"Silhouette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... again knew them as well on summer evenings, when slim buggies whizzed by in renewals of the snow-time rivalry. For that matter, everybody knew everybody else's family horse-and-carriage, could identify such a silhouette half a mile down the street, and thereby was sure who was going to market, or to a reception, or coming home from office or store to noon ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... were in the library now, and sat down on a little sofa in front of the window. The moon was high and brilliant and the great expanse of water with the high clusters of lights on the islands, the sharp hard silhouette of the encircling mountains, the green and silver stars so high above, the moving golden dots of an incoming liner from Japan, the long rows of arc lights along the shore, made a landscape of the night that Mrs. Thornton with all her ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... shepherdess's crook to Papavoine. Through the straw of the sabot one sees gossamer wings appearing on horrible heels. The miracle of the roses is performed for Goton. All fatalities combined have for result a flower. A vague Rambouillet Palace is superposed upon the forbidding silhouette of the Salpetriere. The leprous wall of evil, suddenly covered with blossoms, affords a pendant to the wreath of Juliet. The sonnets of Petrarch, that flight of the ideal which soars in the shadow of souls, venture through the twilight towards this abjection and suffering, ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... in the open door to silhouette a figure as it entered, and a moment later I saw for an instant quite distinctly the outline of that oilskinned man once more. And then for perhaps three long seconds he was lost in the gloom within and ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... into the trench; all down the line we stand on our firing platforms, and answer back to the little spurts of flame which mark the enemy trench; sudden flashes and explosions tell of bombs or grenades, and star shells from both sides sweep high into the air to silhouette the unwary and to give one something to fire at, for firing into the darkness with the probability of hitting nothing more dangerous than a tree or a sandbag is work of ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... her was the great main School building, its windows blazing with light, the silhouette of the bell-tower etched against the sky. She could hear the Old Girls behind her singing ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... the sitting-room were alight and the shades drawn. At one window he saw Charles Phillips' silhouette; he was reading, apparently. Across the other shade Ruth's dainty profile came and went. Jed looked and looked. He saw her turn and speak to some one. Then another shadow crossed the window, the shadow of Major Grover. Evidently the major had not gone ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... for the gray silhouette of the Ariani. A colourless canopy surrounded him, centred by a tiny pool of ocean. Overhead through the vanishing blue, hundreds of wild duck were stringing out to sea; under his tent of fog the tarnished silver of the water ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... hidden behind the trees. We could see far, far down the wide straight road, but it would be bare! In the cold of the winter evening all would be dumb. Then we would meet a shepherd, wrapped in his long brown cloak and leaning on his staff, a silhouette against ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... the north. Suddenly the huge silhouette of the Arc de Triomphe sprang into black relief against the flash of a cannon. The boom of the gun rolled along the quay and ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... is more familiarly known in Resurrection—is a far less appealing figure than the street-walker Sonia in Dostoievsky's Crime and Punishment. The latter lives, while poor Maslova, a crude silhouette in comparison, as soon as she begins the march to Siberia is transformed into a clothes-horse upon which Tolstoy drapes his moral platitudes. She is at first much more vital than her betrayer, who is an unreal bundle of theories; but in company with the rest of the characters ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... a night class in metallurgy the evening after the day Lily had made her declaration of independence, and let himself in with his night key. There was a light in the little parlor, and Mrs. Boyd's fragile silhouette against the ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... curved, came the view of the city beneath its delicate canopy of mist. The city was built on escarpments, on ridges, on hills, and sagged here and there into great hollows. The serrated silhouette of it wrote romance upon the sky, and the contours of the naked earth beyond lost themselves grandly in the mystery of the north. The jutting custom-house was a fine piece of architecture. From the eighteen-forties it challenged grimly the modern architect. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... before my little room in the hotel are pushed away; and the morning sun immediately paints upon my shoji, across squares of gold light, the perfect sharp shadow of a little peach-tree. No mortal artist—not even a Japanese—could surpass that silhouette! Limned in dark blue against the yellow glow, the marvelous image even shows stronger or fainter tones according to the varying distance of the unseen branches outside. it sets me thinking about the possible influence on Japanese art of the use ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... thumping noise from the direction of Brineweald announced the usual morning visit of young Stephen Fearwell, and sure enough, up the main drive, at top speed, there appeared the familiar silhouette of the youth on his motor-cycle. This time, however, he did not seem to be alone, fair arms seemed to be clinging to him, and the flutter of a dress and a sun-bonnet seemed outlined at ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... oval frames, hung the copy of a Madonna by Gabriel Max, two etchings after Defregger, several large group-photographs of Schwarz's classes in different years, a framed concert programme, yellow with age, and a silhouette of Schumann. Over one of the doors hung a withered laurelwreath of imposing dimensions, and with faded silken ends, on which the inscription was still legible: DEM GROSSEN KUNSTLER, JOHANNES SCHWARZ!—Open on a chair, with an embroidered book-marker between its ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Edinburgh is the automobile hotel of Britain. There is nothing quite so good either in England or Scotland. The proof of this is that the Automobile Club de France have given it distinctive marks in its "Annuaire de l'Etranger." There is the tiny silhouette of a knife and fork, and four-poster bed, indicating that the tables and beds are of an agreeable excellence. This is a great deal more satisfying as ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... the woods upon the shore, made dim the yeasty waterway, and gave Doom itself the look of a phantom edifice. It would be ill to find a place less hospitable and cheerful in its outer aspect; not for domestic peace it seemed, but for dark exploits. The gloomy silhouette against the drab sky rose inconceivably tall, a flat plane like a cardboard castle giving little of an impression of actuality, but as a picture dimly seen, flooding an impressionable mind like Count Victor's with a myriad sensations, tragic and unaccustomed. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... I shall go down," said a soft voice beside me; "pray do not move, Mr. Renault, you are so picturesque in silhouette against the sunset—and I hear that silhouettes are so fashionable ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... the mother's side given to travel, a "rolling-stone," fond of books and talk, and rich in humanity. Surviving still in a high-nosed old silhouette. ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... Jersey might have sent a messenger,—or Lady Brierley! She went on to the hall door, which was open, and where indeed she saw a tall figure against the summer glow which filled all out of doors. A tall figure, a tall, upright figure; at first Dolly could see only the silhouette of him against the warm outer light. She came doubtfully close up to the open door. Then she could see a little more besides the tallness; a peculiar uprightness of bearing, a manly, frank face, a head of close curling dark hair, and an expression of pleasant expectation; there was a half ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... A silhouette appeared there—undoubtedly that of Isobel. She seemed to be endeavoring to pull the curtain aside ... when the shadow of a long arm reached out to her, and she was plucked irresistibly back. The sound of a muffled ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... luminous ground of a stained-glass window. Quite at the top, in the middle of the vast lawns whose green turf shines ironically under the scorching sun, a gigantic cedar uplifts its crested foliage, enveloped in black and floating shadows—an exotic silhouette, upright before this former dwelling of some Louis XIV farmer of revenue, which makes one think of a great negro carrying the sunshade of a ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... few strokes of his magical charcoal a sharp silhouette of Brownson upon the wall of our waiting curiosity, fills in his sketch of Parker with a whole wilderness of classical shades, disposes of Willis with a kiss and a blow, gives pages of sharp pleasantries to Emerson, pays a graceful tribute to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in Green Street, Schenectady, there appeared, some years ago, the silhouette of a human form, painted on the floor in mould. It was swept and scrubbed away, but presently it was there again, and month by month, after each removal, it returned: a mass of fluffy mould, always ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... the issues are in question. [Footnote: The following is an extract, given by Margry, from a letter of the aged Madeleine Cavelier, dated 21 Fevrier, 1756, and addressed to her nephew M. Le Baillif, who had applied for the papers in behalf of the minister, Silhouette: "J'ay cherche une occasion sure pour vous anvoye les papiers de M. de la Salle. Il y a des cartes que j'ay jointe a ces papiers, qui doivent prouver que, en 1675, M. de Lasalle avet deja fet deux voyages ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... committee-man harshly, bringing his dirty fist down on the other's knee. "Did you ever hear of Frank Pixley weakenin'? Did you ever see the man that said Frank Pixley wasn't game?" He rose to his feet, a ragged and sinister silhouette against the sputtering electric light at the alley mouth. "Didn't you ever hear that Frank Pixley had a barrel of schemes to any other man's bucket o' wind? What's Frank Pixley's repitation, lemme ast you that? I git what ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... is quite indispensable, in Millin's Dictionnaire des Beaux-Arts! It is little suspected that this innocent term originated in a political nickname! Silhouette was a minister of state in France in 1759; that period was a critical one; the treasury was in an exhausted condition, and Silhouette, a very honest man, who would hold no intercourse with financiers or loan-mongers, could contrive no other expedient to prevent a national bankruptcy, than excessive economy and interminable reform! Paris was not the metropolis, any more than London, where a Plato ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... fact, the influence of Oriental work upon European has been so great that even experts hesitate sometimes to say whether a particular piece of work is Turkish or Italian. In Italian work, at least, it was usual to get over the angularity of silhouette inherent in canvas stitches by working an outline separately. When that is thin, the effect is proportionately feeble. The broader outline (shown at A, Illustration 10) justifies itself, and in the case of a stitch which ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... surface erosion of a standing wall of grout, such as these under discussion, is very slight; photographs of the Casa Grande ruin, extending over a period of sixteen years, and made from practically the same point of view, show that the skyline or silhouette remained essentially unchanged during that period, every little knob and projection remaining the same. It is through sapping or undermining at the ground surface that walls are destroyed. An inspection of the illustrations ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... I. "But where is her hat? She wore one. Let me see if I can describe it." Closing my eyes I endeavored to recall the dim silhouette of her figure as she stood passing up the change to the driver; and was so far successful that I was ready to announce at the next moment that her hat presented the effect of a soft felt with one feather or one ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... lives in the inner city, where she cares for infants born of mothers who are heroin addicts. The children, born in withdrawal, are sometimes even dropped on her doorstep. She helps them with love. Go to her house some night, and maybe you'll see her silhouette against the window as she walks the floor talking softly, soothing a child in her arms—Mother Hale of Harlem, and she, too, is ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that, not only is it a most admirable position for the instrument acoustically, but also that its presence here does not detract from the general effect of the interior. From the west end of the nave, as a dark silhouette against the eastern apsidal windows, or as an object in the middle distance, it helps the spectator to realise the length of the cathedral. A certain sense of mystery and something undiscerned adds to the charm of an interior, and the organ ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... experience, the trick of an eye that cannot master a profuse and ever-changing world? Shall these diagrams drawn in fancy, this system of signals in thought, be the Absolute Truth dwelling within us? Do we attain reality by making a silhouette of our dreams? If the scientific world be a product of human faculties, the metaphysical world must be doubly so; for the material there given to human understanding is here worked over again by human art. This constitutes the dignity and value of dialectic, that in spite of appearances ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed, The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' straddling feet, The mug of cider simmered slow, The apples sputtered in a row, And, close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... against the paler hue of the sky. the dark outlines of the boat's prow. It was bearing down on him. Above the bow's edge he could make out the vague silhouette of ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... over the banisters: "Is that you, Jack?" met the two young men as they handed their hats to the noiseless Frederick. Both craned their necks and caught sight of the Wren's head framed by the hand-rail and in silhouette against the oval sky-light in ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... color,—unreal, living pigment,—which seemed to appeal to more than one sense, and which satisfied, as a cooling drink or a rare, delicious fragrance satisfies. A medium-sized, stocky bird flew with steady wing-beats over the jungle, in black silhouette against the sky, and swung up to an outstanding giant tree which partly overhung the edge of my clearing. The instant it passed the zone of green, it flashed out brilliant turquoise, and in the same instant I recognized it and reached for my gun. Before I retrieved the bird, a second, dull ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... to the panorama of silver water spaces. Out in the centre was an islet where a great rock, rearing above the surface, had gathered moss and a few clinging cedars, one of which stood out in solitary silhouette against the bright sky. The scene was like some artistic conception in black and white,—high lights and deep shadows,—and the cold beauty of it held ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... Order of the Garter, born of his wild frenzy[70] of devotion over this article of Elisa's wearing apparel, is an open satire on Leuchsenring's and Jacobi's silly efforts noted elsewhere. The garter was to bear Elisa's silhouette and the device "Orden vom Strumpfband der ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... They stopped and wondered. The poor horse's bones stood out in strange projections, the round-shouldered little fly-man sat grinning on his box, showing three long yellow fangs. The vehicle, the horse, and the man, his arm raised in questioning gesture, appeared in strange silhouette upon the grey clouds, assuming portentous aspect in their tremulous and excited imaginations. 'Take you to Southwater in ten minutes!' The voice of the fly-man sounded hard, grating, and ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... the north gable, he gazed with love in his eyes as he made his every round. He was a good soldier, was Mullins, but glad this night to get off post. Through the gap between the second and third quarters he saw the lights at the guard-house and could faintly see the black silhouette of armed men in front of them. The relief was forming sharp on time, and presently Corporal Donovan would be bringing Trooper Schultz, of "C" Troop, straight across the parade in search of him. The major so allowed his sentry on No. 5 to be relieved at night. Mullins thanked the saints with pious ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... on my swollen face and asked if I might go upstairs to see Laura; and they said they thought I might. When I got to the top landing, I stood in the open doorway of the boudoir. A man was sitting in an arm-chair by a table with a candle on it. It was Alfred and I passed on. I saw the silhouette of a woman through the open door of Laura's room; this was Charty. We held each other close to our hearts... her face felt hot and ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... stopped. God's truth, I was frozen to the spot with terror. For Nils' shadow lay athwart the floor of the port fo'sle, his moving shadow. It was this shadow coming in through the deck door that had frightened Nigger. He recognized the shadow as Nils because a tam-o'-shanter crowned the silhouette, and Nils had owned the ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... planned revived his numb brain into a dismal aching. He looked back through the dusk at the Dildine roof. It stood black against an opalescent sky. Out of the foreground, bending over it, arose a clump of tall sunflowers, in whose silhouette hung a suggestion of yellow and green. The whole scene quivered slightly at every throb of his heart. He thought what a fool he was to allow a picaresque past to keep him away from such a woman, how easy it would be to go back to the soft luxury ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... the platform. The hazy silhouette of Pelusium was outlined three miles to the south. A torrent had carried us from one sea to the other. But although that tunnel was easy to descend, going back ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... sweet moon as well, and just as baffled Miss Mapp was turning away from the window, she saw that which made her positively glue her nose to the cold window-pane, and tuck the curtain in, so that her silhouette should not be visible from outside. Down the middle of the garden path came the two truants, Susan in her sables and Mr. Wyse close beside her with his coat-collar turned up. Her ample form with the small round head on the top looked like a short-funnelled locomotive engine, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... the next pinnacle glided into its place and blotted the spotless disk with the black exclamation-point of its presence. The top of one pinnacle took the shapely, clean-cut form of a rabbit's head, in the inkiest silhouette, while it rested against the moon. The unillumined peaks and minarets, hovering vague and phantom-like above us while the others were painfully white and strong with snow and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... There is one envelope still in existence which bears Clemens's name in elaborate design and a very good silhouette likeness, the work of some talented artist. "Mark Twain, United States," was a common address; "Mark Twain, The World," was also used; "Mark Twain, Somewhere," mailed in a foreign country, reached him promptly, and "Mark Twain, Anywhere," found its way to Hartford ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... for a space. The only movement in the night was the faint gambolling of starlight on the water. The last person had passed in black silhouette between ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... the evil fires flashed from her eyes, her teeth gleamed white, her bosom rose and fell in a storm of angry, unuttered sobs. She was dry-eyed and still speechless, but for all that she was a tigress. A strangely-cut silhouette they formed there upon the housetops, with a background of empty sky, their feet ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... arm, then, you or you or you, And let us walk abroad on the solid air: Look how the organist's head, in silhouette, Leans to the lamplit music's orange square! . . . The dim-globed lamps illumine rows of faces, Rows of hands and arms and hungry eyes, They have hurried down from a myriad secret places, From windy chambers next to the skies. . . . The music comes upon us. . ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... muttered—"it must have been impossible for him to have led the mule through here;" and as he thought, this, the full light of day came streaming in, making Dale, a few yards before him, stand out like a silhouette clearly cut in black, while for a hundred yards the water now ran, rapidly widening and growing less like a torrent, till right away he could see it flowing smoothly between the towering rocks that were piled-up on either side ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... the first time in life, perhaps, failed to meet the demands of society; they also, respecting a frame of mind which they divined in him, troubled the man in no way. He remained resting against the wall, and, from a distance, resembled a silhouette outlined on it darkly, as on a background. He looked on the brilliant assembly, from which he was separated by half the chamber, and felt that he was divided from those people by a space as great ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... the silhouette of his antagonist with a tense set of his jaws. Many plans were revolving in his mind. Moralists might have labelled them "blackmail," but Lars Larssen was utterly free from scruples where his own interests were concerned. Honesty with him was a mere matter ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... certificates and giltbacked books and portraits, and kettle-holders, and all kinds of beautiful things made out of wool; very comfortable it was indeed. The window was lead framed and diamond paned, and through it one saw the corner of the vicarage and a pleasant hill crest, in dusky silhouette against the twilight sky. And after the sausages had ceased to be, he lit a Red Herring cigarette and went swaggering out into the twilight street. All shadowy blue between its dark brick houses, was the street, with a bright yellow ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... great hoop before we came upon the trail of our man, and were directed to a near-by tepee, upon the glowing walls of which many heads were outlined in silhouette, and from which came the monotonous voice ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... shot!" somebody said enviously. The men on the little deck looked across at the slow-moving silhouette. One of them, a cigarette behind his ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... "Nothing. What could you have said?" But he went to the window as if he had been told something that had made him hasten, and opened it and stepped outside. Against the moonlight he was only a silhouette; but from the hawkishness of the profile he turned to the west she knew that he was allowing himself to wear again that awful look of rage which had made her cry aloud. He stepped in again and said: "I'm sorry, Ellen, but I must ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... characters is presented in profile only, imposing its sole interpretation on the baffled performer. Every one of them is rounded and various, like a man in real life, to be seen from contradictory angles and to be approached from all sides. No one is a silhouette; and every one is a chameleon, changing color even while we are looking at it. Every part is a problem to the actors who undertake it, a problem with many a solution, no one of which can be proved, however assured the performer may be ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... didn't dare risk it. So she waited in the little garden, looking up at the windows, praying that little Harry would wake up, or that the baby's little acid wail would drift through the open window, and then the dim light bloom suddenly, and show a silhouette of Rose, tall and sweet in her wrapper, with a great rope of braid falling ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... distance the form of a woman. Standing as she did, in the open ground with no trees between her and the far silver horizon, she was a noble and commanding figure, slender and tall like a daughter of the palms. She was for Max no more than a graceful silhouette, majestically poised, for he could not see her face, or even be sure that the effect of crown and plumes on her high-held head was not a trick of shadow. Indeed it seemed probable that it was a mere illusion, for crowns and waving plumes were worn by desert dancers, and it did not appear ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... plain even on a night as dark as this. Behind them, bordering the stretch of mud and puddles which they had just left, was the silhouette of a dilapidated picket fence; and in front loomed the ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the noises began again—a fresh lot, and more violent. The pariah dog, who had come to investigate with his tail in the air, went away again, and quickly, with his tail between his legs; and in the same moment the king's son's head appeared over the top of the corrugated iron wall in silhouette against ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... horse appeared against the sky, following the man, topping the ridge, passing on. In silhouette it appeared no normal animal but some weird monstrosity, a misshapen body covered everywhere with odd wart-like excrescences. Close by, these unique growths resolved themselves into at least a score of canteens and water-bottles ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... about, and behold! along the upper edge of a rock to the eastward a similar fringe in a scarcely less forward condition swayed and bent, dark against the blinding glare of the sun. And beyond this fringe was the silhouette of a plant mass, branching clumsily like a cactus, and swelling visibly, swelling like a ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... the booming of their tireless throats. A young moon slipped across an eastern mountain, and livened the creek into a soft shimmer wherein long shadows quavered. The more distant line of mountains showed in a mist of silver, and the nearer heights in blue -gray silhouette. A wizardry of night and softness settled like a benediction, and from the dark door of the house stole the quaint folklore cadence of a rudely thrummed banjo. Lescott strolled over to the stile with every artist ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... dim silhouette merge into the shadows and disappear. Then flashed his light here and there that the men who must be approaching now might be guided to him. In a moment they were crashing through the undergrowth, Jesse and Andy in ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... everyday incident, truly enough observed but nothing more. Gradually the background is cut down, the space restricted, the figure enlarged until it fills its frame as a metope of the Parthenon is filled. The gesture is ever enlarged and given more sweep and majesty, the silhouette is simplified and divested of all accidental or insignificant detail. A thousand previous observations are compared and resumed in one general and comprehensive formula, and the typical has been evolved from the actual. What generations of Greek sculptors did in their slow perfectioning ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... been upon the face of my uncle as he listened, but now as I turned them from him they fell once more upon the thin, wolfish face of Sir Lothian Hume. He stood near the window, his grey silhouette thrown up against the square of dusty glass; and I have never seen such a play of evil passions, of anger, of jealousy, of disappointed greed upon a ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that office rang with the name of Tonk that morning. Hardly had the industrious Sarah Brown finished turning the blot upon her card into the silhouette of a dromedary by a few ingenious strokes of the pen, when the lady representing the obstinate charity came in, her lips shaped ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... almost immediately between itself and us. Luckily, the dazzling light itself was hidden from our eyes by the bulk of the ship upon which it rested, but it invested her with a sort of halo of radiance against which she stood out black and grim, a perfect silhouette. She was a big craft, evidently a battleship, with a lofty superstructure, three big funnels cased half-way up, a long overhanging bridge, and two stout military masts with fighting tops, and two yards across each. She was just within range, and, seizing a megaphone, I was in ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... string. At the door of the summer-house stood the blurred figure of a man, bareheaded and tall. The light being chiefly behind him, he showed only in thin silhouette, undistinguishable as to age, character, and personal pulchritude. Stares passed between ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a half centuries since Cervantes painted this picture of a gentleman, literature has given less or more of heed to similar attempts; though as result, as I suppose, there are but two life-size pictures which unhesitatingly we name gentlemen as soon as our eyes light on them. Profile or silhouette of him there has been, but of the full-length, full-face figure, only two. Shakespeare did not attempt this task. Aside from Hamlet—who was not meant to sit for this picture, though he had been no ill character for such sitting—there is not among Shakespeare's ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... flat-topped, table-like islands, or "keys," which, in general outline and appearance, suggested dark mesas of foliage floating in a tropical ocean of pale chrysolite-green. Directly ahead was the city of Key West—a long, low, curving silhouette of roofs, spires, masts, lighthouses, cocoanut-palms, and Australian pines, delicately outlined in black against the scarlet arch of the dawn, "like a ragged line of Arabic etched on the blade of a Turkish simitar." At the extreme western end of ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... looked at him, standing in the doorway, a simple figure in his striped black and yellow vest and white apron, I wondered just what effect the war had had on him. Through the open window of the room, seen over the dark silhouette of the roofs of Nancy, shone the glowing red sky and rolling smoke of the vast munition works at ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... tall figure loafing near the front door of her house and, at that distance, she thought that it was Halloway. It stood so tall and straight that it must be, but that was because the setting sun was in her eyes and the man showed only in silhouette. So seen Jerry O'Keefe—for it proved to be Jerry—suffered little by comparison with any man she ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... ornament is usually linear; in two cases {103b} lines incised lead to "cups." One plaque is certainly meant to represent the human form. M. Cartailhac holds that all the plaques with a "vandyked" pattern in triangles, without faces, "are, none the less, des representations stylisees de silhouette humaine." {103c} ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... light a cigarette. Suddenly he felt Duncombe's hot breath upon his cheek. In the momentary glow of the match he caught a silhouette of a pale, angry face, whose eyes were ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... diagonally from the lower hoist side corner; the upper half is white, bearing the brown silhouette of a large shield with crossed spear and club; the lower half is a diagonal blue band with a ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... rocks were hurled down upon the heads of the enemy, and the dilapidated gate of Kublai, the grandson of Jenghiz Khan. Against the greenish sky drenched with the rays of the moon stood out the jagged line of the mountains and the black silhouette of the tower with its loopholes, through which the alternate scudding clouds and ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... forthwith out of the CASUCHA. Night had completely set in, dark and starry. The moon, now in her last quarter, had not yet risen. The peaks on the north and east had disappeared from view, and nothing was visible save the fantastic SILHOUETTE of some towering rocks here and there. The howls, and clearly the howls of terrified animals, were redoubled. They proceeded from that part of the Cordilleras which lay in darkness. What could be going on there? Suddenly a furious ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Asinelli at Bologna, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Seen two or three miles away, these towers, drunk and staggering, with their pointed caps that seem to nod at the horizon, present a droll and hilarious silhouette. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... as a token, not only of truth, but also of genius. Style receives its beauty from the thought expressed, while with those writers who only pretend to think it is their thoughts that are said to be fine because of their style. Style is merely the silhouette of thought; and to write in a vague or bad style means ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... seat between the prisoner and the bench, so that I could hear and see the better. The Government prosecutor occupied a seat at a table to my right, between me and the three staring Gothic windows. When he rose from his chair his body came in silhouette against their light. With his goat-beard, beak-nose, heavy eyebrows, long, black hair resting on the back of his coat-collar, bent body, loose-jointed arms, his coat-tails swaying about his thin legs, he looked (I did not see him in any other light) like ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... landscape which they wished to construct, where all the outlines stand out most clearly defined. It had almost grown to be a rule that the foreground should be placed sharply in profile and often so deep in shadow that it contrasted like a silhouette with the more distant grounds. On the other hand, it is a favorite whim of the genuine pigtail age to draw bird's-eye landscapes and views of cities, in which every elevation of the earth seems flattened out as ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... somewhat frisky, there was a good, sound, human kernel in the woman; a warmth of love, strong dogmatic religious feeling, and a considerable, but not authoritative, sense of the proprieties. Of what biographers refer to daintily as "her somewhat voluptuous style of beauty," judging from the silhouette in Mr. Scott Douglas's invaluable edition, the reader will be fastidious if he does not approve. Take her for all in all, I believe she was the best woman Burns encountered. The pair took a fancy for each ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... either side of the avenue were a fierce green, the brakes of bracken were burning orange, the long shadows of the trees that fell across the roadway were purple. The grove of yew trees, that hid the course of the river from him, had the sharpness of a silhouette cut ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... darkness where it lay, saying perhaps to itself:—"Shall I ever take a trick again?" there was still dust, dust of thought-baffling fineness! And it had fallen, fallen steadily, with immeasurable slowness and absolute impartiality, on all the card above had left unsheltered. There was the top-card's silhouette, quite recognisable as soon as ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... your silhouette," decided Reddy. "You see 'em rallyin' round The Pump? They're friends of Bill's. Bill won't stand for nothin' of this kind in his district since he ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... booths in the garden. Young couples wandered about and had their fortunes told; they ventured themselves on the Wheel of Happiness, or had their portraits cut out by the silhouette artist. By the roundabout was a mingled whirl of cries and music and brightly colored petticoats. Now and again a tremendous outcry arose, curiously dreadful, over all other sounds, and from the concert-pavilion one heard the cracked, straining voices of one-time "stars." Wretched little ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... frock of her own unaided making. Her eyes, of the one deep Tasmanian blue, were still open very wide, but no longer with the same apprehension; for a step there was, but a step that jingled; nor did they recognize the silhouette in top-boots which at length ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... but at eight o'clock the dusk is already on the verge of darkness as Honoria emerges from the lift at her Chancery Lane Office (near the corner of Carey Street), puts her latch-key into the door of the partners' room, and finds herself confronting the silhouette of a young man against the western glow of the ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... that his capacity for fear was strained to its utmost; that he could support nothing more, yet a new horror was in store for him; for, as he watched that gray patch, in it, as in a frame, a black silhouette appeared—the silhouette of a human ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... had framed in black, in her chamber, a silhouette of this hero, and she wore in a locket a lock of his hair, by which she had come, in some girlish fashion, through a young gossip of hers, a kinswoman of Bacon's, from whose head I verily believe she had pilfered it while asleep. And, more than that, ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... glimmer that seemed not so much to shine through the air as to be part of it, took all colour out of the woods and fields and the high slopes above me, leaving them planes of grey and deeper grey. The woods near me were a silhouette, black and motionless, emphasizing the east beyond. The river was white and dead, not even a steam rose from it, but out of the further pastures a gentle mist had lifted up and lay all even along the flanks of the hills, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... paralysed him, and he remained perfectly motionless, gazing at the black silhouette of the man at the helm seen against the dull, soft light shed ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... go drawing on down or cliff Let no soft curves intrude Of a woman's silhouette, But show the escarpments stark and stiff As in utter solitude; ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... where nothing lighted the fronts of the houses, save the hanging-lamps of the streets and the pink and green bottles of the pharmacy Bezuquet, which projected their reflections on the pavement, together with a silhouette of the apothecary himself resting his elbows on his desk and sound asleep on the Codex;—a little nap, which he took every evening from nine to ten, to make himself, so he said, the fresher at night for those who might need his services. That, between ourselves, ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... I was crossing the short, stubbly grass of the Meadows. The light within beaconed redder and warmer. On the window-blind I saw a gracious silhouette. Then there was the putting aside the edge of the blind with exploring finger—sure sign that my little wife had been regarding the clock and finding me a ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... la ronce et le chardon et l'herbe, Le vieux burg est reste triomphal et superbe; Il est comme un pontife au coeur du bois profond, Sa tour lui met trois rangs de creneaux sur le front; Le soir, sa silhouette immense se decoupe; Il a pour trone un roc, haute et sublime croupe; Et, par les quatre coins, sud, nord, couchant, levant, Quatre monts, Crobius, Bleda, geants du vent, Aptar ou croit le pin, Toxis que verdit l'orme, Soutiennent ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... country was the same as that which they had travelled over since leaving Oodnadatta: masses of scanty mulga scrub standing out dark on a landscape of vast bare plains or rolling sand-hills. Far away, a pale-blue silhouette against the bright north-west sky, was a range ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... to grow up for, young man," said the Butcher, profoundly. "Now tell me about that uncle of yours. I don't fancy his silhouette." ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... leaped joyfully as she turned in at the drive gates of her home and felt the well-remembered gravel crunching under her feet. The silhouette of the ruined castle against the summer sky gave her the feeling which all returning wanderers know. And, when she stepped on to the lawn and looked at the black bulk of the house, indistinct and shadowy with its backing of trees, tears came into her ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... dreams, this motionless shadow upon the earth. When she re-opened her eyes at dawn, her looks wandered from the enormous wardrobe to the odd carved chest, from the porcelain stove to the little toilet-table, as if surprised at not seeing there the mysterious silhouette, which she could have so easily and precisely traced from memory. In her sleep she had seen it gliding among the pale heather-blossoms on her curtains. In her dreams, as in her waking hours, her mind was filled with it. It was a companion shadow to ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... I if my hands are in the air?" he expostulated, now intensely interested in the novelty of being held up by this graceful and vaguely pretty silhouette. ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... produced two of his long novels in one single year. I remember reading in some book of reminiscences—on second thoughts it was in Lockhart himself—how the writer had lodged in some rooms in Castle Street, Edinburgh, and how he had seen all evening the silhouette of a man outlined on the blind of the opposite house. All evening the man wrote, and the observer could see the shadow hand conveying the sheets of paper from the desk to the pile at the side. He went to a party and returned, but still the hand was moving the sheets. Next morning he was ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the East and the Nations of the West are new types in motif and composition of arch-crowning groups - to be seen in silhouette against the sky ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... silhouette of her figure, which was all that I could see, was not perfect enough in detail for me to determine. She was busy at some occupation which took her from one end of the room to the other; but after watching her shadow for an hour I was no surer than ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... corner came the sound of slow, deep breathing. Outside the circle of candlelight, Madame had fallen asleep in her chair. The full June moon had shadowed the net curtain upon the polished floor and laid upon it, in silhouette, an arabesque of oak leaves. It touched Madame's silvered hair to almost unearthly beauty as she leaned back with her eyes closed, and brought a memory of violets and sun from the gold-tasselled amethyst that hung on her breast. The small slender hands lay quietly, one on either arm ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... a white, five-pointed star superimposed on the gray silhouette of a latte stone (a traditional foundation stone used in building) in the center, surrounded by ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... faint sweep of a lady's dress. Nearer it grew, and nearer yet. We could see a figure steal from patch to patch of moonlight, and even hear the soft fall of sandalled feet. Another second and I saw the black silhouette of the old Zulu raise its arm in mute salute, and Nyleptha was ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... amazement, a book rose in the air, and I could see two hands in silhouette plainly and vigorously thumbing the volume, which was held about three feet above the table, ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... chain of low hills which is the street. Out of the deep dark the smithy window flames with vivid orange behind its black tracery. In the middle of that square-ruled page of light I see transparently outlined the smith's eccentric silhouette, now black and sharp, now softly huge. Spectrally through the glare, and in blundering frenzy, he strives and struggles and fumbles horribly on the anvil. Swaying, he seems to rush to right and to left, like a passenger on a hell-bound ferry. The more drunk he is, the more furiously ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... follow any man. He began to form a style of his own, and that style did not lend itself to the representation of modern life. It was suited better for decoration than for movement; while the beauty of line and of silhouette which he sought and obtained, in spite of his intense, almost aggressive, individuality, placed him absolutely apart from all the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... farther on that the spectators were engaged in a knot, for the caisson was drifting round, and a handsome vessel was floating in, her funnel backed against the grey darkness and her spars in a ghostly silhouette. The name I heard on several sides roused in me a faint curiosity. It was the stranger I had observed, the Sea Queen, the ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... examination, but the general effect was admirable, especially that of the great circular library, with its conical roof. In addition to the Legislative Chambers proper, two flanking buildings in the same style housed various Administrative departments. Seen from Rideau Hall in dark silhouette against the sunset sky, the bold outline of the conical roof of the library and the three tall towers flanking it gave a sort of picturesque Nuremberg effect to the distant view of Ottawa, The Parliament buildings proper ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... the pathway of the moon Two trees stand forth in pencilled silhouette Against the steel-grey sky, as black as jet— The steak is ready. Ah! too ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... Yates was naturally too much of a diplomat to begin awkwardly. As he stood there, wishing chance would bring her out of the house, there appeared a light in the door-window of the room where he knew the convalescent boy lay. Margaret's shadow formed a silhouette on the blind. Yates caught up a handful of sand, and flung it lightly against the pane. Its soft patter evidently attracted the attention of the girl, for, after a moment's pause, the window opened carefully, while Margaret stepped quickly out and ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... thing is that, though these are by no means fine specimens of prehistoric art, yet there is a definitely modern look about the figures and a freedom of touch about the drawing which makes one think at first that the picture is some modern, hasty but clever sketch in silhouette of a number of short skirted school girls at play. The waist is extremely small and elongated, the skirt, or petticoat, bell shaped, and the whole figure "sinuous." One of the figures appears to have a cloak or jacket, but the breasts ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... unexpected. The whole wind, not merely part of it, was in. It had come so gently, softly, delicately too! In the darkness the outline of the window- frame was visible; Uncle Felix's big figure blocked against the stars. Judy's head could be seen in silhouette against the other window, but Tim and Maria, being smaller, were merged in the pool of shadow below the level of the sill. A large, spread thing passed flutteringly up and down the room a moment, then came the rest. It settled over everything at once. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... not already read—buy Keats' Love-Letters to Fanny Brawne. One wishes she had another name; and had left some other Likeness of herself than the Silhouette (cut out by Scissors, I fancy) which dashes one's notion of such a Poet's worship. But one knows what misrepresentations such Scissors make. I had—perhaps have—one of Alfred Tennyson, done by an Artist on a Steamboat—some thirty years ago; which, though not ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... person was in the room, too, and by the silhouette on the blind I could see that he was industriously applying himself to some task, the nature of which I could not determine. The longer I watched the shadow on the blind, the more puzzled I grew. I could imagine ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... encouraging the arts. She had a kind of ideal of conduct for a young man who should find himself in this magnificent position, and she tried to adapt it to Lord Lambeth's deportment as you might attempt to fit a silhouette in cut paper upon a shadow projected upon a wall. But Bessie Alden's silhouette refused to coincide with his lordship's image, and this want of harmony sometimes vexed her more than she thought reasonable. ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... what Sims or Bateman ever imagined weirder caricature than the grotesque larva of the Oniticella, with its extravagant dorsal hump; or the fantastic and alarming silhouette of the Empusa, with its scaly belly raised crozierwise and mounted on four long stilts, its pointed face, turned-up moustaches, great prominent eyes, and a "stupendous mitre": the most grotesque, the most fantastic freaks that creation ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... contented sighing came from the cows in the barnyard. She took the path past the house and down to the corral, where she paused, her ear arrested by the steady drone of milking. A lantern sitting on the black earth, cast a little circle of light, and threw a docile cow in dreadful silhouette against the barn. And by that dim light Beulah discerned the bent form of her ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead |
