"Steely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... around her, and when Amory found her in Philadelphia he thought her steely blue eyes held only happiness; a latent strength, a realism, was brought to its fullest development by the facts that she was compelled to face. She was alone in the world, with two small children, little money, and, worst of all, a host of friends. He ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and tall campanili like gigantic galleys setting sail for fairyland over "the foam of perilous seas forlorn." Let a blue-black shadow from a thunder-cloud be cast upon this plain, and let one ray of sunlight strike a solitary bell-tower: it burns with palest flame of rose against the steely dark, and in its slender shaft and shell-like tint of pink all Venice ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... Wentworth gate for a moment, hand close clasped in hand. The night was clear, the air was cold and sparkling, but with nothing of bitterness in it, the sky was steely blue, and the evening star glowed and burned like a tiny sun. Nancy remembered the shepherd's song she had taught the ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the cloud-veil lifted; and the mountains of Sinai and Midian, which before had been hidden as if by a November fog in London, again stood out in sharp and steely blue. I proposed to board the gunboat. Afloat we should have been much more comfortable than ashore in the raw, high, and dusty-laden wind. The Egyptian officers, however, quoted the unnautical Fellah's favourite saws, El-barro birr li-Ahlihi—"Earth is a blessing to those ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... took your chances, governed by the movement of troops, not to mention other conditions. This time I took the regular noon express to Nancy, as I might have done to Marseilles, or Rome, or Madrid, had I chosen. The sprinkling of quiet army officers on the train were in the new uniform of peculiar steely grey, in place of the target blue and red. But for them and the number of women in mourning and one other circumstance, the train might have been bound for Berlin, with Nancy only a stop on ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... unexpected blow spun Regis around, and the next moment Jay Allison, who had never touched another human being except with the remote hands of healing, closed steely, murderous hands around Regis' throat. The world thinned out into a crimson rage. There were shouting and sudden noises, and a red-hot explosion in ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... And for centuries later still along this path had crept or rushed or fled the Indians: now coming from over the moon-loved, fragrant, passionate Southern mountains; now from the sad frozen forests and steely marges of the Lakes: both eager for the chase. For into this high road of the mastodon and the bison smaller pathways entered from each side, as lesser watercourses run into a river: the avenues of the round-horned elk, narrow, yet ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... fought their way through it into a glimpse of sun. To Robert, healthy, powerful, and except at rare times, hopeful, it added to the pleasure of the journey to contend with the storm, and there was a certain steely indifference about Ericson that carried him through. They trudged on steadily for three hours along a good turnpike road, with great black masses of cloud sweeping across the sky, which now sent them a glimmer ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... 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 of us to fight the Saracen for the Holy Land leaving only the ...
— ...After a Few Words... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Tom had recovered from his surprise and coolly sized up his enemy. The man was about thirty years old, with close-cropped black hair. Steely eyes glinted in a lean, ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... ladies present I can't hear you, but maybe if you said it outside I could," the deputy suggested gently, a gleam of steely ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... moment's 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 ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Against the steely mirror in the twilight a long line was visible, like a distressful note of exclamation or a pause in life. It was the topmast of ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... Lights After their steely play? The lonely watcher feels an awe Of Nature's sway, As when appearing, He marked their flashed uprearing In the cold gloom— Retreatings and advancings, (Like dallyings of doom), Transitions and ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... by a look of the keenest inquiry, followed instantly and superseded by another flash of expression. I could not comprehend it at the time. The eyes, which had startled me by their steely gleam, softened wonderfully with what looked like nothing so much as reverence, along with some other expression which I could neither read at the moment nor ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... chill, but withal invigorating, as he watched the steely blue of the daylit sky slowly give place to the rosy tint of sunrise. Slowly at first—then faster—great waves of golden light seemed to leap from the top of one green rising ground to another; the gray white of the snowy western mountains passed from one dead shade ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... there is no force so hard to fight as the force which it is easy to conquer; the force that always yields and then returns. Such is the force of a great impersonal prejudice, such as possesses the modern world on so many points. Against this there is no weapon at all except a rigid and steely sanity, a resolution not to listen to fads, and not ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... arm of fight and fire; Strike fast for God and Fatherland, For mother, and wife, and sire. Though thunders roar and lightnings flash, Oh! Southrons, never fear, Ye shall turn the bolt with the sabre's clash, And the shaft with the steely spear. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... whom M. Loupins alluded to by the name of Rose was seated in one of these dreary dens on this bitter winter's day. Rose was an exquisitely beautiful girl about eighteen years of age. She was very fair; her long lashes partially concealed a pair of steely blue eyes, and to a certain extent relieved their hard expression. Her ripe, red lips, which seemed formed for love and kisses, permitted a glimpse of a row of pearly teeth. Her bright waving hair grew low down upon her forehead, and such of it as had escaped ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... extraordinary in the presence of the illustrious Delobelle at a cafe concert, as he spent all his evenings away from home; and yet the old cashier felt vaguely disturbed, especially when he discovered in the same row a blue cape and a pair of steely eyes. It was Madame Dobson, the sentimental singing-teacher. The conjunction of those two faces amid the pipe-smoke and the confusion of the crowd, produced upon Sigismond the effect of two ghosts evoked by a bad ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... A thousand 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; Unwrong'd, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... bewildered glance downward I found myself staring squarely into the mouth of a blunderbuss. The mouth of this blunderbuss, I may say, was of about the width of a fair-sized water-pitcher; in colour it was bright and steely. Its appearance attracted me to such an extent that I lost all idea of the man behind the gun. But presently I heard a grim, slow ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... plot bounded on three sides by shrubbery and on the fourth by the wall of the little square within which had been laid to rest the mortal remains of some half dozen generations of the Burwells. Though the grass was green and the sky above was of the deep steely hue which the late afternoon brings; yet the thick shrubbery which secluded the place gave it an air of wildness, and the tops of the tall monuments gleaming white over the old wall against the ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... The steely-grey eyes of Lieutenant Max turned towards this hulking German, and shot at him a glance which was angry and threatening, a glance, however, which failed altogether to impress the man who had addressed him. For this hulking officer roared ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... she would have done it! Only—there would have been Bough to reckon with afterwards. For of God she made a jest, and the devil was an old friend of hers, but she was horribly afraid of the man with the brown bushy whiskers and the light, steely eyes. Yet she threw herself upon him to kiss him, blubbering freely, when at the week's end the Johannesburg transport-rider's waggons returning from the district town not yet linked up to the north by the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Fate is strong And will not lightly bend, Nor yet the stubborn gates of steely Hell. Nay, I can see full well His life will not be long: Those downward feet no more will earthward wend. What marvel if they lose the light, Who make blind Love their guide by ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... 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 ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... and in spite of his proprietors—about pub spieling and such things—and was too sarcastic in his progress committee, town council, and toady reception reports. The Doctor had a hawk's nose, pointed grizzled beard and moustache, and steely-grey eyes with a haunted look in them sometimes (especially when he glanced at you sideways), as if he loathed his fellow men, and couldn't always hide it; or as if you were the spirit of morphia or opium, or a dead girl he'd wronged in his youth—or whatever ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... much in value, according to the quality of the barley, and the mode of manufacture. When good it is full of flour, and in biting a grain asunder it will easily separate; the shell will appear thin, and well filled up with flour. If it bite hard and steely, the malt is bad. The difference of pale and brown malt arises merely from the different degrees of heat employed in the drying: the main object is the quantity of flour. If the barley was light and thin, whether from unripeness, blight, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... "Hush!" and the lawyer, whose eye had grown steely under these comments, took advantage of the sudden silence which had followed this last objurgation, and went ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... drew a breath of satisfaction. He glanced round at Augustine. It was not a venomous glance, but, with its dart of steely intention, it paid a debt of vengeance. "So,—we needn't say anything more about it," he said. "And—dearest—perhaps now you'll tell Augustine that he may ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... 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 Carlisle, ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... business crept into the lighter discussion, and, in an instant, the gaiety evaporated and left expressionless men and quick sharp sentences steely with decision, or indirect and imperturbably blank. A memorandum book and a gold pencil would appear for an enigmatic note, after which the cheerfulness ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the latter 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 Judd's ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... nowhere else is it possible to see, so widely, the slow march of clouds from horizon to horizon; it all gives a sense of largeness and tranquillity such as you receive upon the sea, with the additional advantage of having the solid earth beneath you, green and fertile, instead of the steely waste of waters. ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... offering them endless treasures, and his eye was being constantly attracted by the flowers high up on the trees across the river and the still more beautiful butterflies and birds constantly passing here and there. Now it was some lovely object whose large flat wings flashed with steely or purply blue, according to the angle in which it was viewed, then butterflies of velvety black dashed with orange and vermilion. Parrots of vivid green with scarlet heads flew to and fro across the stream; and twice over a great ara ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... nerves at almost a snapping point, Henry moved on behind the fourth man. He was horribly afraid, he wanted to break from the line and run, it didn't matter where, any place to get away from that steady, steely light in front of him. He had seen three men step into it, glow for a second, and then disappear. A fourth man had placed his ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... and white sky, and the broad black frame of the picture of Cupid tell strongly, yet fall into plane behind the figure in white satin—quite a different quality of white, and warmer and brighter than the wall. The bodice is a steely blue silk, which is repeated in the velvet seat of the chair; while the blue and white landscape upon the open lid of the spinet repeats the blue and white landscape on the wall, and the blue and white motive is subtly re-echoed ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... back and a laugh. "Don't you worry about me, partner; if I'm going to hell I'm going there with bells on," was always his rejoinder; and yet, when called upon to cover some great big news story, or report some vital event, he settled down to his work with a steely determination and a grim joy that resulted in work which classified him as a genius. Any great mental effort of this character, any unusual achievement along these lines, would be immediately followed by a protracted debauch that would upset him physically and mentally for weeks at a time, ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... while the couple on the cliff became more and more indistinct, and the old grey tower seemed to melt away in the steely sky, and as it did so my feelings softened, for I felt I was bidding good-bye to it for ever. My love for Ruth began to exert its power, and although I felt bitter, the thought of going back to wreck her ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... old, only the features were finer and cleaner carved. It was a nude, in an attitude of easy repose—the legs hanging, the toes dangling—the hands resting, palms downward, on the blotter, the trunk relaxed. The eyes, which were a kind of steely blue, seemed to have been made, depth upon depth, of some wonderful translucent enamel, and to make his work still more realistic the artist had planted the statuette's eyebrows, eyelashes, and scalp with real hair, very soft and silky, brown ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... are infrequently seen in commerce. They never equal the fine sapphire in their color, being more steely. They, of course, lack dichroism and are softer than sapphire as well ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... Nature if she set 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 ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... a heap upon his rough bed as I entered, but, uncoiling his long limbs, he started up and stared at me with an insolent look of defiance on his face which augured badly for our interview. He had a pale, set face, with sandy hair and a steely-blue eye, with something feline in its expression. His frame was tall and muscular, though there was a curious bend in his shoulders, which almost amounted to a deformity. An ordinary observer meeting him in the street might have ...
— My Friend The Murderer • A. Conan Doyle
... replied, with an indifference which made the boy stare. Jeff was gazing across the foothills with a queer steely glint in his blue eyes. Bud ran into ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... throw 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
... of a particularly ferocious aspect, and not unlike the headsman in certain Renaissance pictures which represent executions, tortures, and the like, advanced upon him with an implacable air to take his 'things.' But the harshness of his steely glare was compensated by the softness of his cotton gloves, so effectively that, as he approached Swann, he seemed to be exhibiting at once an utter contempt for his person and the most tender regard for his hat. He took ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... 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 their horses and grope their way along the ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... all save the few Mantineans who vainly clung to their champion, and the Laconians themselves, had begun to pin their hopes on the beautiful son of Conon. There was a steely glint in the Spartan athlete's eye that made the president of the games ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... "Well," drawled Yank, his steely blue eye softening to a twinkle, "sixteen dollars a day is fair wages, to be sure; but nothin' to get wildly excited over." He surveyed the two of us with some humour. "Hadn't thought of it that way, ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... face was impassive as to the play of his features, except that he smiled, from time to time,—a smile which bore out Ellen's previous feeling concerning its possibilities for cynicism rather than sympathy. His eyes, however, steely blue and cold in their expression, told more than his face of antagonism to the man with whom he spoke. But his command of manner, to the outward observer, who could not hear his ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... Manzaneta County, for such was the newcomer's office, raised his steely grey eyes inquisitorially to Nick's who, with a hostile ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... instantly, but when Edith appeared after a moment in the library, smiling and affable again, lie seemed in good spirits also, but there was a steely, serpent-like glitter in his eyes, that made him more repulsive than ever. But he stayed as late as the others, knowing that it might be his last evening at the Allens'. For Edith had said as part of her plan ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe |
