of the jest. She was too busy thinking what a tangle she had made of her life. Gerhardt would not come now, even if they had a lovely home to share with him. And yet he ought to be with Vesta again. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... dark face, its grimness not lessened by flecks and bars of court-plaster; across the apathy of physical exhaustion his black eyes gleamed ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... at the corners of Blount's steady gray eyes, but this time it was shot through with a faint suggestion of the Blount grimness. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... the same person," said Gwen. She followed the doctor into his parlour, and accepted the seat he offered. He stood facing her, not relaxing his expression, which worked out as a sort of mild grimness, tempered by a tune which his thumbs in the armpits of his waistcoat enabled him to play on its top-pockets. It was a slow tune. Gwen continued:—"But her mind is not ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... another, experienced in nightmares, the agony of attempting to fly from some pursuing phantom, when our limbs refuse to serve us. This, I fancy, is much what a fox suffers, only his pains are intensified by the grimness of stern reality. If he stops, he loses his life, therefore he rolls, and flounders, and creeps along when every movement has become a fresh torture. The cock, quail, dove, bull, ram, or fish, on the other hand, fights because it is his nature to do so, and when he has had his ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... do him justice, did not interrupt. He listened with an expression that varied between grimness and weariness. When Joe ended he picked up a telephone. He talked briefly. Joe felt a reluctant sort of approval. Major Holt was not a man one could ever feel very close to, and the work he was in charge of was not likely to make him popular, but he did think straight—and ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... the little whitewashed gaol, and the late roses blooming on the fence. It showed also the mob that had gathered—a gathering as quiet as a congregation at prayer. But in the silence was the danger—the determination to act that choked back speech—the grimness of the justice that walks at night—the triumph of a lawless ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... as he noted the green and white paint and the trimmings of the verandahs with which Ashton had endeavored to give a bungalow effect to the shack-like structure. But as he swung up the steps into the front verandah, the grimness of his look increased and the humor vanished. His heavy tread through the weather vestibule announced his entrance into the office. He took no pains to ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale's jaw. "Aye, he was dismasted off Japan," said the old Gay-Head Indian once; ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... by a woman who, while thorough in all housekeeping arrangements, had certainly mistaken her calling as a substitute mother for boys. She kept their clothes in order, saw to it that their rooms were aired, their stockings darned and their lights out at exactly half-past nine, but the grimness of her countenance forbade any familiarity, and she never thought of gaining the confidence of her rough, but affectionate charges. There was no tenderness in her, and Mikky never felt like smiling in her presence. He came and went with a sort of high, unconscious superiority that almost irritated ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... very base of Emily not to say a word about it," said John, smiling with as much grimness as utter want of practice, together with the natural cast of ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... Everywhere are avenues and clumps of great trees, hedges of roses, of limes, and deronta encircle every garden, the green of the polo grounds is as that of the Emerald Isle. Even the old fort has lost its grimness, and the mud walls have given place to beautiful terraces bright with every flower; while the once formidable moat is spanned by peaceful rustic bridges, clustered thick with climbing roses, and giving access ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... humming as she put on her berry cap and pulled it over at a rakish angle. She had spent a very profitable afternoon laughing at herself. At first the laughter had been a little too grim, but before long the grimness had disappeared and only a good-natured ridicule was left. It is good to be able to laugh at yourself once in a while, but Janet was glad that the ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... quote again from the tribute of a fellow-student: "On everything he said or wrote there was stamped the impress of a forcible individuality, a mind that thought for itself, and whose thoughts had the rugged strength of an original character wherein grimness was mingled with humor, and practical shrewdness with a love for abstract speculation." In the end, his solid qualities of mind and character made so strong an impression upon the University authorities that in 1860 he was elected fellow of Balliol. At the same time he became lecturer on ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... herself resentfully with her mother. The only thing was that her mother was, thank goodness, still so much prettier, still so assertively, so publicly, so trashily, so ruinously pretty. Wonderful the small grimness with which Julia Bride put off on this parent the middle-aged maximum of their case and the responsibility of their defect. It cost her so little to recognize in Mrs. Connery at forty-seven, and in spite, or perhaps indeed just by reason, of the arranged silver tendrils which were ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... out, yet not find a doctor to look at it for love or money. The dentists' instruments are rusting in their drawers, and their horrible cool parlours, where people pretend to read the Every-Day Book and not to be afraid, are doing penance for their grimness in white sheets. The light-weight of shrewd appearance, with one eye always shut up, as if he were eating a sharp gooseberry in all seasons, who usually stands at the gateway of the livery-stables on very little legs under a very large waistcoat, has gone to Doncaster. Of such undesigning ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... among the wounded. Colonel Aldworth of the Cornwalls died at the head of his men. A bullet struck him dead as he whooped his West Countrymen on to the charge. Eleven hundred killed and wounded testified to the fire of our attack and the grimness of the Boer resistance. The distribution of the losses among the various battalions—eighty among the Canadians, ninety in the West Riding Regiment, one hundred and twenty in the Seaforths, ninety in the Yorkshires, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a strike," Mrs. Cudahy agreed, with quiet grimness, and under her breath she added heavily, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... shy and proud, if I may so express it, that it would not show itself except upon long acquaintance, and I distinctly perceived now that this enabled her to make light of a burden that might otherwise have been intolerable. It qualified her to treat with cheerfulness the grimness of her mother, which had certainly not grown less since I saw her last, and to turn into something like a joke her valetudinarian austerities of sentiment and opinion. She made a pleasant mock of the amenities ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells |
