"Sombreness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which he resisted until overcome by numbers, and subjected to treatment which left him insane. His insanity takes the form of harmless delusion, and the absurdity of his ways and talk enables the author to lighten the sombreness without weakening the moral, in a way that ought to win all boys to his ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... indefinable impulse, I went immediately up-stairs, and took my stand at the western window of the large room directly over Mrs. Belden. The blinds were closed; the room was shrouded in funereal gloom, but its sombreness and horror were for the moment unfelt; I was engaged in a fearful debate with myself. Was Mary Leavenworth the principal, or merely the accessory, in this crime? Did the determined prejudice of Mr. Gryce, the convictions of Eleanore, ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... brethren in the crowd, the hate that smouldered in their dusky eyes as the festal procession passed by. Nor while he knelt before crucifix and image that night, did he dream of that other ceremonial in the Synagogue of the Piazza of the Temple, half-way from the river; a scene more impressive in its sombreness than all the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... carmine lips—a soupcon of wantonness in their glances, and a rather needless undraping of their beautiful shoulders; while the painter to the Prince was bestowing on the giddy angels of Carlton House a decency that was within a little of dull, a simplicity that was almost sombreness, a purity that was prudery! The beauties of George III.'s court were not displeased to be pictorially credited with a levity they did not dare to live up or down to; and the ladies of the Prince's court, too honest to assume a virtue they had not, now hastened to be represented ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... forbidding, like everything else under this wild gray sky; but Noll had long ago ceased to consider it as resembling a prison. It was home, now, and so took a fairer, brighter shape in his eyes. Beyond, the pines stood up against the sky, full of sombreness and inky shadow. ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... felze, or cabin, is freed of all dust, the tiny four-legged stools and the carved chair are wiped off, and occasionally a thin coat of black paint is needed here and there, and a touching-up of the gold lines which relieve the sombreness. The last thing to be done is to polish the vases and run back into the garden for nosegays, and when these are disposed in their niches on each side of the felze, Angelo waves his infantile hat gaily to us at the window, and smiles his ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... "wedding bells" and canopies are out of date. The most approved setting is tall palms, ferns on standards concealed by a lower grouping, with a few potted plants in bloom to relieve the sombreness of the green. Large flowers like lilies, hydrangeas, chrysanthemums and peonies are most effective. Tulips are often employed at a spring wedding. One little country girl made good use of ordinary field clover in decorating her home for ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Harbinger is delicately appreciative. The introductory chapter is one of the softest, clearest pictures I know in literature. His feeling is so deep, and so unexaggerated, that it is a profoundly subtle interpreter of life to him, and the pensiveness which throws such a mellow sombreness upon his imagination is only the pensiveness which is the shadow of extreme beauty. There is no companion superior to him in genial sympathy with human feeling. He seems to me no less a successful man than Mr. Emerson, although at the opposite end ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... he was able to maintain just the right shade of dignity, when, in the half-light of the midwinter afternoon, Diane glided into the big, book-lined apartment, in which the comfortable air induced through long occupancy by people of means did not banish a certain sombreness. She entered with the subdued manner of one who has been sent for peremptorily, but who acknowledges the right of summons. The perception of this called an impulse to apologize to Derek's lips; but on reflection he repressed it. It was best to assume that ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... delights of the celestial city as pictured in the apocalyptic vision of Saint John, and is in marked contrast to the gloom and sombreness of the Requiem music, as well as the terrors of the Judgment. It is bright, jubilant, and exultant throughout. The title of the prelude is "New Heaven, New Earth." The baritone intones the recitative ("And I saw the New Heaven"), which is followed by ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... atmosphere of the place was expressive of solitude and even of gloom. The imposing evidences of great wealth, written in bold headlines on the massive square architecture of the whole block of huge mansions, only intensified the austere sombreness of their appearance, and the fringe of sad-looking trees edging the road below sent a faint waving shadow in the lamplight against the cold walls, as though some shuddering consciousness of happier woodland scenes had suddenly moved them to a vain regret. The haze of heat lay very ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... they will forget all about the sombreness of the dress when they see your happy face," answered Harriet. "Besides, it is the dress that all the girls here are wearing. I call it a very pretty uniform. I hope Margery had the buttons sewed securely on hers. If ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... about the Pacific Union Club that the Southern Pacific had raised its rates to Southern points. One might have sensed that shadow which hangs always over commercial California in the sombreness which froze the group at this news. From five minutes of pessimistic discussion, Goodyear led them by a scattered fire of personalities. Billy Darnton was going to give a bull's head breakfast at San Jacinto. ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... was raised to admit the fresh air. This window opened on an inner courtyard, very gloomy on account of the masses of leaves that seemed to drop from the walls and fill it with sombreness. ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... grown hollow with suffering! There were liberal streaks of grey also at his temples, and she noted there was one strand all white just in the centre of his thick hair. A swift revulsion of feeling in her making for peace was, however, sharply arrested by the look in his eyes. It had all the sombreness of reproach—of immitigable reproach. Could she face that look now and through the years to come? It were easier to live alone to the end with her own remorse, drinking the cup that would not empty, on and on, than to live with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... placed against the camellia-tree, and the pink blooms matched the soft flush in her cheeks, and relieved the sombreness of her black attire. Thus placed she looked charmingly pretty, and held herself with an air of dignity, ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... river the panorama changed, and they beheld new marvels of this Titanic architecture. There was no end to the gigantic and grotesque variety of the commingling outlines. The vastness, the loneliness, the stillness, the twilight sombreness, were awful. And through all reverberated incessantly the defiant clarion ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... It is, however, not only in the closeness and complexity of texture that we notice Chopin's style changing: a striving after greater breadth and fulness of form are likewise apparent, and, alas! also an increase in sombreness, the result of deteriorating health. All this the reader will have to keep in mind when he passes in review the master's works, for I shall marshal them by groups, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... "As that is of the water, watery, so this is of the earth, earthy." He has earned his place among the greatest of our dramatists by his two plays, the theme of which matched his sombre genius and the sombreness of the ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... spent in the sombreness of the church, with the flickering candle light making grotesque forms of shadows on the wall and among the tall pews. The old minister reminded her of the one she had left at home, though he was more learned and scholarly, and when ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... I accounted for the fact in the most reasonable way I knew,—I, who rejoice in being reasonable,—by thinking it occurred in consequence of my long watchfulness, and sombreness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... imposed upon a city of the ancients; and under the aegis of the Papacy preserved aspects of life and character which differed little from those of three or four centuries earlier. After the grey metropolis of the north, with its softly luminous or cloudy skies, its sombreness of aspect, its calvinistic religious atmosphere, its interest in science and philosophy, and its want of interest in the arts, the clear sunshiny air of the Eternal City, its picturesque and crowded life, ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... opened when Elizabeth lost one of her most valuable allies by the murder of the Regent Murray, assassinated by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh. Murray's figure in history is a sombre one, and the sombreness is thrown into the greater relief by the picturesque brilliancy of his hapless sister. It was his fate to fight on the gloomy side; to stand at the head of a nobility conspicuously sordid and unprincipled, half of whom, when not occupied in plotting against the life of ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... and begrudged no expenditure. I found it somewhat up-hill work at first, but none the less were my efforts crowned with success in the end. My house grew to be the favorite resort alike of the fashionable and the cultivated; and to keep it so created an interest in my life which relieved the sombreness of ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... For the moment his face lighted from its sombreness. "I'd forgot you'd be here," said he. And he sprang to the ground. "It's ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... day an obscure interval, from mid-day to four o'clock; the middle portion of this battle is almost indistinct, and participates in the sombreness of the hand-to-hand conflict. Twilight reigns over it. We perceive vast fluctuations in that fog, a dizzy mirage, paraphernalia of war almost unknown to-day, pendant colbacks, floating sabre-taches, cross-belts, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Gallery there is an unimportant 'St Peter the Martyr,' and a finer 'Maestro di Capella giving a music lesson,' which Kugler assigns to Giorgione, though it has been given elsewhere to Titian. The 'refined voluptuousness and impassioned sombreness' of Giorgione's painting have instituted a comparison between him and Lord ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... these words he gently leaned on the arm she proffered and left the studio with her, the rich glow and voluminous folds of his scarlet robes contrasting vividly with the simple black gown which Angela wore without other adornment than a Niphetos rose to relieve its sombreness. As she went with her uncle she looked over her shoulder and smiled an adieu to Florian,—he, in his turn lightly kissed his hand to her, and then addressed Prince Pietro, who, with the care of a man to whom expense is a consideration, was putting out some ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... face seemed to Brooks, watching him with more than usual closeness, to give him something of a Mephistopheles aspect. His evening clothes hung with more than ordinary precision about his long slim body, his black tie and black pearl stud supplied the touch of sombreness so aptly in keeping with the mirthless, bitter smile which ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... aestheticism has lately appeared which pretends to combine morality and culture. 'The New Ethic,'[12] as it is called, protests against the sombreness of religious traditions and the rigidity of moral restrictions, and assigns to art the function of emancipating man and idealising life. But what this movement really offers under its new catchword is simply a subtler form of epicureanism, ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... scarcely changed. His dark visage was still vital with intelligence, still keen and strange from the exercise of an inexhaustible imagination. Yet in his eyes, which formerly had sparkled with the wit of youth, there was more depth and a hint of somberness. He had become ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... cheerful prospect, because rigging and deck equipment of various kinds would be released. The steamer began to look like a less discouraging proposition. She was no longer the icicle that had put a chill into underwriters and bidders. Mayo lost the somberness that had weighed upon him. The sea did not seem so lonely and so threatening. He felt that he could show something tangible and hopeful to the parties whom Captain Can-dage might ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day |
