"Duskiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tried to disguise it behind a belated cough, but it was quite palpably a snort of outraged patience and dignity. She couldn't fool him any longer—not even with that wide-eyed appealingly infantile stare. He knew, without looking closer, that there was a flare of mirth hidden within its velvet duskiness. And there was only one way to deal with such shallowness—that was with firm and unmistakable severity. He leaned forward and pounded one meager knee for emphasis as Judge Maynard had ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... the heavy, massive entrance to the wealthy brewer's mansion with a sense of relief as if escaping from prison. The duskiness and solitude of the street seemed a grateful refuge, and the night wind was to his flushed face like a cool hand laid on a feverish brow. He was indeed glad to be alone, for his was one of those deep, earnest natures that cannot rush to the world in garrulous confidence ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... dusk in the winter nights, I often hear his soft bur-r-r-r, very pleasing and bell-like. What a furtive, woody sound it is in the winter stillness, so unlike the harsh scream of the hawk! But all the ways of the owl are ways of softness and duskiness. His wings are shod with silence, his ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... turban, and long gold eardrops dangled to her shoulders against the glossy blackness of her cheeks, and bracelets tinkled on her polished arms, which were mighty shapely, though black. In faith, the wench, had she but possessed roses and lilies for her painting, instead of that duskiness as of the cheek of midnight, had been a beauty such as was seldom seen. Her dark face was instinct with mirth and jollity, and, withal, a fierce spark in the whitening roll of her eyes under her flame-coloured turban made one think of a tiger-cat, and roused that knowledge of danger ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... appeared in the distance. Evidently the owner of that athletic figure knew where he was bound, and was going to get there as quickly as his firm, long strides could carry him. He was a large man, sun-burned to the point of duskiness, bearded and moustached as though barbers were unknown in the land from which he hailed. Dressed in servicable tweed knickerbockers and Norfolk jacket, his Alpine hat placed upon his head to stay put, his grip slung by a strap across his broad ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... street lamps twinkled like corpse-lights. The confused sounds of the street-life reached his ear as from another world. He did not see the people who flitted to and fro amid the gathering shadows of the cold, dreary night. One ghastly vision flashed and faded and flashed upon the background of the duskiness. ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... flat greenish smudge of the sea had been taking on a darker tone, without any change in their colouring and texture. Evening was coming on over the North Sea. Black uninteresting hummocks of land appeared, dotting the duskiness of water and clouds in the Eastern board: tops of islands fringing the German shore. While I was looking at their antics amongst the waves—and for all their solidity they were very elusive things in the failing light—another passenger came out on deck. ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... her anxiety, Dosia was filled now with a wondering knowledge of something unnatural about Lois, not to be explained by the fact of Justin's illness. There was something newly impassioned in the duskiness of her eyes, in the fulness of her red lips, in every sweeping movement of her body, which seemed caused by the obsession of a hidden fiery force that held her apart and afar, goddess-like, even while she spoke of and handled the things of every-day life. She looked at the common-place surroundings, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... her with more attention than he had as yet bestowed upon her. She was very slim, but wonderfully elegant, and her clothes, though simple, were absolutely perfect. Her eyes certainly were marvellous. Her complexion had not altogether lost the duskiness which came from her outdoor life. Her hair was parted in the middle, after a fashion of her own, and coming rather low on the back of her head, gave her the appearance of being younger even than she was. ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... would be pleased with this picturesque couple. They always seemed to me in the house like two wild birds, and tropical ones at that, in a cage. There was a tawny-gold, black and scarlet tone about them and their garb, an Indian Spanish duskiness and glow which ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... confessions which the soul makes to itself; they are so many little slaps which the author applies to our face." This, it seems to me, is to exaggerate almost immeasurably the reach of Hawthorne's relish of gloomy subjects. What pleased him in such subjects was their picturesqueness, their rich duskiness of colour, their chiaroscuro; but they were not the expression of a hopeless, or even of a predominantly melancholy, feeling about the human soul. Such at least is my own impression. He is to a considerable degree ironical—this is part of his charm—part even, one may say, of his ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... sisters would have been conspicuous anywhere—in a queen's drawing-room or on an Indian reservation. Theirs was a type that the caballeros and senoritas did not know. With them dark hair was always associated with dark complexions, the rich duskiness of which was always vulgarized by a coat of powder, and this fair blending of pink and white skin under masses of black hair was strangely new, so that each of the few women who were to be met on the street turned to look after ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis |
