"Sombrely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... teeth the harder. "I could have gone out, met him face to face and killed him," he said, sombrely, "only ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... anticipated; nor did it seem to her to possess any of the attributes of influence; for one of her basic ideas about the world was that influential people must be dull and formal, moving about with deliberation in sombrely magnificent interiors. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... resources, the burden on the national future. So that the Farrell motor-cars and men servants, the costly simplicity of the 'cottage,' Cicely's extravagance in dress, her absurd and expensive uniform, her make-up and her jewels, were so many daily provocations to a man thus sombrely possessed. ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... squire said sombrely. "You're fond of telling me I have no claim on you, but I have—for all that. There is a bond between us that you can't get away from, however hard you try. You think I can't understand your feelings in this matter, that I'm too sordid in my views to realize how hard you've been hit. ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... back. A strange sense of inexplicable disaster rushed upon him. He sombrely watched them pass through ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... seeming to review the case sombrely. "I managed to get them both off, scot free; and that makes them loyal. But it would go hard with anyone who tried to escape to the mainland and tell on them—to say nothing of me.... Mrs. Clover has ever since been quite convinced of the virtue of vitriol. She keeps a supply handy most of ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... marched sombrely towards midnight, while we stayed every man by his post. I asked Shalah if the enemy had gone, and he shook his head. He had the sense of a wild animal to detect danger in the forest when the eye and ear gave no proof. He stood like a stag, sniffing the night air, and peering ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... call out, but her voice refused its office. She attempted to throw open the door of her own carriage; but her fingers fumbled clumsily and ineffectively with the handle. And meanwhile the caleche was slowly passing, La Tour d'Azyr's fine eyes sombrely yet intently meeting her own anguished gaze. And then she saw something else. M. d'Ormesson, leaning back again from the forward inclination of his body to join his own to his companion's salutation of the Countess, disclosed ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... another pebble and was kicking it sombrely. He was beginning to perceive something of the intricate and unfathomable workings of the feminine mind. He had always looked on Elizabeth as an ordinary good fellow, a girl whose mind worked in a ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... this an instant, looking at me sombrely the while and then illumination came, and she flashed a glance of vivid answering ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... she would, she evidently did not find what she sought, and muttering "Lawd! Lawd!" she returned to the kitchen, shook the tied dog into silence, and seating herself near the fire, gazed sombrely into its depths. A covered pot hung from the crane over the blaze, making a thick bubbling noise, as if what it contained had boiled itself almost dry, and a coffee-pot on the hearth gave forth a pleasant smell. The woman from time to time turned the spit of a tin kitchen wherein a fowl was ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... were on the first floor, but he passed the entrance to them, following his guide up and up to the second floor, where the earl had his own apartment. Here he was shown into a small room, richly furnished after a sombrely ornate fashion, the drapery and coverings much faded, worn even to shabbiness. It had been for a century or so the private sitting-room of the lady of the castle, but was now used by the earl, perhaps in memory of his wife. Here he received ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... dead," he replied sombrely. "Why should he go to Hades? You have it confused with another place that was ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to see the reason. The soldier had drawn letters from his breast and had died with them in his hands. The unfolded, fluttering sheets stirred as though they had life. Stafford, riding on, found the right and found Longstreet looking sombrely, like an old eagle from his eyrie. "I told General Lee," he said "that we ought never to have divided. I don't see A. P. Hill. You tell General Lee that I've only got D. R. Jones and the knowledge that we fight ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Howat Penny thought sombrely of love, of the emotion that had brought—or betrayed?—Isabel Howat so far away from her birthright. It had gripped his sister no less tyrannically; stripping them, he considered, of their essential liberty. The thing was clear enough in his mind—nothing more ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... "It's splitting," Julia said sombrely. She gave Barbara one grave, almost resentful, look, straightened her hat and fluffed up her hair, and went away. Barbara looked after her, and thought that Carter was a beast, and that there was something very pitiful about common ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... in his silence, in the formality of the ceremony, there was the whole spirit of the Spanish dominion. It was sombrely magnificent, and it was gravely cruel; it adhered to the forms of sovereignty as rigidly as to the outward practices of religion; its power extended to the ends of the world, and the most remote countries sent their homage and obeisance ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... heed of heat nor cold," said Bunting sombrely. "I take it the man's dead to all human ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Carl sombrely, "there are fine, big splendid women like that. I'm glad you know one. God knows what the world of men would do without them. You'll go back ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... himself half a pipe of tobacco—tobacco, like food, was going to run out soon—and smoked sombrely. Here already was the thing to be dreaded more than aught else: Gloria threatened with illness. As Ben Gaynor's daughter, never as his own beloved wife, she had become his responsibility. She was a parcel marked "Fragile—Handle with Care," which ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... daintily. lunching upon the fluffy seeds of thistle blossoms, pecking at the mullein-stalks, and swinging airily among the asters and Michaelmas daisies; or, when snow covers the same field with a glistening crust, above which the brown stalks offer only a meagre dinner, the same birds, now sombrely clad in winter feathers, cling to the swaying ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... from the subway at Fourteenth Street and took the world in their right hands. From this revolving orb, said they, they would squeeze a luncheon hour of exquisite satisfactions. They gazed sombrely at Union Square, and uttered curious reminiscences of the venerable days when one of them had worked, actually toiled for a living, upon the shores of that expanse. Ten years had passed (yes, at least ten—O edax rerum!). Upon ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... restlessly. "It was not," he said sombrely; "it was not meant to wound you, sir. Let me, once for all, sitting in this room amid the shades of so many past kindnesses, utterly disavow any personal feeling toward you other than respect and gratitude. It was apparent to me that the letter must be written, but I take God to witness ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... "I did," said Otto sombrely, "but now I do not. I am growing old. And then, Gotthold, there is Seraphina. She is loathed in this country that I brought her to and suffered her to spoil. Yes, I gave it her as a plaything, and she has broken it: a fine Prince, an admirable Princess! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nodded, gravely and sombrely. Paulus was not alone in his bitterness. For the first time in the history of the world men stood aside and watched their country falling into ruins before their eyes with a swiftness greater in proportion to its mighty length of life than ever country had fallen before; ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... inclined to think it's a hopeless experiment—our life together." Herrick spoke sombrely. "I have been wondering seriously of late whether it would not be better to make over all my property to my wife and rid her of my presence, I believe she would be happier ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... dull silver paper. The reception room into which he was shown, by a maid, was jungle-like in its hangings and deep-tufted upholstery of maroon and royal blue velvets, its lace and twisted cords with heavy tassels, and hassocks crowded on the sombrely brilliant rugs sacred in mosques. There was a mantle in colored marbles, cabinets of fretted ebony, tables of onyx and floriated ormolu, ivories and ornaments of ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... world governed by God Whom we must believe to be all-powerful, all-just, and all-loving? It is the wilful sin of man, says the moralist, that has brought these hard things upon him. But that is no answer, for the dark shadow lies as sombrely over irresponsible nature, which groans over undeserved suffering. And then, to make the shadow darker still, we have all the same love of life, the same inalienable sense of our right to happiness, the same inheritance of love. If we could but see that ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... expression, as he took a seat and beckoned me to do the same, may have had something to do with this strange sensation, it was so mysteriously and sombrely expectant. ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... standing in the level sun-rays gazing sombrely down into the valley from which already the mists were ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... That is the sort of tree to know at sight, for the globose, resin-dripping cones have palatable, nourishing kernels, the main harvest of the Paiutes. That perhaps accounts for their growing accommodatingly below the limit of deep snows, grouped sombrely on the valley-ward slopes. The real procession of the pines begins in the rifts with the long-leafed Pinus jeffreyi, sighing its soul away upon the wind. And it ought not to sigh in such good company. Here begins the manzanita, adjusting its tortuous ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... sombrely and left him in the midst of the question he was asking. She strolled back to the house and joined Lydia who was looking radiantly beautiful in a new ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... admire a fair picture of an old house set in old gardens. Old were the trees that shadowed it, and ivy darkened all its walls; without sound a listless beauty breathed beneath the pale blue skies; for all the sunshine and the bourgeoning of the spring, the picture seemed but sombrely rich, but sadly sweet. To the lips of a light-of-heart there was that in its quality had brought a sigh: as for Arden, when he had checked his horse he looked upon the scene with a groan, then presently for very ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... sombrely, after a barely perceptible pause to mark his tacit displeasure. "It is your ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... approval, but spoke no word. For the rest of that red adventure into the placid blackness of the night those two stood apart in the shadow, with their arms folded and their swords in their sheaths, sombrely watching the seven men that were their friends assailing the one man they loved. Such honor as they had forbade them to change sides and fight for the Little Parisian. They had been paid to range with the assailants of Nevers. But no payment could possibly prevail on them ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... vaguely foreseen, sombrely eluded. A questioner was before him who, poor, unheeded, an ancient victim of vice, could yet wield a weapon whose sweep of wounds would be wide. Stern and masterful as he looked in his arid isolation, beneath ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... grey and forbidding even with the yellow sunlight of dawn full upon it, and there, stark and clear, an offence against the sweetness of the new day, were the three royal gibbets. Their sinister hint was emphatic. The justice of the King was without mercy, and sombrely he asked himself, Was he so sure that in his failure he had no need of forgiveness? Was it not rather true that with Louis failure had always need of forgiveness and was never forgiven? He was not so certain, now that his blood was sluggish in the ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... from St. James's Palace, dash you through the City, and land you, within twenty minutes, breathless and bewildered, in the very spot where Sir John climbed from his steed. There is little now that is naughty and light-hearted. There is much that is sombrely wicked, and there are numbers of unsweetened ladies attached to the churches; and if it should chance to be one of your bad days, you may hear, as you stand musing upon the fringe of the Downs, in place of Sir John's insouciant numbers, "Mein liebe Schwann ..." and other trifles rendered by gramophone ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... sombrely. "The choice shall be yours, but you will come to me daily for the one or the other. If I cannot be lover, Madame, I will be master. And by this sign I will have you know it, daily, and ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... the train had come to a standstill. We were already in the station, and as I hastily collected my belongings I saw that Feurgeres had left me, and was standing on the platform talking earnestly to a pale, dark young Frenchman, sombrely dressed and of insignificant appearance. I joined him just as his companion departed. He turned towards me ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was not much pink left in the chintz now, there were still some pictures and small ornaments remaining from that time. It had a pleasant look-out, too, on to the quiet green Close, and was altogether a contrast to the dark sombrely furnished room Pennie had been occupying. So after Betty had scoured and cleaned and aired as much as she thought fit, Pennie and all her small belongings were settled into the pink-chintz roomy and it turned out that her stay there was to be a long one. The news ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... Jill's ear, as he pulled her along. "This way. Stick to me. Strange how the drama anticipates life! At the end of act two there was a scene where Sir Chester had to creep sombrely out into the night, and now he's gone ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... head and he remembers sombrely that it is an omen of a change of rule. He is king now, has usurped a throne, has had himself crowned. But for how long is he monarch, with this flaming menace burning into his courage? The year finishing saw the prophecy fulfilled by the coming of ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... without price because inimitable and too delicate to pass from hand to hand among merchants. I looked at the wonderful complexity of its infinite threads, my finger sank into it for more than an inch without feeling the touch; so black it was and so carefully wrought, sombrely covering the whole of the wall, that it might have been worked to commemorate the deaths of all that ever lived there, as indeed it was. I looked through a hole in the wall into an inner chamber where a worn-out driving band went among many wheels, and there this ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... repudiate his interpretation of her grief. She was quite willing that Mr. Kane should know why she had been crying, but she did not care to talk about that side to him. It had been always, and it would always be, she feared, all life to her. She looked sombrely before ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... glass, took a long steady look, and said sombrely, "It's the girl. Keep an eye on her. If they start to do anything with her, let me know. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... not seem interested either by the news of Mr. Faucitt's illness or by the fact that Sally, after delay, had at last arrived. He dug a spoon sombrely ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... of fresh yellow daffodils; in another a long, tapering Venetian vase held feathery clusters of African grass and fern, . . here the medallion of a Greek philosopher or Roman Emperor gleamed whitely against the sombrely painted wall; there a Rembrandt portrait flashed out from the semi-obscure background of some rich, carefully disposed fold of drapery,—while a few admirable casts from the antique lit up the deeper shadows of the room, such as the immortally youthful head of the Apollo ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Blakeney felt repelled and chilled by this sombrely-dressed young person: an instinct, which she could not have explained and which she felt had no justification, warned her that somehow or other, the sadness was not quite genuine, the appeal for ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... eyes rested sombrely upon the remnant of a rocking-horse, still hitched by bits of weather-hardened leather to a child's wheelbarrow whose broken wheel had once been the bottom of a wooden pail—and he ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... then, so drunk as not to realize his own drunkenness. When they reached the gray house he went to his own room and, his mind still wrestling helplessly and sombrely with what he had done, fell into a deep stupor on ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... 1904. The place was an ancient, secluded manor house, built so far back in the last century as 1896. It stood at the head of a profound valley; a valley clothed in ferns waist deep, and sombrely guarded by ancient trees, the remnants of a primeval forest. From this mansion no other human habitation could be seen. The descending road which connected the king's highway with the stronghold was so sinuous and precipitate that more than once the grim baronet ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... to follow, but a reflection that she could do no good by talking at the moment, and a certainty that she held him in the hollow of her hand, made her pause. With a hitch of her shapely shoulders she resumed her seat by the fire, brooding sombrely on the way in which this Gentile had rejected her love. Bending her black brows and showing her white teeth like an irritated dog, she inwardly cursed herself for cherishing so foolish a love. Nevertheless, she did not try to overcome it, but resolved to force the Gorgio ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... walls and ceiling painted by Verrio, has on the whole a somewhat sombre and certainly unpleasing effect. It is true that we have in it one of the most notable examples of Verrio's decorative achievements, but it is an example which I frankly find unattractive. It is sombrely gorgeous but in an unrestful fashion, with its sprawling gods, goddesses, and heroes in all manner of impossible positions, its pillars overhung with clouds or clouds swooping down, as though weighted with the figures, about the pillars. Beneath in a brownish tone are painted various "trophies". ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold
... way among the trees rising sombrely from the snow. Here and there a squirrel, alarmed by the swiftly passing sleigh and the tinkling bells, sprang upon a trunk and scrambled upward, clinging to the bark. From the gray sky a biting cold was falling and the wind ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... I don't want more dinners and dances and jewels and gowns!" Rachael answered musingly. She stared sombrely at the fire, and there was a ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... very few minutes of his summons, was ushered into an apartment large and sombrely elegant, an apartment of faded white and gold walls, of chandeliers glittering with lustres, of Louise Quinze furniture, shabby but priceless. To his surprise, although he scarcely noticed it at the time, Mrs. Unthank promptly disappeared. ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... over the bars, another and another. Round somewhere in the thirties the bars dissolved. The next thing she knew she was blinking in the light, Cutty, his arms folded, staring down at her sombrely. There was blood on his face and blood on ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... no more," he replied sombrely. "It belongs to the psychology of madness. To me, who knew him, there are gleams of sense in it, and passages where the delirium of the language is only a transparent veil on the meaning. All the remainder is devoted to what he thought important advice to me. But it's ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... last night; the lights in the chapel of the abbey were still flickering, and the monks were chanting the complines. The mellow music of a drizzle seemed to respond sombrely to the melancholy echo of the choir. About midnight the rain beat heavily on the pine roof of the forest, and the thunder must have struck very near, between me and the monks. But rising very early this morning to commune for the last time with the pensive silence of dawn in the pines, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... themselves was a biting, aching madness. She hated the conceited, happy self that hadn't cared. The piano, gleaming sombrely in the hushed light, ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... sometimes led solemnly to the house of some old, influential, or pious person, who formally gave them his blessing. He took them also to some of the funerals of the endless procession of dead Bostonians that files sombrely through the pages of his diary, to the funeral of their baby brother, little Stephen Sewall, when "Sam and his sisters (who were about five and six years old) cryed much coming home and at home, so that I could hardly quiet them. It seems they looked into Tomb, and Sam said he saw ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... in their chairs, and their sombrely-clad figures were once more merged in the gloom of the narrow box. Instinctively, since the name of the Public Prosecutor had been mentioned between them, they had allowed their voices to sink to ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... does," broke in de Marmont sombrely, "your Castlereagh will rave and your Wellington will gather up his armies to try and crush the hero whom France ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... a tragic family," said Piers sombrely. "As for her, she ruined her own life and my grandfather's too. She might have been happy enough with ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... some time without speaking, Valerius rather sombrely, it seemed, absorbed in his own thoughts. When he broke the silence it was to say abruptly: "I wonder if, when he goes to Rome, he will keep the light in those eyes and the music in that young throat." ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... sure, has ever entered his mind during all that time. To betray his trust would have been in his mind a thing undreamed. He was phlegmatic, stolid to such a degree that one could not but wonder how the Revolution had any meaning to him at all. And yet love of freedom glowed sombrely and steadily in his dim soul. In ways it was indeed good that he was not flighty and imaginative. He never lost his head. He could obey orders, and he was neither curious nor garrulous. Once I asked how it was that he was ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... Vickers as if a ghost had risen from the river mist and come to sit between them. That the woman was paying a price for her chance, a heavy price, he could see. They walked back to the city between the deserted vineyards. As they crossed the river, Mrs. Conry stopped, and remarked sombrely, "A bargain is a bargain the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... blind, unreasoning rage was shaking Varick. Curse the woman! What a brute she must be, to take his money, and go on annoying him in this way. "I wish you'd written and told me about it when it happened," he said sombrely. ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... this black purple is!' he cried, as they topped the ridge, and the Shanmoor valley lay before them, bounded on the other side by line after line of mountain, Wetherlam and the Pikes and Fairfield in the far distance, piled sombrely under a sombre sky. 'I had grown quite tired of the sun. He had done his best ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... else, all but got me down," said he somberly. "God, what I've been through! It came near preventing us from discovering that you're not a grand lady but a human being." His mood veered, and it was he that was gay and she glum; for he suddenly seized her and subjected ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips |
