"Silhouette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... definitely and shortly as possible. Simplicity has always been held to be a mark of truth; it is also a mark of genius. Style receives its beauty from the thought it expresses; but with sham-thinkers the thoughts are supposed to be fine because of the style. Style is nothing but the mere silhouette of thought; and an obscure or bad style means a ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... that his capacity for fear was strained to its utmost; that he could support nothing more, yet a new horror was in store for him; for, as he watched that gray patch, in it, as in a frame, a black silhouette appeared—the silhouette of a human head... a ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... expression, carried up my luggage, and as I looked at him, standing in the doorway, a simple figure in his striped black and yellow vest and white apron, I wondered just what effect the war had had on him. Through the open window of the room, seen over the dark silhouette of the roofs of Nancy, shone the glowing red sky and rolling smoke of the vast munition works at ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... gentleman, literature has given less or more of heed to similar attempts; though as result, as I suppose, there are but two life-size pictures which unhesitatingly we name gentlemen as soon as our eyes light on them. Profile or silhouette of him there has been, but of the full-length, full-face figure, only two. Shakespeare did not attempt this task. Aside from Hamlet—who was not meant to sit for this picture, though he had been no ill character for such sitting—there is not among ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... little stars one by one pierced the attenuated light; the interspaces of the trees, the gaps in the further vegetation, that had been hazy blue in the daylight, grew black and mysterious. I pushed on. The colour vanished from the world. The tree-tops rose against the luminous blue sky in inky silhouette, and all below that outline melted into one formless blackness. Presently the trees grew thinner, and the shrubby undergrowth more abundant. Then there was a desolate space covered with a white sand, and then another expanse of tangled bushes. I did not remember crossing the sand-opening ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... could grasp what he was about to do, Ned ran forward toward the light till he was half-way to the mouth of the cavern, when Jack saw the dark silhouette-like figure stoop down again and again, to pick up something each time, and he returned laughing, bearing quite a bundle of spears, bows, ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... instant warmer and more content, Julia sat back and let her whole body and soul soak in the comfort and beauty of the hour. Her eyes roved sea and sky and encircling hills; she saw the last wisp of mist rise and vanish from the stern silhouette of Tamalpais, and saw an early ferryboat cut a wake of exquisite spreading lacework across the bay. And whenever her glance crossed Sally's, or the doctor's, or Richie's glance, she smiled like a happy child, and the ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... morning Bassett, waiting in a lonely road near what he judged to be the camp of a drilling crew, heard a horse coming toward him and snorting nervously as it came and drew back into the shadows until he recognized the shrouded silhouette leading him. ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... projections, the round-shouldered little fly-man sat grinning on his box, showing three long yellow fangs. The vehicle, the horse, and the man, his arm raised in questioning gesture, appeared in strange silhouette upon the grey clouds, assuming portentous aspect in their tremulous and excited imaginations. 'Take you to Southwater in ten minutes!' The voice of the fly-man sounded hard, grating, ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... themselves, their giant crests pitched like mighty tents drowsing placidly between earth and heaven. Now their four o'clock veil of blue-purple mist lay filmed about their shoulders, but later they would stand out in bold silhouette cutting into the twilight sky. Everywhere was the soft smell of new-mown hay; everywhere the silences of the eternal, broken only by the muffled noises of Transley's outfit trailing ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... the door of Cara's room opened and closed, and the slender figure of the girl stood out in the silhouette of her black evening gown against the white woodwork. Her eyes widened and she paled perceptibly. For an instant, she caught her lower lip between her teeth; but she did not, by start or other overt manifestation, give sign of surprise. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... I saw him step out. Thus deserted, I sank into a chair near one of the windows. Never had I felt more uncomfortable. To attribute guilt to a totally unknown person—a person who is little more to you than a shadowy silhouette against a background of snow—is easy enough and not very disturbing to the conscience. But to hear that person named; given positive attributes; lifted from the indefinite into a living, breathing actuality, with a man's hopes, purposes and responsibilities, ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... stammer out fragments of would-be thunderbolts. Commissary of police yawns more wearily than before, secretary disdains to use his pen, seizes his penknife and pares his nails. Up rises a wild-haired, weak-limbed silhouette of a man, and affecting a solemnity of mien which might have become the virtuous Guizot, moves this resolution: 'The French people condemns Charles Louis Napoleon the Third to the penalty of perpetual hard labour.' Then up rises the commissary of police and says quietly, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the German trenches, followed by a whirring squeak overhead. Then comes an earth-shaking crash a mile behind us. We whip round, and there, in the failing evening light, against the sunset, there springs up the silhouette of a mighty tree in full foliage. Presently the silhouette disperses, drifts ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... struck a full clear note, another and another. The after-humming of the ninth had scarcely died when the blackness that lay beneath the fanlight of 506 was split by a thin rod of yellow light. Instantly this widened, served for a moment to silhouette a tall figure, then vanished as the door slammed. The tall figure stepped on to the pavement; a cat at its feet trod sedately across the road. The tall figure turned; in a moment was meditatively pacing the pavement opposite where ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... copper-colored silhouette of the island (the name Cyprus is derived from the Greek word for copper) above two green crossed olive branches in the center of the flag; the branches symbolize the hope for peace and reconciliation between the Greek and Turkish communities ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... this;" then, raising her glasses again she looked out at the smallest angle with the wall of the house, so that she should get sight of a vista through which any one coming from Shoreham would have to pass. Presently a silhouette appeared on the sullen sky. Mrs Norton moved precipitately from the window, and she rang ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... difficult of access. There was nothing doing by night; we had to do it at daybreak. At high speed, without smoke, with lights out, we steered into the mouth of the channel. A torpedo boat on guard slept well. We steamed past its small light. Inside lay a dark silhouette; that must be a warship! But it wasn't the French cruiser we were looking for. We recognized the silhouette—dead sure; that was the Russian cruiser Jemtchug. There it lay, there it slept like a rat. No watch to be seen. They made it easy for us. Because of the ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... I. "But where is her hat? She wore one. Let me see if I can describe it." Closing my eyes I endeavored to recall the dim silhouette of her figure as she stood passing up the change to the driver; and was so far successful that I was ready to announce at the next moment that her hat presented the effect of a soft felt with one feather or one bow of ribbon standing upright ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... gasped Dona Teresa. Just then there was a loud crow from the roof, and they saw the silhouette of the red rooster making all haste to reach the ridge-pole and fly down on the ...
— The Mexican Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... of a diplomat to begin awkwardly. As he stood there, wishing chance would bring her out of the house, there appeared a light in the door-window of the room where he knew the convalescent boy lay. Margaret's shadow formed a silhouette on the blind. Yates caught up a handful of sand, and flung it lightly against the pane. Its soft patter evidently attracted the attention of the girl, for, after a moment's pause, the window opened carefully, while Margaret stepped quickly out and ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... disquieting the eye, like the tower of Asinelli at Bologna, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Seen two or three miles away, these towers, drunk and staggering, with their pointed caps that seem to nod at the horizon, present a droll and hilarious silhouette. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... affectionately remodeled by those for whom the things of the past have a special lure. These remodeled cottages are, perhaps, the prettiest of all. Those very ancient landmarks, sagging into pathetic disrepair, present a sorrowful, albeit an artistic, silhouette against the sky. But these "new-old" cottages, with ruffled muslin curtains at the small-paned, antique windows, brave with a shining knocker on the green-painted front door, and gay with old-fashioned gardens to the side or in the rear—these ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... mother. In complexion he was so dark as to have earned in some quarters the familiar nickname of "The Moor." His underlip was thick and hanging, his jaw massive. "The mouth and chin are Philistine," wrote Lavater under his silhouette, noting, at the same time, "something out of the common in the eyes and the nose." The eyes were dark gray. They are described as "beaming with benevolence," and he used to say himself: "Anyone can see by the look of me that I am ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... scattered over the slope, upon the soldiers moving about, and upon our two guns, which seemed to crane their necks as they rested motionless on the earthwork two paces from us. The infantry picket, stationed on the knoll at the left, stood in perfect silhouette against the light of the sunset; no less distinct were the stacks of muskets, the form of the sentry, the groups of soldiers, and the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... the bar on this particular October day, there streamed the ruddy blaze of a fire newly kindled from knots of resinous pine. Against this pleasant background might be discerned now and then the shapeless silhouette of Betsey Bottom, the innkeeper, a soft and capable soul, who, in attaching William Ming some ten years before, had successfully extinguished his identity without materially impairing her own. Bottom's Ordinary had always been ruled by a woman, and it would continue to be so, please God, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... los?" Fritz repeated with a strong, rising inflection on the "los." And at that he drew his overcoat, which apparently had been thrown across his shoulders, high above his head and down over it, as if he were cold. I can see the silhouette of that coat against the stars now. Of course I could have been in the hole no longer than fifteen seconds, but it seemed hours, and every move is ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... black silhouette on the parlour window; then, with the sound of an opening door, flitted out before the other cottage, all black, but with something white over her head. These two voices beginning to talk suddenly outside (she had heard them indoors) had given ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... difficult, from Doctor Lombard's manner and appearance to guess his nationality; but his wife was so inconsciently and ineradicably English that even the silhouette of her cap seemed a protest against Continental laxities. She was a stout fair woman, with pale cheeks netted with red lines. A brooch with a miniature portrait sustained a bogwood watch-chain upon her bosom, and at her elbow lay a heap ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... silhouette, the figure of Peabody blocked the entrance to this vault, and then, turning to the right, again vanished. Monica felt an untimely desire to laugh. Now that they were on the track of Peabody she no longer feared the outcome of the adventure. ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... strokes of his magical charcoal a sharp silhouette of Brownson upon the wall of our waiting curiosity, fills in his sketch of Parker with a whole wilderness of classical shades, disposes of Willis with a kiss and a blow, gives pages of sharp pleasantries to Emerson, pays a graceful tribute to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... were in the library now, and sat down on a little sofa in front of the window. The moon was high and brilliant and the great expanse of water with the high clusters of lights on the islands, the sharp hard silhouette of the encircling mountains, the green and silver stars so high above, the moving golden dots of an incoming liner from Japan, the long rows of arc lights along the shore, made a landscape of the night that Mrs. Thornton with all her millions ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... I was frozen to the spot with terror. For Nils' shadow lay athwart the floor of the port fo'sle, his moving shadow. It was this shadow coming in through the deck door that had frightened Nigger. He recognized the shadow as Nils because a tam-o'-shanter crowned the silhouette, and Nils had owned ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... manifestation like the reflection of a huge and misshapen jumping-jack, which first would lengthen itself grotesquely, and then abruptly would shorten up, as the tremors running through the dying man's frame altered the silhouette cast by the oblique sunbeams; and along with this stencilled vision, as a part of it, occurred shifting shadow movements of two legs dancing busily on nothing, and of two foreshortened arms, flapping ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... into position at the word. Well, it wasn't difficult to fire; though the noise of the gun was much greater than that of the gallery rifle there was no recoil; and I tried to be as steady as possible in aiming and squeezing. The bullseye was the silhouette, life size, of a man lying prone and firing at me. Instructions were to aim at the bottom of the target, about a foot below him. The crack of my neighbor's piece, very loud and sharp, was the most uncomfortable part of the performance, and I ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... blot out the smaller shadow of the guard. Then both figures disappeared. A moment later a silhouette cut across the lines of the grille. Unoiled hinges screeched; the bars lifted. A rope uncoiled from above to fall at Rastignac's feet. He seized it and felt himself being ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... half-ruined tower, from which in the early days the heavy rocks were hurled down upon the heads of the enemy, and the dilapidated gate of Kublai, the grandson of Jenghiz Khan. Against the greenish sky drenched with the rays of the moon stood out the jagged line of the mountains and the black silhouette of the tower with its loopholes, through which the alternate scudding clouds ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... light from the hall had failed to disclose her when she had come from the kitchen. She wore the black cloak. Against the darkness at the end of the room she had made no silhouette. When he put his arms around her and touched her cheek, he noticed that that, too, was cold; and the shoulders of the cloak were damp as if she had just come in ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... horse appeared against the sky, following the man, topping the ridge, passing on. In silhouette it appeared no normal animal but some weird monstrosity, a misshapen body covered everywhere with odd wart-like excrescences. Close by, these unique growths resolved themselves into at least a score of canteens and water-bottles of many shapes ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... little creek where the boats were moored; and there was the wonderful lake before us, with its mountains, and islands, and trees. Unluckily, however, the mountains happened to be invisible; the islands looked like gray masses in the fog, and all that we could see for some time was the gray silhouette of the boat ahead of us, in which a passenger was engaged in a witty conversation with some boat ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... masonry, as well as the tangle of communicating doors. Above all, they had the twilight for their helper in our game. I had caught one or two joyous chuckles of evasion, and once or twice had seen the silhouette of a child's frock against some darkening window at the end of a passage; but we returned empty-handed to the gallery, just as a middle-aged woman was setting a lamp in ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... barnyard. She took the path past the house and down to the corral, where she paused, her ear arrested by the steady drone of milking. A lantern sitting on the black earth, cast a little circle of light, and threw a docile cow in dreadful silhouette against the barn. And by that dim light Beulah discerned the bent form ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... that even now Katherine was Cantemir's wife, spoke out with a semblance of injured dignity that melted under Sir Julian's scathing contempt to silly simpering. The noble character of Sir Julian seemed to silhouette that of her ladyship in all ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... there was the fine, haughty silhouette of Prince Galitch. He had been invited by Annouchka, for she had consented to risk this supper only in company with three or four of her friends, officers who could not be further compromised by this affair, as they were already under ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... where all the outlines stand out most clearly defined. It had almost grown to be a rule that the foreground should be placed sharply in profile and often so deep in shadow that it contrasted like a silhouette with the more distant grounds. On the other hand, it is a favorite whim of the genuine pigtail age to draw bird's-eye landscapes and views of cities, in which every elevation of the earth seems flattened out as much as possible, every distinct division ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... of a lady's dress. Nearer it grew, and nearer yet. We could see a figure steal from patch to patch of moonlight, and even hear the soft fall of sandalled feet. Another second and I saw the black silhouette of the old Zulu raise its arm in mute salute, and ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... the sight of this vast plain upon which we descended, lashed by the great wind. Above the low horizon was the wide grey sky in which, here and there, pale rents recalled the vanished blue.—A black, tragic Calvary in silhouette—then some skeleton trees! What a place! This is where I can think of you, and of my beloved music. To-day I have the atmosphere that ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... she said with eyes which fell now to the hands folded in her lap—and the droop of her head as he saw it, with the turned-away profile cut like an exquisite silhouette against the fire, was burnt into his memory afterward—"to have you remember this Christmas Eve—as ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... desert land showed clear; the grim blackness of Sentinel's lone peak rose abruptly from the sand of the desert floor in darker silhouette against the velvet of a midnight sky. And the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... no longer unknown to Parisians. Every year at Colonne's or Chevillard's we see his tall, thin silhouette reappear in the conductor's desk. There he is with his abrupt and imperious gestures, his wan and anxious face, his wonderfully clear eyes, restless and penetrating at the same time, his mouth shaped like a ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... the walls were covered on one side with big faded portraits of an inferior quality, like those in the corridor that connects the Pitti and Uffizzi in Florence. Before him moved the figure of Count Albert,—a black silhouette in the ever-increasing light. And always the music grew stronger and stranger, a mad, evil, seductive dance that ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... before the crisis came, hours full of the peculiar happiness of effective strenuous work. Once some piece of writing went on, holding me intent and forgetful of time until I looked up from the warm circle of my electric lamp to see the eastward sky above the pale silhouette of the Tower Bridge, flushed and ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... woman; a warmth of love, strong dogmatic religious feeling, and a considerable, but not authoritative, sense of the proprieties. Of what biographers refer to daintily as "her somewhat voluptuous style of beauty," judging from the silhouette in Mr. Scott Douglas's invaluable edition, the reader will be fastidious if he does not approve. Take her for all in all, I believe she was the best woman Burns encountered. The pair took a fancy for each other on the spot; Mrs. M'Lehose, in her turn, invited him to tea; but the poet, in ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which enwrapped the forest were not so heavy. The lingering light of departing day was still in the west and touched this part of the highway with its faint glow. It brought out into clear relief the silhouette of the old man as he stood there with his right hand placed to his ear so as not to miss the least sound ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... and throwing into ghostly silhouette the line of the mountain ridge across the Vardar by the time we had pushed on out along the communication trench to the Greek Observation Post on the extreme brow of the hill. Since midnight the enemy "heavies" had been coughing gruffly under the mist-blanket that overlaid the plain, dappling it ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... offered him by the expiring sunset, the figure of the man with the stick showed at first merely black and fantastic. He was a small man with two wisps of long hair that curled up on each side, and seen in silhouette, looked like horns. He had a bow tie so big that the two ends showed on each side of his neck like unnatural stunted wings. He had his long black cane still tilted in his hand like a fencing foil and half presented at the open door. His large straw hat had fallen behind ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... his way through the pitch darkness, groping cautiously; halting once or twice for a smolder of lightning to silhouette the house he was nearing. In a wooded lane, a quarter mile away, his ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... whose window, under the north gable, he gazed with love in his eyes as he made his every round. He was a good soldier, was Mullins, but glad this night to get off post. Through the gap between the second and third quarters he saw the lights at the guard-house and could faintly see the black silhouette of armed men in front of them. The relief was forming sharp on time, and presently Corporal Donovan would be bringing Trooper Schultz, of "C" Troop, straight across the parade in search of him. The major ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... little room in the hotel are pushed away; and the morning sun immediately paints upon my shoji, across squares of gold light, the perfect sharp shadow of a little peach-tree. No mortal artist—not even a Japanese—could surpass that silhouette! Limned in dark blue against the yellow glow, the marvelous image even shows stronger or fainter tones according to the varying distance of the unseen branches outside. it sets me thinking about the possible ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... belongs the Egyptian Slinger, a picture which, as we shall see later, provoked severe censure from Mr. Ruskin. As exhibited it differed much from its present state. Not only was the sky of deeper violet, but almost in silhouette against the moon, on another raised platform, stood a draped female figure, afterwards painted out entirely. Other works shown this year were Little Fatima, a small half-length figure of a little girl in Eastern costume, seen against a dark background; and a Portion of the Interior ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... if trying to collect his thoughts. He had dragged a wine barrel to collect his thoughts. He had dragged a wine barrel close to the trestle table, and now sat astride upon it, facing Tinville and the group of Jacobins. The flickering tallow candle behind him threw into bold silhouette his square, massive head, crowned with its Phrygian cap, and the great breadth of his shoulders, with the shabby knitted spencer ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... rose from the deepening gloom and stood erect in the moonlight, her figure throwing upon the whitewashed wall a distorted, specterlike silhouette. ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... you do, to a man like Markham. From the eyrie where his soul is wont to sit, John Markham has a fine perspective on life—yours and mine. But I imagine that you make the more conspicuous silhouette. To him you represent 'the New York Idea'—only more so. Besides that you're a vellum edition of the Feminist Movement with suffrage expurgated. In other words, darling, to a lonely and somewhat morbid philosopher like Markham you're a horrible example of what may become of a female person ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... ride. The character of the country was the same as that which they had travelled over since leaving Oodnadatta: masses of scanty mulga scrub standing out dark on a landscape of vast bare plains or rolling sand-hills. Far away, a pale-blue silhouette against the bright north-west sky, was a range of ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... Silhouette. A soldier of 1812 is kept true to the cause by a vision of Sam Average, the spirit ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... if the Germans saw anybody moving about on it. I think, myself, that this is an exaggeration, as their line of observation must be at least seven or eight miles removed and at that distance, even with a very strong glass, it would be almost impossible to distinguish a human silhouette. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... finger, Lois," her companion said, sitting up, and handing her the little grass ring. She took it, smiling, and tried it on. Gifford watched her with an intentness which made him frown; her bending head was like a shadowy silhouette against the pale sky, and the little curls caught the light in soft ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... had been upon the face of my uncle as he listened, but now as I turned them from him they fell once more upon the thin, wolfish face of Sir Lothian Hume. He stood near the window, his grey silhouette thrown up against the square of dusty glass; and I have never seen such a play of evil passions, of anger, of jealousy, of disappointed greed upon a human ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... giltbacked books and portraits, and kettle-holders, and all kinds of beautiful things made out of wool; very comfortable it was indeed. The window was lead framed and diamond paned, and through it one saw the corner of the vicarage and a pleasant hill crest, in dusky silhouette against the twilight sky. And after the sausages had ceased to be, he lit a Red Herring cigarette and went swaggering out into the twilight street. All shadowy blue between its dark brick houses, was the street, with a bright yellow window here ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... petty Bagdad of the petty wise, the voice of the street corner lifted itself above the inarticulate din of the thoroughfare. A youth, thewed like an ox, surmounted on a stack of three self-provided canned-goods boxes, his in-at-the-waist silhouette thrown out against a sky that was almost ready to break out in stars; ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... land as seen from the railway descending from Nabresina to Trieste; for, though the Point of Salvore stretches actually farther out, it is low, and does not catch the eye as Pirano does, especially when its characteristic silhouette is emphasised by the blue shadow of a passing cloud. The headland upon which the cathedral is built, with its arched buttresses below, hides the town, except for the fortified cresting high above the trees; but, when the point is rounded and the harbour ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... chamois-skin bag, which she had forgotten under the pillow: and lifting the loosened canvas flap with its dangling pegs, I stooped to go back into the tent. Inside, I expected to find darkness, but instead I found light; Anthony up, setting a match to a candle wick, and looking a tall, dark silhouette in his pyjamas. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... voice trailed heavily off into silence. Eyes still numbly bewildered he turned, leaning forward a little, to gaze out across the valley at the great square silhouette of Judge Maynard's house on the opposite ridge, while Old Jerry wheeled the protesting buggy and started deliberately down the hill. Just once more the latter paused; he drew the fat gray mare to a standstill and leaned a last time far out ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... mounted the next ridge, still distancing our pursuers, I saw suddenly, on its crest, defined against the livid red sky like a silhouette, two ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... away a little or put it in shadow its boundaries are a little hazy and gradually you lose the impression of the lines that bound it and see only a book. A tree has no sharp outline except when it stands on a horizon and looks like a silhouette against the light. Ordinarily it is a mass of moving light and shade, of color. The leaves are not separately limited by lines and yet we know that leaves are there. If the artist drew each leaf separately and accurately the general effect would be extremely ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... and immediately disappeared into the darkness. In the red circle of light cast by the lamp in the road, a fresh pair or trio of impatient horses, and the silhouette of a coachman with his hands held out stiffly before him, would come into view. Again there began kisses, reproaches, and entreaties to come again or to take a shawl. Pyotr Dmitritch kept running out and helping the ladies ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... absolute. But after a minute a slender beam of golden light struck suddenly athwart the darkness and found his face. This he endured impassively, only lifting a hand to describe an obscure sign. Immediately the light was shut off, a door opened in the wall opposite, dull light from behind disclosed the silhouette of a man in Chinese robes, his head inclined in a bow ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... as upon one string. At the door of the summer-house stood the blurred figure of a man, bareheaded and tall. The light being chiefly behind him, he showed only in thin silhouette, undistinguishable as to age, character, and personal pulchritude. Stares ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... precision that one often sees men, who, placing their partner against a soft board, will stand at some distance and so pen him in with daggers that he cannot move until some are withdrawn, marking a silhouette of his form on the board,—yet never once does one as much as graze the skin. With these same people the foot-jugglers are most common. These persons, both made and female, will with their feet juggle substances and articles that it requires several ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... on a rock on the backbone of a ridge when he drew in sight of her—a dark picturesque silhouette against the sky. The sheep fed below, and her horse, with a bedroll across its back, nibbled ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... little silhouette in black, done in that day before the camera, when small portraits were otherwise well-nigh impossible. The artist, skilled as were many in this curious form of portraiture, had done his work well. ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... things indifferent; and when the young men were stumbling along the streets, he called after them a resounding "Good-night! Thanks!"—and stood a resolute, gigantic silhouette, filling, as a right Doone filled their doorframe, the ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... see the Time Machine itself?' asked the Time Traveller. And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the way down the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. I remember vividly the flickering light, his queer, broad head in silhouette, the dance of the shadows, how we all followed him, puzzled but incredulous, and how there in the laboratory we beheld a larger edition of the little mechanism which we had seen vanish from before our ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... profound night and watch the odd play of lights and shadows in that sombre labyrinth of edifices; cast upon it a ray of light which shall vaguely outline it and cause to emerge from the fog the great heads of the towers; or take that black silhouette again, enliven with shadow the thousand acute angles of the spires and gables, and make it start out more toothed than a shark's jaw against a copper-colored western sky,—and ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... are deeper matters; I am only trying to suggest a sort of silhouette of the crowd like the similar silhouette of the city, a profile or outline of the heads and hats, like the profile of the towers and spires. The tower that makes the Greek priest look like a walking catafalque is by no means alone among the horns thus fantastically exalted. There is ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... distant highlands were limned in silhouette against the twilight sky. A tiny, sparkling lamp glimmered from Signal Hill its warm farewell. From the swaying poop we flashed back, "Good-bye, ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... came to them like the voice of Fate, issuing from the ocean to tell them of the sadness that was the doom of men. Behind them Naples sank away into the vaporous distance. Vesuvius was almost blotted out, Capri an ethereal silhouette. And their little island, even when they approached it, did not look like the solid land on which they had made a home, but like the vague shell of some substance that had been destroyed, ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... lower, its reflection vivid and complete upon the waveless stream below it. Ten feet above the water. Five—and swift ripples from the rush of air disturbed the unbroken reflections behind. It was almost a silhouette against the mirrored appearance of the sunset sky. And then a clumsy-seeming boat body touched water with a vast hissing sound, and settled more and more heavily, while the speed of the plane checked markedly and its motors ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... in her easy-chair with half-closed eyes, her clear-cut features in silhouette against the glow of the fire, her soft gray curls nestling in the filmy lace that fell about her temples, she expressed, in every line of her face and figure, that air of graceful repose which only comes to those highly favored ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... engraving, half- tone, photograph, print, miniature, daguerreotype, chromo, icon, chromotype, mezzotint, pastel, lithograph, lithotint, cartoon, sketch, etching, chromolithograph, pasticcio, tableau, portrait, illustration, cyclorama, silhouette, carte-de-visite, minette, caricature, vignette, draught, aquarelle, thermotype, tintype, ambrotype, cabinet, heliograph, chrysotype, photogravure, oleograph, cut, negative, study, likeness, scene, landscape, view, stereogram, stereograph, panorama, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the hearth, and listened. He was a tall, straight negro of powerful build, and although his features were African, they were not gross in character. The candle on the mantel near him brought out his profile in fine silhouette, while his quiet steady eyes indicated a ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... all. Some person was in the room, too, and by the silhouette on the blind I could see that he was industriously applying himself to some task, the nature of which I could not determine. The longer I watched the shadow on the blind, the more puzzled I grew. I could imagine no occupation that would account ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... of the CASUCHA. Night had completely set in, dark and starry. The moon, now in her last quarter, had not yet risen. The peaks on the north and east had disappeared from view, and nothing was visible save the fantastic SILHOUETTE of some towering rocks here and there. The howls, and clearly the howls of terrified animals, were redoubled. They proceeded from that part of the Cordilleras which lay in darkness. What could be going on there? ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... she sat with lips just parted and teeth just showing, in a simple summer frock of her own unaided making. Her eyes, of the one deep Tasmanian blue, were still open very wide, but no longer with the same apprehension; for a step there was, but a step that jingled; nor did they recognize the silhouette in top-boots which at length ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... Terror. The dramatist has only to bring on some ruffianly characters in Phrygian caps, who address each other as "Citizen" and "Citizeness," and at once the imagination of the audience will supply the roll of the tumbrels and the silhouette of ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... swinging along, a silhouette beneath a gas-lamp; Edward, another, slouched at her side. They were talking just as they had talked any time since the girl had been seventeen; with the same tones, the same joke about an old beggar woman who always amused them ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... suppose you can make much of it; it is merely blocked in, and seems quite mad. You see my idea was to make her leaning against a wall—there was one hung with yellow that seemed almost brown—so as to bring out the silhouette. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... woods in intermittent intervals the one solitary gun still intact in an entire battery belched forth a lone shell into the enemy lines. In the fantastic flash of each explosion three shirt-sleeved forms showed a ruddy silhouette of blackened hands and features. A tearing, splintering crash awoke echoes as some great bough was shattered in impact with a "heavy" and crackled its cumbersome way past smaller branches to where it splashed into ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... the banisters: "Is that you, Jack?" met the two young men as they handed their hats to the noiseless Frederick. Both craned their necks and caught sight of the Wren's head framed by the hand-rail and in silhouette against the oval sky-light ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... landings on tempestuous miniature quays. All this seen through wonderful aqueous vapor, against a background of sky darkened at times to the depths of an India ink washed sketch, but more usually blurred and confused on the surface like the gray silhouette of a child's slate-pencil drawing, half rubbed from the slate by soft palms. Occasionally a rare glinting of real sunshine on a distant fringe of dripping larches made some frowning crest appear to smile as ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the doorway of the Pension, her tall, thin figure in sharp silhouette against the ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... doorway, where he could not be seen from the parsonage. The front of the church, quite bare and worn by the sunshine and rain of years, was crowned by a narrow open stone belfry, in which a small bell showed its black silhouette, whilst its rope disappeared through the tiles. Six broken steps, on one side half buried in the earth, led up to the lofty arched door, now cracked, smothered with dust and rust and cobwebs, and so frailly hung upon its outwrenched hinges that it seemed as ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... square, strong shoulders, well-knit back and straight limbs—a fulfilment of the promise of his youth—in silhouette against the glare of the overhead light, its rays silvering his iron-gray hair and the tips ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... silvered by the moon above the ridge, glimmered the river, winding along by peaceful forest and meadows edged with grass and mint. There was moon-bright dew upon the clover and high upon the ridge a tree showed dark and full against the moon in lonely silhouette. It was an enchanted wood of moonlit depth and noisy quiet, of shrilling crickets, the plaintive cries of tree frogs, the drowsy crackle of the camp fire, or the lap of water by the shore, with sometimes the lonely hoot of ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... of the block of buildings loomed in silhouette; the squares of the windows were ranks of luminous blue against the dark. Dust motes danced in shafts of sunlight. Far above, the roof was dimly visible, a spidery tangle of trusswork. And ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... saw Warren. He had walked about a hundred and fifty yards down the track and was standing in the shelter of the Pullman office building. It was very dark there—just enough light for me to make out his silhouette. I started forward—then ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... is vital and enviable in the real "Bohemia," and is the first of several poems of escape, which culminate in Fifine at the Fair. Both here and in another short suggestive poem, A Light Woman (which might be called the fourth act of a tragedy), the situation is outlined like a silhouette. Equally graphic, in the more ordinary sense of the term, is the picturesque and whimsical view of town and country life taken by a frivolous Italian person of quality in the poem named Up at a Villa—Down in the City, "a masterpiece of irony and of description," as an Italian ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... sitting up in bed, with an angry thumb on the bell, was electrified to see, on the glass door across, the silhouette of a young lady without a cap go into the arms of a very large, masculine silhouette in a dressing-gown. He heard, too, the thump ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... power of developing the expressive form of line on both sides is a resource tending to great development of drawing in designs for wood-block prints. The line may be of varying form, changing from silhouette to pure line as may best serve to express the design. It should never ...
— Wood-Block Printing - A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice • F. Morley Fletcher
... from Schnitzler's saloon indicated the presence of human beings in the little low buildings that pent in the highway. The boy and the girl stood at the pump, and the boy stuck a foot in the horse trough. He made a wet silhouette of it on the stone beneath him, and reached for the handle of the pump. Then he said, "I got somepin I ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Goritz was her companion, seemed to hear the murmur of their voices. He waited long and then the white drapery vanished, reappeared, and Marishka's figure stood in the window, leaning with one hand upon the casement, in silhouette against the light. And now quite distinctly against the velvety soft background of the breathless night the sound of her voice, refined by the distance between them, but fearful in its tone ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... on the far side of the eastern azure hills and set all the tree tops in the wood beyond the wold aflame; he looked over the silhouette out of a cloudless sky upon a Bay whose breadth and beauty is one of the seven hundred wonders of the world; he paved the waves with gold, a path celestial that angels might not fear to tread. He touched the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... long and dense shadows, but the silhouette of the man would be clearly outlined if he made any attempt at climbing over them. Mr. Howard felt quite sure that the thief was bent on recovering the stolen goods, which, no doubt, he had hidden in the rear of one of the houses. He would be caught in ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... The window running quite down to the level of the floor concealed nothing of her person; she was visible from the crown of her head to the satin slipper that covered her pretty little foot; and the outline of her figure formed in a graceful silhouette against the light ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... The large portrait on the opposite side of the room was painted by Joseph Lindon Smith, an artist of celebrity, who is a relative of Whittier's. Portraits of Whittier's brother, his sisters, his mother, and his old schoolmaster, Joshua Coffin, are shown in this room. The silhouette on the mantelpiece is of aunt Mercy, his mother's unmarried sister. A sampler worked by Lydia Aver, the girl commemorated in the poem "In School Days," is exhibited in this room. She was a member of the family who were the nearest neighbors ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... as the old man deliberately breathed upon it till the tinder grew plain before the watcher's eyes, and the shape of the old man's bald head, with its roll of fat across the back of the neck, stood out like a silhouette. ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... on as they walked across the lawn, from which the russet glow of the sunset had almost faded; the commonplace villa before them was tinted with violet, and in the west the hedges and trees formed an intricate silhouette against a background of ruddy gold and pale lemon; one or two flamingo-coloured clouds still floated languidly higher up in a greenish blue sky; over everything the peace and calm had settled that mark the close of a perfect autumn day, with the ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... light, stretches away as far as the eye can reach. Their green fans expand beneath the sun which colors, but does not cause them to fade. Upon the horizon a few scattered trees lift their slender columns. You see now and then the silhouette of a herdsman on his stilts, inert and standing like a sick heron. Wild horses are grazing half hid in the herbage. As the train passes, they abruptly lift their great startled eyes and stand motionless, uneasy at the noise ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... the forest that surrounded the glade, the enchanted mountain was visible—its sombre silhouette outlined against the blue ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... it formed one of those sudden pictures which paint themselves on the brain and can never after be effaced. I recall yet the long shade cast by the man's gun, the grotesque shape of his flapping army overcoat, the quick change in the silhouette as he wheeled to retrace his beat. But there was no noise, not even the sound of his footsteps reaching us. Even as I gazed, lying nearly full length upon my horse, we had crossed the open, and a perfect tangle of low bushes hid us as completely as if we had entered the yawning ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... Mala Dona was just visible, as an indistinct silhouette, over the stern, and an hour later they were fairly to sea. Out on the Mediterranean once more, the Rector could hardly believe the cargo he had taken aboard so rapidly during the night could be real. But there the bales were! You ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... alone, he went vacantly through the process of dressing the soil in autumn, every moment expecting to see the tall gesticulating silhouette of his father rising up at the end of a plain. To kill time, he entered the houses of his neighbors, told about the accident to all who had not heard of it, and sometimes repeated it to the others. Then, after he had finished his occupations and his reflections, he would sit down at the side of ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... saddle the better to obtain the silhouette of the sky-line. The sound which had held him came up on the southern night breeze. It was a low murmur, or rumble, and, to his accustomed ears, it suggested the speeding of hoofs over the green clad earth. He waited for many moments, but the sound only increased. There was ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... eyes, heavy eyebrows, and a profusion of dark hair. For his appearance at that time the inquirers must rely wholly upon the testimony of friends; for, I think, no portrait of him as a lad is extant. On one occasion, in our senior years, the class wished to have their profiles cut in silhouette by a wandering artist of the scissors, and interchanged by all the thirty-eight. Hawthorne disapproved the proposed plan, and steadily refused to go into the Class Golgotha, as he styled the dismal collection. I joined him in this freak, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... caught, far away as yet, the red and green glint of tiny port and starboard lights on the bridge of the Isis, and the long ruby and emerald shafts quivering beneath in the calm waters of the bay. In the light of a low moon, swinging down the midnight sky, the trim silhouette of ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... looking, to say nothing of their joy in telling at one time or another something they have seen before, shows with what keenness they observe. At the Buffalo Public Library there have been on exhibition some excellent silhouette pictures made by cutting figures, trees, etc., from black paper and pasting them on white backgrounds. "The pied piper" was one subject illustrated. To appreciate this it should be understood that the figure of the piper and of each little rat, some not more than a half inch high, were ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... see against the paler hue of the sky. the dark outlines of the boat's prow. It was bearing down on him. Above the bow's edge he could make out the vague silhouette of a head ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... committee-man harshly, bringing his dirty fist down on the other's knee. "Did you ever hear of Frank Pixley weakenin'? Did you ever see the man that said Frank Pixley wasn't game?" He rose to his feet, a ragged and sinister silhouette against the sputtering electric light at the alley mouth. "Didn't you ever hear that Frank Pixley had a barrel of schemes to any other man's bucket o' wind? What's Frank Pixley's repitation, lemme ast you that? I git what I ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... especially that of the great circular library, with its conical roof. In addition to the Legislative Chambers proper, two flanking buildings in the same style housed various Administrative departments. Seen from Rideau Hall in dark silhouette against the sunset sky, the bold outline of the conical roof of the library and the three tall towers flanking it gave a sort of picturesque Nuremberg effect to the distant view of Ottawa, The Parliament buildings proper were destroyed by an incendiary during the war, ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... customs of that age. Tradition tells us that the origin of the art of design in Greece was in tracing in outline and in profile the shadow of a human head on the wall and afterwards filling it in so as to present the appearance of a kind of silhouette. The Greek painted vases of the earliest epoch exhibit examples of this style. From this humble beginning the art of design in Greece rose in gradually successive stages, until it reached its highest degree of perfection under the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... heron croaking softly to her little ones—a husky lullaby, but sweet enough to them—and then, as I paddled away, I would see the nest dark against the sunset with Mother Quoskh standing over it, a tall, graceful silhouette against the glory of twilight, keeping sentinel watch over her little ones. Now I would solve the mystery of the high nest by looking ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... adored the Crawley family as the author of all his prosperity in life. He had a silhouette of his mistress in his back shop, and a drawing of the Porter's Lodge at Queen's Crawley, done by that spinster herself in India ink—and the only addition he made to the decorations of the Curzon Street House was a print of Queen's ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... moments Lida remained motionless in the same place, and Sanine's curious gaze was riveted on her white silhouette in the moonlight. Sarudine now came from the lighted drawing-room on to the veranda. Sanine distinctly heard the faint jingling of his-spurs. In the drawing-room Tanaroff was playing an old-fashioned, mournful waltz whose languorous cadences floated on the air. Approaching Lida, Sarudine ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... risk it. So she waited in the little garden, looking up at the windows, praying that little Harry would wake up, or that the baby's little acid wail would drift through the open window, and then the dim light bloom suddenly, and show a silhouette of Rose, tall and sweet in her wrapper, with a great rope of braid ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... the Rue de Douai, to the rondpoint of the Place Clichy, the two lanterns casting their clear light into the obscurity. The coupe then took the road to Maisons-Lafitte, crossing the plain and skirting wheat-fields and vineyards, with the towering silhouette of Mont Valerien on the left, and on the right, sharply defined against the sky, a long line of hills, dotted with woods and villas, and with little villages nestling at their base, all plunged ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... silent thought, went and fetched some wood. He was going to take possession of the fire. Janet kept her eye to the knot-hole. When he had the fire burning better, he straightened up and wandered round to the other side of it. At this, the sinister silhouette, acting as a sort of dissolving view, came out in favor of the old maxim that "there is a bright side to everything." It was no less a person than Jonas Hicks. ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... fluttered up then, a vivid italicized prototype, on slim tall heels that clicked and a very small red hat set just at the angle of sauciness. They moved off together after a bickering over luggage, the slim silhouette with the chin sharply flung up and the accentuated sway-back figure of the little mother, her skirt sagging over run-down heels, and, for want of a free hand, blowing up the loose strands of ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... loins the Messiah was; in them the apex of a nation's prosperity; in them glory at its apogee. And across that tableau of might, of splendor, and of submission for one second flitted the silhouette of that dainty princess of Utopia, the Queen of Sheba, bringing riddles, romance, and riches to the ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... cat duet. A silhouette. A high brick wall, An awful squall. A moonlit night, A mortal fight. A man in bed, Sticks out his head. Gee Whiz! The man has riz. His arm draws back A big bootjack— A loud swish, Squish! "What's that?" A ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... Dardanelles—sunshine and blue water, a glare which makes the Westerner squint; moons that shine like those in the tropics. One cannot send a photograph of it home any more than I could photograph the view from my hotel window here on Pera Hill of Stamboul and the Golden Horn. You would have the silhouette, but you could not see the sunshine blazing on white mosques and minarets, the white mosques blazing against terra-cotta roofs and dusty green cedars and cypresses, the cypresses lifting dark and pensive shafts against the blue—all that splendid, exquisite radiance which bursts through one's ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... these almost infantine sketches. Exorbitant fancy is here much less striking than sureness of touch, outlined figures drawn between the age of five and ten displaying remarkable precision and point, each line of the silhouette telling. At six he celebrated his first school prize with an illustrated letter, two portraits and ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... farmer's middle-aged sister, who stands at the table by the window, and rolls out a pie-crust as she talks. (The farmer is a widower, and she keeps house for him.) She talks of a small picture—a silhouette executed in black and gold—that adorns the wall-space between the dresser and the tall clock, and directly above the side-table piled with the small library of the house. The portrait is a profile of a young man, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... "The silhouette, you mean? Yes, that is she, and she is the same one who did that sampler you see hanging between the windows. She was not so old as you when she ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... the cloud-like surface of the fog a circular rainbow preceded them and when the operators, thinking the camp near, descending, drew near the fog, in the white center of the rainbow-circle, ghost-like, appeared a perfect silhouette of ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... at the open door, and the religious in his black habit was like a cut paper silhouette against the long ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... glide out of it by its own volition and power, and become a dim specter, while the next pinnacle glided into its place and blotted the spotless disk with the black exclamation-point of its presence. The top of one pinnacle took the shapely, clean-cut form of a rabbit's head, in the inkiest silhouette, while it rested against the moon. The unillumined peaks and minarets, hovering vague and phantom-like above us while the others were painfully white and strong with snow and moonlight, made a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on the door, possessed of the sense that the man she sought was here, till at last it was flung open, framing the silhouette of a ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... Order of the Garter, born of his wild frenzy[70] of devotion over this article of Elisa's wearing apparel, is an open satire on Leuchsenring's and Jacobi's silly efforts noted elsewhere. The garter was to bear Elisa's silhouette and the device "Orden ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... been looked upon as a token, not only of truth, but also of genius. Style receives its beauty from the thought expressed, while with those writers who only pretend to think it is their thoughts that are said to be fine because of their style. Style is merely the silhouette of thought; and to write in a vague or bad style means a stupid or ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... did, in the open ground with no trees between her and the far silver horizon, she was a noble and commanding figure, slender and tall like a daughter of the palms. She was for Max no more than a graceful silhouette, majestically poised, for he could not see her face, or even be sure that the effect of crown and plumes on her high-held head was not a trick of shadow. Indeed it seemed probable that it was a mere illusion, for crowns and waving plumes ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... saw that the night was lit with a strange and brilliant radiance. The storm had passed, and from all the houses that backed upon the one in which they were prisoners lights blazed from every window, and in each were crowded many people, and upon the roof-tops in silhouette from the glare of the street lamps below, and in the yards and clinging to the walls that separated them, were hundreds of other dark, shadowy groups changing and swaying. And from them rose the confused, ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... my arm, then, you or you or you, And let us walk abroad on the solid air: Look how the organist's head, in silhouette, Leans to the lamplit music's orange square! . . . The dim-globed lamps illumine rows of faces, Rows of hands and arms and hungry eyes, They have hurried down from a myriad secret places, From windy chambers next to the skies. . . . The music comes upon us. . . . it shakes the darkness, ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... a moment, to Kirkwood, tagging after her with an uncomfortable sense of having somehow done the wrong thing, her figure—full fair shoulders and arms rising out of the glittering dinner gown—cut a gorgeous silhouette against the darkness. Then, with a sudden, imperative gesture, she half ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... upper ends to hold them together. As a rule this cross piece is provided with a hole near each end into which the tapering extremities of the poles are inserted. From their high position near the extremities of the ladders, seen in silhouette against the sky, they form peculiarly striking features of Zuni. They are frequently decorated with rude carvings of terraced notches. Examples of this device may be seen in the views of Zuni, and several typical specimens are illustrated in detail in Pl. ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... 'escobarderie' of subterfuge or equivocation. A pale green colour is in French called 'celadon' from a personage of this name, of a feeble and fade tenderness, who figures in Astree, a popular romance of the seventeenth century. An unpopular minister of finance, M. de Silhouette, unpopular because he sought to cut down unnecessary expenses in the State, saw his name transferred to the slight and thus cheap black outline portrait called a 'silhouette' (Sismondi, Hist, des Francais, vol. xix, pp. 94, 95). In the 'mansarde' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... Morna's first impression of the new mistress of Normanthorpe, and it was never erased from her mind; a slender silhouette in an enormous hat, the light all behind her, the pilastered doorway for a frame, a gay background of hothouse flowers, and in the figure itself a nervous hesitancy which struck an immediate chord of sympathy in Morna. She also was shy; the touch ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... the Polaris unit rode the slidewalk through the grassy quadrangle and the cluster of Academy buildings, out toward the spaceport. In the distance they could see the rocket cruiser Polaris, poised on the launching ramp, her long silhouette outlined sharply against the blue sky. Resting on her four stabilizer fins, her nose pointed toward the stars, the ship looked like a giant projectile poised and ready to ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell |
