"Grim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knowing that the enemy is massing his forces elsewhere on the long front, but this trick of rapid change is becoming harder to perform, and more exhausting. At any rate, the plain poilus in the front trenches are instinctively sure: "We'll have 'em now soon!" They have watched that grim gray wall opposite so long that, like animals, they can feel what is going on there ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... are surprised at hearing one like me speak in this way,—one who has all her life been admired and flattered,—I, Diana de Laurebourg, Countess de Mussidan. Even in the hours of my greatest triumphs my soul shuddered at the thought of the grim spectre hidden away in the past; and I wished that death would come and relieve my sufferings. My eccentricities have often surprised my friends, who asked if sometimes I were not a little mad. Mad? Yes, I am mad! They do not know that I seek oblivion in excitement, and that ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... depends, monsieur, on what is thought horrible! A good many of my pensioners have been dangerous customers in their time—but now? Fortunately, monsieur, the dead cannot bite!" and he smiled at his own grim joke. ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... fearfully desiring to have his own courage tested—a more common boy-wish than might be supposed. He thought of it as he laid down the book and began to inspect again the painted buffalo skins on the wall, letting his imagination wander when once more he touched a Sioux tomahawk with its grim adornment of scalp-locks. He was far away when he heard his aunt say, "You were not out long, John. Did ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Charcot, indeed, it is said, used to declare that the only anaphrodisiac in which he had any confidence was that used by the uncle of Heloise in the case of Abelard. "Cela (he would add with a grim smile) ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... chair and took her hand in his. "Let us watch the dawn break on the mountains," he said, and together they moved to the windows that overlooked the valley and the grim ranges beyond. Already shafts of crimson light were firing the scattered drift of clouds ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... part to speak thus frivolously of events which will stand out in such golden letters so long as America has a history, but I wanted to illustrate the yearning for sympathy which I felt. You who were among people grim and self-contained usually, who, I trust, were falling on each other's necks in the public streets, shouting, with tears in their eyes and triumph in their hearts, can ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... in the world outside. Now inside the stone walls of Oyster-le-Main, whose grim solidity spoke of narrow cells and of pious knees continually bent in prayer, not a monk paced the corridors, and not a step could be heard above or below in the staircase that wound up through the round towers. Silence was ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... planned far in advance, even rehearsed. Such perfect team work could not be the result of chance, nor even of unusually good discipline. No, somewhere in Germany just such scenes must have been enacted in time of peace, that when the grim, harsh test of real war came there might be no delay, no lost motions, no trifling, unforeseen hitch to render useless all the elaborate plan that had been made. This might be war, but it was a grim, ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... next level, and our faces are revealed to each other, with one voice they exclaim, "How frightfully pale you are!" But I say nothing. In fact, their familiar features, wearing no longer their daylight semblance, present an aspect at once grim and grotesque, and more like the spirits of my friends ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... she murmured. "Just plain lost. Surely I must have come fifty miles, and I followed their directions exactly, and now I'm tired, and stiff, and sore, and hungry, and lost." A grim little smile tightened the corners of her mouth. "But I'm glad I came. If Aunt Rebecca could see me now! Wouldn't she just gloat? 'I told you so, my dear, just as I often told your poor father, to have nothing whatever to do with that horrible country ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... The beggar was the only man who could make him smile. But he smiled—a grim, bitter smile—when he heard that the great fire he had predicted had devastated Constantinople, and wrought fierce ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Evil One. In 1568, Ulpian Fulwell, a distinguished writer of the Elizabethan era, published A Pleasant Interlude intituled Like will to Like quoth the Devil to the Collier; and in the old play of Grim the Collier of Croydon, the epithet grim was intended to convey a similar idea. In Robin Goodfellow His Mad Pranks and Merry Jests, 1628, however, Grim is the name of ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... story, try to profit by it, young fellows. Hope to be blessed with a frank counsellor, a severe friend; and love not the man who flatters, but the man who reproves. Do not believe too much in phrenology; for I have the murderer's bump largely developed, and, as Edmee used to say with grim humour, "killing comes natural" to our family. Do not believe in fate, or, at least, never advise any one to tamely submit to it. Such is the moral ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... sayin' she's got a kind o' trouble in her breest, doctor; wull ye tak' a look at it?" We walked into the consulting-room, all four; Rab grim and comic, willing to be happy and confidential if cause could be shown, willing also to be the reverse, on the same terms. Ailie sat down, undid her open gown and her lawn handkerchief round her neck, and without a word, showed ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... now through all these years to think that I did kneel too hard upon this man. He was no enemy of mine, and did but do—or seek to do—his duty. But he would fight or die, and I must fight or die; and so it ended as such strivings will, with some grim crackling of ribs—and when I rose he rose ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... weight of blows!" answered the grim soldier. "But the command is hard; I would fain let their puddle-blood flow an hour or two longer. Yet, pardon me; in obeying thy orders, do I obey those of my master, thy kinsman? It is old Stephen Colonna—who seldom spares blood or treasure, God bless him—(save ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... moment of childhood. Consequently it is natural to suppose that many of the things which have been denied us should at times beckon to us. But since they are banned they must beckon in devious ways. These sometime grim specters both of the present and of the past cannot break through the barriers of our staid and sober waking moments, so they exhibit themselves, at least to the initiated, in shadowy form in reverie, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of great gentleness. My ideas of the "learned blacksmith" had been of something altogether more ponderous and peremptory. Elihu has been for some years operating, in England and on the Continent, in a movement which many in our half-Christianized times regard with as much incredulity as the grim, old warlike barons did the suspicious imbecilities of reading and writing. The sword now, as then, seems so much more direct a way to terminate controversies, that many Christian men, even, cannot conceive how the world is to get ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... but to us," she corrected, smiling; "but tell me what think you of this appearance which has so startled our Margaret. Was it ghost or goblin or dream of the night? We have never had either witch or warlock about the house of Thrieve since the old Abbot Gawain laid the ghost of Archibald the Grim with four-and-forty masses, said without ever breaking his fast, down there ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Julie, sitting wrapped in a heavy cloak, in one of the pews before the choir, and the grim Suzanne, also shrouded in a heavy cloak, sat beside her. John's heart was in a glow. He knew now that he loved his comrade Philip's sister. Two or three of the golden curls escaping from her hood, fell down her back, and they ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... nations; only a small portion of non-OECD countries have succeeded in rapidly adjusting to these technological forces; the accelerated development of new industrial (and agricultural) technology is complicating already grim environmental problems ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... runs her timorous dam to find, Whom empty terror thrills Of woods and whispering wind. Whether 'tis Spring's first shiver, faintly heard Through the light leaves, or lizards in the brake The rustling thorns have stirr'd, Her heart, her knees, they quake. Yet I, who chase you, no grim lion am, No tiger fell, to crush you in my gripe: Come, learn to leave your dam, For ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... ran in, one behind the other, foaming over the hidden rocks, splashing wildly against the grim wall of granite that stood sharp-edged to withstand them. It was curved like a scimitar, that rock, and within its curve there slept, when the tide was low, a pool. When the tide rose the waters raged and thundered all around the rock, but when it sank again the still, ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... I tell yer?" he exclaimed with a grim smile of satisfaction on his countenance; "he picked up them lost ten minutes, and here ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... would it were ordained for me To share your fate, oh finny friend! I surely were not loath to be Reserved for such a noble end; For when old Chronos, gaunt and grim, At last reels in his ruthless line, What were my ecstacy to swim In wine, ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... a word from me the men sprang to their feet, and we pushed rapidly forward. The battery was but a quarter of a mile from the spot where we had landed, and so accurately had I taken my bearings that, in about five minutes after we began to move, the structure loomed up, dark and grim, before us. Hoard had informed me that its landward sides were protected by a deep moat, connected with the sea, and spanned by a drawbridge; and it was for this bridge that I was keeping a sharp look-out. I was so close aboard of ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... grim certainty of his mastery of the situation Ken threw a huge potato at his leading pursuer. Fair and square on the bronze head it struck with a sharp crack. Like a tenpin the Soph went down. He plumped into the next two fellows, knocking them off their slippery footing. The three fell helplessly ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... remarked Captain Shirril, rousing himself; "we had rough days and nights, beyond all doubt, but after all, there was something about it which had its charm. There was an excitement in battle, a thrill in the desperate ride when on a scout, a glory in victory, and even a grim satisfaction in defeat, caused by the belief that we were not conquered, or that, if we were driven back, it was by ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... rope, up and down the vessel's side, bringing my feet to within a very few inches of the water. On looking downwards I saw a great shark in the water, almost within snapping distance of my legs. I can swear that my hair stood on end with fear; though I held on like grim death, I felt myself going, yes, going, little by little right into the beast's jaws. At that moment, only just in time, a rope was thrown over my head from the deck above me, and I was pulled from my fearfully perilous position, ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... all," said Columbine, earnestly, as the cowboy concluded. Her knowledge of the range told her that Lem had narrated nothing so far which could have been cause for his cold, grim, evasive manner; and her ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... bushes and trees or tall branchless pillars crowned with magnificent flowers, their prickly armor sparkling, look boldly abroad over the glaring desert, making the strangest forests ever seen or dreamed of. Cereus giganteus, the grim chief of the desert tribe, is often thirty or forty feet high in southern Arizona. Several species of tree yuccas in the same desert, laden in early spring with superb white lilies, form forests hardly less wonderful, though ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... tore away the mask of the minister. She called him a Bible-banger, that he made the dust fly from the pulpit cushions too much to suit her; besides, he denounced sinners with vituperation, larding his piety with a grim wit which was distasteful. He was resentful toward me, especially after he had seen her. It was needful, he said, from my influence in Surrey, that I should become an example, and asked me if I did not think my escape from sudden death in Rosville was an indication from Providence ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... to eat he took me out on to the balcony to look at the sea, for though there was no rain flashes of sheet lightning with low rumbling of distant thunder lit up the water for a moment with visions of heavenly beauty, and then were devoured by the grim and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation—above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself—here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be successful. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... only play at words, Joan thought. She divined in Roberts a cold and grim acceptance of something he had expected. And the voice of Kells—what did that convey? Still the man seemed slow, easy, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... the strange beings who had startled him as he rode through the wood. He glanced distrustfully toward the window. Were the grim figures there, peering at him through the window-pane? No, he could see nothing save the dim night light, which ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... Unchanged, grim and grey, visited day and night by bomb and shell with the ceaseless activity of that Belgian area. A battalion of Worcesters, whom the Normans were relieving, painted a merry picture ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... Pat, who maintained his hold like grim death to the hind flapper. "Tim, me darlin', be quick here, or the baste will be off. ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... come," replied Gerard, with a look of grim satisfaction, "to secure the ten years more. I shall not let ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... it was good news also. There was no longer any doubt of who brought that wallet to the bungalow. There was no longer the grim suspicion of who might have rifled her rooms. The spectres which had seemed to be moving nearer and nearer her brother vanished instantly. That burden at least was lifted from her shoulders, even though ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... have ceased to trouble; when the roses and strawberries are at their best; when the lamb is verging towards muttony, and the whitebait are growing up; when the leaves are yet young, and Epsom and Ascot either pleasant or grim memories of the past. Can anything be more delightful than Hurlingham on a fine Saturday afternoon? that one week-day when the daughters of Venus throng the pleasant grounds, and the birds sacred to the goddess are held ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... to guess at what the city was, in those grim times of the early fight for life. We know the walls, and there were nineteen gates in all, and there were paved roads; the wooden bridge, the Capitol with its first temple and first fortress, the first Forum with the Sacred Way, were all there, and the public fountain, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... his powerless, motionless presence. The noble face, pale and set as under a mask, the thoughtful brow, the dominating features, were not those of a man born to be a plaything to the will of a woman. The commanding figure towered in the grim surroundings like a dark statue, erect, unmoving, and in no way weak. And yet she knew that she had but to speak and the figure would move, the lips would form words, the voice would reach her ear. He would raise this hand or that, step forwards or backwards, at her command, affirm what ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... imposts on trade, and soon amassed a considerable fortune.[113] In his eyrie upon the rock fortress, he is said to have kept for his enemies a cage of iron, in which the prisoner could neither stand nor lie down, and which Levasseur, with grim humour, called his "little hell." A dungeon in his castle he termed in like fashion his "purgatory." All these stories, however, are reported by the Jesuits, his natural foes, and must be taken with a grain of salt. De Poincy, who ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... they proceeded to the unprecedented and unconstitutional course of killing the Budget. This was exactly what Mr. Asquith and his first lieutenant had been waiting for. Lloyd George saw the fruits of his labor destroyed in a day, but he watched the process, not with despair, but with grim satisfaction. ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... balanced on its own rose and handle, all ready to fail with a touch. These outworks being echelloned along the floor rendered it impossible for an intruder to cross the kitchen in the dark without overturning one or more of them. Thanks to the lamp, Brassey steered his way carefully and with a grim smile. ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... grim Destiny, making with equal facility tragedy, farce, burletta, masque or mystery. The world is his inn, and, like the wandering master of interludes, he sets up his stage in the court-yard, beneath the windows of mortals, takes out his figures and ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... the lands to which they are justly entitled; no one more thoroughly realizes the agonies of apprehension which Italy has suffered from the insecurity of her northern borders, or has been more keenly alive to the grim but silent struggle which has been waged between her statesmen and her soldiers as to whether the broad statesmanship which aims at international good-feeling and abstract justice, or the narrower and more selfish policy dictated by military ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... began to look about her. All around and underneath her lay the black, still water,—so black that the maple-branches cast no shadow on it. About and above her rose the mountains, grim and mute, and watching, as they had watched for ages, and would watch for ages still, all the long night through. Overhead, the stars glittered and throbbed, and shot in and out of ragged clouds. Far up in the great forests, that climbed ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... mortal strife; I do detest my life, And with lamenting cries Peace to my soul to bring Oft call that prince which here doth monarchise: —But he, grim grinning King, Who caitiffs scorns, and doth the blest surprise, Late having deck'd with beauty's rose his tomb, Disdains to crop a weed, and will ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... childhood, while he lived among the peasants, he became familiar with their mode of thought and speech, and it entered into his being, and became his own natural mode of expression. There is in his daily conversation a certain grim directness, and a laconic weightiness, which give an air of importance and authority even to his simplest utterances. This tendency to compression frequently has the effect of obscurity, not because his thought ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... planets fade, new stars shall dimly burn, But not to Eden's peace shalt thou return. Oft from thy yearning heart glad hope shall fail. Thy fruit of life lift bloom all sere and pale. Certain, small comfort bides, when joy is gone, In Great or Less. Grim Sorrow waits to lead thee on. Sorrow! Thou hast not seen her pallid face. In thy most troubled dream she had no place"— "Nay, I depart," she said, with lips grown chill. "Fearless and free, exiled, but princess still." "I may not hinder thee," the Angel ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... battle which Denis Oglethorpe fought during the next fortnight, in that small chamber of the wayside inn at St. Quentin; and it was a stern antagonist he waged war against—that grim old enemy, Death. ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hard on the women-folk," added the captain, with a grim smile, "they are not all alike. At least there is one that I know of in the East, whose spirit is like that of the lamb, and her voice like the ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... were slowly and not quite smoothly dropping through the lugubrious upper part of the structure, where it was darkened by a rough weatherboarding, or lower down, where the unobstructed light showed the grim tearful face of the cliff, bedrabbled with oozy springs, and the audacious slightness of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... agricultural implement lest he shock the supersensitiveness of hedonists and call down upon his head the Anathema Maranatha of men infinitely worse than Oscar Wilde. What the Mirror means by "Cambronne's surrender" I cannot imagine, unless Editor Reedy was indulging in grim irony. I present extracts from the account of Cambronne, which he suspects may have given the pietistical Quakers a pain. It is the finale of Hugo's matchless word-painting of the Battle ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... unconsciously overdo it, and overtax their own strength in their grim fights with Angel of Death. A sort of superhuman power sustains them for a time, ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... darkened hours and days and years smothered their haunting voices. She had "left yesterday behind her," as the major's royal wife had wished her to, and for the first time in all her checkered and neglected life she laughed with the gladness of a bird at song, flung her past behind her, and the grim unhappiness of her former life ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... detention occurred again as it had occurred before. The country was very disturbed and very miserable, and Dr. Livingstone was in great straits and want. Yet with a grim humor he tells how, when lying in an open shed, with all his men around him, he dreamed of having apartments at Mivart's Hotel. It was after much delay that he found himself at last, under the escort of a slave-party, on the way to Ujiji. Mr. Waller has graphically ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... grouped dogs of all sorts and sizes. Two splendid Blood-hounds were solemnly sitting up, one on each side of the crown-bearer. Two or three Bull-dogs—-whom I guessed to be the Body-Guard of the King—were waiting in grim silence: in fact the only voices at all plainly audible were those of two little dogs, who had mounted a settee, and were holding a lively discussion that looked ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... more rupees," said Dana Da, faintly, "and if I die before I spend them, bury them with me." The silver was counted out while Dana Da was fighting with death. His hand closed upon the money and he smiled a grim smile. ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... change came over him. It was Monday when he and I were in the office receiving our instructions. Curtis, after going over some books, handed to Quentin a vellum-covered volume of poems, saying with a grim smile: "There are some more laurels for you ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... stated, it was subsequently built over so as to leave only a few courts. The largest one, eighty by seventy feet, is immediately before us, with a range of steps leading down into it. On each side of the stairway is sculptured, on stucco, a row of grim and gigantic figures. The engraving opposite represents the same. "They are adorned with rich headdresses and necklaces, but their attitude is that of pain and trouble. The design and anatomical proportions of the figures are faulty, ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... sky, That Anadale [F] doth crown, with a most amorous eye, Salutes me every day, or at my pride looks grim, Oft threatening me with clouds, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... away, trumpeting in agony, at twenty miles an hour. The driver lost his balance and fell off; the other man, scrambling along to take his place and steer the monster, fell off after him, taking both my guns with him as he went; and I myself, crouching in the swaying howdah, and holding on for grim death, continued to tear through the jungle on top of my terrified and angry elephant. Then, suddenly, the branch of a tree caught the howdah in the middle and swept it clear. The elephant rushed on. The howdah, with myself inside it, swung in mid- air like a caught balloon. But I saw ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... passage were carved with strange writings in the uncanny form mentioned. The huge stone coffin or sarcophagus in the deep pit was marvellously graven throughout with signs. The Arab chief and two others who ventured into the tomb with me, and who were evidently used to such grim explorations, managed to take the cover from the sarcophagus without breaking it. At which they wondered; for such good fortune, they said, did not usually attend such efforts. Indeed they seemed not over careful; and did handle the various ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... by the intimation in the tone that all her speaking was in vain. Several in the crowd looked reproachfully at him who had responded, feeling that Lahoma deserved more consideration; but in the main, the men nodded grim approval. They had plenty of time—but at the end of it, Bill would either tell all ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... violet chiffon and carried carefully in a bandbox by itself, a new, crisp sateen petticoat, and a golf skirt she had sat up until one o'clock to finish the night before she left home. It was inevitable that the butcher's widow should be disappointed. There was too much grim reality in ten-hour days spent over a machine in the stifling mill room to feed a sentimentalist whose thirty odd years were no accomplice to romance. She grumbled and complained. Secret dissatisfaction ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... had been haled from my feasting a careless boy, and had stood before my judges as an angry man, as I look back, I see that from that arming I rose up a grim and desperate warrior with wrongs to right, and the will and ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... wind and wave the sailor brave has fared To shores of every sea; But, never yet have seamen met or dared Grim death for victory, In braver mood than they who died On drifting decks in Apia's tide While cheering every sailor's pride, The Banner of ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... steel-buckled leather belt upon him beneath his cloak and a pair of daggers in it, with his long-sword looped up; he had his felt hat on his head, buckled again, and decked with half a pheasant's tail; he had his long boots of undressed leather, that rose above his knees; and on his left wrist sat his grim falcon Agnes, hooded and belled, not because he rode after game, but from mere custom, and ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... was being rapidly cleared by whites and Malays working shoulder to shoulder in silence. "I like him. He don't belong to that yachting lot either. They picked him up on the road somewhere. Look at the old dog—carved out of a ship's timber—as talkative as a fish—grim as a gutted wreck. That's the man for me. All the others there are married, or going to be, or ought to be, or sorry they ain't. Every man jack of them has a petticoat in tow—dash me! Never heard in all my travels such a jabber about wives and kids. Hurry up with your dunnage—below ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... might never have got to love her at all, and—to have loved her for so long and to have been with her so many times, was worth more than all else. Could he but have that measure of delight again, and then die, Death wouldn't be so grim and hopeless as this present pass. He flattered himself that she could never imagine all his folly of love. He was grateful to Fate that he had never uttered such avowal and suffered its inevitable rejection; for ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... grim messenger depart, she pressed her hands tightly over her breast to hide from the quick eye of the miser the violent agitation that convulsed her frame, as the recollection of former days flashed upon her ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... or consulate; yet this library, while offering peculiar advantages to theological and other special students and readers, does not afford any extended privileges to the general reader of modern English and American publications. It is located in a grim and forbidding old stone palace, approached by an obscure lane from the Corso, where, as there is no sidewalk, the pedestrian shares the narrow, dark, cold, stone-paved little street with carts, donkeys, ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... I was asked to go off into the enemy's lands on a quest for which I believed I was manifestly unfitted—a business of lonely days and nights, of nerve-racking strain, of deadly peril shrouding me like a garment. Looking out on the bleak weather I shivered. It was too grim a business, too inhuman for flesh and blood. But Sir Walter had called it a matter of life and death, and I had told him that I was out to serve my country. He could not give me orders, but was I not under orders—higher ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... speech, and made some impression, and the principal of the Institute was urged by the Republicans to reply. After some hesitation, Garfield did so. The answer was said to have been calmly given, but its grim facts of slavery horrors, its awful pictures of slavery evils, were so overwhelming, that ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... within sight of the Caledonian isles and headlands hovering in blue shadows over the sea, they entered, where the sun rose over long silver sands and hills of chalk, with a grim headland on the west towering up into sombre mountains. Once within the strait, they had a wide expanse of quiet waters on all sides, running deep among the rugged hills, and receiving at its further end the ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... a grim smile, "when the Prince of Wales himself came to shop in our town, he was obliged to be his own porter. Governesses and tutors may pack up the loads, but the pupils ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... done by you, Had fate made me a princess.—Death, methinks, Is not a terror now: He is not fierce, or grim, but fawns, and sooths me, And slides along, like Cleopatra's aspick, Offering his service to ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... and postures, with dresses as fantastical as their minds. One gentleman, of the existence of whose trowsers you are not aware till you see the terminating line at the ankle, is sitting and looking grim on a sofa, with his hat on and no waistcoat. Yet there is real genius in his designs for Milton, though disturbed, as usual, by strainings after the energetic. His most extraordinary mistake, after all, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... reason for trembling was that the celebrated bald expert had quite recently examined me for my Final in surgery. On that dread occasion I had made one bad blunder, so ridiculous that Toddy's mood had passed suddenly from grim ferociousness to wild northern hilarity. I think I am among the few persons in the world who have seen and ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... hang to this day over his country as bitter curses. For in all his plan and work to advance the mass of men was one supreme lack—lack of any account of the worth and right of the individual man. Lesser examples of this are seen in his grim jest at Westminster Hall—"What use of so many lawyers? I have but two lawyers in Russia, and one of those I mean to hang as soon as I return;" or when at Berlin, having been shown a new gibbet, he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... his grandfather. He had been gay and inconsequent, or fiercely passionate in his devotion to her. But of his loss he had never spoken, and vaguely she had known that he had shut it out of his life with that other grim shadow that dwelt behind the locked door she might not open. She had not deemed him heartless, but she had regretted that deliberate shirking of his grief. She had known that sooner or later he would have to endure the scourging ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... could not possibly have threaded its way among the labyrinth of icebergs or squeezed through the barely open channels. These monster bergs presented an endless succession of crystal palaces, of massive cathedrals and fantastic mountain ranges, grim and sentinel-like, immovable as some towering cliff of solid rock, standing; silent as a sphinx, resisting the restless waves ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... that had been made for the grim Doctor's benefit, and was hooted in the streets, and under his own windows. Hearing such remarks and insults, the Doctor would glare round at them with red eyes, especially if the brandy-bottle had happened to be much ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thought Mal Shaff. But he staggered to his feet to meet the charge of the ancient enemy and a grim song, a death chant immeasurably old, suddenly and dimly remembered from out of the mists of countless millenniums, was on his lips as he swung a pile-driver blow into the suddenly astonished face ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... you, Mr. Norburn? Well, it was worth all the money only to see old Mrs. Grim eat ices—you remember, Miss Medland? She bolted three while Sir John was proposing the Queen's health, and two more in the first verse of 'God save—'" and so Dick ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... commanded Nicholson fiercely, as he pointed out the ringleaders. And, impressed by his resolute bearing, as he towered above them with grim determination written on his face, the soldiers did as he ordered, whereupon he placed the prisoners in fetters and made arrangements for the security of ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... on the man's part, they tamed the Cove and made it a beauty spot in that wild land. A beauty spot, though their lives held nothing but treadmill toil and harsh words and a mental horizon narrowed almost to the limits of the grim, gray, ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... threats to appeal to the British consul, minister plenipo., her Majesty's Foreign Office, etc., all of which had about as much influence on the sheriff and his cowboy assistants as a Moqui Indian snake-dance would have in stopping a runaway engine. I confess to feeling a certain grim satisfaction in the fact that if I was to be shut off from seeing Madge, the Britisher was in the same box ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... time, Randolph heard the grim and sordid details of John Dornton's mysterious disappearance. He had arrived the morning before that eventful day on an Australian bark as the principal passenger. The vessel itself had an evil repute, and was believed to have slipped from the hands of the police at Melbourne. John Dornton had ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... strange memories crowded back Of Queen Gunhild's wrath and wrack, And a hurried flight by sea; Of grim Vikings, and their rapture In the sea-fight, and the capture, And the ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... and lustreless in death. It was an awful scene to the inexperienced youth. Though he had seen hundreds fall in the battle of that day, death had not seemed so ghastly and horrible to him as now, when he stood face to face with the grim monster. For a few moments he forgot his own toil-worn limbs, his craving hunger, and his ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... as fast as they could go, for who could tell what grim tragedies were taking place in Latimer since the two had ridden forth to find a doctor? There were stories of whole townships having been wiped out in ten days or a fortnight by smallpox, when no doctor had been forthcoming to tend the patients and insist ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... we pressed, till our banners Swept out from Atlanta's grim walls, And the blood of the patriot dampened The soil where the traitor-flag falls; But we paused not to weep for the fallen, Who slept by each river and tree, Yet we twined them a wreath of the laurel, As Sherman marched down to the sea! Then ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... overflowed on the wall which held the entrance door, and where they stopped a sort of trophy of arms was arranged on the wall. An army revolver, a great Western six-shooter, a fine little hunting-piece, a grim Ghoorka knife and an assegai, which I recognised from similar treasures on the barrack wall of an English friend of mine—an infantry major—one or two bayonets, a curious Japanese sword and a curved dagger whose workmanship was quite ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... One day a rider came to the ranch on the San Pedro with the story: how John Slaughter was last seen alive in the dismal hamlet at the foot of the Sierra Madre, abandoned by his Mexicans, with two cow-boys as his only companions, and half a hundred well-armed bandits on their way to murder him. A grim tale for the ears of a woman who was waiting word ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... generally more loaded with clothes than a Dutchman: he is tall, walks very upright, considering his great age, and is tolerably well shaped; he has a large mouth and short nose, with eyes very much contracted and down-looking; a very small forehead, covered with a large periwig,—this gives him a grim aspect, but on addressing any one, he puts on a smiling countenance: he is near-sighted, and affects to be much more ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... that's just the point Ellis has missed all through. Even if it be true that the world appears to him as a work of art, it doesn't appear so to the personages of the drama. What's play to him is grim earnest to them; and, what's more, he himself is an actor not a mere spectator, and may have that fact brought home to him, any moment, in his ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... little I am touched by the desire of accuracy. This is no furniture for the scholar's library, but a book for the winter evening school-room when the tasks are over and the hour for bed draws near; and honest Alan, who was a grim old fire-eater in his day has in this new avatar no more desperate purpose than to steal some young gentleman's attention from his Ovid, carry him awhile into the Highlands and the last century, and pack him to bed with some engaging images to ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Grim enough; but the grimness and the jokes are always running through my mind together. I used to spend hours in thinking what my dear friends would say about it when they found that I had been hung in mistake;—how Sir Gregory Grogram would like it, and ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... falsely represented as a peak or tower. It is a vast ridged promontory, connected at its western root with the Dent d'Erin, and lifting itself like a rearing horse with its face to the east. All the way along the flank of it, for half a day's journey on the Zmutt glacier, the grim black terraces of its foundations range almost without a break; and the clouds, when their day's work is done, and they are weary, lay themselves down on those foundation steps, and rest till dawn, each with his leagues of grey mantle stretched along the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... nearest neighbor, though it matters nothing to me how many people you kill. That's the only pointer I will give you—I'm giving it merely to keep you from blowing up the whole country," he concluded with a grim ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... had a shaking up. To many it has been their first dose of real grim warfare, and it has been a sore trial for us to lie out in front with shells bursting all round and no cover. The natural tendency is to run back to the trench and get under cover. However, I managed to pull through, and feel much more confident of myself, and the Captain apparently ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... sight it was! The skeletons of houses stood grim and gaunt, and the sound of the wind rushing through the ruins was like the moaning of the spirits of the dead inhabitants crying aloud for vengeance. The sounds increased in volume as we neared this scene of awful ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... expect: who won't go the pleasure excursion you had arranged on his account, or partake of the dish which has been cooked for his special eating. There is unsoundness in the deluded and unamiable person who, by a grim, repellent, Pharisaic demeanour and address excites in the minds of young persons gloomy and repulsive ideas of religion, which wiser and better folk find it very hard to rub away. 'Will my father be there?' said a little Scotch boy ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... various churchyards of the town. There were those who had seen him thus employed (that form seeming still to carry something of real sun-gold upon it) peering into the darkness, while his tears fell sometimes among the grim ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... inclination to overdo matters, she observed that I would probably be able to pull the matting along more easily if I wouldn't lie down on the piece I was trying to pull. Then we both said some things that I suppose we shall regret to our dying day. It was a terrible night. When morning came, grim and ghastly, life seemed a failure, and I could feel that ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine |
