"Steely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was the prevailing colour. The great seas, which seemed unable to recover from the wild turmoil into which they had been lashed, were of a cold greenish grey, flecked and tipped with white. The sky was steely grey with clouds that verged on black; and both were so mingled together that it seemed as if the little vessel were imbedded in the very heart of a drizzling, ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... very fond of flowers. That was a queer trait in a person who seemed to care so little for persons. There always seemed something frozen about this gray-haired, immobile-faced woman with her stern manner and steely eyes. Sometimes Berta thought of her as like a dying fire ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... to each other the little things that mean nothing to others, but which lovers love, and Grafton yet lay hidden in its place between the swells. The skies, changing now from a bright to a steely gray, were unmarred by ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... And that which had held her at first was his eyes. For it is not the part of youth to be stern-eyed; and while this man could not be more than midway between twenty and thirty, his eyes had already acquired the trick of being hard, steely, suggesting relentlessness, stern and quick. Tall, lean-bodied, with big calloused hands, as brown as an Indian, hair and eyes were uncompromisingly black. He belonged to the ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... broken by Rupert Grant. He spoke in that sweet and steely voice which he reserved for great occasions and practised for hours together in his bedroom. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... clear of its storm-wraiths. Soon after passing the pillar rock, Courtenay thought he could make out the unwavering outline of mountainous land amid the gray mists. A few minutes later the waves racing alongside changed their leaden hue to a steely glitter which told him the fog was dispersing. The nearer blue of the ocean carpet spread an ever-widening circle until it merged into a vivid green. Then, with startling suddenness, the curtain was drawn aside on a panorama ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... not anticipate any rudeness. We decided to receive the burghers civilly and offer them coffee, trusting that the exodus of all the cattle would not rouse their ire. Our elaborate preparations were wasted, for the Boers did not come. The weary hours dragged on, the sun crawled across the steely blue heavens, and finally sank, almost grudgingly, it seemed, into the west, leaving the coast clear for the glorious full moon; the stars came out one by one; the goats and kids came wandering back to the homestead with loud bleatings; and presently everything ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... indeed he was right, for Yorke was over six feet in height, rather stout, and with a chest like a working bullock. His face and neck were deeply bronzed to a dark tan, and presented a striking and startling yet pleasing contrast to his snowy-white hair, moustache, and eyebrows; his clear, steely blue eyes were in consonance with the broad, square jaw, and the man's character revealed itself in his ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... was afraid of really meeting his master. His subconsciousness remembered those steely blue eyes and the harsh brows, and did not intend to meet them again. So he always stared past his master, and avoided him. Also, in a little anxiety, he waited for the three months to have gone, when his time would be up. He began to feel a constraint in the ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... fixed her husband with a steely eye. She saw opportunity for a shattering retort. " You don't mean, Harrison, to include Marjory and I in the same breath with ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... them Chink knives are," as he observed for the hundredth time he had taken this journey. A rotisserie, before whose upright fender of scarlet coals whole ducks were happily roasting to a shiny brown. In a furrier's window were Siberian foxes' skins (Siberia! huts of "awful brave convicks"; the steely Northern Sea; guards in blouses, just as he'd seen them at an Academy of Music play) and a polar bear (meaning, to him, the Northern Lights, the long hike, and the igloo at night). And the florists! There were orchids that (though he ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... this a wave of crimson surged to her face in spite of herself. To hide her confusion she turned her head, and her eyes met those of Amalia, brilliant and steely, as they rested upon her. They looked at each other for an instant. The feline mouth of the Valencian was wreathed in a smile. Fernanda tried to respond by a similar one, but it was a failure. She turned again to ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... awful tract of forest, And you must have felt some doubt of your chance of winning out Of all perils when your need was at the sorest. Mortal sickness now and then, and the pranks of lesser men, Must have tried your iron health and steely temper. But, like SCIPIO of old, you 're as patient as you're bold, And you turn up tough and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... to push the man a little farther. "Castelnuovo," he said with what he hoped was a steely glint in his eyes, "isn't going to like a curse ruining business." He took another ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... there?" Malcolm Sage suddenly looked up, flashing that keen, steely look through his gold-rimmed spectacles that many men had found so disconcerting. "Ordinary visit?" ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... by, and the sky was opening out its eyelids wider and wider, and letting in light to man and all his wondrous train of servitors. It was a cold, steely light indeed, particularly on those March evenings; and the sunsetting was a dreary, lonesome thing, as the copper-colored rays rested on hamlet or mountain, or tinged the cold face of the sea. But it was light, and light is something man craves for, be it never ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... used than her brush in this particular production. The face was long and thin and severe, the nose almost painfully sensitive, the mouth thin and firmly closed rather than strong. The chin did not support the intention of the lips, nor did the brows quite do their duty by the eyes, which had a steely light, and might have gleamed with more effect if they had been somewhat more deeply set. The hair was sparse and light, and the complexion of that kind of paleness which takes on no deeper tinge from exposure to sun or ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... forehead of good type, a very ordinary nose, largish lips, chin suggesting the masculine; but the eyes, to begin with, were prominent, and they glistened in a way which made it very difficult to determine their colour. They impressed Denzil as of a steely-grey, and seemed hard as the metal itself. His preference was distinctly for soft feminine eyes—such ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... face and sat looking at the ground. Her furs were all grey, she had had none new for four years, and they were tight to her young body that had grown into them. The roses embroidered on her glove had come unstitched, and, against the steely grey of the river, her face in its whiteness had the tint of mother of pearl and an expression of ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... hast thou withdrawn thyself? Thy brother's blood the thirsty earth hath drunk, Broach'd with the steely point of Clifford's lance; And in the very pangs of death he cried, Like to a dismal clangor heard from far, 'Warwick, revenge! brother, revenge my death!' So, underneath the belly of their steeds That stain'd their fetlocks in his smoking ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... could make no reply. Singularly enough, she had discovered early in their acquaintance that her wonted weapons were likely to dull their edges upon the steely coldness of Mr. Francis Barold's impassibility. In the presence of this fortunate young man, before whom his world had bowed the knee from his tenderest infancy, she lost the majesty of her demeanor. He refused to be affected by it: he ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... my eyes were drawn involuntarily to his face; I could not keep their lids under control: they would rise, and the irids would fix on him. I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking,—a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... up my hands," directed he. I did so; his palms flew into the air; and with a steely snap the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... looked into the deadly eyes of the man inside, and realized. A great sob arose in his throat. He held it back for a moment, but it grew and grew as he saw no pity in the steely eyes beyond. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... came halting. Her husband, man-like, had deserted her in her hour of utmost need and was fumbling with the door-knob. The steely stare with which the Rev. Cracklethorpe regarded her, instead of chilling her, acted upon her as a spur. It put her on her mettle. He should listen to her. She would make him understand her kindly feeling towards him if she had to take him by the shoulders and shake ...
— The Cost of Kindness - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... desk at the foot of her bed, and spreading out the cheque, read over and over the TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS written across it in a steely business hand. Ten months earlier the amount it stood for had represented the depths of penury; but her standard of values had changed in the interval, and now visions of wealth lurked in every flourish of the pen. As she continued to gaze at it, she ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... according to our standard of music, yet many insect performers give us great pleasure, perhaps because of the pleasant memories which they call up. Who among us does not love the hum of the bee? How delightful is the lazy drone of the great steely-blue dor-beetle, as he rambles along in the twilight of a summer night! The lively chirping of the cricket, too, has inspired more than one poet, and the great novelist, Charles Dickens, used it in ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... proved strong enough to assimilate the foreign barbarians, instead of becoming assimilated by them. It was strong enough to wipe out every trace of Asian and Slavic taint. It was strong enough to keep intact the Latin idea against the steely shock of Asian hordes, the immense, crushing weight of Slave fatalism, the subtleties ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... coolly, "underneath that steely hardness of manner for which your profession is responsible, you have a vein of sentiment, of chivalrous sentiment, I should say, which some day or other is bound to get you into trouble. The woman is beautiful enough to turn any one's head. As a matter ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... flabbily, bulging in deep pouches under the eyes and in loose folds at the corners of the mouth. His head was grizzled an iron-grey but the hair at the temples was white as driven snow. Only his eyes were unchanged. They were the same grey, steely eyes, restless, shifting, unreliable, mirrors of the man's impulsive, wayward ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... breath of the eager street about him. A grim, chilling sight enough, as solitary and impenetrable as the Sphinx. He did not like such faces in this genial and gracious time, so hurried over his examination. The eye was cool, the pulse steady, the man's body, battered though it was, strong in its steely composure. "Ja wohl!—ja wohl!" he went on chuffily, summing up: latent fever,—the very lips were blue, dry as husks; "he would go,—oui?—then go!"—with a chuckle. "All right, glueck zu!" And so shuffled out latent fever? Doubtless, yet hardly from broken bones, the doctor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... out for a walk. The storm had gullied the hills and flooded the hollows. There were pools of water everywhere, shining cold and steely in the winter sunshine. The captain remembered the low ground in which the barn and outbuildings upon the "Cap'n Abner place" stood, and judged that he and Kenelm might have to do some rescue work among the ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... subdued voice that was steely with menace: "I'm too busy to attend to you now, Barney—but, by God, I'm going to square things with you for the dirt you've done me, and I'm going to show you up for a stool and a squealer!" He wheeled on Old Jimmie. "And the only reason I'll be easy with you, Jimmie ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... the level meadow lands between the Brezon and the Mole. With each mile, now, the landscape took on new beauty and wildness. The superb mountains—some with cloudy white turrets, some thrusting out huge snow-powdered prongs, and others tapering to steely dagger-points—hemmed them in on ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... on a sort of litter, painted black. The coffin was clumsily covered with too short a pall, and at the lower end of it the fresh deal of which it was made could be seen, with the heads of the nails sparkling with a steely glitter. Upon the pall lay flowers: handfuls of white roses, hyacinths, and tuberoses, taken from ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... Ritson entered, followed by the lawyer, Mr. Bonnithorne. There was a steely glimmer in his eyes as he stood just inside ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... cruelty? The unalterable Shall I perform ignobly—steal away, With stealthy coward flight forsake her? No! She shall behold my suffering, my sore anguish, Hear the complaints of the disparted soul, And weep tears o'er me. Oh! the human race Have steely souls—but she is as an angel. From the black deadly madness of despair Will she redeem my soul, and in soft words Of comfort, plaining, loose this pang ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... head slowly and stared at him. Rand was fingering his cards, his eyes hastily busied with their corners. George turned from him to Ernestine. She bit her lips and a spurt of red leaped up into her cheeks. Her eyes met his a moment, steely and hard. Then they went to Blunt Rand, as bright and ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... carelessly off the hooks. Every moment or two one of them would dance up and flip its tail wildly; beat on the bottom-boards a tattoo which spattered us with scales; then sink back among the glistening mass that was fast losing its beauty of colour, its opalescent pinks and steely blues, even as it died ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... particularly the case on this day, he seemed to be discovering nothing but the incurable perversity and militancy of human nature. It was a day under an east wind, when a steely-blue sky full of colourless light filled a stiff-necked world with whitish high lights and inky shadows. These bright harsh days of barometric high pressure in England rouse and thwart every expectation of the happiness of spring. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... sky is clear, but it clouds rapidly with films of cirrus and of stratus in the south and west. Soon it is covered over with grey vapour in a level sheet, all the hill-tops standing hard against the steely heavens. The cold wind from the west freezes the moustache to one's pipe-stem. By noon the air is thick with a coagulated mist; the temperature meanwhile has risen, and a little snow falls at intervals. The ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... also contributed to heighten the interest. It was not long after the invention of gunpowder, when firearms and artillery mingled the flash and smoke and thunder of modern warfare with the steely splendor of ancient chivalry, and gave an awful magnificence and terrible sublimity to battle, and when the old Moorish towers and castles, that for ages had frowned defiance to the battering-rams and catapults of classic ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... could see out over the foothills, where twilight was settling gray on the crests, dark in the hollows. Cedar and pinyon trees lined the trail, and there were no more firs. At intervals huge drab-colored rocks loomed over her. The sky was clear and steely. A faint star twinkled. And lastly, close to her, she saw Stewart's face, once more dark and impassive, with the inscrutable eyes fixed ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... from the fields which lie between it and the town. The flying afterguard of the late storm was hurrying across the sky, the fields were sodden, and rainpools lay here and there reflecting the dull steely hue of the heavens. A single light burned red and baleful in one window, and right over the black bulk of the gaol one star beamed. It seemed to me like a promise of mercy beyond, and I went back to my hotel filled with thoughts which will hardly ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... one of those glances that intoxicate like wine. They were quite near the bridge now, all rosy under the setting sun. The river looked motionless and steely throughout its sinuous length. Reeds swayed and shivered on the banks, and some stakes, fixed in the clay of the river-bed to fasten nets, shook with the motion ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... suggestion more tragic than the wasted and helpless power of this poor wandering vessel, around whose stolid mass myriads of wavelets, busy as aspen-leaves, bickered with a continual weltering splash that was quite loud to hear. I sat a good time that afternoon in one of her steely port main-deck casemates on a gun-carriage, my head sunken on my breast, furtively eyeing the bluish turned-up feet, all shrunk, exsanguined, of a sailor who lay on his back before me; his soles were all that I could see, the rest of him lying ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... May 3l.—Somewhere in the tangle of smashed walls there was a steely jingle. At first the sound was hard to identify, so odd are acoustics in this which was once a little town. There were stub ends of walls here and there—bare, raw snags of walls sticking up—and now and then a rooftree tilted pathetically ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... yon steely sky Lone Mountain rears its holy cross on high. About its base the meek-faced dead are laid To share the benediction of its shade. With crossed white hands, shut eyes and formal feet, Their nights are innocent, their days ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... occurred about a fortnight ago. I was greeted towards 8 a.m. with moanings in the passage, where Madame tottered around, her entire head swathed in a bundle of nondescript woollen wraps, out of which there peered one steely, vulturesque eye. She looked more than ever like an animated ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... on the brace, his face was clear, even white, his eyes steely, and he never moved a muscle. When Jo thought it was funny, that he was loose in the pasture, and kicked up a little behind, father gave him a sharp cut with the whip and said: "Steady boy! ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... lean that he looked as if he had not got an ounce of flesh on his bones in any part of him. He was dressed all in decent black, with a white cravat round his neck. His face was as sharp as a hatchet, and the skin of it was as yellow and dry and withered as an autumn leaf. His eyes, of a steely light grey, had a very disconcerting trick, when they encountered your eyes, of looking as if they expected something more from you than you were aware of yourself. His walk was soft; his voice was melancholy; his long lanky fingers were ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... of the room the eyes of the two men met. Selwyn's were blazing like hot coals; Van Derwater's were cold and steely. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... is served, my guests," answered Masouda in tones that rang like the clash of metal, so steely were they. Whereon Wulf shook his head and followed her into the eating-room, which was now empty again as it had been on the afternoon ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... face to his with an audacious glance, whereat "the strange boy's" eyes dilated with the steely flash which ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... covered the lower slopes or the breastplates had begun to tighten, a thunderstorm came up behind, rolling across the low hills and drowning any noise less than that of cannon. The first flash of the lightning showed the bare ribs of the ascent, the hill-crest standing steely blue against the black sky, the little falling lines of the rain, and, a few yards to their left flank, an Afghan watch-tower, two-storied, built of stone, and entered by a ladder from the upper story. The ladder was up, and a man with a rifle was leaning from the window. The darkness and ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... of gusts, the sere leaves were flying in clouds, and presently rain began to fall. The steady downpour increased in volume to torrents; then the broad, pervasive flashes of lightning showed, in lieu of myriad lines, an unbroken veil of steely gray swinging from the zenith, the white foam rebounding as the masses of water struck the earth. The camp equipage, tents and wagons succumbed beneath the fury of the tempest, and, indeed, the hunters had much ado to saddle ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... department staff, who went on to say that he supposed it was a case of "Inter arma silent leges," the general's beard, which hid his mouth, was observed to twitch, and the wrinkles at the corner of his steely-blue eyes followed suit. It was a way of his when trying not to smile. Then Bright was heard to say that where the laws were silent, wise lawyers should he likewise, an epigram which long-legged Lieutenant Blake, of Camp McDowell, was delightedly and explosively ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... potentate rose to take leave. Lewis wanted to slap him on the back in that "bully-for-you-old-top" manner, but the farce must be completed. When the sultan paused opposite Lewis, measuring him with those cruel, steely eyes, Lewis's only indiscretion was a wavering of the eyelid, just one little waver, but it was very much like a wink. There was undoubtedly a response in the other's eyes, but that is between the ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... The steely head stucke fast still in his flesh, 190 Till with his cruell clawes he snatcht the wood, And quite a sunder broke. Forth flowed fresh A gushing river of blacke goarie blood, That drowned all the land, whereon he stood; The streame thereof would drive a water-mill: 195 Trebly augmented ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... the gray landscape, and looked more ghostly than ever, standing there, stark and silent, like an army of the dead. Not a light could be seen, nor a sign of human habitation. Above stretched the illimitable blue of heaven, steely cold, like the frozen earth, and spangled with glittering stars. For several nights Gilbert had had very little sleep, and as he moved on through the unbroken silence his head drooped forward on his breast, the lines hung loosely in his limp hand, and he ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... Naab had them. The little brown flecks danced in clear pale yellow. Evidently Snap had not located the perplexing dust-clouds, for his glance drifted. Suddenly the remarkable vibration of his pupils ceased, and his glance grew fixed, steely, certain. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... to say as to the consequences of that," he rejoined, rising to his feet; "but they might be disastrous. Wasn't it you yourself who were telling me a few minutes ago how steely cold Miss Alice's eyes got when she ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... good-bye to the hot immediate life of passion, to Nettie and desire, to physical and personal rivalry, to all that was most intensely myself, it was wrong to leave me alone and sore hearted, to go on at once with these steely cold duties of the wider life. I felt new born, and naked, and at ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... were he, seemed afflicted with a sudden shortsightedness. He met the incredulous gaze both of Lessingham and his wife without recognition or any sign of flinching. At that distance it was impossible to see the tightening of his lips and the steely flash in ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... did not rise to hand it to him, so he was obliged to get up and take it from where she sat. She perceived then that though extremely thin he was lithe and well-shaped. And in spite of her unconquered prejudice, she was obliged to own she liked his steely gray hawk-like eyes and his fine, rather ascetic, clean-shaven face. He did not look at her specially. He may have taken in a small, pale visage and masses of mouse-colored hair and slender legs—but nothing struck him particularly except her feet. ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... Barr's sharp features were not improved by a small growth of gray hair; of the kind known as a "goatee" that sprouted from his lower rip. For the rest of the boys noticed that Mr. Barr was gifted with a singularly gimlet-like pair of steely blue eyes that seemed ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... husband," the city clergyman, declined the task of "bringing Lydia to her senses." He merely sent for her to go to his study, and, as she stood timidly in the doorway, he set his small steely eyes on ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... kerchiefs could be seen on the heads of the peasant girls armed with rakes. Nejdanov wandered down to the pond; the early morning mist had already lifted, only a few curves in its banks still remained in obscurity. The sun, not yet far above the horizon, threw a rosy light over the steely silkiness of its broad surface. Five carpenters were busy about the raft, a newly-painted boat was lightly rocking from side to side, creating a gentle ripple over the water. The men rarely spoke, and then in somewhat preoccupied tones. Everything was submerged in the ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... the stars, when he had stretched out hands passionately eager for the agonizing sacrament of confession, faintly surprised him. How could he have been so wrought up about it? He looked off over the valley—saw the steely sickle of the river; saw a cloud shadow touch the shoulder of a mountain and move down across the gracious bosom of its forests. Below him, chestnuts twinkled and shimmered in the sun, and there were dusky stretches ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... was a sort of steely shriek in the street outside, and a small motor, driven at devilish speed, shot up to the door of the shop and stuck there. In the same flash of time a small man in a shiny top hat stood ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... in their uniforms and sat down on highbacked chairs and leant on the table, trying to appear natural, just in the same way as the judges in the Court of Law. There were four senators present—Nikitin, who took the chair, a clean-shaved man with a narrow face and steely eyes; Wolf, with significantly compressed lips, and little white hands, with which he kept turning over the pages of the business papers; Skovorodnikoff, a heavy, fat, pockmarked man—the learned lawyer; and Bay, the patriarchal-looking man who ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... greatest moment in the life of Fifth Avenue is at dusk, when dusk falls at tea-time. The street lamps flicker into a steady, steely blue, and the windows of the hotels and restaurants throw a yellow radiance; all the shops—especially the jewelers' shops—become enchanted treasure-houses, whose interiors recede away behind their facades into infinity; and the endless files ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... her mother's cry, appeared on the stairway. For a moment her eyes refused to grasp the scene before them; Conward cowering, terror-stricken; Dave fierce, steely, implacable, with his revolver lined on Conward's brain. Through some strange whim of her mind her thought in that instant flew back to the bottles on the posts of the Elden ranch, and Dave breaking five out of six on the gallop. Then, suddenly, ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... A red light in the northeast is coming up over the snowy hills. The water, steely grey—the tide rising. What strange moving bodies are those, scudding along over the dim surface, like the ghosts of sea planes? Dense flocks of duck apparently, rising and falling along the shallows of the shore. Now they are gone. Nothing moves. The morning is ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a countenance sadly dejected that Crispin returned to his chamber and sate himself wearily upon the bed. With elbows on his knees and chin in his palms he stared straight before him, the usual steely brightness of his grey eyes dulled by the despondency that sat upon his face and drew deep furrows down his ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... steely points on every scale Form the bright terrors of his bristly male.— 165 So arm'd, immortal Moore uncharm'd the spell, And slew the wily dragon of the well.— Sudden with rage their injur'd bosoms burn, Retort the insult, or the wound return; ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... gave way to a change and another monotony as uniform and depressed. The western horizon, slowly contracting before a wall of vapor, by four o'clock had become a mere cold, steely strip of sea, into which gradually the northern trend of the coast faded and was lost. As the fog stole with soft step southward, all distance, space, character, and locality again vanished; the hills upon ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... the engineer, clothed in greasy overalls and jumper, stood at his post like a grim sentinel on duty, his right hand on the reversing lever, his left on the throttle, while his steely gray eyes peered into the gloom, as if expecting to see spring from the regions of darkness the hosts of ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... Manzaneta County, for such was the newcomer's office, raised his steely grey eyes inquisitorially to Nick's who, with a hostile stare at the ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... hurry? Let's stay a little. But how wet you are! Even though one catches nothing, it's nice. That's the best thing about every part of sport, that one has to do with nature. How exquisite this steely water is!" said Sergey Ivanovitch. "These riverside banks always remind me of the riddle—do you know it? 'The grass says to the water: ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... together a moment before he answered, and I saw a certain steely gleam in his eye that I always ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... with a boy's curiosity, but he did not take his eyes from me until I had dropped my own. After that I watched him keenly. He seemed almost too fair for a Mexican—a tall, spare-built man with black hair, and eyes so steely blue that they were almost black. Everywhere I saw him—at the corners of the little crowd and in the thick of it. He was an easy mark, for he towered above the rest, and, being slender, he seemed to worm his way ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... emerald and flossy mosses, and glimmers with diamond, jacinth, ruby, topaz, sapphire and gold. Every jewel-shape in leaf, spore, coral or plume, lying on a greenish crystalline ground, is fringed with a soft radiance of silver fire, and every point is tipped in minute ciliate flames of faint steely purple. It is spotted with soft velvety black wherever a shadow falls, that mingles and varies the wonderful display of color. It is brilliant, vivid, changeable with the interferences of light from the fluctuating surface above, which transmogrifies ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... "A strange steely light clung round her, half illuminating, half obscuring her, and the men drew back in fear, thinking they saw a vision, till one, bolder than the rest, stretched out his hand and touched the ice ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... the bay were gray and cold; a sharp breeze swept their steely surfaces into fans of ruffled water. The little Crow rocked at her anchor, her ropes and brasswork beaded with dew. Julia, sitting in desperate terror upon a slanting upholstered ledge, felt her teeth chatter, and wondered why ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... cannibalism, the horrible but efficient slave system carried on by these blind, intelligent things in the dark depths of the subterranean cells! Lions? Suppose you were suddenly confronted by a thing as big as a horse, with fifteen-foot jaws of steely horn that could slice you in two and hardly know it! ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... eyed one another. In his heart each hated the other, but in David the hate had come suddenly, the hysteric growth of a night's anguish. The mountain man's was tempered by a process of slow-firing to a steely inflexibility. He hated David that he had ever been his rival, that he had ever thought to lay claim to the woman who was his, that he had ever aspired to her, touched her, desired her. He hated him when he saw that, all unconsciously, he had still a ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... about midnight, as I have said. It is a bitterly cold night, and the stars are shining brilliantly in the clear, steely-looking sky—such a night as Rome has still occasionally at this time of year, and as she used to have more frequently when Horace spoke of incautious early risers getting nipped by the cold. One ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... intense silence. A steely light glittered in Mr. Sabin's eyes. He and the Prince alone remained standing. The Duchess of Dorset watched them through her lorgnettes; Lady Carey watched too with an intense eagerness, her eyes alight with mingled cruelty and excitement. Lucille's eyes were so bright that ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... force animated Leopold of Lutha? Those were not the eyes of a coward. No fear was reflected in their steely glitter. The officer mumbled an apology, saluted, and turned toward the door. At his elbow walked the impostor; a cavalry cape that had belonged to the king now covered his shoulders and hid the weapon that pressed its hard warning now and ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... surrounded by dimples, and displaying teeth white, small, strong, but divided from each other. The expression of that smile would have been frank and candid to all who failed to notice that it was not in harmony with the brooding forehead and the steely eye; that it seemed to stand distinct from the rest of the face, like a feature that had learned its part. There was that physical power in the back of the head which belongs to men who make their way in life,—combative and destructive. All gladiators have it; so have great debaters ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Lovell's Harbor became a different place altogether. The stems of the willows fringing the small fresh-water ponds mellowed to bronze before one's very eyes; the dull reaches of salt grass turned emerald; the steely tint of the sea softened to azure and glinted golden in the sun. How shrill sounded the cries of the redwings in the marsh! How jolly the ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... surprised and flattered, but she gave no indication of being either the one or the other. She fixed her steely blue eyes sternly on the visitor, and inquired stiffly what he thought she wanted a husband for, and what use he reckoned sich-like 'ud be to her. Ted edged his chair yet a little nearer, and thrust forward his face till it was within a ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... breed. He made no move; but the cords and veins in his muscular neck and hands swelled visibly, and his dark gray eyes took on a steely glint, as they bored steadily into ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... themselves. All their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be bent upon the finger-point, and the soul's force must fill all the invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last—a heap of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work in this world is concerned; saved only by its Heart, which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... present waste; All former works of men behind him shone Graved by his hand in ever-during stone; On his calm brow a various crown displays The hero's laurel and the scholar's bays; His graceful limbs in steely mail were drest, The bright star burning on his lofty breast; His sword, high waving, flash'd the solar ray. Illumed the shrouds and rainbow'd far the spray; The smiling crew rose resolute and brave, And the glad sails hung bounding ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... dovecot for them in the cleft of a pollard elm. They were quite tame, and used to feed out of his hands every morning. She would like them, and the rabbits that scurried about in the long fern, and the jays with their steely feathers and black bills, and the hedgehogs that could curl themselves up into prickly balls, and the great wise tortoises that crawled slowly about, shaking their heads and nibbling at the young leaves. Yes, ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... helter skelter, terrified and desperate. None seemed to have a thought for the miserable man smitten down before their very eyes. All took care to avoid approaching him in their hasty flight. He lay with his face upturned to the steely, pitiless summer sky. A woman coming furtively along with a market basket upon her arm suddenly set up a dolorous cry at sight of him, and setting down her basket ran towards him, the tears ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... they were both older and both in their prime. And the two did not speak to each other, but were silent with their thoughts. And when I looked up the sky was grey, and the two walked up the white castle-stairway, and she was full of indifference, yes full of hate in her steely eyes, and when I looked for the third time I saw also anger and hate in his glance, and his hair was ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... stood, a splendid specimen of humanity; every line in his rugged Scottish face bespoke a character of extraordinary force, but the eyes which in public Charles Osmond had seen flashing with the fire of the man's enthusiasm, or gleaming with a cold metallic light which indicated exactly his steely endurance of ill treatment, were now softened and deepened by sadness. His heart went out to him. Already he loved the man, only hitherto the world's opinions had crept into his heart between each meeting, and had paralyzed the ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... herself to tempt him. No sooner had he put his nose outside the door than the summer air, sweet and fresh, began to play upon his face and reminded him of a certain wood. As he went through the streets of the town, a glimpse of the river, steely blue that morning in the sunshine, brought up a pool where a fat trout was sure to be lying. As he crossed the North Meadow, the wind was blowing free from the Highlands, and was laden with the scent of hay and flowers, and sent his blood a-tingling. The books upon his back grew woefully ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... burning by the flushed face; he chafed his cold, bloodless hands, and shuffled his feet to bring back circulation. For a long time he attempted to hide these alarming symptoms from me, but I had detected them from the beginning; his eyes had a far-reaching look and unusual steely brilliancy; the expression of his countenance was hard-set, rigid, almost defiant, as if ready to overthrow any obstacle in his way; and indeed it was the case, for unable to control himself any longer, he got up and told me hoarsely that he was going to jump out of the train. I took hold ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... the men who, after finishing their meal, were lounging about, their small talk filling the room. The talk died away as he entered, the men adroitly gave him room, for there was something in the expression of his eyes, in the steely, boring glances that he cast about him, that told these men, inured to danger though they were, that the stray-man was in no gentle mood. He dropped a short word to the one among them that he knew best, at which they all ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... by some figure and motto to manifest to the world his intent, this figure and motto together is called an impress, made to signify an enterprise, whereat a noble mind levelling with the aime of a deep desire, strives with a steely intent to game the prize of his purpose. For the valiant and hautie gentlemen, disdayning to conjoine with the vile and base plebeians in any rustique invention, have procured to themselves ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... stream on the east side of the garden, brushing aside the rockets that were bending across it drowsy with dew, the larkspurs on either side of me rearing their spikes of heavenly blue against the steely blue of the sky, and the huge poppies like splashes of blood amongst the greys and blues and faint pearly whites of the innocent, new-born day. On the garden side of the stream there is a long row of silver birches, and on the other side a rye-field reaching across in powdery grey waves to the ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Elliot had gone, Charmian sat for two or three minutes looking into the fire, where pale, steely-blue lights played against the prevailing gold and red. All the absurdity, the nonsense, had ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... held himself erect. At that moment no one could have thought of "sweetness" in connection with the old man's delicately white features. Every word fell from him with a quiet and steely deliberation. ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was open, and up in the steely blue sky the moon was sailing, large, peaceful, grand. Jessie knelt by the window and gazed up at the sky and the moon, awed and wondering. She was dazed and overcome by all that had happened. Then she buried her face in her hands and prayed that her ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... distant combat roared and deepened. It was obvious that a great battle was going on, but the division lay quiet obeying its orders. The sun rose higher in the cold, steely blue heavens and then Dick, who was watching a forest opposite them, uttered a loud cry. He had seen many bayonets ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... has abandoned the love of God; and a fair face may hide a soul "leprous as sin itself." Well may Adolf Stahr observe that Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth and husband-murdering Gertrude are mere children by the side of this awful giant-shape of steely feminine cruelty. ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. "My lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned to France in haste, leaving the rest ...
— ...After a Few Words... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a ship that tossed and tumbled on a wind-blown sea. They crouched together there till morning, and Jane and Cyril were not at all well. When the dawn showed, dove-coloured, across the steely waves, they stood up as well as they could for the tumbling of the ship. Pheles, that hardy sailor and adventurer, turned quite pale when he turned round ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... sun went down it turned all the broad river to a national banner laid in gleaming bars of gold and purple and crimson; and in time these glories faded out in the twilight and left the fairy archipelagoes reflecting their fringing foliage in the steely ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... terrible fireball had burst like a shell! Thousands of glittering fragments were flying around them in all directions—but with no more noise than is made by so many light flakes of thistle-down floating about some warm afternoon in summer. The blinding, blasting steely white glare of the explosion almost bereft the travellers of the use of their eyesight forever, but no more report reached their ears than if it had taken place at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. In an atmosphere like ours, such a crash would have ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... up with a shrug, not because she wanted to yield but because she must. Her face was turned away from him, so that he did not see the steely look in her eyes and the hard set of the mouth. She was thinking of Jack Kilmeny. What would he say or do when he was told? Surely he would protect her. He would not give her away. If he were a gentleman, he couldn't betray a woman. But how far would the code of her ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... it was already winter. The fell-sides were red with withered fern; their round or craggy tops showed white against a steely sky; down the withered copses by the stream, the north wind swept; a golden oak showered its dead leaf upon her. Gray walls, purple fells, the brown and silver of the stream, all the mountain detail that she loved—she drew it passionately into her soul. Nature and art—why ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... repeated. "They have left me but one weapon, and it's for my life;" and the lips set themselves in hard lines, and the dark eyes looked steely and resolute. What wild purpose was taking shape in the tortured brain of Sybil Burrill? planted there by the impulsive revelation ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... tortured ship hurled itself at their deep-green crests. Cascades of rain, and hail, and snow, were dashing down upon her unprotected bulwarks. The inky sky was one vast thunder-clap, out of which the steely shaft of an electric flash pierced its dazzling path into the heart of the raving deep. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... when the beauteous ladies came to know, That their deare Lovelace was endanger'd so: Lovelace, that thaw'd the most congealed brest, He who lov'd best, and them defended best, Whose hand so rudely grasps the steely brand, Whose hand so gently melts the ladies hand, They all in mutiny, though yet undrest, Sally'd, and would in his defence contest. And one, the loveliest that was yet e're seen, Thinking that I too of ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... overcast. Low down it is armored in steely blue by great clouds. Above, in a weakly luminous silvering, it is crossed by enormous sweepings of wet mist. The weather is worsening, and more rain on the way. The end of the tempest and the long ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... him?—basked in his good luck. But every now and then he looked up and met the glower of Claud Dalzell with a steely eye. These two men, each so fine of his kind, met with the sentiments of rival stags in the mating season; the impulse to fight 'on sight' and assure the non-survival of the unfittest came just as naturally to them as ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... crossed the tundra to the deserted village near which they had left their dory moored, they saw that a change had come over the weather. In the north a black cloud was rising, and the surface of the bay, although little broken by waves so far as they could see, had a steely and ominous look. ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... The afternoon was wearing away; the sun was very low now and all its strength had gone. The wolf followed us, howling from afar. Once I saw it across the treeless wastes—a gaunt, white, dog-like figure, trotting against the steely grey of the sky. ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... out of his steely blue eyes, but said nothing. He began to understand what Archie was driving at, and a deep disgust for the man before him, who was trying to "put over" this cheap falsehood to "save his face," filled the mason's soul. The others had instinctively ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... powers of self-control, he went slowly down to the Safe Deposit, and entered those steely ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... his hand, and a swift change came over Stampede's face. A steely glitter shot into the blue of his eyes, and his chin hardened. Nature no longer disguised the Stampede Smith of other days, and Alan felt a new thrill and a new regard for the man whose hand he held. This, at last, was ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... the expression which she habitually wore like a mask in society, wavered and broke. Her lip trembled: her eyes filled with tears: she rose with a sniff that was half a sob. When she spoke, her voice was sincere for the first time, and at the sound of it Conolly's steely, hard manner melted, and his inhuman ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... hands on her knees. Her gray eyes, warmed almost to blue by joy and tenderness, were steely as ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... while still * Hears 'Amir my word or in earnest or play.[FN395] I spring with the spring of a lynx or a pard * Upon whoso dareth our course to stay; O'erthrow him in ruin and abject shame, * Make him drain the death-cup in fatal fray. My lance is long with its steely blade; * A brand keen-grided, thin-edged I sway: With a stroke an it fell on a towering hill * Of the hardest stone, this would cleave in tway: I lead no troops, nor seek aid save God's, * The creating Lord (to whom laud alway!) On Whom I rely in adventures all * And Who pardoneth ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... from the high heaven one bright star, One dancer left the circling galaxy, And back to Athens on her clattering car In all the pride of venged divinity Pale Pallas swept with shrill and steely clank, And a few gurgling bubbles rose where her ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... possessed a sweet mind and a loving heart; he thinks so now. But one glimpse of Blakely's mother was enough for me. She had a heart of stone; everything about her was militant, uncompromising; her eyes were of a piercing, steely blue; the gowns she wore were insolently elegant; she radiated a superb self-satisfaction. When she looked at you through her lorgnette, you felt as if you were on trial for your life. When she ceased looking, you knew you were sentenced to mount ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... morning. Great had been the speculation as to whether he would or not. When he stood up in his pulpit and faced the crowded pews and the steely glances of curious eyes through the shifting flutter of fans, he was as austerely composed as ever; but a buzzing whisper went through the audience like a veritable bee of gossip. "He looks dreadful," they hissed in each other's ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... were now set in mute rage. She was up in arms at once. Her steely eyes shot fire. The honest bargewoman had almost won her childish confidence. Another word or two of kindness and she would have gained an easy victory. Now, however, everything was upset and the fat was ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... he said with steely affection, "listen once more. Reflect! Ponder! Does it not seep into your consciousness that we are, as it were, subtly connected in this house in the minds of certain bad persons? Are we not imagined ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... fixed on a faint spot of steely blue, out on the sea, not far from the horizon. It was hard to account for, with such a sky overheard, wherein was no lighter part to be seen that might be reflected in the water below; but neither of the beholders was troubled about its cause: there it ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... shame, to have a nice, new jail and nobody to use it on," sympathized Ford, his eyes half-closed and steely. "I'd like to help you out, all right. Maybe I'd better kill you, Bill; they might stretch a point and call it manslaughter—and I could use the bounty to help pay a lawyer, if it ever come to a ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower |
